

GKY
Peter Cadogan

What follows is an edited version of some moments in the political career
of an important player in the shadowy world of para-politics until hi=
s
death in 1990. In itself it is only a fragment, containing the views of
Peter Cadogan, a longtime English Dissident, himself active in variou=
s
people power projects over the years.1 As a fragment, it has its limi=
ts
and (tantalisingly) the height of GKYs formal poli tical influence - his
failed attempt to take over the Tory Monday Club in the early 1970s -=
 is
absent as the diary entries only start in 1974. What the document does
give, though, is a hint of the ferment and excitement amongst the ruling
class around 1974, when in some circles a coup was discussed, and a
demonstration of the close affinity between the state's security apparatus
and the commerci al ruling class. There is one point on which it is
possible to take issue slightly with Peter Cadogan that is worthy of
remark - the assertion that there are people trying to hunt the wizard=

of GKYand place him at the centre of a far Right conspiracy. In fact he
was onl y too happy to write his own obituary for Lobster. The extent=
 to
which GKY was (or was not) a totalitarian is something which readers =
can
delve into elsewhere.2 However, Peter Cadogan is right when he observes
that GKY was "...incorrigibly interesting". - Larry O'Hara

GKY and me

personally got to know GKY in 1968 when, after reading his Finance and
World Power', I wrote to him. We had many working lunches over the next 16
years.  The argument of that book and the central tenet of his political
thought, was that the Establishment (wrongly) preferred escalating debt to
investment in the economy and improvements in productivity. In 1970 I
became the general secretary of the South Place Ethical Society at the
Conway Hall, Red Lion square (a centre of English dissent since 1793). GKY
was very interested and gave a series of lectures there throughout the
1970s.

eorge K. Young (1911-90) was a man born out of his time and he raged
against it. He would have been happier as a zealous Scottish Covenanter in
the 17th century or like his fellow Scot, Livingstone, building the empire
in the bush, singlehanded. He was a journalist, a soldier, a senior civil
servant, a master-spy, a writer, a historian, a political conspirator, a
restless critic of weakness in high places, a ruthless man and a caring
man at the same time. He believed in ideas, values and loyalty and lived
 by them. He never suffered fools gladly. He had a brilliant intellect. He
also had a blind spot.  When he retired from Government service in 1961 he
was a Deputy Head of MI6. Within a year he had his first book out -
Masters of In-decision - a withering attack on the system he had serv=
ed
for so long, but written as much in sorrow as in anger. He saw
 absolutely no alter-native to Conser-vatism and it therefore followed
that the Conservative cause had to be redeemed from within. He saw himself
as an arch-redeemer, a crusader more than a reformer.  He is dead. These
lines are not written to hunt the wizard (there seems to be no shortage of
volunteers in that direction) but to try to tell the truth about him, or
at least that part of it that I saw for myself, knowing him personally and
enjoying his t rust, over the years 1968 to 1984. Being exceptionally
well-informed (he kept his hotline to Intelligence long after his
retirement) he had an angle on everything and everybody. He was,
therefore, incorrigibly interesting, regardless of whether he was right or
wrong, progressive or reactio nary. His interests centered on foreign
policy, defence and internal security. His book Who is my Liege? (197=
2)
was a textbook of Thatcherism par excellence but with values closer to
chivalry than Bentham:  The collection and dispensing of revenue, the
running of courts of law, the equipment, direction and planning of the
armed forces - these three functions of central government are the only
ones for which a permanent corps of specialist officials is essen tial. So
the Conservative intention of hiving-off functions of state which they
consider are the responsibility of the private sector must be extended to
being a broad avenue of no-return... Unlike Mrs Thatcher though he
insisted on the moral under-pinning. Just as Mrs. Thatcher denied
society so he affirmed it. But that was the G.K.Young enigma - that h=
e
belived in truth, integrity, loyalty, action and he knew they came from
people, but wh en it came to the crunch he chose authority: The loyaltie=
s
of the people are there: they only await a new focus. No subsitute of
function, interest or contrived comm-unication can meet their need: the
restoration of emotional unity requires a new sense of communal action and
since our whole body of
 ideas is involved, it is from above that new initiatives must come. And
who is to do it?  Since Labours identity tags are tied to universalis=
t
ideas which have brought betrayal, and in our time treason bears a
Left-Wing label, only a Conservative Government can play this role. So
that is it. He felt he had no option but to make sense of the Conservative
Party. One gets the impression that he was feared, disliked, derided and
misunderstood by the common run of Tories; but he had hot lines to the
top. To him, that was what counte d.  He had no sense of a new morality
and politics coming up from below. There were always two George Youngs -
the man of moral passion and the authoritarian. And the second had the
edge over the first. It just never occurred to him that people-power might
be
 a possible option.

