Tom Driberg, Baron Bradwell
Encyclopedia
Thomas Edward Neil Driberg, Baron Bradwell (22 May 1905 – 12 August 1976), generally known as Tom Driberg, was a British journalist, politician and High Anglican churchman
who served as a Member of Parliament
(MP) from 1942 to 1955 and from 1959 to 1974. A member of the British Communist Party
for more than 20 years, he was first elected to parliament as an Independent, and joined the Labour Party
in 1945. He never held any ministerial office, but rose to senior positions within the Labour Party and was a popular and influential figure in left-wing politics
for many years.
The son of a retired colonial officer, Driberg was educated at Lancing
and Christ Church, Oxford
. After leaving the university without a degree, he attempted to establish himself as a poet before joining the Daily Express
as a reporter, later becoming a columnist. In 1933 he began the "William Hickey" society column
, which he continued to write until 1943. He was later a regular columnist for the Co-operative Group newspaper Reynolds News and for other left-leaning journals. He wrote several books, including biographies of the press baron Lord Beaverbrook
and the fugitive British diplomat Guy Burgess
. He retired from the House of Commons in 1974, and was subsequently raised to the peerage as Baron Bradwell of Bradwell juxta Mare in the County of Essex.
Driberg made no secret of his homosexuality, which he practised throughout his life despite it being a criminal offence in Britain until 1967; his ability to avoid any consequences for his risky and often brazen behaviour baffled his friends and colleagues. Always in search of bizarre experiences, Driberg befriended at various times the black magic
practitioner Aleister Crowley
and the Kray twins
, along with honoured and respected figures in the worlds of literature and politics. He combined this lifestyle with an unvarying devotion to Anglo-Catholicism
. After his death, allegations were published about his role over many years as an MI5
informant, or a KGB
agent, or both. The extent and nature of Driberg's involvement with these agencies remains uncertain.
, a small dormitory town
about 40 miles (64.4 km) south of London. He was the third and youngest of three sons born to John James Street Driberg, a former officer in the Indian Civil Service, and his wife Amy Mary Irving Driberg, née Bell. The Driberg family had immigrated from Holland about 200 years previously; the Bells were lowland Scots from Dumfriesshire
. John Driberg had retired in 1896 after 35 years in Assam
, latterly as head of the state's police, and was 65 years old when his youngest son was born. For Driberg, growing up mostly alone with his elderly parents was a stifling experience; he would later describe Crowborough as "a place which I can never revisit, or think of, without a feeling of sick horror".
At the age of eight Driberg began as a day-boy at the Grange school in Crowborough. In his autobiography he mentions in particular two aspects of his time there: learning the "facts of life" from other boys, with extensive experimentation, and his discovery of what he calls "exotic" religion—High Anglicanism
. These experiences formed what he called two "conflicting compulsions", soon to be joined by a third—left-wing politics
—to shape the ruling passions of his life.
, the public school on the south coast where, after some initial bullying and humiliation, he was befriended by fellow-pupil Evelyn Waugh
. Under Waugh's sponsorship Driberg joined an intellectual society, the Dilettanti, which promoted literary and artistic activities alongside political debate. He began to write poetry; his aesthetic education was further assisted by the charismatic J. F. Roxburgh, "a magnetically brilliant teacher" who later became headmaster of Stowe School
. Lancing's notable Gothic
chapel gave Driberg the religious atmosphere he sought, though he found the services disappointingly "moderate". By 1920 he was inclining to the political left and was in rebellion against his conservative upbringing. Finding the Labour Party
too dull and respectable for his radical tastes, he joined the Brighton branch of the newly formed British Communist Party
.
After he had risen to responsible positions within the school (deputy head boy, head librarian, and chief sacristan
, among others), his Lancing career ended suddenly in the autumn of 1923, when two boys complained about his sexual overtures. To avoid distressing the widowed Amy Driberg (John Driberg had died in 1919), the headmaster allowed him to remain in the school for the remainder of the term, stripped of his offices and segregated from all social contact with other boys. At the end of the term he was required to leave, on the pretext that he needed private tuition to pass his Oxford entrance examination, which he had failed the previous summer. Back in Crowborough, under the guidance of his tutor, the future Lord Justice Pearson
, and after several months' hard application, he won a classics
scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford
.
Oxford in 1924 was dominated by an avant-garde
aesthetic movement in which personalities such as Harold Acton
, Brian Howard, Cyril Connolly
and, a little later, W. H. Auden
were leading lights. Driberg was soon immersed in a world of art, politics, poetry and parties: "There was just no time for any academic work", he wrote later. With Auden, he discovered T. S. Eliot
's The Waste Land
, which they read again and again, "with growing awe". A poem of Driberg's in the style of Edith Sitwell
was published in Oxford Poetry 1926; when Sitwell came to Oxford to deliver a lecture, Driberg invited her to have tea with him, and she accepted. After her lecture he found an opportunity to recite one of his own poems, and was rewarded when Sitwell declared him "the hope of English poetry".
Meanwhile, together with the future historian A. J. P. Taylor
, Driberg formed the membership of the Oxford University Communist Party. During the General Strike of May 1926, most Oxford students supported the government and enrolled as special constables and strike-breakers. A minority, which included the future Labour Party
leader Hugh Gaitskell
and the future Poet Laureate
John Betjeman
, sided with the strikers, while Driberg and Taylor offered their services at the British Communist Party's headquarters in London. The Party showed no urgency to employ them, and Taylor soon left. Driberg, given a job distributing strike bulletins, was arrested by the police before he could begin and was detained for several hours. This ended his active role in the strike. Notwithstanding his extreme left-wing associations, he secured 75 votes (against the winner's 152) in the 1927 elections for the presidency of the Oxford Union
.
Throughout his time at Oxford, Driberg followed his passion for Anglican rituals by regularly attending Mass at Pusey House
, an independent religious institution with a mission to "[restore] the Church of England's Catholic life and witness". In spite of the prevalent Oxford homoerotic ethos, his sexual energies were largely devoted to casual encounters with working-class men, rather than to relationships with his fellow undergraduates. He experienced sexual relations with only one don
, whom he met outside the university, unaware of the latter's identity. One of Driberg's elaborate hoaxes was a concert called "Homage to Beethoven", which featured megaphones, typewriters and a flushing lavatory. Newspaper accounts of this event raised the interest of the notorious practitioner of black magic
Aleister Crowley
. Driberg accepted an invitation to lunch with Crowley for the first of several meetings between them, at one of which Crowley nominated Driberg as his successor as World Teacher. Nothing came of the proposal, though the two continued to meet; Driberg received from Crowley manuscripts and books that he later sold for sizeable sums. The consequence of these various extracurricular involvements was neglect of his academic work; failure in his final examinations was inevitable, and in the summer of 1927 he left Oxford without a degree.
where I was discomposed to observe Tom Driberg's satanic face in the congregation". Driberg had maintained his contact with Edith Sitwell, and attended regular literary tea parties at her Bayswater
flat. When Sitwell discovered her protégé's impoverished circumstances she arranged an interview for him with the Daily Express
. After his submission of an article on London's nightlife, he was engaged in January 1928 for a six-week trial as a reporter; coincidentally, Waugh had undergone an unsuccessful trial with the same newspaper a few months earlier.
Within a month of beginning his duties, Driberg achieved a scoop with the first national newspaper reports of the activities in Oxford of the American evangelist Frank Buchman, whose movement would in time be known as Moral Re-Armament
. Driberg's reports were generally abrasive, even mocking in tone, and drew complaints from Buchman's organisation about news bias. The trial period at the Express was extended, and in July 1928 Driberg filed an exclusive report on a society party at the swimming baths in Buckingham Palace Road, where the guests included Lytton Strachey
and Tallulah Bankhead
. This evidence of Driberg's social contacts led to a permanent contract with the Express, as assistant to Percy Sewell who, under the name "The Dragoman", wrote a daily feature called "The Talk of London". Driberg later defended his association with an inconsequential society column by arguing that his approach was satirical, and that he deliberately exaggerated the doings of the idle rich as a way of enraging working-class opinion and helping the Communist Party.
Driberg used the column to introduce readers to up-and-coming socialites and literary figures, Acton, Betjeman, Nancy Mitford
and Peter Quennell
among them. Sometimes he introduced more serious causes: capital punishment, modern architecture, the works of D. H. Lawrence
and Jacob Epstein
, and the controversial novel The Well of Loneliness
by Radclyffe Hall
, which had been denounced in the Express editorial columns as "infamous". By prior arrangement with Waugh, the column included a discreet announcement in September 1930 of Waugh's conversion to Roman Catholicism; Driberg was his only guest at the service. He further assisted Waugh in 1932 by giving him space in the column to attack the editor of the Catholic journal The Tablet
, after it had denounced Waugh's Black Mischief
as blasphemous.
Sewell retired in 1932, leaving Driberg in sole charge of "The Talk of London" column. He grew increasingly frustrated with the trivial nature of his work. Following the intervention of Express proprietor Lord Beaverbrook
, the column was relaunched in May 1933 as "These Names Make News", and its by-line changed to "William Hickey
", after the 18th century diarist and rake. Driberg described the new feature as "...an intimate biographical column about ... men and women who matter. Artists, statesmen, airmen, writers, financiers, explorers..." Historian David Kynaston
calls Driberg the "founder of the modern gossip column", although it soon began to move decisively away from chit-chat and towards social and political issues. The tone of the column was described by biographer Richard Davenport-Hines as "wry, compassionate, and brimm[ing] with ... open-minded intelligence".
Beaverbrook, who had developed a fondness for Driberg, was amused by the disparity between his columnist's professed left-wing sympathies and bon vivant lifestyle. The proprietor knew of Driberg's persistent mismanagement of his personal finances, and on various occasions helped out with loans and gifts. During his time in London, Driberg had continued to indulge his taste for rough, casual sex; his memoir records many such instances. In the autumn of 1935 he was charged with indecent assault, after an incident in which he had shared his bed with two Scotsmen picked up late one night, in the bohemian district of London which Driberg had christened "Fitzrovia
" in the Hickey column. Beaverbrook paid for a leading counsel, J. D. Cassels, and two unimpeachable character witnesses were recruited by the defence. Driberg was acquitted, and Beaverbrook's influence ensured that the case went unreported by the press. This was the first known instance of what writer Kingsley Amis
called the "baffling immunity [Driberg] enjoyed from the law and the Press to the end of his days".
In the latter part of the 1930s Driberg travelled widely: twice to Spain, to observe the Spanish Civil War
, to Germany after the Munich Agreement
of 1938, to Rome for the coronation of Pope Pius XII
and to New York for the 1939 New York World's Fair
. After the Nazi-Soviet Pact was announced in August 1939, he informed his readers that there would be "no war this crisis". Nine days later, after the German invasion of Poland precipitated the Second World War, he apologised for his mistake, and ended his first wartime column with the words "We're all in it". His opposition to the Nazi-Soviet Pact and his support for the war in September 1939 may have been the reason for his expulsion from the Communist Party in 1941. An alternative explanation, proffered later, is that he was reported by Anthony Blunt
for passing information on the Party to Maxwell Knight
of MI5. Driberg and Knight were long-standing acquaintances who met frequently and, among other things, shared a mutual interest in the works of Aleister Crowley.
