John Stonehouse: the Lessons for Labour

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The capitalist press recently has heen full of the spec tacular globe-trottings of John Stonehouse. It is quite a story - the honourable Labour MP for Walsall North who fled from 'incredible pressures' and blackmail' in a "brainstorm on November 20th last year now looks very much like a shady company director planning to escape with the loot before bankruptcy struck.

Secretary of State to: Trade Peter Shore has now ordered an investigation into the Stonehouse company London Capital Group, and the Scotland Yard fraud chiel. who was in charge of the Poulson investigations, is to enquire into his disappearance.

The real question, however, is how such a man could exist in the Labor Party, the party founded to defend trade unions and the working class, using it to further his ambitions and private business.

POLITICAL LIFE Stonehouse began his political life in the co-operative movement in which his mother had been a leading light. He went to Uganda in 1952 to run a co-operative farm and wound it up two years later later leaving it £360 in debt (a debt not recovered till 1958 under legal A gond start.

But already he was in conflict with the established authorities, and the suppression oi the Rheinische Zeitung he first eager with which tion in which he was gomg.

It cannot be claimed of course that by the end of the period covered in this first volume of his writings. Marx had in any sense developed his overall world view.

He still suw himself as a philosopher who asks what i true. Yet already he knew that the same spirit that constructs the railways with the hands of the workers, constructs philosophical systems in the brains of the philosophers'. (pp. 191, 195 It wes to these very workers that Marx*: quest was already driving hin and this is a fact already implicit ly the end of this first volume.

Three further verses trom his youthful poems can also serve to illustrat: the path along which Marx began to more Cpp. 523, 5, 7 Like a limon our there, Demen use into the far mists Towards " goa! 1 cannot near.

I am caught in endless strife, Endless ferment, endless dream: I cannot conform to life, Will not travel with the stream.

Not in brooding introspection Bowed beneath a yoke of pain, So that yearning, dream and action Unfulfilled to us remain.

If the 18 year old youth who wrote these lines could not foresee where his 'yearning' would lead him we at least can understand in retrospect that his 'dream and action' already contained the elements that would culminate in the struggle for the emancipation of the working class, and, through thai, of the who. of humanity.

We can look forward to the help that we will receive in this struggle from the 49 volumes which are said to be about to follow this. one, though in the meantime we will have to rely on less full and compre hensive editions. END He sold insurance for a while before successfully standing in 1957 as Labour candidate for Wednesbury. Stonehouse always approached polities as a businessman, an employer, using political experience for personal gain - he visited the Central Africal Federation in 1959 not only as a Labour MP but also as cofounder of the local Commercial Surveys Company. Amazingly he was known as a left-winger for making provocative speeches to the Airican National Congress and being expelled from the African white supremacist states. The left face was soon to go.

THOROUGH CAPITALIST Stonehouse made hisumark when he ran successfully for presidency of the London Co-op in 1962 agains the left-wing 1960 Group (loosely based on USDAW, the shopworkers union) and pledged to combat Communist influence in the Co-op and work for right-winger Gaitskell's reforms. Stonehouse waş a thorougl capitalist who proposed sackings an‹ closure of departments to save money, and a board of full-time paid directors. (The 1960 Group turned this down.)

Such a man had to be noticed by Harold Wilson, himself then engaged in an anti-communist witch-hunt to idrive the Young Socialists out of the Labour Party. After the 1964 Elecian lion made him as one of the managerial, pro-capitalist MPs, Junior minister under Roy Jenkins (a natural pair) at the Ministry of Aviation.

Stonehouse often talked about ambiions - to be rich and to be Prime Minister and he set about furthering both. in a government that enthusiastically supported Americal imperiallism in Vietnam, declared a state of emergency against striking seamen, passed a racialist Immigration Act, froze wages and tried to pass laws against the unions, Stonehouse was in his element and managed the unprecedented step of becoming Postmaster General and Minister of Posts and Telecommunications at the same time in 1969.

FURTHER TO RIGHT As workers now came into the struggle against both employers and the Government over wages and in defence of trade unions, Stonehouse steadily moving further to the right and being promoted for it, set about his other personal ambition too.

In 1970 he set up a wine import business, Connoisseurs of Claret Ltd., naming as directors Sheila Bucklęy (his political secretary), Michael Hayes (his solicitor) and Alan Rainbird (a business friend). As a Minister Stonehouse could not have a personal interest, but all these three said they were directors of companies which Stonehouse subsequently claimed he had set up: Export Promotion and Consultancy Services, and Systems and Consultancy Services.

While he had I been at the Ministries ot Aviation and, later, of Technolog he was continually travelling the world as a salesman for British industry, and he acquired a wealth of personal connections which he could use through these two export firms to chart out a very profitable business career.

In fact Stonehouse's enthusiasm for making the working class pay cost him his political ambition. In 1969 he faced the telegraphists in the Post Office, on strike over a claim which seemed to breach the Government incomes policy, and o his advice the Cabinet decided to fight.