The Journal

From1974 I kept a journal, what follows is taken almost verbatim from
that journal. 25th July 1974.  George K Young had lunch with me today in
the Library at Conway Hall. He tells me the Conservative Party has
collapsed in Scotland and Tories in general hardly know what they stand
for because they dont know what Heath stands for. He is working on
something I think he called plan B. Like me he expects the collapse of
central government, but we are working in utterly different ways from
opposite ends of the political spectrum. He, in company with about a dozen
others, has drawn up a
 plan (and had it bound!) and discussed it with the Head of the Secret
Service and a top man in the Special Branch. It involves, or is intended
to involve Lord Lieutenants, Chief Constables and their kind. He is
looking for some kind of base in the Royal Society of St. George and the
Ratepayers Association to which, he says, some thirteen million people
have paid their 25p. Gerald Howarth, ex-Society of Individualists, is much
involved. He thinks the outcome of the present crisis will be violent but
we di dnt discuss it in detail. In my view the violence has only to be
marginal or we lose the day and end up with another authoritarian regime.
He takes the regional case but makes less of it than I do. He uses a
military formula for working things out: Objec ts, Factors, Courses, Plan.
He saw Enoch Powell last week for about an hour and a half but doesnt
think much of him. He ratted on his own party people and constituents in
the middle of an election build-up. He is making the mistake of getting
directly involved in Ulster politics (i n looking for a constituency
there), fatal in Georges view - and generally seems to have lost out. I
asked him about the Far Right. The Monday Club, he says, is virtually in a
state of self-destruction. What he said about Jonathan Guinness turned out
to be about right. But the Monday Club in the Midlands has developed a
life of its own and could be of consequence.  Of the National Front it
seems that there is a chap called Roy3 who is a self-made millionaire and
who reckons to get rid of both John Tyndall and Martin Webster within two
years. George doubts if he will make it. It will take a good organiser to
beat Web ster to the draw! He is very frank with me and I am equally
straight with him. It is a strange relationship. He mentioned, in some
context or other, that he had previously been much involved in planning
the overthrow or the bolstering of Governments (presum-ably in the Mid dle
East) so that his present activity was not all that different! 29th July
1974.  Todays Times carries quite a long report on the emergency
organisation that GKY described to me last week, but his name is kept out
of it. Now the climate will really begin to change... When the politicians
see others getting ready to do their job becaus e they have failed, there
will be some very interesting sequels from all directions! 5th December
1974.  We had the working lunch for ten people today (at the Hall). My
guests were GKY, Michael Barnes, Alex Cox and Marion Boyars. James had
three guests including Tony Wilson of British Oxygen. Tomoko Sato acted as
co-host with me. The discussion was good but didnt seem to get very far;
but all felt it was worthwhile. At the very end George staggered them
(except me as privy to the news) by revealing that it was he who had drawn
up the plan that General Walker is now acting on. He told us that cadres
had been recruited, how an alternative communication system existed, how
contacts ranged from the Palace down! Shock all round the table! In 1975
it seemed that some kind of change was imperative. This was the year in
which Thatcherism was invented and Mrs. Thatcher ousted Ted Heath. She had
been holding her Sunday evening discussions with her friends in her house
in Chelsea. General Walker , Sterling and George K Young were making their
extraordinary para-military plans to meet the contingency of a total
political breakdown. 15th July 1976 Today I had lunch with GKY at
St.Stephens Club near St.James Park. He told me that when he first had the
idea that is UNISON he saw General Templar about it. Templar was
interested but too old and sick to act and he suggested General Walker.
George then s aw General Walker and he, having read Georges draft, agree=
d
to take on the job. The form the thing now takes is that of an instant
communications network capable of acting at the highest level if the
established machinery of government and comm-unications breaks down. Key
contacts to be with Lord Lieutenants, G.O.C.s [heads of armed services],
Police, key M.P.s and key people in a list of associations. At the top is
Lord X ( I was told his name but it did not mean anything to me and I
forgot it), but he too is a sick man. The key man in the Commons is Sir
Frederick Bennet and with hi m are some twenty other M.P.s. The
communications network will function through the ham radio system and
another special system of communications has been established with some
help from the Home Office. UNISON will go public later this year. There
used to be, he said, an emergency system in this country based on the
counties (presumably a reference to the Regional Seats of Government set
up in the 20s after the experience of the General Strike and reactivated
in the 50s in the face of the pos sibility of nuclear war) but Heath
dismantled it as a reflection on his capacity to govern and Wilson, with
five Communists in his Cabinet, was in no position to revive it - Geo=
rge
is a little free with the use of the word Communist. He sees a Genera=
l
Election producing a minority Thatcher Government and no progress. When it
breaks down or threatens to do so, there will be a need for a new
initiative. He had set up a group of about a hundred Tory M.P.s who are
alerted to the possibili ty and will take suitable action. What action is
yet to be determined. 26th March 1981. A two hour lunch with GKY at the
Caledonian Club in Halkin Street. He tells me that the emergency
organisation UNISON was formed in 1967 and Tory Action subsequently. He
has been the Secretary and the moving force in Tory Action since his 70th
birthday. H e sees Peter Walker as a tory with a future and writes
Carrington and Prior off.  10th August 1982 Another lunch with GKY at the
Caledonian Club. He told me a bit more about himself. In 1941 he was an
Army Captain in Kenya and when the British Forces cleared the Italians out
of the Horn of Africa he was asked to take on the Intelligence job at
Addis Ab baba.  He carried on in Intelligence after the war, with MI6, and
did a tour of SE Asia in 1959. He told me that the Head of the CIA in
Saigon, Richardson, urged no direct US intervention in Vietnam. He was
over-ruled from Washington where Helms was the boss. He
 also said that the CIA was firmly against the form taken by the Bay of
Pigs invasion. They wanted an operation that would start and build up a
complex of guerrilla groups, but the Pentagon prevailed and made it a full
frontal thing leading to disaster. H e thinks that the CIA has had a bad
press. Before 1955 the Foreign Office had no proper means of studying
Soviet power centers. Violet Connolly was their authority on the SU but
the emphasis of specialists was on things like Soviet grain production
etc. He successfully urged that what No.10 needed
 was a special advisory group following closely what was happening in and
around the Kremlin - and which General or 'top person' was on the up or
down. The need for this became apparent with Stalin's death. Nobody in the
FO had ever heard of Malenkov! So mething had to be done. At Georges
instigation a special group was set up headed by Malcolm McIntosh with
Nove and Schapiro (of LSE). The group is still functioning today and
McIntosh is still there. The House of Lords has a special all-party
defence group which has produced a paper on special operations and other
matters (edited by George) that will be considered at a meeting on October
27th by the PM. A good deal turns on that meeting. It seems that
 many politicians, officials and officers have no idea of the importance
of 'special operations' and psychological warfare and both have been
greatly neglected in recent years. George thinks that Carver is a dead
loss because he can't see this point eithe r. George K. Youngs last book
Subversion and the British Riposte appeared in 1984, some three years
after it had been written. I was not a little shocked by it. It opens:
If leading spokesmen of the Western world are to be believed we face in
the 80s, a threat of subversion as great as that of nuclear destruction.
It is a favourite theme of the Prime Minister. The fact is that for year=
s
he had tried, not without some limited success, to sell this belief to
leading spokesmen, Mrs. Thatcher in particular. GKY, now aged 74, (to the
best of my knowledge we had no subsequent contact) fell silent. So many
things he g ot right, but his essential thesis involved a fundamental
misreading of his times.  Over 16 years I had seen him change. His
original critique of the Establishment was brilliant; but his gathering
obsession with an ill-defined internal menace had always seemed to me to
be absurd. Who were the people who were going to bring the system to its
knees? They didnt exist.