Driberg's mother had died in July 1939. With his share of her money and the help of a substantial mortgage, he bought and renovated Bradwell Lodge, a country house in Bradwell-on-Sea
on the Essex
coast, where he lived and entertained until the house was requisitioned by the Royal Air Force
(RAF) in 1940. He continued to write the Hickey column, not always to his editor's satisfaction; his protestations against indiscriminate bombing of German civilians were particularly frowned on. In November 1941 he went to America and was in Washington on Monday 9 December, after the attack on Pearl Harbor
, to report President Roosevelt
's speech to Congress announcing America's entry into the war.
were defeated by Independents—the main parties were not opposing each others' candidates. Driberg, in his column, generally welcomed this trend, while questioning "the merit of some of the candidates likely to get in if the reaction against the Party machines continues". On 12 May 1942 the death was announced of Sir Edward Ruggles-Brise, the Conservative member for Maldon
—the constituency in which Bradwell Lodge was situated. Next day, Driberg requested three weeks' leave from his column to fight the by-election. Contrary to the belief of prime minister Winston Churchill
and others that Driberg was being "run" by Beaverbrook, the Express proprietor was unenthusiastic; an editorial
on 25 May drew attention to Driberg's individual viewpoint and stated that "The Daily Express does not support his candidature".
Driberg's campaign slogan was "A Candid Friend For Churchill", personally supportive but critical of many of the prime minister's circle. The lacklustre campaign of his right-wing
Conservative opponent helped to secure Driberg a wide range of support, from moderate Conservatives, Liberals
and Socialists
. His fame as "William Hickey", and his stance as the only candidate with a home in the constituency, gave him a strong local profile. His previous Communist Party associations were not revealed. At the poll, on 25 June, he overturned a previous Conservative majority of 8,000 to finish 6,000 votes ahead of his opponent. In his war memoirs, Churchill called the result "one of the by-products of Tobruk"—which had fallen to Rommel
on 21 June. Waugh, in his diary, remarked that the presentation of Driberg during the by-election merely as a journalist and churchwarden gave "a very imperfect picture of that sinister character".
On 2 July 1942 Driberg cast his first vote in the House of Commons, in support of Churchill against a rebel motion of censure on the government's conduct of the war. The rebels' case was put incompetently, which ensured that the motion gained only 25 votes, as against 477 cast for the government. Driberg delivered his maiden speech
on 7 July, in a debate on the use of propaganda. He called for the lifting of the ban on the Communist Party's newspaper, the Daily Worker, which he saw as a potentially valuable weapon of home propaganda. In the following months he tabled questions and intervened in debates on behalf of various progressive causes. For example, on 29 September 1942 he asked the prime minister to "make friendly representations to the American military authorities asking them to instruct their men that the colour bar is not a custom in this country". He continued to write the Hickey column, and used his parliamentary salary to fund a constituency office in Maldon.
In January 1943, while in Edinburgh
to campaign in another by-election, Driberg was caught by a policeman while in the act of fellating
a Norwegian sailor. In his own account of the incident Driberg records that he escaped arrest by identifying himself as "William Hickey" and as a member of parliament. These disclosures evidently overawed the constable, who took no further action; indeed, Driberg says, the incident began a chaste friendship with the officer that endured for more than 10 years. Meanwhile Beaverbrook had become disenchanted with him, and did not intervene when Arthur Christiansen
, the Express editor, sacked the columnist in June 1943 over a story detrimental to a government minister, Andrew Rae Duncan. Driberg subsequently signed up with Reynolds News
, a Sunday newspaper owned by the Co-operative Group, and undertook a regular parliamentary column for the New Statesman
. He also contributed to a weekly BBC European Service broadcast until, in October 1943, he was banned by them after government pressure. He reported the post-D-Day
allied advances in France and Belgium as a war correspondent for Reynolds News, and as a member of a parliamentary delegation witnessed the aftermath of the liberation of Buchenwald concentration camp
in April 1945.
In the General election of July 1945
Driberg increased his majority at Maldon to 7,727. Before the election he had joined the Labour Party and had been welcomed by the local constituency party as their candidate. He was thus one of the 393 Labour MPs in the landslide election victory that replaced Churchill as prime minister with Clement Attlee
. Within a few days of his victory, Driberg left for the Far East, to report on the conditions of the allied troops in Burma. The Supreme Allied Commander, Lord Mountbatten
, knew him slightly and made him an unofficial temporary special adviser. In this role he met the Patriotic Burmese Forces leader, Aung San
, who impressed him as honest and incorruptible, "unlike some of the older Burmese politicians". Later, he visited Saigon and offered to mediate with Ho Chi Minh
, who had recently declared an independent Vietnam
state. Driberg later maintained that, had his offer been taken up, he might have prevented the Vietnam War
.
Because of his journalism, Driberg was a well-known figure within the Labour Party generally, and in 1949 was elected to the party's National Executive Committee
(NEC). In the February 1950 General Election
he was again elected at Maldon, while nationally Labour lost 68 seats, reducing its parliamentary majority to six. Members' regular attendance in the Commons chamber became important; however, in August 1950 Driberg left the country for Korea, where Britain had joined the United States in a United Nations
military expedition to repel the North Korean invasion of the South. Driberg and a few other left-wing
MPs had objected to British involvement; In his Reynolds News column, Driberg had written of "Tories (Conservatives) who ... cannot help baying their delight at the smell of blood in the air", a comment that caused outrage in parliament among the Conservative members. Whatever his reservations, Driberg's war dispatches to Reynolds News were strongly supportive of the British troops. He participated in several night operations, and won respect from many of the soldiers for his courage despite, as one Marine put it "being a bit bent". He was away from parliament for three months, missing many critical House of Commons divisions, and on his return was severely censured by his fellow Labour MPs for neglecting his duties. However, his general standing in the party was unaffected; he had been re-elected in absentia to the NEC in September 1950.
In April 1951 the Labour government was hit by the resignations of three ministers—Aneurin Bevan
, the future prime minister Harold Wilson
, and John Freeman—over the imposition of health charges to pay for an increased armaments programme. Driberg was sympathetic to the rebels, though he tried to find a basis for compromise that would avoid resignations. The former ministers strengthened the small Labour group known as "Keep Left", in which Driberg was prominent; the group would henceforth be known as "Bevanites". In the October 1951 General Election
the Labour Party was defeated, and Churchill resumed office; Driberg held on to his Maldon seat by 704 votes. Through the years of Labour government he had neither received nor sought office, having what historian Kenneth O. Morgan called a "backbench mindset". He still enjoyed aspects of his parliamentary life, such as in 1953 when he showed the American singing sensation Johnny Ray
round the House of Commons, his attempt to seduce the singer were politely resisted. However, he needed to earn more money, and in the spring of 1952 responded to a suggestion that he should write a biography of Beaverbrook. The press lord was amenable, and work began in the summer of 1953. The project extended over several years, by which time Driberg was no longer in parliament; he had announced in March 1954 that he was standing down from Maldon, which at the General Election of May 1955
fell, as he had expected, to the Conservatives.
county councillor, she worked as an administrator at the Marie Curie Hospital in London. She was well known in senior Labour circles, and had met Driberg in 1949, at a weekend party given by the government minister George Strauss
. According to her son, she was fully aware of Driberg's sexual preferences, but looked forward to some political excitement, and "thought they could do a useful job as Mr. and Mrs." Driberg's motives are less clear, but he told his friend John Freeman that he needed someone to run Bradwell Lodge, to which he had returned in 1946 after its release by the RAF.
At Driberg's insistence Binfield, a non-practising Jew, was baptised into the Church of England before the wedding at St Mary the Virgin, Pimlico
, on 30 June 1951. The bride entered to a chorale arranged from the Labour Party anthem "The Red Flag
"; this was followed by a nuptial mass described by Driberg's biographer Francis Wheen
as "outrageously ornate". Four hundred guests then attended an elaborate reception at the House of Commons. In the ensuing years Ena tried hard to adapt to Driberg's way of life and to control his wayward finances, but with little success. He continued his frequent travels and casual homosexual liaisons, and was hostile to her efforts to control or change any aspect of his life. In 1961 she wrote to him: "I have tried for ten years to make a compromise with you in your extraordinary mode of life and have now given up." Thereafter they often lived apart, though they never formally separated. Even after a final breach in 1971, they remained legally married.
In an effort to build his post-parliamentary career, Driberg turned briefly to creative writing, but without success. In his more familiar field of journalism he caused a sensation by flying to Moscow in August 1956 to interview Guy Burgess
, the former British diplomat who in 1951 had defected to Russia with his colleague Donald Maclean. The pair had emerged in Moscow in March 1956, to give a brief press conference. Driberg had known Burgess in the 1940s, and the two shared similar homosexual inclinations; this acquaintance was sufficient to secure the Moscow interview. On his return home Driberg rapidly wrote a book from the interview material, the serial rights of which were sold to the Daily Mail. Critics drew attention to the book's relatively sympathetic portrayal of Burgess; some believed the book had been vetted by the KGB, while others saw it as part of an MI5 plot to trap Burgess into revealing secret information for which he could be prosecuted should he ever return to Britain.
In 1956 Driberg convened a group of Christian socialists that met regularly at the Lamb public house in Bloomsbury
to discuss issues such as imperialism, colonialism, immigration and nuclear disarmament. The group's dispatches, Papers from the Lamb, led to the foundation in 1960 of the Christian Socialist Movement. Although no longer an MP, Driberg remained a member of the Labour Party's NEC and was active in party affairs. In 1957, in the face of antagonism from trade union leaders repelled by his lifestyle, he became Labour Party chairman, a largely ceremonial role. He travelled widely during his year in office, generally as a Reynolds News correspondent but using the party title to advantage whenever he could. Thus, in a 1958 visit to Moscow to interview space scientists, he obtained two meetings with Nikita Khrushchev
. In his final speech as chairman, to the party conference in 1958, Driberg angered the Conservatives and their press supporters by referring to the Tory ideology as not essentially different from the German Herrenvolk philosophy. He had been contemplating for some time a return to the House of Commons, and in February 1959 was adopted as a candidate by the safe Barking
constituency. In the General Election of October 1959, which delivered a 100-seat majority to Harold Macmillan
's Conservative government, he won at Barking with a majority of exactly 12,000.
A dominant issue when Driberg returned to Westminster was that of the use or outlawing of nuclear weapons. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
(CND) had been launched on 17 February 1958, though Driberg's involvement with the issue predated CND by three years. On 2 March 1955, in an amendment to a House of Commons motion, he had called for Great Britain to "regain the moral leadership of the world by taking an initiative ... that may lead to the outlawing of ... thermo-nuclear weapons". In October 1960 he supported the unilateralist
motions passed at the Labour Party conference, and fought unsuccessfully in the NEC for them to be adopted as party policy. The conference motion was reversed the following year, but he continued to pursue the matter in parliament. On 29 May 1962 he urged that Britain not be a party to the renewal of nuclear tests, and in a speech on 23 July he said: "The unilateral abandonment of testing—or, better still, a test ban agreement—would be the most valuable first step towards general and complete disarmament."
According to his colleague Ian Mikardo
, Driberg was less than enthusiastic about his duties in Barking—"a very, very bad constituency MP". Even his strongest supporters acknowledged that he attended as few local events as possible. In the Commons chamber he was a regular speaker on issues that concerned him, in particular disarmament, church affairs and racial discrimination. He supported the lowering of the voting age to 18, and the broadcasting of parliamentary debates; he opposed increases to judges' salaries, and the extension of Stansted Airport. After the General Election
of 1964, which narrowly returned Labour to power under Harold Wilson
, he was not offered a place in the new government, and soon found himself in opposition to Wilson's policies on Vietnam, the Common Market
, immigration and other major issues. He joined with Mikardo and other dissidents to form the "Tribune Group", with the aim of promoting more left-wing policies. The group's influence lessened after March 1966, when in another General Election
Wilson increased his majority to 98.
