John Stonehouse, a promising British politician, disappeared off the Miami coast.
Had he drowned in a swimming accident? Had he been eaten by sharks?
To everyone's surprise, he turned up in Australia a few weeks later with a new identity...
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about the story of a man called John Stonehouse.
[00:00:28] He was a charismatic British politician, once even tipped to be Prime Minister, who made a series of very bad decisions.
[00:00:37] I won’t give too much away, but this is a story that involves politics, the cold war, sexual affairs, secrets, spies, a beach in Miami and more.
[00:00:49] OK then, the story of John Stonehouse.
[00:00:54] In the winter of 1974, Britain was a nation grappling with uncertainty and upheaval.
[00:01:02] It was a time of economic strife and political instability, which saw two general elections in the same year.
[00:01:10] Labour’s Harold Wilson had managed to secure a tenuous grip on power in October, following a hung parliament in February.
[00:01:19] The spectre of industrial action loomed large, with miners’ strikes crippling the nation and leading to the implementation of the three-day working week in an attempt to conserve electricity.
[00:01:34] Amidst this backdrop of turmoil, two high-profile disappearances captured the public’s imagination and dominated newspaper headlines.
[00:01:46] The first was one you may remember from episode number 354, or indeed from a recent interview I did on Luke’s English Podcast, that of Lord Lucan.
[00:01:58] He was the aristocratic gambler who vanished in November 1974 following the brutal murder of his children’s nanny, Sandra Rivett.
[00:02:09] Lucan’s car was found abandoned, spattered with blood, but the man himself seemed to have vanished into thin air.
[00:02:20] Just 12 days later, in November 1974, the nation was stunned once more when John Stonehouse, a former Labour minister and MP, mysteriously disappeared.
[00:02:35] Stonehouse was presumed drowned, or even eaten by sharks, after his clothes were found neatly folded on a Miami beach.
[00:02:46] Both men had disappeared into thin air. Had they died at sea in tragic accidents, had they killed themselves out of shame of what they had done?
[00:02:56] Or was there another explanation?
[00:03:00] The case of John Stonehouse seemed to be more clear cut, more obvious, and indeed he was declared dead, and his obituary was published in the newspapers.
[00:03:12] The case of Lord Lucan was less so, and he was the chief suspect in a brutal murder.
[00:03:20] Police around the world were told to keep a look out for a tall, handsome British man with a smooth, polished accent. He might have changed appearance, he might have even changed name, and he would probably be behaving in an unusual way.
[00:03:37] On the other side of the world, in Melbourne Australia, in December of 1974, a bank clerk did notice something a little odd.
[00:03:48] A tall and handsome British man had come into the bank one day and made a large withdrawal, only to stroll across the street and go into another bank.
[00:04:00] The man had given his name as Clive Mildoon, and he seemed to have all of the required documents.
[00:04:08] But something seemed off, something just didn’t feel right.
[00:04:14] She asked around and heard from an associate working in the other bank that the tall Englishman had given his name as “Joseph Markham”, not Clive Mildoon, but again he seemed to have all of the required documents.
[00:04:30] The teller had read about the murdered nanny and the fugitive British aristocrat, and suspected “Clive Mildoon” and “Joseph Markham” were in fact Lord Lucan.
[00:04:42] She called the police, and several days later the tall, handsome man was tracked down and stopped by the police. The Australians had contacted their British counterparts before making the arrest, to ask how they could confirm whether it was indeed Lord Lucan.
[00:05:01] There was a way, they had been told.
[00:05:04] Ask him to pull down his trousers, the British police instructed them.
[00:05:09] Lucan had a large scar, 30 centimetres long, on his right thigh. Nobody could cover that up. Find the scar and you’ve found Lucan.
[00:05:21] So the Australian police politely asked this man, Clive Mildoon, to pull down his trousers.
[00:05:29] To their surprise, there was no scar.
[00:05:32] The man was not Lord Lucan, but if he wasn’t the disappeared suspected murderer, who was he?
[00:05:40] It was only after they consulted photographs of the other high-profile disappearance that year that they made the connection. Clive Mildoon was the spitting image, he was an exact match, for John Stonehouse, the Labour politician who had either drowned or been eaten by sharks off the coast of Miami a month prior.
