Of tithes, spies and the cunning of country folk

 

The Secretary's Room nestles half way up the main stair case, and many an Hon Sec has proclaimed that it symbolises the very essence of the club; a bastion over looking the portals of the institution; ever watchful, ever on guard yet, like one of those bothies nailed to a  mountain side, a sanctuary for members in distress.  The fact is, it ended up there after a secretary during the reign of one the later Georges had a tiff with most of the membership, who turfed him out of his spacious rooms to make way for a Nine-Man’s Morris court – those were the days before it had been reduced to a board game for the common amusement of children and not a life and death tussle on which small fortunes wagered. 

Whatever the reason, the Secretary’s Room has seen much which is still shielded from the common gaze by Secrecy Laws.  We have always done our bit to help smooth over the bumpy course of the nations fortunes; a nod to the right chap in the right place, the occasional placing of some misleading punctuation in an international agreement and, in one case, pretending there was an entire war fought with Iceland over seafood. Details of the real events of the summer 1976 are still to be kept obscured but this is not the case with all those things that took place in the Secretary’s Room ‘off the record.’

Time passes.  Pressing matters of secrecy become matters of interest only for academics or Television producers keen to claim they have access to earnest secrets never before revealed.  I think it is safe to say these Blessed Isles are safe from the Kaiser’s machinations and so I feel it is safe to reveal the details of one of those incidents in which all in the Secretary’s Office were sworn to secrecy.

Imagine the scene.  August 1914.  The beastly Hunnish hordes were sweeping across the flat Belgium Plains; newspapers, which had advised readers that Bank Holiday visits to Switzerland were not to be cancelled just because those Europeans were being a bit tetchy were revising their views and a nation thumbed through well read copies of the ‘The Riddle of the Sands’ just in case.

Blighty was stuffed full of Germans at the time. Over 50000 of the coves were gainfully employed about some lawful business or another.  The Middle Class had decided to put some backbone into their young by subjected them to Nannies from Nuremberg; snap your fingers for a fresh whiskey and like as not a Teutonic accent would demand to know if ice was required and according to the 1911 Census 120 of them were full time spies.  Well, His Majesty’s Spies soon had them rounded up and the nation slept soundly again – save certain houses where the children were running wild.

Military Intelligence is a fine thing and even they could spot the problem of having caught all the Huns that somebody would soon inquire if they needed all the cash the Treasury were passing their way.  Some more German spies were needed but where to get them from.  After a few false starts where chaps with false ‘W’ moustaches and the sort of German accent heard only at Wilton’s Music Hall had been sent to chat up up potential traitors,  Britain’s finest got the hang of things and lured in several hundred potential friends of the Kaiser.

Soon, it became clear that MI5 were not only running British but also German intelligence.  The problem with recruiting spies is that, in the nature of things, they want to do some spying. The Intelligence chaps had hoped that they could keep everyone happy by dishing out the precursor of what would become the ‘I-Spy’ books, but that was not enough.  These sons of Albion had signed up to be spies and damn it, they were not taking no for an answer.  On their own bat, they began to flood the Kaiser’s man in London aka Major Roderick Blain, with the sort of detail that would fill a thousand ring-binders.

Despite all the admonitions that they should ‘keep a low profile’ these agents could not be kept silent. Obviously intelligence costs money and many guineas were finding their way into disloyal hands.  The bill began to mount.  At some point it was wondered if the whole thing was entirely ethical? Wasn’t it a kind of entrapment?  Luckily clever administrators saw to it the payments were  hidden in the accounts of the Shakelton Expedition, which had handily returned to Europe wondering what all the fuss was about.

What was not noticed at the time was about 95% of the secrets finding their way to Berlin- as they thought – were about the doings of a small area of the Suffolk-Essex border.  Few know today of the Volunteer Training Corps – as active between 1914-18 as the Home Guard but if they had received it, it is for sure that Von Hindenburg and his cronies would have.  Had they wished it, they could have been apprised of the best time to assail the Borely Bridge, usually between the opening hours of The Bull public house and inn.  Likewise they would have known why ‘Young Norbert’ had not been dispatched to guard the coast during the 1918 March Offensive and why it was now common talk that the ‘Lumber Jills’ had been issued with trousers and why this was undermining nation morale.’

Well, the Kaiser was beaten, the threat of an efficient railway network receded and peace descended on the land.  What to do with the Huns’ 5^th column.  It was thought sleeping dogs should be allowed to continue to slumber in peace, until the 1930s raised the spectre of German aggression again.

The Tithe may have connotations of Medieval Peasantry but it was alive and well in the early Twentieth Century- in fact I believe a tenth of all the brassicas grown on the Club’s Roof Allotment are delivered to  St Beorhthelm’s Without, whether the vicar wishes them or not.  The government had one of its ‘seemed a good idea at the time’ thoughts and planned to get rid of the damned tax by putting forward a scheme to pay it off over a few generations, setting the sum on the price of corn the previous few years.  All was well until the Wall Street Crash.  Farmers were left paying the tithe on the high prices of the 1920s while getting from the merchant low 1930s coinage.

Word came to the Spymasters at Westminster that all was not well in the countryside.  Moseley’s Blackshirts, rank bad hats to a man, were gathering like crows around carrion in the East Anglian by-ways   and it was clear that things were a foot.

Lieutenant-Commander Balfron, a then up and coming agent was dispatched.  His immediate conclusion -  the Hun were up to their tricks again and must be because he could find absolutely no sign of them – which was clearly the obvious sign of an effective cover up.  Booking himself into comfortable lodgings he patrolled the countryside looking out for unusually blonde farm workers or a tendency to eat sausages more often than was strictly necessary, but nothing.  Then it occurred to him that a small number of farms around Glemsford seemed better appointed and generally bucking the tide of deep agrarian depression.

The people who dwell either side of the London North Eastern Railway’s Stour Valley Branch line may charitably be describe as reticent in the company of strangers. Balfron was more succinct  when  he described them as ‘thunderingly unsociable.’  They closed ranks.  Tales were not told,  gossip was not shared.  It took a piece of cat burglary at the Melford & Clare Impermanent Building Society to discover the accounts of certain farms had revived MI5 gold from 1916 and 1918 and had redeemed their tithes sometime about 1923 but since then nothing.

Balfron tried to delve deeper. He tried all manner of disguises, that of a Fordson tractor salesman, an Association Football Pools tout and even a casting director from Constable Pictures hoping against all probability to make a Suffolk version of the adventures of Robin Hood.  Academia is always convenient on that score and you can generally find some don who will claim the Outlaw of Sherwood Forest actually came from Basingstoke or some such.  In the end he resolved to just buying beer and then the horrible truth came out.  Suffolk was not a breeding ground of subversion.  The man from MI5 had been spotted for what he was in 1916 and been gently milked of cash for several years.  Towards the end it had been a close run thing as they had run out of news to tell him but the Armistice came before anyone had spotted they had been repeating themselves for the last few months.

Consider the shame.  Imagine coming into your club and having to admit that a bunch of swede herders had pulled the wool over your eyes.  A vow of secrecy was taken, blushes spared and the nation’s confidence in its protectors maintained.