Driberg embraced enthusiastically the climate of the 1960s and the social and cultural freedoms that the decade introduced. In 1963 he met the Kray twins
, prominent London gangland figures, and began a lengthy friendship with them and their associates. In July 1964 two backbench Conservative MPs reported to their Chief Whip that Driberg and Lord Boothby (a well-known Conservative peer) had been importuning males at a dog track, and were involved with gangs of thugs. At parties which Driberg and Boothby attended at the Krays' flat, "rough but compliant East End lads were served like so many canapés", according to Wheen. While Driberg avoided publicity, Boothby was hounded by the press and forced to issue a series of denials. After the twins had been convicted of murder in 1969, Driberg frequently lobbied the Home Office
about their prison conditions, requesting that they be given more visits and allowed regular reunions. Driberg was impressed with Mick Jagger
, to whom he was introduced in 1965, and tried hard over a number of years to persuade the singer to take up active Labour politics. He also began a long association with the satirical magazine Private Eye
, supplying it with political gossip and, under the pseudonym "Tiresias", compiling a regular, highly risqué prize crossword puzzle which on one occasion was won by the wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury
.
In 1964 Driberg published a critical study of Moral Re-armament, which brought him attacks from the movement on the basis of his homosexuality and communist past. Although he made money from this book, throughout the 1960s he was beset by financial problems. When Reynolds News, which had evolved into the Sunday Citizen, finally folded in 1967, he became fully dependent on his parliamentary salary and casual journalism. He had long considered selling Bradwell Lodge, preferably to the National Trust
on a basis that would allow him to continue living there. However, the Trust required the property to be mortgage-free and endowed with a substantial fund to cover future repairs, neither of which terms could be arranged. In the event the house remained unsold until 1971. As the 1970 election approached, Driberg wished to retire from parliament, and asked Wilson to appoint him as ambassador to the Vatican
. Wilson refused, citing Driberg's age—at 65 he was beyond the retirement age for senior diplomats. Against his will, but with few other sources of income available to him, Driberg fought the June 1970 General Election
. He was returned for Barking with a comfortable though reduced majority; nationally, Wilson's government was defeated by Edward Heath
's Conservatives.
development in the City of London
. In February 1974, at the age of 68, he retired from the House of Commons with the intention of writing his memoirs. Still short of income, he first completed a biography of his fellow-journalist Hannen Swaffer
, which was indifferently received—"a feeble potboiler", according to Driberg's biographer Davenport-Hines. Friends organised an elaborate 70th birthday party for him on 21 May 1975; "one duke, two dukes' daughters, sundry lords, a bishop, a poet laureate—not bad for an old left-wing MP", Driberg observed to a guest.
In November 1975 he was granted a life peerage, and on 21 January 1976 was introduced to the House of Lords
as Baron Bradwell of Bradwell juxta Mare. On 14 April he tabled a motion in the Lords calling on the government to consider the withdrawal of troops from Northern Ireland
, but won little support. His health was failing, though he continued to work on his memoirs. His final contribution to the House of Lords was on 22 July, in a debate on entry vouchers for the dependents of immigrants. Three weeks later, on 12 August 1976, while travelling by taxi from Paddington to his Barbican flat, he suffered a fatal heart attack. The funeral was held on 19 August at St Matthew's, Westminster; he was buried in the cemetery attached to St Thomas's Church, Bradwell.
alleged that he had been "a Kremlin agent of sympathy" and a supporter of Communist front organisations. In 1979 Andrew Boyle
published The Climate of Treason, which exposed Anthony Blunt and led to a period of "spy mania" in Britain, though his exhaustive account of the Burgess–Maclean–Philby
–Blunt circle mentioned Driberg as a friend of Burgess, "of much the same background, tastes and views", but made no allegations that he was part of any espionage ring.
In this atmosphere, Pincher published Their Trade is Treachery (1981), in which he maintained that Driberg had been recruited by MI5 to spy on the Communist Party while still a schoolboy at Lancing, and that he was later "in the KGB's pay as a double agent". Other writers added further details; the former British Intelligence officer Peter Wright
, in Spycatcher
(1987), alleged that Driberg had been "providing material to a Czech controller for money". The former Kremlin archivist Vasili Mitrokhin
asserted that the Soviets had blackmailed Driberg into working for the KGB by threatening to expose his homosexuality.
The weight of information, and its constant repetition, made an apparently strong case against Driberg, and former friends such as Mervyn Stockwood
, the Bishop of Southwark, became convinced that he had indeed betrayed his country. Other friends and colleagues were more sceptical. According to ex-Labour MP Reginald Paget
, not even the security services were "lunatic enough to recruit a man like Driberg", who was famously indiscreet and could never keep a secret. Mitrokhin's "blackmail" story is questioned by historian Jeff Sharlet
, on the grounds that by the 1950s and 1960s Driberg's homosexuality had been an open secret in British political circles for many years; he frequently boasted of his "rough trade" conquests to his colleagues. The journalist A. N. Wilson
quotes Churchill commenting years before that "Tom Driberg is the sort of person who gives sodomy a bad name". Pincher, however, argued that as homosexual acts were criminal offences in Britain until 1967, Driberg was still vulnerable to blackmail, although he also asserted that the MI5 connection secured Driberg a lifelong immunity from prosecution. Driberg's colleague Michael Foot
denied Pincher's claim that Margaret Thatcher
, when prime minister, had made a secret agreement with Foot to protect Driberg if Foot, in turn, would remain silent about the supposed treachery of Roger Hollis
, another of Pincher's recently dead targets.
Wheen notes that Pincher was not an objective commentator; the Labour Party, and its supposed infiltration by Communist agents, had been his target over many years. Pincher's verdict on Driberg is that "in journalism, in politics and intelligence ... eventually he betrayed everybody". Wheen argues that Driberg's greatest vice was indiscretion; he gossiped about everyone, but "indiscretion is not synonymous with betrayal". Driberg's Labour Party colleague, Leo Abse
, offers a more complex explanation: Driberg was an adventurer who loved taking risks and played many parts. "Driberg could have played the part of the spy with superb skill, and if the officers of MI5 were indeed inept enough to have attempted to recruit him, then, in turn, Tom Driberg would have gained special pleasure in fooling and betraying them".
, finding him guilty of Gluttony, Lust and Wrath, but relatively free from Avarice and Envy and entirely untouched by Sloth. Pride, Irvine maintained, was in Driberg's case mitigated by "the contrary virtue of humility". Ena did not attend the funeral; she gave a single press interview in which she expressed "huge respect for Tom's journalistic skills, political power and championship of the underdog". She added that if her admiration for him did not extend to their personal life together, that was a private matter.
Driberg prided himself on being an exception to a rule propounded by Cyril Connolly, that the war between the generations is the one war in which everyone changes sides eventually. Mervyn Stockwood, in his address at the funeral service, praised Driberg as "a searcher for truth", whose loyalty to the socialist cause was beyond question. This verdict was echoed by Michael Foot, who in a postscript to Driberg's memoir wrote of Driberg's "great services" to the Labour Party in the various offices that he occupied. Foot believed that Driberg's homosexual passion, rather than bringing him fulfilment, had "condemned him to a lifetime of deep loneliness" The Times obituarist described Driberg as "A journalist, an intellectual, a drinking man, a gossip, a high churchman, a liturgist, a homosexual", the first time, according to journalist Christopher Hitchens
, that the newspaper had ever defined a public figure specifically as homosexual. Nevertheless, Driberg's incomplete memoir Ruling Passions, when published in June 1977, was a shock to the public and to some of his erstwhile associates, despite advance hints of the book's scandalous content. Driberg's candid revelations of his "cottaging
" and his descriptions of casual oral sex were called by one commentator "the biggest outpouring of literary dung a public figure has ever flung into print." The comedians Peter Cook
and Dudley Moore
depicted Driberg as a sexual predator, wearing "fine fishnet stockings" and cavorting with a rent boy, in a sketch, "Back of the Cab", which they recorded in 1977. More vituperation followed when Pincher's allegations of Driberg's links with the Russian secret service were published in 1981; Pincher christened him "Lord of the Spies". However, Foot dismissed these accusations as typical of the "fantasies of the secret service world that seem to have taken possession of Pincher's mind". Foot added that Driberg "had always been much too ready to look forgivingly on Communist misdeeds, but this attitude was combined with an absolutely genuine devotion to the cause of peace".
In his 2004 biographical sketch Davenport-Hines describes Driberg as "a sincere if eccentric Christian socialist who detested racism and colonialism", who at the same time "could be pompous, mannered, wayward, self-indulgent, ungrateful, bullying and indiscreet". As to the apparent contradiction between sincere Christianity and promiscuous homosexuality, Wheen argues that "there had been a recognisable male homosexual subculture in the Anglo-Catholic movement since the late nineteenth century". This theme is explored in a paper by David Hilliard of Flinders University
, who maintains that "the [19th century] conflict between Protestantism and Anglo-Catholicism within the Church of England was ... regularly depicted by Protestant propagandists as a struggle between masculine and feminine styles of religion". Driberg throughout his life was a devout Anglo-Catholic; Wheen suggests that Evelyn Waugh, in Brideshead Revisited
, may have had Driberg in mind when the novel's protagonist Charles Ryder is warned on arrival at Oxford to "beware of Anglo-Catholics—they're all sodomites with unpleasant accents."
Driberg was the subject of a play, Tom and Clem, which was staged at London's Aldwych Theatre
in April 1997. The action takes place during Driberg's brief visit to the Potsdam Conference
in July 1945, and deals with the contrast of compromise, represented by the pragmatic Clement Attlee, and post-war idealism, represented by Driberg. Michael Gambon
's portrayal of Driberg, as "a slovenly, paunchy Bacchus with a mouth that can suddenly gape like a painfully-hooked fish", won special praise from The Times
critic Benedict Nightingale
.
High church
The term "High Church" refers to beliefs and practices of ecclesiology, liturgy and theology, generally with an emphasis on formality, and resistance to "modernization." Although used in connection with various Christian traditions, the term has traditionally been principally associated with the...
who served as a Member of Parliament
Parliament of the United Kingdom
The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body in the United Kingdom, British Crown dependencies and British overseas territories, located in London...
(MP) from 1942 to 1955 and from 1959 to 1974. A member of the British Communist Party
Communist Party of Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain was the largest communist party in Great Britain, although it never became a mass party like those in France and Italy. It existed from 1920 to 1991.-Formation:...
for more than 20 years, he was first elected to parliament as an Independent, and joined the Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
in 1945. He never held any ministerial office, but rose to senior positions within the Labour Party and was a popular and influential figure in left-wing politics
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
for many years.
The son of a retired colonial officer, Driberg was educated at Lancing
Lancing College
Lancing College is a co-educational English independent school in the British public school tradition, founded in 1848 by Nathaniel Woodard. Woodard's aim was to provide education "based on sound principle and sound knowledge, firmly grounded in the Christian faith." Lancing was the first of a...
and Christ Church, Oxford
Christ Church, Oxford
Christ Church or house of Christ, and thus sometimes known as The House), is one of the largest constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England...
. After leaving the university without a degree, he attempted to establish himself as a poet before joining the Daily Express
Daily Express
The Daily Express switched from broadsheet to tabloid in 1977 and was bought by the construction company Trafalgar House in the same year. Its publishing company, Beaverbrook Newspapers, was renamed Express Newspapers...
as a reporter, later becoming a columnist. In 1933 he began the "William Hickey" society column
William Hickey (columnist)
"William Hickey" is the pseudonymous byline of a gossip column published in the British daily newspaper, the Daily Express. It was named for the 18th century diarist of that name....
, which he continued to write until 1943. He was later a regular columnist for the Co-operative Group newspaper Reynolds News and for other left-leaning journals. He wrote several books, including biographies of the press baron Lord Beaverbrook
Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook
William Maxwell "Max" Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook, Bt, PC, was a Canadian-British business tycoon, politician, and writer.-Early career in Canada:...
and the fugitive British diplomat Guy Burgess
Guy Burgess
Guy Francis De Moncy Burgess was a British-born intelligence officer and double agent, who worked for the Soviet Union. He was part of the Cambridge Five spy ring that betrayed Western secrets to the Soviets before and during the Cold War...