[00:06:03] Upon further questioning, Clive Mildoon cracked. Or rather, John Stonehouse admitted that there was no Mildoon. He had faked his own death and had been living in Australia under a fake name.
[00:06:19] He was brought back to Britain, bizarrely was allowed to continue as a member of parliament before being sent to prison a year and a half later.
[00:06:28] And to think, this was a man who many had tipped to become the British Prime Minister.
[00:06:36] According to his university classmates, he had had his eyes set on the top job since he was a young man. He came from a politically active family - his father was a trade union leader and his mother was the mayor of Southampton, a city on the south coast of England.
[00:06:55] John Stonehouse had strong political beliefs from a young age, and joined the British Labour party at the age of 16.
[00:07:04] After a stint in Uganda, where he worked with co-operative businesses, he entered the world of politics, and successfully won a seat as an MP, a member of parliament, at the age of 32.
[00:07:18] He was charismatic, decisive, and principled.
[00:07:22] People hung on his every word, and soon he found that people clung to him, believing that this was not just a future leader of the Labour party, but a future British Prime Minister.
[00:07:35] His political rise was not stellar, but he was rewarded with increasing responsibility. He became the Minister of State for Technology and then something called the “Postmaster General”, which was a political role related to the post office.
[00:07:52] When the Labour party then lost the election in 1970 his ministerial career was over, but he remained a member of parliament, representing the constituency of Wednesbury, in north Birmingham.
[00:08:07] He also had a busy life outside of politics.
[00:08:11] He had got involved in numerous business interests, even attempting to start his own bank and profit from London’s property boom.
[00:08:19] He was well-known around London for his snappy style, being well-dressed, good looking and stylish, and he had all of the trimmings of a wealthy and successful businessman.
[00:08:32] But a combination of bad luck and poor judgement had meant that several of these businesses were heavily in debt, and Stonehouse owed today’s equivalent of millions of pounds.
[00:08:47] He might have looked the part, but his finances were a mess.
[00:08:53] On a personal level, he had also made some bad decisions. He had been married since 1948, since he was 23. His wife had stood by him while he pursued his political ambitions, and the pair had two daughters together.
[00:09:10] But some time in the late 1960s he had started an affair with his secretary, a woman 21 years his junior. His wife had discovered the affair, was understandably furious, and had threatened to leave him.
[00:09:27] So, he was in deep financial trouble, his marriage was in tatters, and he was having a now open affair with his secretary, who he had refused to leave even after his wife had discovered the affair.
[00:09:42] His political ambitions had also been scuppered, they were over, because the then Labour leader, Harold Wilson, had decided that Stonehouse was “corruptible”, that he could be corrupted.
[00:09:56] And it is here that we must go into some controversial territory.
[00:10:02] It would later be alleged that Stonehouse had been spying for Czechoslovakia since the late 1960s.
[00:10:09] He had been passing the Czechs information about British technology, he had been asking questions in parliament that his Czech handlers had passed him, he was a full-on spy, although it was never agreed how effective a spy he was.
[00:10:24] He had, reportedly, been targeted right at the start of his political career because the Czechoslovakian intelligence agency had thought that this was a man who was “on the up”, someone who could in theory ascend right to the top of British politics, becoming Prime Minister.
[00:10:43] If they got him young, then by the time he was at the top he would be an invaluable asset.
[00:10:50] He had, again reportedly, been compromised because Czechoslovakian intelligence agents had taken photographs of him in bed with another woman, and had threatened to show these to his wife.
[00:11:03] What’s more, they had paid him handsomely, which partially helped explain his unusually lavish lifestyle.
[00:11:12] Now, I should add that he always denied this, and his daughter vehemently denied it in a book from 2021. He was no spy, she says, he was a “rabid anti-communist”, and the claims that he was one come from his political enemies.
[00:11:30] Unfortunately for Stonehouse, and for his daughter, there is some evidence to suggest that he was passing secrets to the Czechs. There is a photograph of him strolling around London with a well-known Czech spy, and there is the testimony of a high-ranking Czech spy, who had no discernible motive to lie.
[00:11:52] Anyway, spy or no spy, John Stonehouse was in a bit of a pickle by 1974. He was drowning in debt, and was at risk of having to declare personal bankruptcy.
