On this day on 31st January

On this day in 1881 conspiracy theorist Noel Pemberton Billing was born. Noel Pemberton Billing, the youngest child of Charles Eardley Billing, a Birmingham iron-founder, and his wife, Annie Emilia Claridge, was born in Hampstead on 31st January 1881. He was educated at Hampstead High School but at the age of thirteen he stowed away on a ship bound for Delagoa Bay.

While in Durban he did a succession of menial jobs before joining the Natal Mounted Police. From 1899 to 1901 he fought in the Boer War. In 1903 he finally returned to England, and Lilian Maud Schweitzer. The couple had no children.

Billing was an early advocate of air power and published and edited Aerocraft. According to his biographer, Geoffrey Russell Searle: "In 1908 he designed and tested, on his own airstrip in Fambridge, Essex, three light monoplanes, two of which left the ground. Billing then threw himself into land speculation, writing, yacht broking, and ship-running. By 1913 he had amassed enough capital to found a yard on Southampton Water, where he pioneered the construction of flying boats (supermarines). With characteristic bravado he had meantime obtained a pilot's certificate after only four hours two minutes in the air."

Billing's Supermarine Aircraft Company was not very successful and on the outbreak of the First World War he joined the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS). Billing claimed that in November 1914, he played a prominent role in the planning of the first bombing raid on Germany when it was decided to attack the large Zeppelin base at Friedrichshafen. However, James Hayward, the author of Myths and Legends of the First World War (2002) has argued: "Billing claimed... to have risen to the rank of Squadron Commander. Later, official sources would claim that Billing had spent only 12 months in the RNAS, had never flown on a raid or in the face of the enemy, and never rose beyond Flight Lieutenant."

Noel Pemberton Billing left the RNAS and began a campaign against the way the air war was being conducted. Despite the fact that his wife was half-German, he constantly advocated the deportation of aliens in case they were spying on the country. Billing, who drove a lemon-yellow Rolls Royce, dressed in unusual clothes, including long pointed collars without a tie, and openly expressed a preference for "fast aircraft, fast speed-boats, fast cars and fast women".

In 1916 Billing, despite the support of Horatio Bottomley and Hannen Swaffer, was an unsuccessful independent candidate at Mile End by-election in January 1916. Two months later he tried again at the East Hertfordshire by-election. According to his biographer "the tall, monocled, and debonair Billing drew large enthusiastic crowds to his meetings." This time he was successful and he became a member of the House of Commons.

Billing now founded a journal called The Imperialist that was part-funded by Lord Beaverbrook. His biographer, Geoffrey Russell Searle, has pointed out that "Billing campaigned for a unified air service, helped force the government to establish an air inquiry, and advocated reprisal raids against German cities. He also became adept at exploiting a variety of popular discontents."

The journal also claimed the existence of a secret society called the Unseen Hand. As Ernest Sackville Turner, the author of Dear Old Blighty (1980) has pointed out: "One of the great delusions of the war was that there existed an Unseen (or Hidden, or Invisible) Hand, a pro-German influence which perennially strove to paralyse the nation's will and to set its most heroic efforts at naught... As defeat seemed to loom, as French military morale broke and Russia made her separate peace, more and more were ready to believe that the Unseen Hand stood for a confederacy of evil men, taking their orders from Berlin, dedicated to the downfall of Britain by subversion of the military, the Cabinet, the Civil Service and the City; and working not only through spiritualists, whores and homosexuals."

Billing now joined forces with Lord Northcliffe (the owner of The Times, The Daily Mail and London Evening News), Lord Beaverbrook (The Daily Express), Leo Maxse (the editor of The National Review), the journalist, Arnold Henry White (the author of The Hidden Hand), Ellis Powell (the editor of the Financial News), Horatio Bottomley (the editor of John Bull) and the former soldier, Harold S. Spencer, to claim that the Unseen Hand were working behind the scenes to obtain a peace agreement with Germany.

Billing was a strong opponent of the Russian Revolution and feared that the Bolsheviks would try to persuade influential people in Britain to seek a peace deal. He argued that money from Germany and Russia was being used to fund the peace movement. These people were part of what became known as Boloism (Paul Marie Bolo was a German spy who was executed by the French during the First World War). According to Billing and other supporters of the Hidden Hand theory, Boloism was the distribution or receipt of funds calculated to assist the act of treason.

In December 1917, Billing published an article in The Imperialist by Arnold Henry White that argued that Germany was under the control of homosexuals (White called them urnings): "Espionage is punished by death at the Tower of London, but there is a form of invasion which is as deadly as espionage: the systematic seduction of young British soldiers by the German urnings and their agents... Failure to intern all Germans is due to the invisible hand that protects urnings of enemy race... When the blond beast is an urning, he commands the urnings in other lands. They are moles. They burrow. They plot. They are hardest at work when they are most silent." It was true that there was a great increase in cases of sodomy coming before the British courts but the main reason for this was the large numbers of young men being herded together under wartime conditions.

Relying on information supplied by Harold S. Spencer, Billing published an article in The Imperialist on 26th January, 1918, revealing the existence of a Black Book: "There exists in the Cabinet Noir of a certain German Prince a book compiled by the Secret Service from reports of German agents who have infested this country for the past twenty years, agents so vile and spreading such debauchery and such lasciviousness as only German minds can conceive and only German bodies execute."

Noel Pemberton Billing claimed the book listed the names of 47,000 British sexual perverts, mostly in high places, being blackmailed by the German Secret Service. He added: "It is a most catholic miscellany. The names of Privy Councillors, youths of the chorus, wives of Cabinet Ministers, dancing girls, even Cabinet Ministers themselves, while diplomats, poets, bankers, editors, newspaper proprietors, members of His Majesty's Household follow each other with no order of precedence." Billing went onto argue that "the thought that 47,000 English men and women are held in enemy bondage through fear calls all clean spirits to mortal combat".