. He retired from the House of Commons in 1974, and was subsequently raised to the peerage as Baron Bradwell of Bradwell juxta Mare in the County of Essex.
Driberg made no secret of his homosexuality, which he practised throughout his life despite it being a criminal offence in Britain until 1967; his ability to avoid any consequences for his risky and often brazen behaviour baffled his friends and colleagues. Always in search of bizarre experiences, Driberg befriended at various times the black magic
Black magic
Black magic is the type of magic that draws on assumed malevolent powers or is used with the intention to kill, steal, injure, cause misfortune or destruction, or for personal gain without regard to harmful consequences. As a term, "black magic" is normally used by those that do not approve of its...
practitioner Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...
and the Kray twins
Kray twins
Reginald "Reggie" Kray and his twin brother Ronald "Ronnie" Kray were the foremost perpetrators of organised crime in London's East End during the 1950s and 1960s...
, along with honoured and respected figures in the worlds of literature and politics. He combined this lifestyle with an unvarying devotion to Anglo-Catholicism
Anglo-Catholicism
The terms Anglo-Catholic and Anglo-Catholicism describe people, beliefs and practices within Anglicanism that affirm the Catholic, rather than Protestant, heritage and identity of the Anglican churches....
. After his death, allegations were published about his role over many years as an MI5
MI5
The Security Service, commonly known as MI5 , is the United Kingdom's internal counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its core intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service focused on foreign threats, Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence...
informant, or a KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
agent, or both. The extent and nature of Driberg's involvement with these agencies remains uncertain.
Family background and childhood
Driberg was born on 22 May 1905 in CrowboroughCrowborough
The highest point in the town is 242 metres above sea level. This summit is the highest point of the High Weald and second highest point in East Sussex . Its relative height is 159 m, meaning Crowborough qualifies as one of England's Marilyns...
, a small dormitory town
Commuter town
A commuter town is an urban community that is primarily residential, from which most of the workforce commutes out to earn their livelihood. Many commuter towns act as suburbs of a nearby metropolis that workers travel to daily, and many suburbs are commuter towns...
about 40 miles (64.4 km) south of London. He was the third and youngest of three sons born to John James Street Driberg, a former officer in the Indian Civil Service, and his wife Amy Mary Irving Driberg, née Bell. The Driberg family had immigrated from Holland about 200 years previously; the Bells were lowland Scots from Dumfriesshire
Dumfriesshire
Dumfriesshire or the County of Dumfries is a registration county of Scotland. The lieutenancy area of Dumfries has similar boundaries.Until 1975 it was a county. Its county town was Dumfries...
. John Driberg had retired in 1896 after 35 years in Assam
Assam
Assam , also, rarely, Assam Valley and formerly the Assam Province , is a northeastern state of India and is one of the most culturally and geographically distinct regions of the country...
, latterly as head of the state's police, and was 65 years old when his youngest son was born. For Driberg, growing up mostly alone with his elderly parents was a stifling experience; he would later describe Crowborough as "a place which I can never revisit, or think of, without a feeling of sick horror".
At the age of eight Driberg began as a day-boy at the Grange school in Crowborough. In his autobiography he mentions in particular two aspects of his time there: learning the "facts of life" from other boys, with extensive experimentation, and his discovery of what he calls "exotic" religion—High Anglicanism
High church
The term "High Church" refers to beliefs and practices of ecclesiology, liturgy and theology, generally with an emphasis on formality, and resistance to "modernization." Although used in connection with various Christian traditions, the term has traditionally been principally associated with the...
. These experiences formed what he called two "conflicting compulsions", soon to be joined by a third—left-wing politics
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
—to shape the ruling passions of his life.
Lancing
In 1918, when he was 13, Driberg left the Grange for Lancing CollegeLancing College
Lancing College is a co-educational English independent school in the British public school tradition, founded in 1848 by Nathaniel Woodard. Woodard's aim was to provide education "based on sound principle and sound knowledge, firmly grounded in the Christian faith." Lancing was the first of a...
, the public school on the south coast where, after some initial bullying and humiliation, he was befriended by fellow-pupil Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...
. Under Waugh's sponsorship Driberg joined an intellectual society, the Dilettanti, which promoted literary and artistic activities alongside political debate. He began to write poetry; his aesthetic education was further assisted by the charismatic J. F. Roxburgh, "a magnetically brilliant teacher" who later became headmaster of Stowe School
Stowe School
Stowe School is an independent school in Stowe, Buckinghamshire. It was founded on 11 May 1923 by J. F. Roxburgh, initially with 99 male pupils. It is a member of the Rugby Group and Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference. The school is also a member of the G20 Schools Group...
. Lancing's notable Gothic
Gothic architecture
Gothic architecture is a style of architecture that flourished during the high and late medieval period. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture....
chapel gave Driberg the religious atmosphere he sought, though he found the services disappointingly "moderate". By 1920 he was inclining to the political left and was in rebellion against his conservative upbringing. Finding the Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
too dull and respectable for his radical tastes, he joined the Brighton branch of the newly formed British Communist Party
Communist Party of Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain was the largest communist party in Great Britain, although it never became a mass party like those in France and Italy. It existed from 1920 to 1991.-Formation:...
.
After he had risen to responsible positions within the school (deputy head boy, head librarian, and chief sacristan
Sacristan
A sacristan is an officer who is charged with the care of the sacristy, the church, and their contents.In ancient times many duties of the sacristan were performed by the doorkeepers , later by the treasurers and mansionarii...
, among others), his Lancing career ended suddenly in the autumn of 1923, when two boys complained about his sexual overtures. To avoid distressing the widowed Amy Driberg (John Driberg had died in 1919), the headmaster allowed him to remain in the school for the remainder of the term, stripped of his offices and segregated from all social contact with other boys. At the end of the term he was required to leave, on the pretext that he needed private tuition to pass his Oxford entrance examination, which he had failed the previous summer. Back in Crowborough, under the guidance of his tutor, the future Lord Justice Pearson
Colin Pearson, Baron Pearson
Colin Hargreaves Pearson, Baron Pearson PC, KC, CBE was a Canadian-born English barrister and judge. Rising to sit as a judge in the House of Lords, he is best remembered for his unspectacular but efficient and courteous chairmanship of industrial inquiries and royal commissions...
, and after several months' hard application, he won a classics
Classics
Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...
scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford
Christ Church, Oxford
Christ Church or house of Christ, and thus sometimes known as The House), is one of the largest constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England...
.
Oxford
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
aesthetic movement in which personalities such as Harold Acton
Harold Acton
Sir Harold Mario Mitchell Acton CBE was a British writer, scholar and dilettante perhaps most famous for being wrongly believed to have inspired the character of "Anthony Blanche" in Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited...
, Brian Howard, Cyril Connolly
Cyril Connolly
Cyril Vernon Connolly was an English intellectual, literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine Horizon and wrote Enemies of Promise , which combined literary criticism with an autobiographical exploration of why he failed to become the successful author of...
and, a little later, W. H. Auden
W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...
were leading lights. Driberg was soon immersed in a world of art, politics, poetry and parties: "There was just no time for any academic work", he wrote later. With Auden, he discovered T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
's The Waste Land
The Waste Land
The Waste Land[A] is a 434-line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922. It has been called "one of the most important poems of the 20th century." Despite the poem's obscurity—its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location and time, its...
, which they read again and again, "with growing awe". A poem of Driberg's in the style of Edith Sitwell
Edith Sitwell
Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell DBE was a British poet and critic.-Background:Edith Sitwell was born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, the oldest child and only daughter of Sir George Sitwell, 4th Baronet, of Renishaw Hall; he was an expert on genealogy and landscaping...
was published in Oxford Poetry 1926; when Sitwell came to Oxford to deliver a lecture, Driberg invited her to have tea with him, and she accepted. After her lecture he found an opportunity to recite one of his own poems, and was rewarded when Sitwell declared him "the hope of English poetry".
Meanwhile, together with the future historian A. J. P. Taylor
A. J. P. Taylor
Alan John Percivale Taylor, FBA was a British historian of the 20th century and renowned academic who became well known to millions through his popular television lectures.-Early life:...
, Driberg formed the membership of the Oxford University Communist Party. During the General Strike of May 1926, most Oxford students supported the government and enrolled as special constables and strike-breakers. A minority, which included the future Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
leader Hugh Gaitskell
Hugh Gaitskell
Hugh Todd Naylor Gaitskell CBE was a British Labour politician, who held Cabinet office in Clement Attlee's governments, and was the Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition from 1955, until his death in 1963.-Early life:He was born in Kensington, London, the third and youngest...
and the future Poet Laureate
Poet Laureate
A poet laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for state occasions and other government events...
John Betjeman
John Betjeman
Sir John Betjeman, CBE was an English poet, writer and broadcaster who described himself in Who's Who as a "poet and hack".He was a founding member of the Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture...
, sided with the strikers, while Driberg and Taylor offered their services at the British Communist Party's headquarters in London. The Party showed no urgency to employ them, and Taylor soon left. Driberg, given a job distributing strike bulletins, was arrested by the police before he could begin and was detained for several hours. This ended his active role in the strike. Notwithstanding his extreme left-wing associations, he secured 75 votes (against the winner's 152) in the 1927 elections for the presidency of the Oxford Union
Oxford Union
The Oxford Union Society, commonly referred to simply as the Oxford Union, is a debating society in the city of Oxford, Britain, whose membership is drawn primarily but not exclusively from the University of Oxford...
.
Throughout his time at Oxford, Driberg followed his passion for Anglican rituals by regularly attending Mass at Pusey House
Pusey House, Oxford
Pusey House is a religious institution located in St Giles', Oxford, immediately to the south of Pusey Street. It is firmly rooted in the Anglo-Catholic tradition of the Church of England...
, an independent religious institution with a mission to "[restore] the Church of England's Catholic life and witness". In spite of the prevalent Oxford homoerotic ethos, his sexual energies were largely devoted to casual encounters with working-class men, rather than to relationships with his fellow undergraduates. He experienced sexual relations with only one don
University don
A don is a fellow or tutor of a college or university, especially traditional collegiate universities such as Oxford and Cambridge in England.The term — similar to the title still used for Catholic priests — is a historical remnant of Oxford and Cambridge having started as ecclesiastical...
, whom he met outside the university, unaware of the latter's identity. One of Driberg's elaborate hoaxes was a concert called "Homage to Beethoven", which featured megaphones, typewriters and a flushing lavatory. Newspaper accounts of this event raised the interest of the notorious practitioner of black magic
Black magic
Black magic is the type of magic that draws on assumed malevolent powers or is used with the intention to kill, steal, injure, cause misfortune or destruction, or for personal gain without regard to harmful consequences. As a term, "black magic" is normally used by those that do not approve of its...
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...
. Driberg accepted an invitation to lunch with Crowley for the first of several meetings between them, at one of which Crowley nominated Driberg as his successor as World Teacher. Nothing came of the proposal, though the two continued to meet; Driberg received from Crowley manuscripts and books that he later sold for sizeable sums. The consequence of these various extracurricular involvements was neglect of his academic work; failure in his final examinations was inevitable, and in the summer of 1927 he left Oxford without a degree.