In fact there was no breach of the policy and the claim meant a drop in earnings for many workers. The delayed settlement of the strike was expensive and destroyed Wilson's confidence in Stonehouse BUSINESS EMPIRE The 1970 General Election finally finished his political career and he set about creating a business empire Connoisseurs of Claret was failing and needed loans but in March 197: he landed the chairmanship of Aeromatitime Ltd. and a £ 4,800. p.a. salary for occasionally keeping its directors in order. He also recruited Andrew Scott from 'ugly face of capitalism' Lonrho to head a new export firm, Global Imex. He burst into politics again to support the independence struggle of Bangladesh in Parliament, and was in charge of raising the Bangladesh Fund (to buy arms for Mujib Al Rahman) which was wound up in September 1972.

The source of this energy is not hard to find: in November 1972 he tried to raise £lm for a merchant banking firm, British Bangladesh Trust, intended to capitalise on Bangladeshi good will by financing investment on Bengali deposits. This ingenious exercise was a flop as the Bangladesh High Commissioner disowned him and many Bengalis refused to be drawn. Instead, Stonehouse plunged in with his own money and that of I tried to wear businessman's hat a a political hat, and i the Labour Party, a socialist party, this is often extremely misunderstood."

John Ston Global Imex and Export Promotion and Consultancy Services.

CORRUPTION Stonehouse was not the first man in the Labour movement to use the personal connection network, the corrupt and double-dealing method of capitalism to pay his way. There had been Poulson and Cunningham too. But for Stonehouse the road was downwards from here on. 'several original Trust subscribers baulked, and several others were very doubtful: Boston Registrars and Nominees, down for a £50,000 stake had not traded since 1956; Pladd Finance, also in for £50,000, had assets of £1,262 when it last filed accounts in 1971 Stonehouse went further into debt and engaged in complex company dealings to hide the crisis - he with his three co directors had personall staked £145,000 in the Trust. Some protested - Scott resigned from Global Imex when asked for another £20,000 for the bank in February 1974.

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rehouse was in trouble - he had an empire of 24 companrut which was making little Key - only €18,652 pre-tax it on a £3.7m turnover in : 73. In 1974 fringe banks : collapsing in the wake of the nfall of London and County rities and the major banks ened on personal lending.

tically, perhaps, Stonehouse's est threat was from his own r when Healey's March Budget ped businessmen setting their draft interest against tax.

rehouse was later to comment , 'I tried to wear a business's hat and a political hat, and Be Labour Party, a socialist parhis is often extremely misundrod."

le poor man was embarrassed le echoes of socialism left in Labour Party we might suggest La serious fight on behalf of the ring class by the 'left' MPs ist him and other 'misunderd' politicians might save their Wish by forcing them out of the ›ur Party into more congenial ›undings.

h men flourish on the inability ze 'left' to make a break with n and fight them. Roy Jenkins 58 Labour MPs to break Party Icy and vote with the Tories he Common Market in 1971 thereby kept the Tories in 'er. Not a single 'left' tabled land for the expulsion of this a-right group of MPs.

ih a demand would have enorm By strengthened the Labour Parnd would do so today with ‹ins' refusal to free the Shrews I Two.

it is, it is scarcely any wonder the demands for a Labour paign against the Tory "Fair ts" Act fell on deaf ears when • like Stonehouse rented a thouse in Hampshire and a in London, and bought a hous le Wesi Country for an estima£80,000, END NEAR Everything came to a head tor Stonehouse last summer. Several incrative export connections collapsed, the Global Imex managing director quit in August, the company Accountant resigned in September, director Sir Charles Forte and two others were pressing him for the 1973-74 balance sheets and wanted a Department of Trade investigation, and another ex-director was suing him for over £10,000. He had a $ 15m cement deal which could have netted Global Imex €190,000 profit on £500,000 worth of cement, and had plans to keep as much of the loot as possible: "I have vehicles for the money to be paid offshore, in Switzerland or Liechtenstein" he told one fellow-director.

But the Nigerian government pulled out of the deal and at the same time, just before he disappeared on 20th November, the First National Bank of Miami turned him down for a loan for the second time. It was no surprise that Stonehouse had read the warnings and prepared He phoned round local hospitals to find a dead man of his own age and found two - Joseph Arthur Markham and Donald Clive Mildoon. He visited the widows as their MP and used the former's birth certificate to get a false pass port, issued on 2nd August last year.

Before he left, he withdrew £20,000 from Global Imex (two year's salary) leaving it very short of cash, sold the lease on his flat and put his house up for sale. Whatever his faults, he could certainly think clearly in a 'brainstorm' STILL PAID Stonehouse is still being paid his €4,500 p.a. MP's salary in Australia and talks of staying an MP. "I think there's a lot of humbug about membership of the House of Commons being discontinued Many MPs are away for months...

Of course, this puts him in the illustrious company of men like Labour millionaire Harold Lever, whose absence one night to wine and dine led to vicious Tory amen ments being incoporated into Labour's Trade Union and Labour Relations Bill.

The Labour Party, intimately tied to capital, particularly through men like Stonehouse, will always refuse to challenge the employers and their right to make money whatever that means in rising unemployment and falling living standards.

As the employers now mount their toughest offensive, Wilson and Healey are reduced to an echo of the employers, using threats of unemployment against strikers and against the wages movement. Thara munin nut aalitiniane muct be driven out of the Labour movement, and a new leadership built to defend the working class..

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SOCIALIST ESS, Thursday, 6the February, 1975 WORKERS