Joseph Ball, MI5, Oxford and Balliol College

In 1916, MI5's Joseph Ball was based at Barnet House, Broad Street in Oxford. He wrote to Arthur Smith, Master of Balliol concerning arrangements for Albert Mansbridge to attend a conference at Balliol College on 27th October 1916. The Notes seem to indicate that Ball himself would chair the conference and the notes were written on notepaper of Senior Tutor of St John's College Oxford.
What was Ball's First World War activities in Oxford for MI5?
http://archives.balliol.ox.ac.uk/Modern%20Papers/ALSmith/alsmithletterb.asp

Joseph Ball and Guy Burgess

One particular aspect of the sinister work of MI5's Joseph Ball has been hard to research. His dealings and involvement with the Cambridge Spies - especially Guy Burgess. Many Intelligence writers in their researching of Burgess, Maclean, Philby and then Blunt between 1951 and 1995 have said various things about Ball - suggesting that he was Homosexual, that he sponsored Burgess into MI5 and that he used him for various intelligence related activities  (Burgess's link to Daladier, his Radio work, spying on Heinlein) and that Ball was an active member of the Anglo-German Fellowship and part of a Pro-Nazi circle which included Henry Ford, Henri Deterding, and Basil Zaharoff.
Guy Burgess himself in 1956 told Tom Driberg about his activities with Ball and also named Ball in a list of mostly prominent homosexual aquaintances in reports to Moscow in declassified KGB files from the 1930's.
Ball strongly denied the Burgess allegations in 1956 and his lawyers made Driberg redact much of the material from his book. Because many of the Cambridge Spy writers got many of the biographical details about Ball wrong and wrongly believed Burgess that Ball was a member of the AGF when it was a namesake, I have largely discounted Burgess's claims and the rumours of Ball's homosexuality as Moscow propaganda aimed at discrediting a leading right wing spook. However revisiting Conspiracy of Silence by Penrose and Freeman (1987) I realised that MI5 officer TAR Robertson did corroborate in conversations with Freeman in 1985  in part Burgess's involvement in a clandestine intelligence link from Neville Chamberlain to Eduard Daladier in 1938 which use the St Ermin's Hotel and Burgess's claim to have slept with Daladier's Chef du Cabinet. I now feel that most of what Burgess claimed about Ball including his homosexuality (with the exception about the Anglo-German Fellowship, though Ball may have clandestine involvement) now is more likely to be fact than malicious invention. Given that, Homosexuality is the most likely explanation for Ball's rapid rise, his meeting Burgess and sponsorship of Howard and other homosexuals in MI5 and CRD and links to the pederast Maundy Gregory.

HG Wells Inside Track

As reported earlier, when in June 1946 HG Wells read reports about Mussolini's secret funding of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists in the 1930's he was so appauled that he wrote a stinging attack questioning whether the British Royal Family had been involved in this funding. His attack a month before his death was the most sensational attack on British monarchy ever made by a senior public figure and was reported around the world. It was quickly belittled as a the ramblings of a great man well past his prime and even saw the once interned traitor Mosley come to the defence of the Monarchy.


Yet what exactly triggered Well's allegations? - The statement in the House of Commons by Labour Home Secretary Chuter Ede outlined a secret bank account used by the BUF to receive funds. Wells may well have received information from his Russian lover Moura Budberg who was suspected by MI5 of being a triple agent  "Russian Mata Hari" and she may have secret information via the Cambridge Spies or her Moscow network. Well's suspicions may have been reinforced by his prior knowledge of the Duke of Windsor's fascist links when he was Prince of Wales and briefly King Edward VIII or the activities of Prince George Duke of Kent and those of Lord Mountbatten and his nefarious friends.
The true key was the activities of Sir Louis Greig (member of the Fascist front January Club) King George VI's key mentor and advisor who had been close to pro-fascist Maundy Gregory and his brother in law AC Scrimgeour who had financed the BUF to the tune of £11,000.
Well's parting shot might have been closer to the mark than many at the time realised.

Appeasement: The Leeds Castle Connection

Many of the visitors to Leeds Castle in Kent might not realise that they are visiting a site as important as Cliveden to the history of British Appeasement.

Lady Olive Baillie was a society hostess to rival pro-Nazi Hostesses Emerald Cunard and Maggie Greville. All three hosted first the sets around Royal Princes, the Prince of Wales, Duke of York and Duke of Kent. Lady Baillie was daughter of Lord Queenborough.