In February, 1918, Billing changed the name of The Imperialist to The Vigilante. Soon afterwards it published an article that argued that the Unseen Hand was involved in a plot to spread venereal disease: "The German, through his efficient and clever agent, the Ashkenazim, has complete control of the White Slave Traffic. Germany has found that diseased women cause more casualties than bullets. Controlled by their Jew-agents, Germany maintains in Britain a self-supporting - even profit-making - army of prostitutes which put more men out of action than does their army of soldiers."

Later that month it was announced by theatrical producer, Jack Grein, that Maud Allan would give two private performances of Oscar Wildes's Salomé in April. It had to be a private showing because the play had long been banned by the Lord Chamberlain as being blasphemous. Billing had heard rumours Allan was a lesbian and was having an affair with Margot Asquith, the wife of Herbert Asquith, the former prime minister. He also believed that Allan and the Asquiths were all members of the Unseen Hand.

On 16th February, 1918, the front page of The Vigilante had a headline, "The Cult of the Clitoris". This was followed by the paragraph: "To be a member of Maud Allan's private performances in Oscar Wilde's Salome one has to apply to a Miss Valetta, of 9 Duke Street, Adelphi, W.C. If Scotland Yard were to seize the list of those members I have no doubt they would secure the names of several of the first 47,000."

As soon as Allan became aware of the article she put the matter into the hands of her solicitor. In March 1918, Allan commenced criminal proceedings for obscene, criminal and defamatory libel. During this period Billing was approached by Charles Repington, the military correspondent of The Times. He was concerned about the decision by David Lloyd George to begin peace negotiations with the German foreign minister. According to James Hayward, the author of Myths and Legends of the First World War (2002): "Talk of peace outraged the Generals, who found allies in the British far right. Repington suggested that Billing get his trial postponed and use the mythical Black Book to smear senior politicians and inflame anti-alien feeling in the Commons. By this logic, the current peace talks would be ruined and Lloyd George's authority undermined."

Toni Bentley has argued in her book, Sisters of Salome (2002) that the government hired Eileen Villiers-Stuart to compromise Billing: "Lloyd George and his advisers hired a young woman with some experience in political subterfuge, as an agent-provocateur. She was to offer Pemberton-Billing her support, information, and sexual favours if necessary, and then lure him to a male brothel to be secretly photographed for blackmail. Eileen Villiers-Stuart was a political adventuress primed for the job. She was an attractive, twenty-five-year-old bigamist, and her lunch with the Independent M.P. was all too successful. By the end of the afternoon, mesmerized by him, she flipped her allegiance, slept with him, and divulged the Liberals' conspiracy to blackmail him. She even agreed to testify as a star witness in her new lover's libel case."

This view is supported by Michael Kettle, the author of Salome's Last Veil : The Libel Case of the Century (1977): "Eileen, though previously mistress to Asquith's former Chief Whip, was not acting for the Liberal Party machine (still run by Asquith), but for Lloyd George and Conservative Central Office - in fact, for the Coalition Government. Tory Central Office, it is known, hated Billing; and both Bonar Law, leader of the Tory party, and Lloyd George were later to be closely involved in secret machinations for Billing's final downfall - which was rather different than the one originally planned for him."

The libel case opened at the Old Bailey in May, 1918. Billing chose to conduct his own defence, in order to provide the opportunity to make the case against the government and the so-called Unseen Hand group. The prosecution was led by Ellis Hume-Williams and Travers Humphreys and the case was heard in front of Chief Justice Charles Darling.

Billing's first witness was Eileen Villiers-Stuart. She explained that she had been shown the Black Book by two politicians since killed in action in the First World War. As Christopher Andrew has pointed out in Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community (1985): "Though evidence is not normally allowed in court about the contents of documents which cannot be produced, exceptions may be made in the case of documents withheld by foreign enemies. Mrs Villiers-Stuart explained that the Black Book was just such an exception." During the cross-examination Villiers-Stuart claimed that the names of Herbert Asquith, Margot Asquith and Richard Haldane were in the Black Book. Judge Charles Darling now ordered her to leave the witness-box. She retaliated by saying that Darling's name was also in the book.

The next witness was Harold S. Spencer. He claimed that he had seen the Black Book while looking through the private papers of Prince William of Wied of Albania in 1914. Spencer claimed that Alice Keppel, the mistress of Edward VII, was a member of the Unseen Hand and has visited Holland as a go-between in supposed peace talks with Germany.

The prosecuting counsel, Travers Humphreys, asked Spencer what he meant when he said during cross-examination that "Maud Allan was administering the cult.... Will you tell the court exactly what you meant by that?" He replied: "Any performance of a play which has been described by competent critics as an essay in lust, madness and sadism, and is given and attracts people to it at from five guineas to ten guineas a seat, must bring people who have more money than brains; must bring people who are seeking unusual excitement, erotic excitement; and to gather these people together in a room, under the auspices of a naturalised alien (Jack Grein), would open these people to possible German blackmail, and that their names, or anything that transpires, might find their way into German hands, and these people would be blackmailed by the Germans; and it was to prevent this that the article was written."

Spencer then went onto to explain what he meant by the "Cult of the Clitoris". In reply to Travers Humphreys: "In order to show that a cult exists in this country who would gather together to witness a lewd performance for amusement during wartime on the Sabbath... The Cult of the Clitoris meant a cult that would gather together to see a representation of a diseased mad girl." Billing joined in the attack on Maud Allan: "Such a play.... is one that is calculated to deprave, one that is calculated to do more harm, not only to young men and young women, but to all who see it, by undermining them, even more than the German army itself."