[00:12:07] And the UK isn’t quite as forgiving as countries like the United States when it comes to bankruptcy. If you declare bankruptcy in the UK there are several things you cannot do, including stand as an MP, as a member of parliament.
[00:12:23] So this was the backdrop to the “disappearance” of John Stonehouse.
[00:12:29] He was on holiday in Miami in November of 1974. He had had lunch with a business associate, and the pair had arranged to meet in the bar later that evening for a drink before dinner.
[00:12:42] Stonehouse had told his friend that he was going to go for a quick swim, and then perhaps do a bit of shopping for his wife and kids.
[00:12:51] Afternoon turned to evening and his friend sat waiting in the bar.
[00:12:57] But there was no sign of Stonehouse.
[00:13:01] His friend asked around, and the last anyone had seen of him was at about 4pm, at the hotel’s private beach. Stonehouse was in his swimming trunks, he had handed his clothes to an attendant, and waded out into the crystal clear water.
[00:13:20] And that was the last anyone had seen of him, until he was apprehended on the other side of the world, in Melbourne, just over a month later.
[00:13:31] It’s now believed that he swam a little out into the water and then swam along the shore to the beach of another hotel, retrieved his “getaway kit”, which he had stashed earlier, and then made a beeline for, he rushed to, Miami airport.
[00:13:49] He had a series of fake identities which he had created from recently deceased members of his constituency, so he was able to get onto flights undetected.
[00:14:00] And when he was finally apprehended in Australia, he insisted that he'd done nothing wrong. He said that he had been suffering a psychotic “episode” in which he was trying to escape the problems at home and that he had tried to commit “psychiatric suicide”, killing the identity of John Stonehouse and resurrecting himself with a completely new identity.
[00:14:27] Few people bought this excuse.
[00:14:30] After some tense diplomatic negotiations, he was eventually extradited to Britain in July of 1975, 8 months after he was found in Melbourne.
[00:14:41] And there was this utterly bizarre situation in which he was both on trial for the crime of conspiracy, fraud and theft AND acting as an MP, a member of parliament.
[00:14:56] Under normal circumstances, the Labour party would have most likely dismissed him immediately, but they had a very small majority in parliament, a majority of only three MPs.
[00:15:09] It was a very tense situation, and although he might have committed a serious crime, they couldn’t risk losing him as an MP otherwise they risked losing political power.
[00:15:22] Stonehouse clearly thought he was going to get away with it, and he even proudly announced at his criminal trial that he didn’t need to be represented by a professional lawyer. Despite having no legal training, he was going to represent himself.
[00:15:38] It didn’t work.
[00:15:39] He was found guilty and sent to prison.
[00:15:43] And this had knock-on consequences for British politics. It meant that he had to resign as an MP, Labour lost its majority and had to form a coalition with the Liberals, which–some argue–cleared the path for Margaret Thatcher’s route to power.
[00:16:02] He ended up serving just three years in prison, and was released early because of good behaviour and health problems.
[00:16:10] He died in 1988 at the age of 62, and to his last breath he insisted that he had done nothing wrong, and that he certainly had not been a Czech spy.
[00:16:23] Whether this is true or not, I cannot tell you, but what is undoubtedly true is that this is the story of a man who could have had it all, perhaps would have had it all, but managed to blow it in the most spectacular fashion.
[00:16:39] He said he'd been overwhelmed and had created a parallel personality for himself.
[00:16:45] It certainly seems that he had lost all grip on reality.
[00:16:50] He assumed that he could keep both his marriage and his lover, that he could start a new life for himself unnoticed, that he could simply “kill” John Stonehouse and re-emerge as Clive Mildoon.
[00:17:04] Perhaps the greatest example of his losing all grip on reality was that he thought he would get away with it.
[00:17:13] OK then, that is it for today's episode on John Stonehouse, the potential future prime minister who faked his own death.
[00:17:20] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that you've learnt something new.
[00:17:24] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:17:27] Are there similar stories of politicians getting into trouble and resorting to desperate measures in your country?
[00:17:33] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:17:40] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:17:45] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about the story of a man called John Stonehouse.
[00:00:28] He was a charismatic British politician, once even tipped to be Prime Minister, who made a series of very bad decisions.
[00:00:37] I won’t give too much away, but this is a story that involves politics, the cold war, sexual affairs, secrets, spies, a beach in Miami and more.