"The Talk of London"
After leaving Oxford, Driberg lived precariously in London, attempting to establish himself as a poet while doing odd jobs and pawning his few valuables. Occasionally he had chance encounters with Oxford acquaintances; Evelyn Waugh's diary entry for 30 October 1927 records: "I went to church in Margaret StreetAll Saints, Margaret Street
All Saints, Margaret Street is an Anglican church in London built in the High Victorian Gothic style by the architect William Butterfield and completed in 1859....
where I was discomposed to observe Tom Driberg's satanic face in the congregation". Driberg had maintained his contact with Edith Sitwell, and attended regular literary tea parties at her Bayswater
Bayswater
Bayswater is an area of west London in the City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to the west . It is a built-up district located 3 miles west-north-west of Charing Cross, bordering the north of Hyde Park over Kensington Gardens and having a population density of...
flat. When Sitwell discovered her protégé's impoverished circumstances she arranged an interview for him with the Daily Express
Daily Express
The Daily Express switched from broadsheet to tabloid in 1977 and was bought by the construction company Trafalgar House in the same year. Its publishing company, Beaverbrook Newspapers, was renamed Express Newspapers...
. After his submission of an article on London's nightlife, he was engaged in January 1928 for a six-week trial as a reporter; coincidentally, Waugh had undergone an unsuccessful trial with the same newspaper a few months earlier.
Within a month of beginning his duties, Driberg achieved a scoop with the first national newspaper reports of the activities in Oxford of the American evangelist Frank Buchman, whose movement would in time be known as Moral Re-Armament
Moral Re-Armament
Moral Re-Armament was an international Christian moral and spiritual movement that, in 1938, developed from the American minister Frank Buchman's Oxford Group. Buchman, a Lutheran, headed MRA for 23 years, from 1938 until his death in 1961...
. Driberg's reports were generally abrasive, even mocking in tone, and drew complaints from Buchman's organisation about news bias. The trial period at the Express was extended, and in July 1928 Driberg filed an exclusive report on a society party at the swimming baths in Buckingham Palace Road, where the guests included Lytton Strachey
Lytton Strachey
Giles Lytton Strachey was a British writer and critic. He is best known for establishing a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit...
and Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Brockman Bankhead was an award-winning American actress of the stage and screen, talk-show host, and bonne vivante...
. This evidence of Driberg's social contacts led to a permanent contract with the Express, as assistant to Percy Sewell who, under the name "The Dragoman", wrote a daily feature called "The Talk of London". Driberg later defended his association with an inconsequential society column by arguing that his approach was satirical, and that he deliberately exaggerated the doings of the idle rich as a way of enraging working-class opinion and helping the Communist Party.
Driberg used the column to introduce readers to up-and-coming socialites and literary figures, Acton, Betjeman, Nancy Mitford
Nancy Mitford
Nancy Freeman-Mitford, CBE , styled The Hon. Nancy Mitford before her marriage and The Hon. Mrs Peter Rodd thereafter, was an English novelist and biographer, one of the Bright Young People on the London social scene in the inter-war years...
and Peter Quennell
Peter Quennell
Sir Peter Courtney Quennell CBE was an English biographer, literary historian, editor, essayist, poet, and critic....
among them. Sometimes he introduced more serious causes: capital punishment, modern architecture, the works of D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
and Jacob Epstein
Jacob Epstein
Sir Jacob Epstein KBE was an American-born British sculptor who helped pioneer modern sculpture. He was born in the United States, and moved to Europe in 1902, becoming a British citizen in 1911. He often produced controversial works which challenged taboos on what was appropriate subject matter...
, and the controversial novel The Well of Loneliness
The Well of Loneliness
The Well of Loneliness is a 1928 lesbian novel by the British author Radclyffe Hall. It follows the life of Stephen Gordon, an Englishwoman from an upper-class family whose "sexual inversion" is apparent from an early age...
by Radclyffe Hall
Radclyffe Hall
Radclyffe Hall was an English poet and author, best known for the lesbian classic The Well of Loneliness.- Life :...
, which had been denounced in the Express editorial columns as "infamous". By prior arrangement with Waugh, the column included a discreet announcement in September 1930 of Waugh's conversion to Roman Catholicism; Driberg was his only guest at the service. He further assisted Waugh in 1932 by giving him space in the column to attack the editor of the Catholic journal The Tablet
The Tablet
The Tablet is a Catholic international weekly review published in London. Contributors to its pages have included Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Paul VI ....
, after it had denounced Waugh's Black Mischief
Black Mischief
Black Mischief was Evelyn Waugh's third novel, published in 1932. The novel chronicles the efforts of the English-educated Emperor Seth, assisted by a fellow Oxford graduate, Basil Seal, to modernize his Empire, the fictional African island of Azania, located in the Indian Ocean off of the eastern...
as blasphemous.
As William Hickey
Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook
William Maxwell "Max" Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook, Bt, PC, was a Canadian-British business tycoon, politician, and writer.-Early career in Canada:...
, the column was relaunched in May 1933 as "These Names Make News", and its by-line changed to "William Hickey
William Hickey (columnist)
"William Hickey" is the pseudonymous byline of a gossip column published in the British daily newspaper, the Daily Express. It was named for the 18th century diarist of that name....
", after the 18th century diarist and rake. Driberg described the new feature as "...an intimate biographical column about ... men and women who matter. Artists, statesmen, airmen, writers, financiers, explorers..." Historian David Kynaston
David Kynaston
David Kynaston is an English historian and author of many books on English social history. He has published articles in the New Statesman and other magazines and journals....
calls Driberg the "founder of the modern gossip column", although it soon began to move decisively away from chit-chat and towards social and political issues. The tone of the column was described by biographer Richard Davenport-Hines as "wry, compassionate, and brimm[ing] with ... open-minded intelligence".
Beaverbrook, who had developed a fondness for Driberg, was amused by the disparity between his columnist's professed left-wing sympathies and bon vivant lifestyle. The proprietor knew of Driberg's persistent mismanagement of his personal finances, and on various occasions helped out with loans and gifts. During his time in London, Driberg had continued to indulge his taste for rough, casual sex; his memoir records many such instances. In the autumn of 1935 he was charged with indecent assault, after an incident in which he had shared his bed with two Scotsmen picked up late one night, in the bohemian district of London which Driberg had christened "Fitzrovia
Fitzrovia
Fitzrovia is a neighbourhood in central London, near London's West End lying partly in the London Borough of Camden and partly in the City of Westminster ; and situated between Marylebone and Bloomsbury and north of Soho. It is characterised by its mixed-use of residential, business, retail,...
" in the Hickey column. Beaverbrook paid for a leading counsel, J. D. Cassels, and two unimpeachable character witnesses were recruited by the defence. Driberg was acquitted, and Beaverbrook's influence ensured that the case went unreported by the press. This was the first known instance of what writer Kingsley Amis
Kingsley Amis
Sir Kingsley William Amis, CBE was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, various short stories, radio and television scripts, along with works of social and literary criticism...
called the "baffling immunity [Driberg] enjoyed from the law and the Press to the end of his days".
In the latter part of the 1930s Driberg travelled widely: twice to Spain, to observe the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
, to Germany after the Munich Agreement
Munich Agreement
The Munich Pact was an agreement permitting the Nazi German annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland. The Sudetenland were areas along Czech borders, mainly inhabited by ethnic Germans. The agreement was negotiated at a conference held in Munich, Germany, among the major powers of Europe without...
of 1938, to Rome for the coronation of Pope Pius XII
Pope Pius XII
The Venerable Pope Pius XII , born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli , reigned as Pope, head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City State, from 2 March 1939 until his death in 1958....
and to New York for the 1939 New York World's Fair
1939 New York World's Fair
The 1939–40 New York World's Fair, which covered the of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park , was the second largest American world's fair of all time, exceeded only by St. Louis's Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904. Many countries around the world participated in it, and over 44 million people...
. After the Nazi-Soviet Pact was announced in August 1939, he informed his readers that there would be "no war this crisis". Nine days later, after the German invasion of Poland precipitated the Second World War, he apologised for his mistake, and ended his first wartime column with the words "We're all in it". His opposition to the Nazi-Soviet Pact and his support for the war in September 1939 may have been the reason for his expulsion from the Communist Party in 1941. An alternative explanation, proffered later, is that he was reported by Anthony Blunt
Anthony Blunt
Anthony Frederick Blunt , was a British art historian who was exposed as a Soviet spy late in his life.Blunt was Professor of the History of Art at the University of London, director of the Courtauld Institute of Art, Surveyor of the King's Pictures and London...
for passing information on the Party to Maxwell Knight
Maxwell Knight
Charles Henry Maxwell Knight OBE, known as Maxwell Knight, was an English spymaster, naturalist and broadcaster, whilst reputedly being a model for the James Bond character M.-Spymaster:...
of MI5. Driberg and Knight were long-standing acquaintances who met frequently and, among other things, shared a mutual interest in the works of Aleister Crowley.
Driberg's mother had died in July 1939. With his share of her money and the help of a substantial mortgage, he bought and renovated Bradwell Lodge, a country house in Bradwell-on-Sea
Bradwell-on-Sea
Bradwell-on-Sea is a village in Essex, England. The village is on the Dengie peninsula. It is located about north-northeast of Southminster and is east from the county town of Chelmsford. The village is in the District of Maldon in the parliamentary constituency of Maldon whose boundaries were...
on the Essex
Essex
Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...
coast, where he lived and entertained until the house was requisitioned by the Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...
(RAF) in 1940. He continued to write the Hickey column, not always to his editor's satisfaction; his protestations against indiscriminate bombing of German civilians were particularly frowned on. In November 1941 he went to America and was in Washington on Monday 9 December, after the attack on Pearl Harbor
Attack on Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941...
, to report President Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
's speech to Congress announcing America's entry into the war.
Independent Member for Maldon, 1942–45
When Driberg returned to Britain in March 1942 he found widespread public dissatisfaction with the government's conduct of the war. This mood was reflected in a series of parliamentary by-elections in which candidates supporting the wartime coalition governmentCoalition government
A coalition government is a cabinet of a parliamentary government in which several political parties cooperate. The usual reason given for this arrangement is that no party on its own can achieve a majority in the parliament...
were defeated by Independents—the main parties were not opposing each others' candidates. Driberg, in his column, generally welcomed this trend, while questioning "the merit of some of the candidates likely to get in if the reaction against the Party machines continues". On 12 May 1942 the death was announced of Sir Edward Ruggles-Brise, the Conservative member for Maldon
Maldon (UK Parliament constituency)
Maldon is a county constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament by the first past the post system of election...
—the constituency in which Bradwell Lodge was situated. Next day, Driberg requested three weeks' leave from his column to fight the by-election. Contrary to the belief of prime minister Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
and others that Driberg was being "run" by Beaverbrook, the Express proprietor was unenthusiastic; an editorial
Editorial
An opinion piece is an article, published in a newspaper or magazine, that mainly reflects the author's opinion about the subject. Opinion pieces are featured in many periodicals.-Editorials:...
on 25 May drew attention to Driberg's individual viewpoint and stated that "The Daily Express does not support his candidature".
Right-wing politics
In politics, Right, right-wing and rightist generally refer to support for a hierarchical society justified on the basis of an appeal to natural law or tradition. To varying degrees, the Right rejects the egalitarian objectives of left-wing politics, claiming that the imposition of equality is...
Conservative opponent helped to secure Driberg a wide range of support, from moderate Conservatives, Liberals
Liberal Party (UK)
The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...
and Socialists
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
. His fame as "William Hickey", and his stance as the only candidate with a home in the constituency, gave him a strong local profile. His previous Communist Party associations were not revealed. At the poll, on 25 June, he overturned a previous Conservative majority of 8,000 to finish 6,000 votes ahead of his opponent. In his war memoirs, Churchill called the result "one of the by-products of Tobruk"—which had fallen to Rommel
Battle of Gazala
The Battle of Gazala was an important battle of the Second World War Western Desert Campaign, fought around the port of Tobruk in Libya from 26 May-21 June 1942...
on 21 June. Waugh, in his diary, remarked that the presentation of Driberg during the by-election merely as a journalist and churchwarden gave "a very imperfect picture of that sinister character".
