The Truth
The Truth was a founded by Henry Labouchère the Liberal Party MP for Windsor on 4th January 1877. His biographer, H. C. G. Matthew pointed out: "Labouchere was a first-class journalist. His reputation as a wit was well established; he had an easy, lucid style, and he wrote with candour about his own adventurous life and the follies and failings of his contemporaries. Labouchere used his inside information about the affairs and activities of the court and the political establishment to devastating effect. Though often exaggerated, the gossip in Truth almost always had a base in fact. Above all, Truth won admiration and gratitude by its fearless exposure of fraudulent enterprises of all sorts. This brought upon him a long series of libel actions. Most of them he won, and they were such good advertisements for his paper that he could afford to be indifferent to his irrecoverable costs amounting to scores of thousands of pounds. (1)
Labouchère used the journal to express his political views. This included being a strong opponent of feminism and campaigned against the women's suffrage movement. He was also a virulent anti-semite, opposed to Jewish participation in British life, using Truth to campaign against "Hebrew barons" and their supposedly excessive influence, "Jewish exclusivity" and "Jewish cowardice". One of his targets was Edward Levy-Lawson, the owner of The Daily Telegraph. This right-wing nationalism was popular and it achieved a readership of over a million. (2)
Major George Joseph Ball
On 28th May, 1937, Stanley Baldwin resigned and replaced by Neville Chamberlain as prime minister. Soon afterwards Chamberlain appointed Major George Joseph Ball as his political adviser. Chris Bryant pointed out that this was a shrewd move: "Ball was a passionate Conservative and Unionist with a deep hatred of socialism, communism and all points in between. Ball also had a keen understanding of the dark arts of political manipulation, a readiness to use all means at his disposal and an ability to keep himself out of the limelight... he knew how to lie and how to keep a secret." (3)
John C. Davidson was well aware of Ball's shady past: "Joseph Ball and I have been associated for a great many years, and is undoubtedly tough and has looked after his own interests... On the other hand, he is steeped in the Intelligence Service tradition, and has had as much experience as anyone I know in the seamy side of life and the handling of crooks." (4)
Chamberlain asked Ball to run black operations against his critics: "Ball had already been cultivating close personal contacts in the press, the BBC and the British film industry. He had courted all the newspaper barons. Now he provided pliable journalists from supportive newspapers with twice-weekly briefings away from prying eyes at the St Stephen's Club opposite Westminster Bridge on the completely deniable understanding that he knew the PM's mind. He rewarded those who filed supportive copy with titbits of gossip and bullied critics into rejecting derogatory articles." (5)
With the help of wealthy businessman, George Lawson Johnson (Lord Pavenham), the heir to the Boveril empire and chairman of the fundraising arm of the Conservative Party's National Publicity Bureau, in 1937 Ball secretly purchased The Truth journal. Henry Newnham was appointed editor and A. K. Chesterton and Collin Brooks, both members of the British Union of Fascists, were recruited to write articles for the magazine. The main objective of the journal was to attack any Tory MPs who criticized Chamberlain's government. When the MP for Tiverton, Lieutenant Colonel Gilbert Acland-Troyte, complained about the government's agricultural policy, the magazine accused him of having "blimp blood in his veins" and of having been "overtaken by a rhetorical bilious attack". (6)
However, the main purpose of The Truth was to attack those Tory MPs who opposed appeasement. This included Chamberlain's Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden. In November, 1937, Neville Chamberlain announced he was sending his friend, and fellow appeaser, Lord Halifax, to meet Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Göring in Germany. Eden was furious when he discovered this and felt he was being undermined as foreign secretary. One historian has commented: "Eden and Chamberlain seemed like two horses harnessed to a cart, both pulling in different directions." (7)
Major George Joseph Ball also used The Truth to attack those politicians and newspapers complaining about how Adolf Hitler was imprisoning members of the German Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the German Communist Party (KPD). It argued that "Germany's domestic affairs are her own business." (52) The magazine described Hitler in glowing terms at the 1937 Nuremberg Rally: "Today he looks ten years younger than he did four years ago, when he was a tired, worn and harassed man. Now he is fresh-complexioned, often smiling, the worried expression replaced by one of quiet confidence." (8)
Adolf Hitler
The Truth also poured scorn on the number of stories of atrocities against Jews in Nazi Germany. and claimed that anti-Semitism had "weakened of late". (9) The following month the journal suggested that if anti-Semitism ever assumed an uglier aspect in Britain, it would be "the Jews" own fault, because although there were just 350,000 Jews in Britain at the time "this is difficult to credit when one walks through the West End on a Saturday night." It then added, without offering a shred of evidence that it was "no exaggeration to say that of every ten swindles that come under the notice of Truth, an unduly high proportion are operated by Jews." (10)