Lady Baillie became renowned as a hostess. The Baillies lived during the week in London and held house parties at Leeds Castle at the weekends. Frequent visitors to the castle were political friends of Sir Adrian, David Margesson and Geoffrey Lloyd who were to become lifelong friends of Lady Baillie.^[11] During the 1930s members of the royalty, including the Prince of Wales with Mrs Simpson, the Duke of York, Princess Marina, Queen Maria of Romania, Alfonso XIII of Spain and the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia were visitors. Other prominent visitors included Sir Alfred Beit, many MPs, including Anthony Eden, and Germany's ambassador to Britain, Joachim von Ribbentrop. Lady Baillie was a lover of the cinema and her guest list during that decade included the film stars Douglas Fairbanks senior and junior, Fredric March, Charlie Chaplin, Errol Flynn, Lili Damita, Robert Taylor, James Stewart^[3] and Gertrude Lawrence.^[12] Other guests were Margaret, Duchess of Argyll, Barbara Hutton, the author Ian Fleming, and the singer Richard Tauber.^[12]

Sir Adrian Baillie was Conservative MP for Tonbridge and a leading Scottish Freemason.  

Here is pictured with Grand Master the Duke of Kent in the 1930's.Writer Daphne Du Maurier described the set at Leeds Castle in the 1920's and 1930's as the worst sort, and leaked MI5 files Kim Philby sent to Moscow place the set around Lady Baillie as having very strange Occult gambling  involving cabinet ministers there during World War 2. (Crown Jewels 1998) 

What is clear is that Baillie was a prime mover in Fascist Circles, he invited Nazi Alfred Rosenberg to London in May 1933 and he was a member like Sir Louis Greig of the fascist front the January Club (Blackshirt - Dorrill 2006 p.237)

He had connections to the British Film Industry - to London Films and his own company set up in 1938 with Fairbanks -Albion Films Ltd. It is likely that he was well known to Sir Joseph Ball who at this time also was a leading light in the British Film Sector. By the way, fellow scot and Ball's friend at MI6 - it's head C, was Stewart Menzies and he was also a frequent visitor to the Castle. Given Ball's friendship to Lloyd (at CRD and Truth) and Margesson - it seems likely that Ball was also part of this circle.

Baillie was Grand Master of Lodge Polkmmet 927 in Edinburgh in 1930-31 and a previous Grand Master in the same lodge was a J Greig - possibly Louis Greig's elder stockbroking brother.

With the death of the Duke of Kent who had succeeded George VI as Supreme Grand Master , there is an obvious masonic link here with all the major players in the Rudolf Hess Affair in 1941.

It is another example of the many right wing appeasement and homosexual circles in which all the Royal Princes, including George VI circulated in.

The Scandal of the Queen Mother's Secretary

Miss Nourah Chard secretary to Mrs Lucy Baldwin, wife of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin was a friend of notorious honours trafficker Maundy Gregory, so he claimed to Conservative Party Chairman in 1928. She worked as a secretary also for the Queen Mother when she was the fiance to the Duke of York in 1923 .She married in secret Sir Ronald Waterhouse in August 1928, an Intelligence Officer who became Equerry to the Duke of York (later George VI) in 1921 and was also on very friendly terms with Gregory. She later as Lady Nourah Waterhouse broke the behind the scenes story of the role of Waterhouse and JCC Davidson in securing Stanley Baldwin the premiership in 1923.Gregory boasted that he had obtained honours for his clients from a Royal Duke in financial difficulty and in 1925  he recieved a letter from the Duke of York's Comptroller in receipt of a personal birthday gift. No wonder Gregory boasted he had much "pull at the palace"

Waterhouse had Gregory claimed set up in competition to him in the honours trafficking racket, whilst Davidson organised a secret arrangement with Gregory channelling funds to the Conservative Party which saw the alarm over Gregory's links with Fascist Italy and Right Wing Circles in the Ukraine and Germany along with his compromising of the Yorks triggering the 1933 arrest, trial and his exile in France  paid by political funds.

Trouble in Paradise

Sir Harry Oakes died in 1943, murdered and set alight in his Bahamas Mansion. The mystery of his murder remains unsolved after the sensational aquittal of the prime suspect Count Maringy, the victim of a plot organised by the Bahamian Governor and exiled King - the Duke of Windsor. This story has everything, the involvement of  a famous private eye, corrupt Miami Policemen, and a string of unexplained suicides and murders of people connected or interested in the case, included allegedly a Bahamas Governor (Sir George Sandford)  in 1950 and a Bahamas Civil Servant (US Lawyer Betty Renner in 1949 - whose body was stuffed into a well). The Oakes were plagued by death and Oakes's Widow was victim of a blackmail attempt.