On 2 July 1942 Driberg cast his first vote in the House of Commons, in support of Churchill against a rebel motion of censure on the government's conduct of the war. The rebels' case was put incompetently, which ensured that the motion gained only 25 votes, as against 477 cast for the government. Driberg delivered his maiden speech
Maiden speech
A maiden speech is the first speech given by a newly elected or appointed member of a legislature or parliament.Traditions surrounding maiden speeches vary from country to country...
on 7 July, in a debate on the use of propaganda. He called for the lifting of the ban on the Communist Party's newspaper, the Daily Worker, which he saw as a potentially valuable weapon of home propaganda. In the following months he tabled questions and intervened in debates on behalf of various progressive causes. For example, on 29 September 1942 he asked the prime minister to "make friendly representations to the American military authorities asking them to instruct their men that the colour bar is not a custom in this country". He continued to write the Hickey column, and used his parliamentary salary to fund a constituency office in Maldon.
In January 1943, while in Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
to campaign in another by-election, Driberg was caught by a policeman while in the act of fellating
Fellatio
Fellatio is an act of oral stimulation of a male's penis by a sexual partner. It involves the stimulation of the penis by the use of the mouth, tongue, or throat. The person who performs fellatio can be referred to as the giving partner, and the other person is the receiving partner...
a Norwegian sailor. In his own account of the incident Driberg records that he escaped arrest by identifying himself as "William Hickey" and as a member of parliament. These disclosures evidently overawed the constable, who took no further action; indeed, Driberg says, the incident began a chaste friendship with the officer that endured for more than 10 years. Meanwhile Beaverbrook had become disenchanted with him, and did not intervene when Arthur Christiansen
Arthur Christiansen
Arthur Christiansen was a journalist, and editor of Lord Beaverbrook's newspaper the Daily Express from 1933 to 1957....
, the Express editor, sacked the columnist in June 1943 over a story detrimental to a government minister, Andrew Rae Duncan. Driberg subsequently signed up with Reynolds News
Reynold's News
Reynold's News was a Sunday newspaper in the United Kingdom.The paper was founded as Reynolds's Weekly Newspaper by George W. M. Reynolds in 1850, who became its first editor. By 1870, the paper was selling more than 350,000 copies per week...
, a Sunday newspaper owned by the Co-operative Group, and undertook a regular parliamentary column for the New Statesman
New Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
. He also contributed to a weekly BBC European Service broadcast until, in October 1943, he was banned by them after government pressure. He reported the post-D-Day
D-Day
D-Day is a term often used in military parlance to denote the day on which a combat attack or operation is to be initiated. "D-Day" often represents a variable, designating the day upon which some significant event will occur or has occurred; see Military designation of days and hours for similar...
allied advances in France and Belgium as a war correspondent for Reynolds News, and as a member of a parliamentary delegation witnessed the aftermath of the liberation of Buchenwald concentration camp
Buchenwald concentration camp
Buchenwald concentration camp was a German Nazi concentration camp established on the Ettersberg near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937, one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps on German soil.Camp prisoners from all over Europe and Russia—Jews, non-Jewish Poles and Slovenes,...
in April 1945.
Labour Member, 1945–55
United Kingdom general election, 1945
The United Kingdom general election of 1945 was a general election held on 5 July 1945, with polls in some constituencies delayed until 12 July and in Nelson and Colne until 19 July, due to local wakes weeks. The results were counted and declared on 26 July, due in part to the time it took to...
Driberg increased his majority at Maldon to 7,727. Before the election he had joined the Labour Party and had been welcomed by the local constituency party as their candidate. He was thus one of the 393 Labour MPs in the landslide election victory that replaced Churchill as prime minister with Clement Attlee
Clement Attlee
Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee, KG, OM, CH, PC, FRS was a British Labour politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951, and as the Leader of the Labour Party from 1935 to 1955...
. Within a few days of his victory, Driberg left for the Far East, to report on the conditions of the allied troops in Burma. The Supreme Allied Commander, Lord Mountbatten
Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma
Admiral of the Fleet Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas George Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, KG, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, DSO, PC, FRS , was a British statesman and naval officer, and an uncle of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh...
, knew him slightly and made him an unofficial temporary special adviser. In this role he met the Patriotic Burmese Forces leader, Aung San
Aung San
Bogyoke Aung San ; 13 February 1915 – 19 July 1947) was a Burmese revolutionary, nationalist, and founder of the modern Burmese army, the Tatmadaw....
, who impressed him as honest and incorruptible, "unlike some of the older Burmese politicians". Later, he visited Saigon and offered to mediate with Ho Chi Minh
Ho Chi Minh
Hồ Chí Minh , born Nguyễn Sinh Cung and also known as Nguyễn Ái Quốc, was a Vietnamese Marxist-Leninist revolutionary leader who was prime minister and president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam...
, who had recently declared an independent Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
state. Driberg later maintained that, had his offer been taken up, he might have prevented the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
.
Because of his journalism, Driberg was a well-known figure within the Labour Party generally, and in 1949 was elected to the party's National Executive Committee
National Executive Committee
The National Executive Committee or NEC is the chief administrative body of the UK Labour Party. Its composition has changed over the years, and includes representatives of affiliated trade unions, the Parliamentary Labour Party and European Parliamentary Labour Party, Constituency Labour Parties,...
(NEC). In the February 1950 General Election
United Kingdom general election, 1950
The 1950 United Kingdom general election was the first general election ever after a full term of a Labour government. Despite polling over one and a half million votes more than the Conservatives, the election, held on 23 February 1950 resulted in Labour receiving a slim majority of just five...
he was again elected at Maldon, while nationally Labour lost 68 seats, reducing its parliamentary majority to six. Members' regular attendance in the Commons chamber became important; however, in August 1950 Driberg left the country for Korea, where Britain had joined the United States in a United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
military expedition to repel the North Korean invasion of the South. Driberg and a few other left-wing
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
MPs had objected to British involvement; In his Reynolds News column, Driberg had written of "Tories (Conservatives) who ... cannot help baying their delight at the smell of blood in the air", a comment that caused outrage in parliament among the Conservative members. Whatever his reservations, Driberg's war dispatches to Reynolds News were strongly supportive of the British troops. He participated in several night operations, and won respect from many of the soldiers for his courage despite, as one Marine put it "being a bit bent". He was away from parliament for three months, missing many critical House of Commons divisions, and on his return was severely censured by his fellow Labour MPs for neglecting his duties. However, his general standing in the party was unaffected; he had been re-elected in absentia to the NEC in September 1950.
In April 1951 the Labour government was hit by the resignations of three ministers—Aneurin Bevan
Aneurin Bevan
Aneurin "Nye" Bevan was a British Labour Party politician who was the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 1959 until his death in 1960. The son of a coal miner, Bevan was a lifelong champion of social justice and the rights of working people...
, the future prime minister Harold Wilson
Harold Wilson
James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, KG, OBE, FRS, FSS, PC was a British Labour Member of Parliament, Leader of the Labour Party. He was twice Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the 1960s and 1970s, winning four general elections, including a minority government after the...
, and John Freeman—over the imposition of health charges to pay for an increased armaments programme. Driberg was sympathetic to the rebels, though he tried to find a basis for compromise that would avoid resignations. The former ministers strengthened the small Labour group known as "Keep Left", in which Driberg was prominent; the group would henceforth be known as "Bevanites". In the October 1951 General Election
United Kingdom general election, 1951
The 1951 United Kingdom general election was held eighteen months after the 1950 general election, which the Labour Party had won with a slim majority of just five seats...
the Labour Party was defeated, and Churchill resumed office; Driberg held on to his Maldon seat by 704 votes. Through the years of Labour government he had neither received nor sought office, having what historian Kenneth O. Morgan called a "backbench mindset". He still enjoyed aspects of his parliamentary life, such as in 1953 when he showed the American singing sensation Johnny Ray
Johnny Ray
John Cornelius Ray is a former second baseman in Major League Baseball who had a 10-year career from 1981 to 1990. He played for the Pittsburgh Pirates of the National League and the California Angels of the American League...
round the House of Commons, his attempt to seduce the singer were politely resisted. However, he needed to earn more money, and in the spring of 1952 responded to a suggestion that he should write a biography of Beaverbrook. The press lord was amenable, and work began in the summer of 1953. The project extended over several years, by which time Driberg was no longer in parliament; he had announced in March 1954 that he was standing down from Maldon, which at the General Election of May 1955
United Kingdom general election, 1955
The 1955 United Kingdom general election was held on 26 May 1955, four years after the previous general election. It resulted in a substantially increased majority of 60 for the Conservative government under new leader and prime minister Sir Anthony Eden against Labour Party, now in their 20th year...
fell, as he had expected, to the Conservatives.
Marriage
On 16 February 1951 Driberg surprised his friends by announcing his engagement to Ena Mary Binfield, née Lyttelton, the common law widow of Joe Binfield, who had died in 1948. A former SuffolkSuffolk
Suffolk is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in East Anglia, England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. The North Sea lies to the east...
county councillor, she worked as an administrator at the Marie Curie Hospital in London. She was well known in senior Labour circles, and had met Driberg in 1949, at a weekend party given by the government minister George Strauss
George Strauss
George Russell Strauss, Baron Strauss PC was a long-serving British Labour Party politician, who was a Member of Parliament for 46 years and was Father of the House of Commons from 1974 to 1979....
. According to her son, she was fully aware of Driberg's sexual preferences, but looked forward to some political excitement, and "thought they could do a useful job as Mr. and Mrs." Driberg's motives are less clear, but he told his friend John Freeman that he needed someone to run Bradwell Lodge, to which he had returned in 1946 after its release by the RAF.
At Driberg's insistence Binfield, a non-practising Jew, was baptised into the Church of England before the wedding at St Mary the Virgin, Pimlico
Pimlico
Pimlico is a small area of central London in the City of Westminster. Like Belgravia, to which it was built as a southern extension, Pimlico is known for its grand garden squares and impressive Regency architecture....
, on 30 June 1951. The bride entered to a chorale arranged from the Labour Party anthem "The Red Flag
The Red Flag
The Red Flag is a protest song associated with left-wing politics, in particular with socialism. It is the semi-official anthem of the British Labour Party, sung at the end of conference. It is the official anthem of the Irish Labour Party and sung at the close of national conference.-History:The...
"; this was followed by a nuptial mass described by Driberg's biographer Francis Wheen
Francis Wheen
Francis James Baird Wheen is a British journalist, writer and broadcaster.-Early life and education:Wheen was born into an army family and educated at two independent schools: Copthorne Preparatory School near Crawley, West Sussex and Harrow School in north west London.-Life and career:Running...
as "outrageously ornate". Four hundred guests then attended an elaborate reception at the House of Commons. In the ensuing years Ena tried hard to adapt to Driberg's way of life and to control his wayward finances, but with little success. He continued his frequent travels and casual homosexual liaisons, and was hostile to her efforts to control or change any aspect of his life. In 1961 she wrote to him: "I have tried for ten years to make a compromise with you in your extraordinary mode of life and have now given up." Thereafter they often lived apart, though they never formally separated. Even after a final breach in 1971, they remained legally married.
Out of parliament
On leaving parliament, Driberg's main task was to complete the Beaverbrook biography. Although Beaverbrook had initially promised no interference with the text, he changed his mind when he began to read Driberg's drafts. In the course of a prolonged disagreement, Beaverbrook accused his biographer of being driven by "malice and hatred". When the manuscript was finally cleared for publication, much of the objectionable material had been removed; nevertheless, Beaverbrook used the Daily Express to campaign against the book and denounce its hostile tone. Evelyn Waugh, to whom Driberg sent a copy, expressed disappointment that the work was in fact "a honeyed eulogy".In an effort to build his post-parliamentary career, Driberg turned briefly to creative writing, but without success. In his more familiar field of journalism he caused a sensation by flying to Moscow in August 1956 to interview Guy Burgess
Guy Burgess
Guy Francis De Moncy Burgess was a British-born intelligence officer and double agent, who worked for the Soviet Union. He was part of the Cambridge Five spy ring that betrayed Western secrets to the Soviets before and during the Cold War...