On 4th June, 1918, Billing was acquitted of all charges. As James Hayward has pointed out: "Hardly ever had a verdict been received in the Central Criminal Court with such unequivocal public approval. The crowd in the gallery sprang to their feet and cheered, as women waved their handkerchiefs and men their hats. On leaving the court in company with Eileen Villiers-Stewart and his wife, Billing received a second thunderous ovation from the crowd outside, where his path was strewn with flowers."

Cynthia Asquith wrote in her diary: "One can't imagine a more undignified paragraph in English history: at this juncture, that three-quarters of The Times should be taken up with such a farrago of nonsense! It is monstrous that these maniacs should be vindicated in the eyes of the public... Papa came in and announced that the monster maniac Billing had won his case. Damn him! It is such an awful triumph for the unreasonable, such a tonic to the microbe of suspicion which is spreading through the country, and such a stab in the back to people unprotected from such attacks owing to their best and not their worst points." Basil Thomson, who was head of Special Branch, an in a position to know that Eileen Villiers-Stuart and Harold S. Spencer had lied in court, wrote in his diary, "Every-one concerned appeared to have been either insane or to have behaved as if he were."

Although membership of Vigilante Society grew dramatically after the trial, victory proved short-lived. The sinking of the hospital ship Llandovery Castle on 28th June, 1918, with the loss of 234 lives, brought an end to peace negotiations. By September it became clear that Germany was beaten and Billing's claims about the Unseen Hand created little fear in the population.

Billing retained his seat at the 1918 General Election but with the end of the First World War he was seen as an irrelevance. His reputation was severely damaged when Eileen Villiers-Stuart admitted that the evidence she had given in the Maud Allan trial was entirely fictitious, and that she had rehearsed it with Billing and Harold S. Spencer. Knowing that he faced defeat in the next election he retired in 1921 claiming he was too ill to continue.

In 1928 he had a play, High Treason, performed at the Strand Theatre. It was a science-fiction drama about pacifism set in a future 1950, when a "United States of Europe" comes into conflict with the "Empire of the Atlantic States". In 1929 Maurice Elvey made a film of the play. Both were unsuccessful and Billing devoted the rest of his life trying to make a living out of his inventions. This included a miniature camera, a two-sided stove, and a gramophone. It is claimed that he had taken out 500 patents during his life-time.

At the start of the Second World War Billing produced a design for a pilotless flying bomb; the British authorities turned it down. He attacked the government for the way they were fighting the war. In 1941 he stood as an independent candidate in four by-elections, but each time he was defeated.

Noel Pemberton Billing died on 11 November 1948 on his motor yacht Commodore, Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex.

On this day in 1876 John Spargo, the son of Thomas Spargo (1850-1920) and Jane Hocking Spargo (1851-1900), was born in Longdowns, Cornwall. After leaving school he trained as a stonecutter. In 1894 he enrolled on a course run by J.A. Hobson as part of the Oxford University Extension Program. The following year he moved to South Wales where he found work as a stonemason in Barry Docks.

Spargo became a socialist after reading the work of Henry Meyers Hyndman. He was especially impressed by England for All (1881), where he attempted to explain the ideas of Karl Marx. In 1896 Spargo formed a branch of Hyndman's Social Democratic Federation (SDF). Other members since its formation included Tom Mann, John Burns, Eleanor Marx, William Morris, George Lansbury, Edward Aveling, H. H. Champion, H. H. Champion, Guy Aldred and Ben Tillet.

Spargo was elected president of the Barry Trades and Labour Council and became a member of the National Executive Committee of the SDF. Markku Ruotsila, the author of John Spargo and American Socialism (2006) has argued: "It was an amazing, meteoric progression for an uneducated stonemason from Western Cornwall that took place in these few years of Spargo's education in Marxism... he was recognized as one of the most promising and energetic Marxist agitators in the country."

Although Henry Meyers Hyndman was a talented writer and public speaker, many members of the Social Democratic Federation questioned his leadership qualities. Hyndman was extremely authoritarian and tried to restrict internal debate about party policy. Several members including William Morris, Edward Aveling, Eleanor Marx John Burns and Tom Mann left the party. However, Spargo remained loyal to Hyndman.

On 27th February 1900, Hyndman, Spargo and the Social Democratic Federation met with the Independent Labour Party, the Fabian Society and trade union leaders at the Congregational Memorial Hall in Farringdon Street. After a debate the 129 delegates decided to pass the motion to establish "a distinct Labour group in Parliament, who shall have their own whips, and agree upon their policy, which must embrace a readiness to cooperate with any party which for the time being may be engaged in promoting legislation in the direct interests of labour." To make this possible the Conference established a Labour Representation Committee(LRC).

Soon afterwards Spargo was invited to go of a lecture tour of the United States. He took with him his new wife, fellow socialist, Prudence Edwards. The couple arrived in New York City in February 1901. Spargo saw the potential of the country and decided not to return to England. He became friends with Morris Hillquit. Spargo went to work for Hillquit but spent most of the time lecturing on socialism.

Later that year the Social Democratic Party (SDP) merged with Socialist Labor Party to form the Socialist Party of America. Spargo was one of its founding members. Leading figures in this party included Eugene Debs, Victor Berger, Ella Reeve Bloor, Emil Seidel, Daniel De Leon, Philip Randolph, Chandler Owen, William Z. Foster, Abraham Cahan, Sidney Hillman, Morris Hillquit, Walter Reuther, Bill Haywood, Margaret Sanger, Florence Kelley, Rose Pastor Stokes, Mary White Ovington, Helen Keller, Inez Milholland, Floyd Dell, William Du Bois, Hubert Harrison, Upton Sinclair, Agnes Smedley, Victor Berger, Robert Hunter, George Herron, Kate Richards O'Hare, Helen Keller, Claude McKay, Sinclair Lewis, Daniel Hoan, Frank Zeidler, Max Eastman, Bayard Rustin, James Larkin, William Walling and Jack London.