Ball gained support from right-wing Conservative Party MPs in the House of Commons. Lieutenant Colonel Lambert Ward, who claimed he visited Germany every year denied that thousands were being driven into "hastily-constructed prisons and concentration camps". Ward also said that in his judgement that Germany would never invade Czechoslovakia, but if they did, a third of the Czech Army would desert and join the German Army. He also argued that the British people would not want to go to war to defend the territorial rights of Czechoslovakia. (11)
Major Joseph Ball became an important figure behind the scenes. Hugh Dalton, the Labour Party MP, asked Ronald Cartland who influenced Neville Chamberlain. He replied that none of his colleagues in the Cabinet did, but "there was a queer figure, Sir Joseph Ball, now in the Conservative Head Office, who had been in the Conservative Head Office, who had been in MI5 during the war, in whom the PM had great confidence." (12)
Ball began a smear campaign against those members of the Conservative Party who opposed appeasement. Ball told sympathetic journalists that they were either gay or bi-sexual and gave them the derisory term "the glamour boys". Ball told the journalist Charles Graves, that these MPs that included Anthony Eden, Harold Nicolson, Ronald Cartland, Robert Boothby, Jack Macnamara and Jim Thomas, and "they are viewed with some suspicion by the party heads" and were providing a "smokescreen" for Winston Churchill. (13)
Major Ball used his The Truth journal to attack prominent Jews who were opposed to appeasement. The publisher, Victor Gollancz, a supporter of the Labour Party, was one of Ball's main targets: "if we set aside the ideological passions of Mr Gollancz and his tribe in the tents of Bloomsbury, the truth is that no appreciable section of British opinion desires to re-conquer Berlin for the Jews or see the Vistula run red with British blood." (14)
Several times during 1939, Major Ball, acting on behalf of Neville Chamberlain, arranged for the former Conservative MP for Basingstoke, Henry Drummond-Wolff to take part in secret peace talks with senior figures in Nazi Germany. In January, he met with Adolf Hitler who said he was particularly anxious to obtain trade preferences for Germany and a return of the colonies. In May, Drummond-Wolff met Hermann Göring and Walther Hewel where they discussed the problem of Danzing and the Polish Corridor. (15)
Leslie Hore-Belisha
Major George Joseph Ball and other anti-Semitic members of the party were constant critics of the Jewish minister Leslie Hore-Belisha. The Tory MP, Edward Doran, taunted him by asking the number and nationality of all "money-lenders" registered in the country and claiming that there were 3,000 fraudulent bankrupts in the country, who were "mainly alien Jews" (16) Harry Chips Channon wrote in his diary that Hore-Belisha was "an oily man, half a Jew, an opportunist, with the Semitic flair for publicity". (17)
In the House of Commons, the Tory Archibald Ramsay, was the main critic of having Jews in the government. In 1938 he began a campaign to have Hore-Belisha sacked as Secretary of War. In one speech on 27th April he warned that because he was a Jew Hore-Belisha "will lead us to war with our blood-brothers of the Nordic race in order to make way for a Bolshevised Europe." (18)
Hore-Belisha had a poor relationship with General John Gort, Chief of the Imperial General Staff. By the outbreak of the Second World War the two men were not on speaking terms. General Henry Pownall, the chief of staff to the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), reckoned that it was inevitable that General Gort should fall out with Hore-Belisha. After all, the former was "a great gentleman", while the latter was "an obscure, shallow-brained, charlatan, political Jewboy." (19) Chamberlain suggested to Lord Halifax that Hore-Belisha should be moved from Secretary of State for War to Minister of Information. Halifax replied that "Jew control of our propaganda would be a major disaster". (20)
After the outbreak of the Second World War, the prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, told King George VI that "as I told him repeatedly before, there existed a strong prejudice against him (Hore-Belisha) for which I could not hold him altogether blameless." (21) On 4th January, 1940, Chamberlain offered him the post of president of the Board of Trade. As it was a demotion and meant he would be outside the War Cabinet, he resigned. Some newspapers such as the Daily Mirror criticised Chamberlain's decision to remove a talented minister. (22)
Henry Newnham, writing in The Truth supported Chamberlain's decision and attempted to completely destroy his political career. He described "Mr Belisha's resignation is a minor episode because he is a minor man whose most conspicuous talent is for getting his photograph into the newspapers." Newnham blamed the "hysteria" surrounding his resignation on "newspapers controlled by Mr Belisha's co-religionists" and the "racial sympathy" he had elicited. (23) The following week Newnham claimed the "Daily Mirror came from the Jew-controlled sink of Fleet Street". Both these editions were sent unsolicited to the homes of all MPs and peers and a large number of journalists and senior civil servants. (24)