, the former British diplomat who in 1951 had defected to Russia with his colleague Donald Maclean. The pair had emerged in Moscow in March 1956, to give a brief press conference. Driberg had known Burgess in the 1940s, and the two shared similar homosexual inclinations; this acquaintance was sufficient to secure the Moscow interview. On his return home Driberg rapidly wrote a book from the interview material, the serial rights of which were sold to the Daily Mail. Critics drew attention to the book's relatively sympathetic portrayal of Burgess; some believed the book had been vetted by the KGB, while others saw it as part of an MI5 plot to trap Burgess into revealing secret information for which he could be prosecuted should he ever return to Britain.
In 1956 Driberg convened a group of Christian socialists that met regularly at the Lamb public house in Bloomsbury
Bloomsbury
-Places:* Bloomsbury is an area in central London.* Bloomsbury , related local government unit* Bloomsbury, New Jersey, New Jersey, USA* Bloomsbury , listed on the NRHP in Maryland...
to discuss issues such as imperialism, colonialism, immigration and nuclear disarmament. The group's dispatches, Papers from the Lamb, led to the foundation in 1960 of the Christian Socialist Movement. Although no longer an MP, Driberg remained a member of the Labour Party's NEC and was active in party affairs. In 1957, in the face of antagonism from trade union leaders repelled by his lifestyle, he became Labour Party chairman, a largely ceremonial role. He travelled widely during his year in office, generally as a Reynolds News correspondent but using the party title to advantage whenever he could. Thus, in a 1958 visit to Moscow to interview space scientists, he obtained two meetings with Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
. In his final speech as chairman, to the party conference in 1958, Driberg angered the Conservatives and their press supporters by referring to the Tory ideology as not essentially different from the German Herrenvolk philosophy. He had been contemplating for some time a return to the House of Commons, and in February 1959 was adopted as a candidate by the safe Barking
Barking (UK Parliament constituency)
Barking is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament by the first past the post system of election. It has elected Labour MPs since its creation in 1945, usually with strong majorities.- Boundaries :The...
constituency. In the General Election of October 1959, which delivered a 100-seat majority to Harold Macmillan
Harold Macmillan
Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, OM, PC was Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 10 January 1957 to 18 October 1963....
's Conservative government, he won at Barking with a majority of exactly 12,000.
Member for Barking, 1959–74
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is an anti-nuclear organisation that advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United Kingdom, international nuclear disarmament and tighter international arms regulation through agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty...
(CND) had been launched on 17 February 1958, though Driberg's involvement with the issue predated CND by three years. On 2 March 1955, in an amendment to a House of Commons motion, he had called for Great Britain to "regain the moral leadership of the world by taking an initiative ... that may lead to the outlawing of ... thermo-nuclear weapons". In October 1960 he supported the unilateralist
Unilateralism
Unilateralism is any doctrine or agenda that supports one-sided action. Such action may be in disregard for other parties, or as an expression of a commitment toward a direction which other parties may find agreeable...
motions passed at the Labour Party conference, and fought unsuccessfully in the NEC for them to be adopted as party policy. The conference motion was reversed the following year, but he continued to pursue the matter in parliament. On 29 May 1962 he urged that Britain not be a party to the renewal of nuclear tests, and in a speech on 23 July he said: "The unilateral abandonment of testing—or, better still, a test ban agreement—would be the most valuable first step towards general and complete disarmament."
According to his colleague Ian Mikardo
Ian Mikardo
Ian Mikardo , commonly known as Mik, was a British Labour and Co-operative politician. An ardent socialist and a Zionist, he remained a backbencher throughout his four decades in the House of Commons...
, Driberg was less than enthusiastic about his duties in Barking—"a very, very bad constituency MP". Even his strongest supporters acknowledged that he attended as few local events as possible. In the Commons chamber he was a regular speaker on issues that concerned him, in particular disarmament, church affairs and racial discrimination. He supported the lowering of the voting age to 18, and the broadcasting of parliamentary debates; he opposed increases to judges' salaries, and the extension of Stansted Airport. After the General Election
United Kingdom general election, 1964
The United Kingdom general election of 1964 was held on 15 October 1964, more than five years after the preceding election, and thirteen years after the Conservative Party had retaken power...
of 1964, which narrowly returned Labour to power under Harold Wilson
Harold Wilson
James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, KG, OBE, FRS, FSS, PC was a British Labour Member of Parliament, Leader of the Labour Party. He was twice Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the 1960s and 1970s, winning four general elections, including a minority government after the...
, he was not offered a place in the new government, and soon found himself in opposition to Wilson's policies on Vietnam, the Common Market
European Economic Community
The European Economic Community The European Economic Community (EEC) The European Economic Community (EEC) (also known as the Common Market in the English-speaking world, renamed the European Community (EC) in 1993The information in this article primarily covers the EEC's time as an independent...
, immigration and other major issues. He joined with Mikardo and other dissidents to form the "Tribune Group", with the aim of promoting more left-wing policies. The group's influence lessened after March 1966, when in another General Election
United Kingdom general election, 1966
The 1966 United Kingdom general election on 31 March 1966 was called by sitting Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Wilson's decision to call an election turned on the fact that his government, elected a mere 17 months previously in 1964 had an unworkably small majority of only 4 MPs...
Wilson increased his majority to 98.
Driberg embraced enthusiastically the climate of the 1960s and the social and cultural freedoms that the decade introduced. In 1963 he met the Kray twins
Kray twins
Reginald "Reggie" Kray and his twin brother Ronald "Ronnie" Kray were the foremost perpetrators of organised crime in London's East End during the 1950s and 1960s...
, prominent London gangland figures, and began a lengthy friendship with them and their associates. In July 1964 two backbench Conservative MPs reported to their Chief Whip that Driberg and Lord Boothby (a well-known Conservative peer) had been importuning males at a dog track, and were involved with gangs of thugs. At parties which Driberg and Boothby attended at the Krays' flat, "rough but compliant East End lads were served like so many canapés", according to Wheen. While Driberg avoided publicity, Boothby was hounded by the press and forced to issue a series of denials. After the twins had been convicted of murder in 1969, Driberg frequently lobbied the Home Office
Home Office
The Home Office is the United Kingdom government department responsible for immigration control, security, and order. As such it is responsible for the police, UK Border Agency, and the Security Service . It is also in charge of government policy on security-related issues such as drugs,...
about their prison conditions, requesting that they be given more visits and allowed regular reunions. Driberg was impressed with Mick Jagger
Mick Jagger
Sir Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger is an English musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist and a founding member of The Rolling Stones....
, to whom he was introduced in 1965, and tried hard over a number of years to persuade the singer to take up active Labour politics. He also began a long association with the satirical magazine Private Eye
Private Eye
Private Eye is a fortnightly British satirical and current affairs magazine, edited by Ian Hislop.Since its first publication in 1961, Private Eye has been a prominent critic and lampooner of public figures and entities that it deemed guilty of any of the sins of incompetence, inefficiency,...
, supplying it with political gossip and, under the pseudonym "Tiresias", compiling a regular, highly risqué prize crossword puzzle which on one occasion was won by the wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury
Archbishop of Canterbury
The Archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and principal leader of the Church of England, the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. In his role as head of the Anglican Communion, the archbishop leads the third largest group...
.
In 1964 Driberg published a critical study of Moral Re-armament, which brought him attacks from the movement on the basis of his homosexuality and communist past. Although he made money from this book, throughout the 1960s he was beset by financial problems. When Reynolds News, which had evolved into the Sunday Citizen, finally folded in 1967, he became fully dependent on his parliamentary salary and casual journalism. He had long considered selling Bradwell Lodge, preferably to the National Trust
National Trust
National Trust most commonly refers to an organization dedicated to preserving the cultural or environmental treasures of a particular geographic region. They generally operate as private non-profit organizations, although some receive considerable support from their national government...
on a basis that would allow him to continue living there. However, the Trust required the property to be mortgage-free and endowed with a substantial fund to cover future repairs, neither of which terms could be arranged. In the event the house remained unsold until 1971. As the 1970 election approached, Driberg wished to retire from parliament, and asked Wilson to appoint him as ambassador to the Vatican
Holy See
The Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, in which its Bishop is commonly known as the Pope. It is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and...
. Wilson refused, citing Driberg's age—at 65 he was beyond the retirement age for senior diplomats. Against his will, but with few other sources of income available to him, Driberg fought the June 1970 General Election
United Kingdom general election, 1970
The United Kingdom general election of 1970 was held on 18 June 1970, and resulted in a surprise victory for the Conservative Party under leader Edward Heath, who defeated the Labour Party under Harold Wilson. The election also saw the Liberal Party and its new leader Jeremy Thorpe lose half their...
. He was returned for Barking with a comfortable though reduced majority; nationally, Wilson's government was defeated by Edward Heath
Edward Heath
Sir Edward Richard George "Ted" Heath, KG, MBE, PC was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and as Leader of the Conservative Party ....
's Conservatives.
Retirement, ennoblement and death
Hampered by age and declining health, Driberg became less active politically, and in 1972 was voted off Labour's NEC. The sale of Bradwell Lodge to a private buyer removed his main burden of debt, and he rented a small flat in the BarbicanBarbican Estate
The Barbican Estate is a residential estate built during the 1960s and the 1970s in the City of London, in an area once devastated by World War II bombings and today densely populated by financial institutions...
development in the City of London
City of London
The City of London is a small area within Greater London, England. It is the historic core of London around which the modern conurbation grew and has held city status since time immemorial. The City’s boundaries have remained almost unchanged since the Middle Ages, and it is now only a tiny part of...
. In February 1974, at the age of 68, he retired from the House of Commons with the intention of writing his memoirs. Still short of income, he first completed a biography of his fellow-journalist Hannen Swaffer
Hannen Swaffer
Hannen Swaffer was a British journalist and drama critic.Swaffer was educated at Stroud Green Grammar School, Kent.He joined the Daily Mail in 1902. He was editor of Weekly Dispatch and helped develop the Daily Mirror into a popular newspaper. In 1913, he initiated "Mr Gossip" for the Daily Sketch...
, which was indifferently received—"a feeble potboiler", according to Driberg's biographer Davenport-Hines. Friends organised an elaborate 70th birthday party for him on 21 May 1975; "one duke, two dukes' daughters, sundry lords, a bishop, a poet laureate—not bad for an old left-wing MP", Driberg observed to a guest.
In November 1975 he was granted a life peerage, and on 21 January 1976 was introduced to the House of Lords
House of Lords
The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster....
as Baron Bradwell of Bradwell juxta Mare. On 14 April he tabled a motion in the Lords calling on the government to consider the withdrawal of troops from Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
, but won little support. His health was failing, though he continued to work on his memoirs. His final contribution to the House of Lords was on 22 July, in a debate on entry vouchers for the dependents of immigrants. Three weeks later, on 12 August 1976, while travelling by taxi from Paddington to his Barbican flat, he suffered a fatal heart attack. The funeral was held on 19 August at St Matthew's, Westminster; he was buried in the cemetery attached to St Thomas's Church, Bradwell.