My own researches have revealed that Harry Oakes had strong political connections in England and that in exchange for his Baronetcy he had contributed to a secret political slush fund controlled by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's fixer Sir Joseph Ball in 1938-9. The Introduction had come from  British New York Art Dealer Baron Joseph Duveen who had visited Adolf Hitler in Bertchesgaten.

David Hugh Montgomerie Boyle

David Hugh Montgomerie Boyle
born 1883
Cousin of Earl of Glasgow (who like Ormond Winter was a key figure in the British Fascists)
His father Henry David Boyle (1856-1917) was director of Dawnay Day, Giant Mines of Rhodesia, Russian Mining Corporation, Lena Goldmines.

Educated Wellington School and New College Oxford

1904 Customs Officer at Peking
1906 Tea Planter Ceylon
1907 Bombay Burma Timber Corp
1910 Officiated at Coronation of George V?
1912 ADC Gold Coast Priv Sec to Civil Comissioner Ashanti
1913-1918 Various roles in Gold Coast Colony according to X document "resigned owing to differences of opinion with his superiors against whom he was reported to have intrigued"
1914-18 according to X document - "No record of any war service but sent to USA by C (Mansfield Cumming head of MI6) under Colonel T(hwaites). There he started intrigues against T and during T's absence on leave, closed down the organisation. He was recalled and his services ceased. Prior to this he had been severely censured by Sir R(obert) N(athan) whom he accused of suppressing his telegrams. Next heard of having joined the Black and Tans and subsequently as having been recruited for the intelligence branch at police headquarters, Dublin Castle, in a junior capacity. Here again he started intrigues against his superiors and is reported to have gone to the length of lodging complaints with the Prime Minister respecting them. His services were ceased very shortly afterwards."

According to Cave Brown (The Secret Servant 1987) he escaped Dublin by a whisker.
1919 Son Alistair born New York City (he supposedly working in  Ministry of Pensions)
1920 As MI6 officer he was according to Cave Brown  which enbroils him in the failed attempt on De Valera in USA in1920 and saw him deported at the centre of a bruising Anglo-American Intelligence Row.
1921 His son Ranald born in Fairlie in Ayrshire, He is now in the Far East as a correspondant for the Morning Post with his wife remembering of course his father's role and his later role as director of Cunard and Anchor Line. The "X" document picks up the story : "Still later he was sent on a mission to the Far East by "C" (again Mansfield Cumming) and his wife accompanied him as secretary. His efforts were regarded by the authorities with such grave displeasure that he was recalled and his services ceased again. He subsequently wrote a series of elementary articles on the Far East for the Morning Post"
1923
1924 Rear Admiral Hugh Quex Sinclair succeeds Cumming as head of MI6. X Document - "He next succeeded in obtaining employment on the Prince of Wales Staff on the latter's visit to America (13/9/24) as " a specialist on American Society". He did not, however last the tour out but unexpededly re-appeared in England while the prince was still in America. It is reported that he had been very tactless in his advice to the Prince."
1925
1926 - Letter to Times from Travellers Club "Profits of War"- praising Baruch Plan
1927 - 2/2 Letter to Times on Far East "Japan is our friend", on TOCH appeals Committee
1928
1929
1930 - Booked on Graf Zepplin to Fredrichshaven from Cardington travelling with Japanophile Master of Semphill. Attending Wedding with Sir Ronald Graham  and Mrs Roberts (possibly same as lady in Hamilton -Haushofer letters 1939-1941)
1931
1932 - Times Letter Safety at Sea, Times Letter on US/India
1933 Times letter on Armanents
1934 Pro-Japan letter on Manchurian Railway to TImes "eastern artery"
1935 - Director Anchor Line with Runcimans - resident Fairlieburne, Fairlie Ayrshire
1936
1937 Glebe House, Lewes - officiates at Cornonation of GVI - Kings Messenger
1938 Personal Assistant to Sinclair, running section N at MI6
1939 - Sent by C(SInclair) to visit Berlin on eve of war (with involvement of GVI, Halifax and Cadogan) 10/10 resigns directorship of Dawnay Day because of war work. Personal assistant to New MI6 chief Stewart Menzies who he supports in role.
1940
1941 -Possible involvement in Hess Affair
1948 CMG from GVI for MI6 work
1959 Book "With ardours manifold"
1960 attended funeral of cousin Sd Ldr PN Boyle
1970 died aged 87