Spargo's first wife, Prudence, died of tuberculosis in March 1904. The following year he married Amelia Rose Bennetts, a British-born socialist who worked in a carpet mill. The couple had two children, a daughter named Mary and a son who died in childhood. According to John Patrick Diggins: "It was well known that on many of his trips Spargo cavorted with a number of attractive ladies, and he quickly built a reputation not just as an effective socialist organizer but as a womanizer of some note."

In September 1905, Spargo helped to establish the Intercollegiate Socialist Society. Other members included Jack London, Clarence Darrow, Florence Kelley, Anna Strunsky, Bertram D. Wolfe, Jay Lovestone, Upton Sinclair, Rose Pastor Stokes and J.G. Phelps Stokes. Its stated purpose was to "throw light on the world-wide movement of industrial democracy known as socialism."

In 1905 John Spargo published the best-selling expose of slum life, The Bitter Cry of Children. This was followed by a book about child nutrition, Underfed School Children. In 1907 he published an account of his Christian Socialism, entitled, The Spiritual Significance of Modern Socialism. He was now considered one of the most important popularizers in the socialist movement. In 1910 Spargo published the first full-length biography of Karl Marx. The book, Karl Marx: His Life and Work, according to Robert Asher, "depicted the founder of scientific socialism as sentimental, but above all a pragmatic tactician".

Over the next few years Spargo became a controversial figure in the Socialist Party of America. Although he argued in favour of women's suffrage and civil rights for African Americans, he called for the restriction of immigration. Spargo held that this policy would make socialism more appealing to trade union members. He also strongly attacked the Industrial Workers of the World for advocating a general strike, a move that he considered to be "inflammatory, inviting employer and state repression".

On the outbreak of the First World War most socialists in the United States were opposed to the conflict. They argued that the war had been caused by the imperialist competitive system and argued that the America should remain neutral. In an article in September 1915 Eugene Debs wrote: "I am not opposed to all war, nor am I opposed to fighting under all circumstances, and any declaration to the contrary would disqualify me as a revolutionist. When I say I am opposed to war I mean ruling class war, for the ruling class is the only class that makes war. It matters not to me whether this war be offensive or defensive, or what other lying excuse may be invented for it, I am opposed to it, and I would be shot for treason before I would enter such a war."

After the USA declared war on the Central Powers in 1917, Spargo argued for a pro-war policy. He was supported by William Walling and Upton Sinclair, but when he was defeated at a special conference of the Socialist Party of America, he resigned from the party.

Spargo now moved to the right and became a member of the Republican Party, supporting Calvin Coolidge in the election of 1924 Presidential Election and Herbert Hoover in the 1928 Presidential Election. Spargo was also a strong opponent of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. He lost interest in politics and devoted his time to the Bennington Museum in Vermont.

On this day in 1915 Diana Rowden was born in England. When she was a child the family moved to the south of France. When she was a teenager Diana was sent back to England where she was educated at Manor House at Limpsfield, Surrey.

In 1933 Diana returned to France and enrolled at the Sorbonne. After completing the course she worked as a journalist in Paris. On the outbreak of the Second World War she joined the Red Cross and was assigned to the Anglo-American Ambulance Corps of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF).

In May 1940 France was invaded by the German Army. Diana was unable to join the evacuation at Dunkirk and remained in the country until the summer of 1941. After travelling through Spain and Portugal she arrived back in England where she was reunited with her mother.

In September, 1941, Diana joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). Over the next year she worked at the Department of the Chief of Air Staff. In July 1942 she was promoted to Section Officer at Moreton-in-the-March.

Diana's ability to speak French fluently brought her to the attention of the Special Operations Executive (SOE). After being interviewed at the War Office in March 1943, she agreed to become a British special agent.

Given the codename "Paulette" she was flown to Le Mans with Noor Inayat Khan and Cecily Lefort on 16th June 1943. She travelled to St Amour where she joined the Acrobat Network led by John Starr. Over the next few months she worked as a courier delivering messages to agents in Marseilles, Lyon and Paris. She also helped Harry Ree in the plans to sabotage the Peugeot car plant.

On 18th November, 1943, Diana was arrested while with two other members of the French Resistance at Lons-le-Saunier. She was taken to Avenue Foch, the Gestapo headquarters, in Paris. After being interrogated for two weeks she was sent to Fresnes Prison.

On 13th May 1944 the Germans transported Diana and seven other SOE agents, Vera Leigh, Andrée Borrel, Sonya Olschanezky, Yolande Beekman, Eliane Plewman, Madeleine Damerment and Odette Sansom, to Nazi Germany.

On 6th July 1944, Diana Rowden along with Vera Leigh, Andrée Borrel and Sonya Olschanezky, were taken to the Concentration Camp at Natzweiler. Later that day they were injected with phenol and put in the crematorium furnace.

On this day in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson breaks off diplomatic relations with Germany. At the beginning of the 20th century the United States was the most powerful country in the world. The world leader in coal and steel production, the USA was also a major producer of raw materials. The most important of these being wheat, cotton and oil, which accounted for more than a third of all the USA's exports. With a population of over 100,000,000, the USA had the potential to decide the outcome of the First World War. However, in 1914, the country had no overseas alliances and on 19th August, President Woodrow Wilson declared a policy of strict neutrality.

Although the USA had strong ties with Britain, Wilson was concerned about the large number of people in the country who had been born in Germany and Austria. Other influential political leaders argued strongly in favour of the USA maintaining its isolationist policy. This included the pacifist pressure group, the American Union Against Militarism.

Some people in the argued that the USA should expand the size of its armed forces in case of war. General Leonard Wood, the former US Army Chief of Staff, formed the National Security League in December, 1914. Wood and his organisation called for universal military training and the introduction of conscription as a means of increasing the size of the US Army.

