John Stonehouse

John Thomson Stonehouse (28 July 1925 – 14 April 1988) was a British Labour and Co-operative Party politician, businessman and minister who attended the cabinet of Harold Wilson.

Stonehouse was born on 28 July 1925 in Southampton, the second son and youngest of four children of Post Office engineer and later dockyard engine-fitter William Mitchell Stonehouse, and Rosina Marie, née Taylor.

His father was local secretary of his trade union; Stonehouse joined the Labour Party at the age of sixteen.

His mother, a former scullery maid, was the sixth female mayor of Southampton and a councillor on Southampton City Council from 1936 to 1970.

Stonehouse was educated at Taunton's School (now Richard Taunton Sixth Form College), Southampton, and served as a Royal Air Force pilot from 1944 until 1946.

He then attended the London School of Economics (LSE), where he read for a BSc (Econ.) degree.

During his time at the LSE, he was chairman of both the chess club and the Labour society.

The political scientist Bernard Crick, who was a contemporary of Stonehouse at university, recalls that his then nickname was 'Lord John', and that "his conversation was openly and restlessly about how best to get a parliamentary seat."

Stonehouse stood unsuccessfully in Norwood at the 1949 London County Council election.

An economist, Stonehouse became involved in co-operative enterprise and was a manager of African co-operative societies in Uganda (1952–54).

He served as a director (1956–62) and President (1962–64) of the London Co-operative Society.

He was first elected as Labour Co-operative Member of Parliament (MP) for Wednesbury in Staffordshire in a 1957 by-election, having contested Twickenham in 1950 and Burton in 1951.

In February 1959, Stonehouse travelled to the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland on a fact-finding tour in which he condemned the White minority government of Southern Rhodesia.

Speaking to the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress, he encouraged Blacks to stand up for their rights and said they had the support of the British Labour Party.

He was promptly deported from Southern Rhodesia and banned from returning a year later.

Stonehouse served as a junior minister of aviation, where he was involved in BOAC's order of Boeing 707 aircraft from the United States, against his own recommendation that they should buy a British aircraft, the Super Vickers VC10.

This led to his making accusations against colleagues about the reasons for the decision.

Stonehouse allegedly began spying for Czechoslovakia in 1962.

While in the Colonial Office, Stonehouse's rise continued, and in 1967 he became Minister of State for Technology under Tony Benn and later Postmaster General until the position was abolished by the Post Office Act 1969.

In March 1968, he negotiated an agreement providing a framework for the long-term development of technological co-operation between Britain and Czechoslovakia.

It provided for the exchange of specialists and information, facilities for study and research in technology, and such other forms of industrial co-operation which might be agreed.

In a meeting with Harold Wilson in 1969, Stonehouse was informed of assertions that he was a Czechoslovak secret service agent; the informant was a defector from the Czechoslovak StB secret service, who had been debriefed by the US security services.

At that time, Stonehouse successfully defended himself.

As Minister of Posts and Telecommunications in 1970, he oversaw the controversial jamming of the offshore radio station Radio North Sea International.

When Labour was defeated at the 1970 general election, he was not appointed to the Shadow Cabinet.

Having lost his ministerial salary in 1970, Stonehouse set up various companies in an attempt to supplement his salary as an MP.

Stonehouse is remembered for his unsuccessful attempt at faking his own death in 1974.

It is also alleged that Stonehouse had been an agent for the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic military intelligence.

When the Wednesbury constituency was abolished in 1974, he stood for and was elected to the nearby Walsall North constituency in February 1974.

With Labour now governing in minority, another election was called in September, and Stonehouse was re-elected with an increased majority of nearly 16,000 in the October 1974 election, where Labour won a narrow majority, just six weeks before his disappearance.

His last Parliamentary contribution before his disappearance was at Prime Minister's Questions on 14 November 1974, before leaving for Miami, Florida a few days later.

By 1974, most of these were in financial trouble, and he had resorted to deceptive creative accounting.

Aware that the Department of Trade and Industry was looking at his affairs, he decided that his best choice would be to flee.

Stonehouse maintained the pretence of normality until he faked his death on 20 November 1974, leaving a pile of clothes on a beach in Miami Beach to make it appear that he had gone swimming and had drowned, or possibly had been killed by a shark.

He was presumed dead, and obituaries were published in British newspapers despite the fact that no corpse had been found.

In reality, he was en route to Australia, some 9000 mi away, hoping to set up a new life with his mistress and secretary, Sheila Buckley.

Secret British government documents, declassified in 2005, indicate that Stonehouse spent months rehearsing his new identity, that of Joseph Markham, the deceased husband of a constituent.

In 2009, the spy allegation was substantiated in the official history of MI5, The Defence of the Realm (2009) by Cambridge historian Christopher Andrew.

In December 2010, it was revealed that, in 1980, then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had agreed to cover up revelations that Stonehouse had been a Czechoslovak spy since the 1960s as there was insufficient evidence to bring him to trial.

Until Ray Mawby, briefly a member of a Conservative government, was exposed in June 2012, Stonehouse was the only Minister known to have been an agent for the former Eastern bloc.