Allegations of treachery
After the publication of his relatively sympathetic portrait of Burgess in 1956, Driberg had been denounced as a "dupe of Moscow" by some elements of the press. Two years after Driberg's death, the veteran investigative reporter Chapman PincherChapman Pincher
Harry Chapman Pincher is an Indian born British journalist and novelist whose writing mainly focuses on espionage and related matters, after some early books on scientific subjects.-Family and education:...
alleged that he had been "a Kremlin agent of sympathy" and a supporter of Communist front organisations. In 1979 Andrew Boyle
Andrew Boyle
Andrew Philip More Boyle was a Scottish journalist and biographer. His biography of Brendan Bracken won the 1974 Whitbread Awards and his book The Climate of Treason exposed Anthony Blunt as the "Fourth Man" in the Cambridge Five Soviet spy ring.He was born in the Scottish city of Dundee and was...
published The Climate of Treason, which exposed Anthony Blunt and led to a period of "spy mania" in Britain, though his exhaustive account of the Burgess–Maclean–Philby
Kim Philby
Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby was a high-ranking member of British intelligence who worked as a spy for and later defected to the Soviet Union...
–Blunt circle mentioned Driberg as a friend of Burgess, "of much the same background, tastes and views", but made no allegations that he was part of any espionage ring.
In this atmosphere, Pincher published Their Trade is Treachery (1981), in which he maintained that Driberg had been recruited by MI5 to spy on the Communist Party while still a schoolboy at Lancing, and that he was later "in the KGB's pay as a double agent". Other writers added further details; the former British Intelligence officer Peter Wright
Peter Wright
Peter Maurice Wright was an English scientist and former MI5 counterintelligence officer, noted for writing the controversial book Spycatcher, which became an international bestseller with sales of over two million copies...
, in Spycatcher
Spycatcher
Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer , is a book written by Peter Wright, former MI5 officer and Assistant Director, and co-author Paul Greengrass. It was published first in Australia...
(1987), alleged that Driberg had been "providing material to a Czech controller for money". The former Kremlin archivist Vasili Mitrokhin
Vasili Mitrokhin
Vasili Nikitich Mitrokhin was a Major and senior archivist for the Soviet Union's foreign intelligence service, the First Chief Directorate of the KGB, and co-author with Christopher Andrew of The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West, a massive account of Soviet intelligence...
asserted that the Soviets had blackmailed Driberg into working for the KGB by threatening to expose his homosexuality.
The weight of information, and its constant repetition, made an apparently strong case against Driberg, and former friends such as Mervyn Stockwood
Mervyn Stockwood
Arthur Mervyn Stockwood was Anglican Bishop of Southwark from 1959 to 1980.Mervyn Stockwood was born in Bridgend, Wales, to a middle-class family. His solicitor father was killed during the First World War. He was introduced to Anglo-Catholic worship at All Saints' Church, Clifton, which...
, the Bishop of Southwark, became convinced that he had indeed betrayed his country. Other friends and colleagues were more sceptical. According to ex-Labour MP Reginald Paget
Reginald Paget, Baron Paget of Northampton
Reginald Thomas Guy Des Voeux Paget, Baron Paget of Northampton, PC, QC, , also known as Reginald Guy Thomas Du Voeux Paget was a British lawyer and Labour politician....
, not even the security services were "lunatic enough to recruit a man like Driberg", who was famously indiscreet and could never keep a secret. Mitrokhin's "blackmail" story is questioned by historian Jeff Sharlet
Jeff Sharlet
Jeff Sharlet is an American journalist, bestselling author, and academic best known for writing about religious subcultures in the United States. He is a contributing editor for Harper's and Rolling Stone...
, on the grounds that by the 1950s and 1960s Driberg's homosexuality had been an open secret in British political circles for many years; he frequently boasted of his "rough trade" conquests to his colleagues. The journalist A. N. Wilson
A. N. Wilson
Andrew Norman Wilson is an English writer and newspaper columnist, known for his critical biographies, novels, works of popular history and religious views...
quotes Churchill commenting years before that "Tom Driberg is the sort of person who gives sodomy a bad name". Pincher, however, argued that as homosexual acts were criminal offences in Britain until 1967, Driberg was still vulnerable to blackmail, although he also asserted that the MI5 connection secured Driberg a lifelong immunity from prosecution. Driberg's colleague Michael Foot
Michael Foot
Michael Mackintosh Foot, FRSL, PC was a British Labour Party politician, journalist and author, who was a Member of Parliament from 1945 to 1955 and from 1960 until 1992...
denied Pincher's claim that Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...
, when prime minister, had made a secret agreement with Foot to protect Driberg if Foot, in turn, would remain silent about the supposed treachery of Roger Hollis
Roger Hollis
Sir Roger Henry Hollis, KBE, CB was a British journalist and secret-service agent, who was Director General of MI5 from 1956 to 1965.-Early years:...
, another of Pincher's recently dead targets.
Wheen notes that Pincher was not an objective commentator; the Labour Party, and its supposed infiltration by Communist agents, had been his target over many years. Pincher's verdict on Driberg is that "in journalism, in politics and intelligence ... eventually he betrayed everybody". Wheen argues that Driberg's greatest vice was indiscretion; he gossiped about everyone, but "indiscretion is not synonymous with betrayal". Driberg's Labour Party colleague, Leo Abse
Leo Abse
Leopold Abse was a Welsh lawyer, politician and gay rights campaigner. He was a Welsh Labour Member of Parliament for nearly 30 years, and was noted for promoting private member's bills to decriminalise male homosexual relations and liberalise the divorce laws...
, offers a more complex explanation: Driberg was an adventurer who loved taking risks and played many parts. "Driberg could have played the part of the spy with superb skill, and if the officers of MI5 were indeed inept enough to have attempted to recruit him, then, in turn, Tom Driberg would have gained special pleasure in fooling and betraying them".
Appraisal
In his will Driberg had stipulated that at his funeral his friend Gerald Irvine should deliver an "anti-panegyric" in place of the normal eulogy. Irvine obliged, with a detailed assessment of Driberg against the Seven Deadly SinsSeven deadly sins
The 7 Deadly Sins, also known as the Capital Vices or Cardinal Sins, is a classification of objectionable vices that have been used since early Christian times to educate and instruct followers concerning fallen humanity's tendency to sin...
, finding him guilty of Gluttony, Lust and Wrath, but relatively free from Avarice and Envy and entirely untouched by Sloth. Pride, Irvine maintained, was in Driberg's case mitigated by "the contrary virtue of humility". Ena did not attend the funeral; she gave a single press interview in which she expressed "huge respect for Tom's journalistic skills, political power and championship of the underdog". She added that if her admiration for him did not extend to their personal life together, that was a private matter.
Driberg prided himself on being an exception to a rule propounded by Cyril Connolly, that the war between the generations is the one war in which everyone changes sides eventually. Mervyn Stockwood, in his address at the funeral service, praised Driberg as "a searcher for truth", whose loyalty to the socialist cause was beyond question. This verdict was echoed by Michael Foot, who in a postscript to Driberg's memoir wrote of Driberg's "great services" to the Labour Party in the various offices that he occupied. Foot believed that Driberg's homosexual passion, rather than bringing him fulfilment, had "condemned him to a lifetime of deep loneliness" The Times obituarist described Driberg as "A journalist, an intellectual, a drinking man, a gossip, a high churchman, a liturgist, a homosexual", the first time, according to journalist Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Eric Hitchens is an Anglo-American author and journalist whose books, essays, and journalistic career span more than four decades. He has been a columnist and literary critic at The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Slate, World Affairs, The Nation, Free Inquiry, and became a media fellow at the...
, that the newspaper had ever defined a public figure specifically as homosexual. Nevertheless, Driberg's incomplete memoir Ruling Passions, when published in June 1977, was a shock to the public and to some of his erstwhile associates, despite advance hints of the book's scandalous content. Driberg's candid revelations of his "cottaging
Cottaging
Cottaging is a British gay slang term referring to anonymous sex between men in a public lavatory , or cruising for sexual partners with the intention of having sex elsewhere...
" and his descriptions of casual oral sex were called by one commentator "the biggest outpouring of literary dung a public figure has ever flung into print." The comedians Peter Cook
Peter Cook
Peter Edward Cook was an English satirist, writer and comedian. An extremely influential figure in modern British comedy, he is regarded as the leading light of the British satire boom of the 1960s. He has been described by Stephen Fry as "the funniest man who ever drew breath," although Cook's...
and Dudley Moore
Dudley Moore
Dudley Stuart John Moore, CBE was an English actor, comedian, composer and musician.Moore first came to prominence as one of the four writer-performers in the ground-breaking comedy revue Beyond the Fringe in the early 1960s, and then became famous as half of the highly popular television...
depicted Driberg as a sexual predator, wearing "fine fishnet stockings" and cavorting with a rent boy, in a sketch, "Back of the Cab", which they recorded in 1977. More vituperation followed when Pincher's allegations of Driberg's links with the Russian secret service were published in 1981; Pincher christened him "Lord of the Spies". However, Foot dismissed these accusations as typical of the "fantasies of the secret service world that seem to have taken possession of Pincher's mind". Foot added that Driberg "had always been much too ready to look forgivingly on Communist misdeeds, but this attitude was combined with an absolutely genuine devotion to the cause of peace".
In his 2004 biographical sketch Davenport-Hines describes Driberg as "a sincere if eccentric Christian socialist who detested racism and colonialism", who at the same time "could be pompous, mannered, wayward, self-indulgent, ungrateful, bullying and indiscreet". As to the apparent contradiction between sincere Christianity and promiscuous homosexuality, Wheen argues that "there had been a recognisable male homosexual subculture in the Anglo-Catholic movement since the late nineteenth century". This theme is explored in a paper by David Hilliard of Flinders University
Flinders University
Flinders University, , is a public university in Adelaide, South Australia. Founded in 1966, it was named in honour of navigator Matthew Flinders, who explored and surveyed the South Australian coastline in the early 19th century.The university has established a reputation as a leading research...
, who maintains that "the [19th century] conflict between Protestantism and Anglo-Catholicism within the Church of England was ... regularly depicted by Protestant propagandists as a struggle between masculine and feminine styles of religion". Driberg throughout his life was a devout Anglo-Catholic; Wheen suggests that Evelyn Waugh, in Brideshead Revisited
Brideshead Revisited
Brideshead Revisited, The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder is a novel by English writer Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1945. Waugh wrote that the novel "deals with what is theologically termed 'the operation of Grace', that is to say, the unmerited and unilateral act of love by...
, may have had Driberg in mind when the novel's protagonist Charles Ryder is warned on arrival at Oxford to "beware of Anglo-Catholics—they're all sodomites with unpleasant accents."
Driberg was the subject of a play, Tom and Clem, which was staged at London's Aldwych Theatre
Aldwych Theatre
The Aldwych Theatre is a West End theatre, located on Aldwych in the City of Westminster. The theatre was listed Grade II on 20 July 1971. Its seating capacity is 1,200.-Origins:...
in April 1997. The action takes place during Driberg's brief visit to the Potsdam Conference
Potsdam Conference
The Potsdam Conference was held at Cecilienhof, the home of Crown Prince Wilhelm Hohenzollern, in Potsdam, occupied Germany, from 16 July to 2 August 1945. Participants were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States...
in July 1945, and deals with the contrast of compromise, represented by the pragmatic Clement Attlee, and post-war idealism, represented by Driberg. Michael Gambon
Michael Gambon
Sir Michael John Gambon, CBE is an Irish actor who has worked in theatre, television and film. A highly respected theatre actor, Gambon is recognised for his roles as Philip Marlowe in the BBC television serial The Singing Detective, as Jules Maigret in the 1990s ITV serial Maigret, and as...
's portrayal of Driberg, as "a slovenly, paunchy Bacchus with a mouth that can suddenly gape like a painfully-hooked fish", won special praise from The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
critic Benedict Nightingale
Benedict Nightingale
Benedict Nightingale is a British journalist and a regular theatre critic for The Times newspaper. He was born in 1939 and educated at Charterhouse and Magdalene College, Cambridge...
.