The war helped the USA economy with exported goods to Allied countries increasing from $825 million in 1914 to $3.2 billion in 1916. This made it possible for Britain and France to keep fighting the war against the Central Powers and this influenced Germany's decision to announce its unrestricted submarine warfare policy. Opinion against Germany hardened after the sinking of the Lusitania. William Jennings Bryan, the pacifist Secretary of State, resigned and was replaced by the pro-Allied Robert Lansing.

After the sinking of the Lusitania, Wilson announced an increase in the size of the US armed forces. However, in the 1916 Presidential election campaign, Woodrow Wilson stressed his policy of neutrality and his team used the slogan: "He kept us out of the war".

On 31st January, 1917, Germany announced a new submarine offensive. Wilson responded by breaking off diplomatic relations with Germany. The publication of the Zimmerman Telegram, that suggested that Germany was willing to help Mexico regain territory in Texas and Arizona, intensified popular opinion against the Central Powers.

On 2nd April, Woodrow Wilson asked for permission to go to war. This was approved in the Senate on 4th April by 82 votes to 6, and two days later, in the House of Representatives, by 373 to 50. Still avoiding alliances, war was declared against the German government (rather than its subjects). War against Austria-Hungary was not declared until 7th December, 1917.

On this day in 1919 trade union leaders are arrested (and later imprisoned) for having a public meeting in Glasgow. During the First World War a group of socialists in Glasgow, including David Kirkwood, John Wheatley, Emanuel Shinwell, James Maxton, William Gallacher, John Muir, Tom Johnston, Jimmie Stewart, Neil Maclean, George Hardie, George Buchanan and James Welsh, were opposed to Britain's involvement in the conflict and were active members of the Union of Democratic Control and the Clyde Workers' Committee an organisation that had been formed to campaign against the Munitions Act, which forbade engineers from leaving the works where they were employed. On 25th March 1916, members of the Clyde Workers' Committee were arrested by the authorities under the Defence of the Realm Act. Then men were court-martialled and sentenced to be deported from Glasgow. The men were not allowed to return until being freed on 30th May 1917.

After the war there was a significant increase in the unemployment. The Scottish TUC and Clyde Workers' Committee (CWC) sought to increase the availability of jobs open to demobilised soldiers by reducing the working week from a newly-agreed 47 hours to 40 hours. By 30 January, 40,000 workers from the Clyde's engineering and shipbuilding industries were on strike. Sympathy strikes also started among local power station workers and miners from the nearby Lanarkshire and Stirlingshire pits.

On 31 January, around 20,000 strikers attended a rally in George Square. At 12.20 the police baton charged the striking workers. David Kirkwood was knocked to the ground by a police baton and fellow strike leaders, William Gallacher and Emanuel Shinwell were arrested. They were charged with "instigating and inciting large crowds of persons to form part of a riotous mob". Kirkwood was found not guilty at trial after a photograph was submitted to the court, showing him being struck from behind by a policeman, in an apparently unprovoked attack. Shinwell was sentenced to five months and Gallacher got three months.

In the 1922 General Election Kirkwood was elected to the House of Commons for Dumbarton Burghs. Also successful were several other militant socialists based in Glasgow including John Wheatley, Emanuel Shinwell, James Maxton, John Muir, Tom Johnston, Jimmie Stewart, Neil Maclean, George Hardie, George Buchanan and James Welsh.

On this day in 1933 Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary about the plans to deal with the German Communist Party (KPD): "During discussions with the Führer we drew up the plans of battle against the red terror. For the time being, we decided against any direct counter-measures. The Bolshevik rebellion must first of all flare up; only then shall we hit back."

On 24th February, the Gestapo raided Communist headquarters. Hermann Göring claimed that he had found "barrels of incriminating material concerning plans for a world revolution". However, the alleged subversive documents were never published and it is assumed that in reality the Nazi government had not discovered anything of any importance.

Three days after the KPD raid, the Reichstag building caught fire. It was reported at ten o'clock when a Berlin resident telephoned the police and said: "The dome of the Reichstag building is burning in brilliant flames." The Berlin Fire Department arrived minutes later and although the main structure was fireproof, the wood-paneled halls and rooms were already burning.

Göring, who had been at work in the nearby Prussian Ministry of the Interior, was quickly on the scene. Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels arrived soon after. So also did Rudolf Diels: "Shortly after my arrival in the burning Reichstag, the National Socialist elite had arrived. On a balcony jutting out of the chamber, Hitler and his trusty followers were assembled." Göring told him: "This is the beginning of the Communist Revolt, they will start their attack now! Not a moment must be lost. There will be no mercy now. Anyone who stands in our way will be cut down. The German people will not tolerate leniency. Every communist official will be shot where he is found. Everybody in league with the Communists must be arrested. There will also no longer be leniency for social democrats."

Hitler gave orders that all leaders of the German Communist Party (KPD) should "be hanged that very night." Paul von Hindenburg vetoed this decision but did agree that Hitler should take "dictatorial powers". Orders were given for all KPD members of the Reichstag to be arrested. This included Ernst Torgler, the chairman of the KPD. Göring commented that "the record of Communist crimes was already so long and their offence so atrocious that I was in any case resolved to use all the powers at my disposal in order ruthlessly to wipe out this plague".

Torgler was interviewed by the Gestapo. He was able to give details of having left the Reichstag building at 8.15 p.m. and arriving at the Aschinger Restaurant at 8.30 p.m. Witnesses confirmed this but his alibi was rejected and he was placed in custody and for the next seven months he was "fettered day and night". Torgler complained: "It was left to the warders' discretion either to tighten our chains until the blood circulation was gravely impeded, and the skin broke, or else to take pity on us and to loosen the chains by one notch."

