Tom Driberg

Thomas Edward Neil Driberg, Baron Bradwell PC (22 May 1905, Crowborough, Sussex, – 12 August 1976, Paddington, London W2) was a British journalist and politician who was an influential member on the left of the Labour Party from the 1940s to the 1970s. However after his death, it was revealed that he had been an occultist and a closeted homosexual.

Early life

Tom Driberg was the son of Amy Mary Bell of Dumfriesshire and John James Street Driberg who worked for the Indian Civil Service as Chief of Police and Inspector of Jails for the Province of Assam. He was educated at Lancing College and joined the Communist Party when he was 15. He studied Classics at Christ Church, Oxford (1924–1927) without taking a degree.

During the General Strike in 1925 he worked at Communist Party headquarters and began writing for the Sunday Worker, a communist newspaper. From 1928 he worked on the Daily Express and created the William Hickey diary and gossip column. He was expelled from the Communist Party in 1941 when Anthony Blunt revealed that he was spying on them for MI5.

Member of Parliament

He was first elected as a Member of Parliament for Maldon in a by-election in June 1942 as an independent candidate, basing his election campaign on the 1941 Committee's Nine-Point Plan. He took the Labour whip in January 1945 and continued to sit for the seat until his retirement at the 1955 general election. He was MP for Barking from 1959 to February 1974.

In 1957 Driberg became Chairman of the Labour Party.

Homosexuality

Driberg's sexuality resulted in his first brush with the law in 1935. He was placed on trial for indecent assault in 1935 after he invited two unemployed miners back to his home. After he made a pass, his guests made their excuses and left. They then made a complaint to police about Driberg. However he was later acquitted at trial on the basis it was a misunderstanding between all parties. His employer, Lord Beaverbrook of the Daily Express, ensured that the case was never reported.

Driberg was caught cottaging by the police on two further occasions. The first time was with a Norwegian sailor at an air-raid shelter in Edinburgh during World War II. Later in the 1950s he propositioned a man at Jockey's Fields public lavatories, by Gray's Inn fields off Theobold Road, Camden, London, who turned out to be a policeman. On both occasions he managed to avoid prosecution through help from the British establishment.

In the late 1950s, Driberg was targeted by the KGB while he was in Moscow to interview his old friend Guy Burgess for a biography. According to the Mitrokhin Archive, Driberg was photographed in a homosexual encounter.

The honeytrap operation was possibly carried out by the KGB in the belief that he was in fact the leader of the Labour Party (as opposed to chairman) and could be blackmailed. Mitrokhin does not allege that Driberg carried out any espionage activities but he does claim that the KGB pressured Driberg into removing references to Burgess getting drunk from the biography.

Legacy

He was created a Life peer, as Baron Bradwell, of Bradwell-on-Sea in the County of Essex, shortly before his death. His autobiography, Ruling Passions, was published posthumously in 1977 and disclosed the conflict between the three passions that drove his life: his homosexuality, his left-wing political beliefs and his allegiance to the High Church tendency of the Church of England. Winston Churchill said of him, "Tom Driberg is the sort of person who gives sodomy a bad name." Driberg's will insisted that at his memorial service, the reader excoriate him for his sins rather than praise him for his virtues.

Occultism

One connection Driberg wished to conceal in his lifetime was his early friendship with Aleister Crowley. After Crowley's death, John Symonds discovered a paper on which Driberg had solemnly pledged himself to the Great Work in the presence of the Beast 666.

Sources

• Simon Ball, The Guardsmen, Harold Macmillan, Three Friends and the World They Made, (London: Harper Collins, 2004)
• Francis Wheen, The Soul of Indiscretion: Tom Driberg, Poet, Philanderer, Legislator and Outlaw - His Life and Indiscretions, (1990)
• John Symonds, The King of the Shadow Realm (London: Duckworth, 1989)

External links

• Schoolnet: Tom Driberg
• The history of Bradwell Lodge - Home to Tom Driberg