How does one explain George K. Young?

He was a man of ideas and vast experience on the Right. In the view of the
Left this was impossible - the Right had interests, it did not and could
not have ideas. Churchill had opened up a breach but it closed again.
George K. Young and Sir Keith Joseph did it once more, but all it yielded
was self-limiting Thatcherism and a misreading of subversion. GKY had no
home intellectually and politically, nowhere to go. He had to invent homes
like Tory Action, UNISON and various ad hoc associations or move into
 the Monday Club or the Society of Individualists and SPES. It didnt
work. He met very few people of his own demanding kind. It drove him
downwards into conspiracy, even into inventing conspiracy by others, as in
his last book. Today it might be differen t; there are Conservatives about
like Norman Stone (who looks, talks and sounds like GKY) and Edward
Pearce. They were not about in the 1960s. It is a pity that in the end he
willed himself to self-destruction and we parted company although never
explicit ly or formally so. He was a good man fallen among autocrats...

Introduced and edited by Larry O'Hara, an independent researcher into the
far Right.  Larry O'Hara has been the subject of vicious and unfounded
attacks in the pages of the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight after
criticising their research and their links
 to the British 'secret state'.
  For any readers who want to read in more detail how GKY interacted with
Cadogan's own political project the full text is available; 6 pages at
8p/page inc. postage. 1. Peter Cadogan's latest project is outlined in a
pamphlet "Values & Vision - Human Ecology and Community Politics";
Telephone 071 328 3709. 2. The obituary of himself is in Lobster 19, May
1990, p. 15-19. Dorril & Ramsay 'Smear' discusses: - GKY in Tory Party, Ch
XXXII. - GKY & Unison, Ch XXXIX. Searchlight, June 1987, p. 10-11 repeats
the standard information about GKY. Searchlight 187, Jan. 1991 p. 3
elaborates further, alleging he used the Searchlight 187, Jan. 1991 p. 3
elaborates further, alleging he used the mysterious (and quite possibly
fictional) paramilitary Column 88 "as a smokescreen... for more criminal
plans." David Leigh 'The Wilson Plot" (Heinemann, London, 1988) also
reviews Young's career & views - p. 13-16, 57, 158-9, 213-4, 217, 221-3,
225. 3. Roy Painter was a colourful Tory who defected to the NF and went
on to help form the shortlived 'National Party' in 1975. He is now back in
the Tory Party. A vivid picture of him is in Martin Walker's 'The NF'
(Fonatana, 1977).