Hitler told Franz von Papen: "This is a God-given signal, Herr Vice-Chancellor! If this fire, as I believe, is the work of the Communists, that we must crush out this murderous pest with an iron fist." Hitler claimed that this was clearly an attempted coup and that leading members of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) should also be arrested. Seftan Delmer claimed he heard Hitler say: "God grant that this is the work of the Communists. You are witnessing the beginning of a great new epoch in German history. This fire is the beginning.... You see this flaming building, If this Communist spirit got hold of Europe for but two months it would be all aflame like this building."

Göring informed Hitler, Goebbels and Diels that Marinus van der Lubbe had been arrested in the building. He was a 24 year-old vagrant. He was born in Leiden, on 13th January, 1909. His father was a heavy drinker who left the family when he was seven years old. His mother died five years later. He was then raised by an older sister and was brought up in extreme poverty. After leaving school Lubbe worked as a bricklayer but after an industrial accident in 1925 he spent five months in hospital. He never fully recovered from his injuries and was now unable to work and had to live on a small invalidity pension.

Van der Lubbe was immediately interviewed by the Gestapo. According to Rudolf Diels: "A few of my department were already engaged in interrogating Marinus Van der Lubbe. Naked from the waist upwards, smeared with dirt and sweating, he sat in front of them, breathing heavily. He panted as if he had completed a tremendous task. There was a wild triumphant gleam in the burning eyes of his pale, haggard young face."

Detective-Inspector Walter Zirpins carried out the original investigation. At about 9.03 p.m., Hans Flöter, a young theology student, was walking past the south-western corner of the dark and deserted Reichstag when he heard the sound of breaking glass. When he turned round he saw a man with a burning object in his hand. He raced off and found a police officer, Sergeant Karl Buwert. When the two men reached the scene of the crime, they could see a man rushing from window waving a flaming torch.

Buwert was joined by several other policemen and eventually entered the building. It was Constable Helmut Poeschel who arrested van der Lubbe at 9.27. He later reported that he "was a tall, well-built young man, completely out of breath and dishevelled". Poeschel searched him and all he found was a "pocket knife, a wallet, and a passport".

Marinus Van der Lubbe was interviewed by Zirpins. He admitted to the Reichstag Fire but claimed that he had no connections with the German Communist Party (KPD) or the Social Democratic Party (SDP). However, back home in Leiden, he had supported a tiny Dutch political group called the "Rade or International Communists". On his arrival in Germany he talked to many people and was shocked to discover that the "workers will do nothing against a system which grants freedom to one side and metes out oppression to the other". He decided that since "the workers would do nothing, I had to do something by myself".

Van der Lubbe took Detective-Inspector Helmut Heisig back to the Reichstag building. "Van der Lubbe led us. We neither indicated the direction nor influenced him in any way. He was almost delighted to show us the path he had taken. He said he had an excellent sense of direction because of his poor eyesight. Another sense had taken the place of his eyes."

Foreign newspapers reported that the Nazi government had probably been behind the fire. Willi Frischauer, the Berlin correspondent for the Vienna newspaper, Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung, commented that on the night of the fire that he believed that the Nazis where behind the fire: "There can scarcely be any doubt that the fire which is now destroying the Reichstag was set by henchmen of the Hitler government. By all appearances, the arsonists used an underground passage connecting the Reichstag to the palace of its president, Hermann Göring."

This view was shared by the British journalist, Seftan Delmer: "The arson of the German parliament building was allegedly the work of a Communist-sympathizing Dutchman, van der Lubbe. More probably, the fire was started by the Nazis, who used the incident as a pretext to outlaw political opposition and impose dictatorship... The fire broke out at 9.45 tonight in the Assembly Hall of the Reichstag. It had been laid in five different comers and there is no doubt whatever that it was the handiwork of incendiaries."

This was also the view of most people living in Germany. Victor Klemperer wrote in his diary: "Eight days before the election the clumsy business of the Reichstag fire - cannot imagine that anyone really believes in Communist perpetrators instead of paid Nazi work. Then the wild prohibitions and acts of violence. And on top of that the never-ending propaganda in the street, on the radio etc."

According to the first person who interviewed Marinus van der Lubbe he was "as silent as a wall" and that he was either "an idiot or one cool customer". Eventually the young Dutchman admitted that he had set fire to the Reichstag with firelighters and his own clothing. "The first fire went out. Then I lit my shirt on fire and carried it farther. I went through five rooms."

Van der Lubbe denied that he was part of a Communist conspiracy and had no connections with the Social Democratic Party (SDP) or German Communist Party (KPD). He insisted that he acted alone and the burning of the Reichstag was his own idea. He went on to claim, "I do nothing for other people, all for myself. No one was for setting the fire." However, he hoped that his act of arson would lead the revolution. "The workers should rebel against the state order. The workers should think that it is a symbol for a common uprising against the state order." Hermann Göring, who was in control of the investigation, ignored what van der Lubbe had said and on 28th February, he made a statement stating that he had prevented a communist uprising.

On 3rd March, van der Lubbe made a full confession: "I myself am a Leftist, and was a member of the Communist Party until 1929. I had heard that a Communist demonstration was disbanded by the leaders on the approach of the police. In my opinion something absolutely had to be done in protest against this system. Since the workers would do nothing, I had to do something myself. I considered arson a suitable method. I did not wish to harm private people but something belonging to the system itself. I decided on the Reichstag. As to the question of whether I acted alone, I declare emphatically that this was the case."

Ian Kershaw has suggested that Lubbe was motivated by a sense of injustice: "He was... a solitary individual, unconnected with any political groups, but possessed of a strong sense of injustice at the misery of the working class at the hands of the capitalist system. In particular, he was determined to make a lone and spectacular act of defiant protest at the Government... in order to galvanize the working class into struggle against their repression."