Nancy Astor also started the unfounded rumour that Hore-Belisha had been sacked because he had been making money out of army contracts. (25) The historian, Tim Bouverie, claims these stories were part of an orchestrated campaign against Hore-Belisha. He quotes Hore-Belisha as saying: "The Conservative party machine is even stronger than the Nazi party machine. It may have a different aim, but it is similarly callous and ruthless." (26)
Anti-Semitism
After Neville Chamberlain resigned Major George Joseph Ball lost his power in the Conservative Party. However, he kept control over The Truth journal where it continued with its rabid anti-Semitism. In an article published on 6th August, 1940, Henry Newnham wrote: "I was reading early this week the official list of our casualties during the Battle of France. I noticed among the names of other members of the 'ruling class' those of the Duke of Northumberland, the Earl of Aylesford, the Earl of Coventry, Lord Frederick Cambridge - all killed in action. I did not notice any names like Gollancz, Laski, and Strauss, from which I draw the conclusion that what happened in the last war is being repeated in this. The ancient families of Britain - the hated ruling class of the Left Wing diatribes - are sacrificing their bravest and best to keep the Strausses safe in their homes, which in the last war they did not don uniforms to defend." (27)
George Strauss objected to the claim that he was a coward for not fighting for his country during the First World War. As he pointed out he was too young to fight in the war and he won substantial damages from the journal. Josiah Wedgwood, the Labour MP suggested to Herbert Morrison, the Home Secretary, that The Truth should be banned because it had been a long-term supporter of the British Union of Fascists and continued to express anti-Semitic views. He added that it would be "a Quisling paper if the Germans ever come here." As the journal was still being funded by the Conservative Party it was impossible for Morrison to take action against it. (28)
On 15th November 1940, Collin Brooks took over from Henry Newnham as the editor of The Truth. His deputy was A. K. Chesterton. Both men were former members of the British Union of Fascists. This was a strange decision when one considers that the country was involved in a war with Nazi Germany. Chesterton later became chairman of the far right-wing National Front. (29)
In 1953, Truth was put up for sale, and was bought by Ronald Staples, a publisher who was interested in publishing a weekly magazine. He removed all the right-wing staff, and appointed several Jewish journalists such as Bernard Levin, Anthony Howard and Alan Brien. The last issue of Truth was published on 27th December 1957. (30)
Primary Sources
(1) H. C. G. Matthew, Henry Labouchère: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (8th October, 2009)
Henry Labouchère wrote on finance for The World, founded (1874) and edited by his friend Edmund Yates; then, in 1876, he established a weekly journal, Truth, which for many years was by far the most successful of personal organs in the press. Labouchere was a first-class journalist. His reputation as a wit was well established; he had an easy, lucid style, and he wrote with candour about his own adventurous life and the follies and failings of his contemporaries. Labouchere used his inside information about the affairs and activities of the court and the political establishment to devastating effect. Though often exaggerated, the gossip in Truth almost always had a base in fact. Above all, Truth won admiration and gratitude by its fearless exposure of fraudulent enterprises of all sorts. This brought upon him a long series of libel actions. Most of them he won, and they were such good advertisements for his paper that he could afford to be indifferent to his irrecoverable costs amounting to scores of thousands of pounds. He died a very wealthy man.
(2) Henry Newnham, The Truth (6th August, 1940)
I was reading early this week the official list of our casualties during the Battle of France. I noticed among the names of other members of the 'ruling class' those of the Duke of Northumberland, the Earl of Aylesford, the Earl of Coventry, Lord Frederick Cambridge - all killed in action. I did not notice any names like Gollancz, Laski, and Strauss, from which I draw the conclusion that what happened in the last war is being repeated in this. The ancient families of Britain - the hated ruling class of the Left Wing diatribes - are sacrificing their bravest and best to keep the Strausses safe in their homes, which in the last war they did not don uniforms to defend.
(3) John Campbell Davidson, Memoirs of a Conservative (1969)
We had agents (ran by Joseph Ball) in certain key centres and we also had agents actually in the Labour Party Headquarters, with the result that we got their reports on political feeling in the country as well as our own. We also got advance "pulls" of their literature. This we arranged with Odhams Press, who did most of the Labour Party printing, with the result that we frequently received copies of their leaflets and pamphlets before they reached Transport House (the Labour HQ). This was of enormous value to us because we were able to study the Labour Party policy in advance, and in the case of leaflets we could produce a reply to appear simultaneously with their production.
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