On 9th March, 1933, three Bulgarians, Georgi Dimitrov, Blagoi Popov and Vassili Tanev, were also arrested after a suspicious waiter informed the police that they had been acting strangely. Dimitrov had been a trade union activist before helping to form the Bulgarian Communist Party in 1919. Dimitrov went to live in the Soviet Union but in 1929 he moved to Berlin where he became head of the Central European section of Comintern. However, the Nazi government was unaware that Dimitrov was one of the most important figures in the "international Communist movement".

Detective-Inspector Walter Zirpins became convinced that these men had told van der Lubbe to carry out the attack on the Reichstag. "I am convinced that he (Marinus van der Lubbe) did it all by himself... A man who is willing to carry out revolutionary intrigues on his own account is just what the Communist Party needs. In the Party's hands, van der Lubbe became a willing tool, one who, while believing he was shifting for himself, was being shifted from behind the scenes. No wonder then that the Communist Party was so delighted to use him."

On 23rd March, 1933, the German Reichstag passed the Enabling Bill. This banned the German Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party from taking part in future election campaigns. This was followed by Nazi officials being put in charge of all local government in the provinces (7th April), trades unions being abolished, their funds taken and their leaders put in prison (2nd May), and a law passed making the Nazi Party the only legal political party in Germany (14th July).

Detective-Inspector Walter Zirpins, was given the job of interviewing people who came forward with information about the fire. He eventually came to the conclusion that he had enough evidence to charge Ernst Torgler. He claimed that "three eye-witnesses saw van der Lubbe in the company of Torgler... before the fire. In view of van der Lubbe's striking appearance, it is impossible for all three to have been wrong."

While in prison awaiting trial Torgler was supplied with information that suggested that Hermann Göring, Joseph Goebbels and Ernst Röhm, were involved in starting the fire. He refused to believe the story: "Van der Lubbe and old acquaintance of Röhm and on his list of catamites? Could Goebbels really have planned the fire, and could Göring, standing, as it were, at the entrance of the underground tunnel, really have supervised the whole thing?"

Kurt Rosenfeld, had been Torgler's lawyer for many years. However, like other socialists and communists in Germany, fled the country when the Nazi government began arresting left-wing opponents of the regime and sending them to concentration camps. In August 1933, Torgler was forced to employ a lawyer, Alfons Sack, who was a member of the Nazi Party.

Sack hesitated about defending Torgler as he was aware that if he did a good job, and his client was found not guilty, he faced the possibility of imprisonment. "I was concerned with only one question: is the man guilty or is he innocent? Only if I could be reasonably certain that Torgler had entered politics for idealistic reasons and not for selfish motives and that he had never made personal capital out of his political beliefs, would I find it within me to accept his defence." Sack eventually came to the conclusion that Torgler was telling the truth.

On this day in 1995 George Francis Abbott, died aged 107. Abbott was born in Forestville, New York on 25th June, 1887. When he was eleven years old his family moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming, where he attended Kearney Military Academy. A close friend, Jack Baragwanath, has argued: "George Abbott had been born of good New England stock in upstate New York. The family was poor, largely because his father often preferred hard liquor to hard work."

In 1911 he graduated from the University of Rochester. He then moved to Harvard University, where he studied playwriting under George Pierce Baker. After leaving university he worked as assistant stage manager at the Bijou Theatre in Boston.

In 1914 he married Edna Lewis, his French teacher at high school." At this time he began an acting career on Broadway. This included The Misleading Lady (November, 1914 - May, 1915), The Yeomen of the Guard (April, 1915 - May, 1915), Gertrude Kingston and a Visiting Company (November, 1916 - December, 1916), Daddies (September, 1918 - June, 1919), The Broken Wing (November, 1920 - April 1921), Zander the Great (April, 1923 - June, 1923), Lazybones (September, 1924 - November, 1924) and Processional (January, 1925 - March, 1925).

Abbott then turned to writing plays. The Fall Guy opened on 10th March 1925 and was performed 95 times before being taken off. His first successful play was Broadway. It opened at the Broadhurst Theatre on 16th September, 1926. Written and directed by Abbott it was a great hit and had 603 performances before coming to an end on 11th February, 1928. This was followed by other successes such as Four Walls (September, 1927 - January, 1928) and Coquette (November, 1927 - September, 1928).

Abbott sometimes took lunch with a group of writers, actors and artists, in the dining room at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City. Murdock Pemberton later recalled that he owner of the hotel, Frank Case, did what he could to encourage this gathering: "From then on we met there nearly every day, sitting in the south-west corner of the room. If more than four or six came, tables could be slid along to take care of the newcomers. we sat in that corner for a good many months... Frank Case, always astute, moved us over to a round table in the middle of the room and supplied free hors d'oeuvre. That, I might add, was no means cement for the gathering at any time... The table grew mainly because we then had common interests. We were all of the theatre or allied trades." Case admitted that he moved them to a central spot at a round table in the Rose Room, so others could watch them enjoy each other's company.

This group eventually became known as the Algonquin Round Table. Other regulars at these lunches included Robert E. Sherwood, Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Alexander Woollcott, Heywood Broun, Harold Ross, Donald Ogden Stewart, Neysa McMein, Edna Ferber, Ruth Hale, Franklin Pierce Adams, Jane Grant, Alice Duer Miller, Charles MacArthur, Marc Connelly, George S. Kaufman, Beatrice Kaufman , Frank Crowninshield, Ben Hecht, John Peter Toohey, Lynn Fontanne, Alfred Lunt and Ina Claire.

Abbott, like other members of the group, used to spend a lot of time at the sudio of the artist, Neysa McMein. As the playwright, Marc Connelly, pointed out: "The world in which we moved was small, but it was churning with a dynamic group of young people who included Robert C. Benchley, Robert S. Sherwood, Ring Lardner, Dorothy Parker, Franklin. P. Adams, Heywood, Broun, Edna Ferber, Alice Duer Miller, Harold Ross, Jane Grant, Frank Sullivan, and Alexander Woollcott. We were together constantly. One of the habitual meeting places was the large studio of New York's preeminent magazine illustrator, Marjorie Moran McMein, of Muncie, Indiana. On the advice of a nurnerologist, she concocted a new first name when she became a student at the Chicago Art Institute. Neysa McMein. Neysa's studio on the northeast corner of Sixth Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street was crowded all day by friends who played games and chatted with their startlingly beautiful young hostess as one pretty girl model after another posed for the pastel head drawings that would soon delight the eyes of America on the covers of such periodicals as the Ladies' Home Journal, Cosmopolitan, The American and The Saturday Evening Post."

Brian Gallagher, the author of Anything Goes: The Jazz Age of Neysa McMein and her Extravagant Circle of Friends (1987): "No small incentive to the men invited to Neysa's studio before the afternoon rush was the possibility of seeing a pretty woman posing in the nude for the artist. George Abbott once arrived early for a luncheon date and found a robust model calmly posing nude as Neysa calmly drew her. George, delighted by his immersion in artistic bohemia, kept sneaking glances at the model as he let his supposedly disinterested glance wander round the studio and out the window. At lunchtime, the model put on her smock, Neysa took off hers, and the three sat to their repast, with George marveling at the nonchalance of it all. Later, seeing the artistic result of the session, he would wonder how Neysa had turned this short-legged, curvaceous model into yet another of her lithe, tallish pretty girls. Neysa, who was too much aware of the power and draw of sexuality to be oblivious to its effects, must have taken some sly delight in such teasing visits, in playing so overtly on male pretenses toward sophisticated sexual attitudes, at least with those of her men friends who, like Abbott, were so strongly, so physically attracted to women."

George Francis Abbott had developed a reputation as a puritan who did not drink alcohol or have affairs with women. This changed after the early death of his wife, Edna Abbott in 1930. It was the beginning of a series of relationships with some of the most beautiful stage and screen actresses. According to her biographer, Neysa McMein was the most important woman in his life during this period. Her husband, Jack Baragwanath, accepted the situation: ""Neysa had made it quite clear at the beginning of our marriage that she intended to go out with other men from time to time, explaining quite logically that during the years when she was climbing up the ladder she had made many friendships which she had no intention of breaking. And she hoped I would behave in an adult way about the proposed arrangement, particularly as most of these old friends were interested in artistic matters, which would not be particularly fascinating to me. The application of this theory shocked a good many people, quite a few of whom were having trouble at home, but it worked. The relationship, handled with skill and fairness on both sides, may have been the reason that our marriage was so successful. Ours was as much a deep friendship as a marriage."

In 1929 Abbott stayed with the couple at their house in in Sands Point on the North Shore of Long Island. Baragwanath explained in his autobiography, A Good Time was Had (1962): "She (Neysa) told me his name was George Abbott, that he was, or had been, an actor. She asked if I would mind her inviting him to the country for a weekend, and I agreed without much enthusiasm. George came to our house, and in fact stayed there for thirteen summers! Once I had penetrated his barrier of reserve, I began to like him very much. He was at our house so frequently that people began to wonder if he was Neysa's beau. All this talk died out, eventually, and he was simply accepted as part of our entourage. Later, he made some sort of deal with Neysa under which he might have a room of his own and consider himself a member of the family. I'm sure he paid his share of the expenses, but I never knew the details of the arrangement."

Abbott and Baragwanath became close friends and used to hold something they called "Freedom Week" at Sands Point. This was a week every summer where Neysa agreed to be absent. Jack and his friend, George Abbott , entertained a group of women each night. These groups were loosely organized and recruited by theme: there was Models' Night, Actresses' Night, Salesladies' Night, Chorus Girls' Night and Neurotic Women's Night. One of the most popular visitors was Maria McFeeters, who later obtained Hollywood fame as Maria Montez.

Abbott also wrote screenplays. This included All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Secrets of a Secretary (1931), Those We Love (1932), Lilly Turner (1933), Heat Lightning (1934), Straight is the Way (1934), Three Men on a Horse (1936), On Your Toes (1939), The Boys from Syracuse (1940), Highway West (1941) and Broadway (1942).

During the Second World War Abbott became involved with the actress Mary Sinclair. His friend, Jack Baragwanath, pointed out: "George Abbott... began to take an unexpected interest in planting flowers and shrubs, and in fact resurrected an abandoned garden of ours where he put in vegetables. Almost every week end he had a guest out from New York, a beautiful brunette named Mary, who faithfully followed him around with trowel and shears giving him comfort and advice. Neysa and I thought little about her, for George had had many crushes before.... At the end of summer George disappeared for several weeks, and we finally got a wire from him telling us that Mary and he were married. The news was happy, of course, but carried a barb for Neysa because she loved the Sands Point place and realized that this would now be our last summer there."

Abbott divorced Sinclair in 1951. He continued directing plays on Broadway including A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1951), In Any Language (1952), Wonderful Town (1953), The Pajama Game (1954), Damn Yankees (1955), New Girl in Town (1957), Drink to Me Only (1958), Fiorello! (1959), Tenderloin (1960), Take Her, She's Mine (1961) and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962). In 1963 he published his autobiography, Mister Abbott.

In 1968 Abbott began a long-term relationship with the actress Maureen Stapleton. She was 43 and he was 81. Ten years later he left her for a younger woman. At the age of 96 he married his third wife, Joy Valderrama.

George Francis Abbott, died of a stroke in Miami Beach, on 31st January, 1995. He was 107 years old and was working on a revival of Damn Yankees at the time.