[00:00:49] OK then, the story of John Stonehouse.
[00:00:54] In the winter of 1974, Britain was a nation grappling with uncertainty and upheaval.
[00:01:02] It was a time of economic strife and political instability, which saw two general elections in the same year.
[00:01:10] Labour’s Harold Wilson had managed to secure a tenuous grip on power in October, following a hung parliament in February.
[00:01:19] The spectre of industrial action loomed large, with miners’ strikes crippling the nation and leading to the implementation of the three-day working week in an attempt to conserve electricity.
[00:01:34] Amidst this backdrop of turmoil, two high-profile disappearances captured the public’s imagination and dominated newspaper headlines.
[00:01:46] The first was one you may remember from episode number 354, or indeed from a recent interview I did on Luke’s English Podcast, that of Lord Lucan.
[00:01:58] He was the aristocratic gambler who vanished in November 1974 following the brutal murder of his children’s nanny, Sandra Rivett.
[00:02:09] Lucan’s car was found abandoned, spattered with blood, but the man himself seemed to have vanished into thin air.
[00:02:20] Just 12 days later, in November 1974, the nation was stunned once more when John Stonehouse, a former Labour minister and MP, mysteriously disappeared.
[00:02:35] Stonehouse was presumed drowned, or even eaten by sharks, after his clothes were found neatly folded on a Miami beach.
[00:02:46] Both men had disappeared into thin air. Had they died at sea in tragic accidents, had they killed themselves out of shame of what they had done?
[00:02:56] Or was there another explanation?
[00:03:00] The case of John Stonehouse seemed to be more clear cut, more obvious, and indeed he was declared dead, and his obituary was published in the newspapers.
[00:03:12] The case of Lord Lucan was less so, and he was the chief suspect in a brutal murder.
[00:03:20] Police around the world were told to keep a look out for a tall, handsome British man with a smooth, polished accent. He might have changed appearance, he might have even changed name, and he would probably be behaving in an unusual way.
[00:03:37] On the other side of the world, in Melbourne Australia, in December of 1974, a bank clerk did notice something a little odd.
[00:03:48] A tall and handsome British man had come into the bank one day and made a large withdrawal, only to stroll across the street and go into another bank.
[00:04:00] The man had given his name as Clive Mildoon, and he seemed to have all of the required documents.
[00:04:08] But something seemed off, something just didn’t feel right.
[00:04:14] She asked around and heard from an associate working in the other bank that the tall Englishman had given his name as “Joseph Markham”, not Clive Mildoon, but again he seemed to have all of the required documents.
[00:04:30] The teller had read about the murdered nanny and the fugitive British aristocrat, and suspected “Clive Mildoon” and “Joseph Markham” were in fact Lord Lucan.
[00:04:42] She called the police, and several days later the tall, handsome man was tracked down and stopped by the police. The Australians had contacted their British counterparts before making the arrest, to ask how they could confirm whether it was indeed Lord Lucan.
[00:05:01] There was a way, they had been told.
[00:05:04] Ask him to pull down his trousers, the British police instructed them.
[00:05:09] Lucan had a large scar, 30 centimetres long, on his right thigh. Nobody could cover that up. Find the scar and you’ve found Lucan.
[00:05:21] So the Australian police politely asked this man, Clive Mildoon, to pull down his trousers.
[00:05:29] To their surprise, there was no scar.
[00:05:32] The man was not Lord Lucan, but if he wasn’t the disappeared suspected murderer, who was he?
[00:05:40] It was only after they consulted photographs of the other high-profile disappearance that year that they made the connection. Clive Mildoon was the spitting image, he was an exact match, for John Stonehouse, the Labour politician who had either drowned or been eaten by sharks off the coast of Miami a month prior.
[00:06:03] Upon further questioning, Clive Mildoon cracked. Or rather, John Stonehouse admitted that there was no Mildoon. He had faked his own death and had been living in Australia under a fake name.
[00:06:19] He was brought back to Britain, bizarrely was allowed to continue as a member of parliament before being sent to prison a year and a half later.
[00:06:28] And to think, this was a man who many had tipped to become the British Prime Minister.
[00:06:36] According to his university classmates, he had had his eyes set on the top job since he was a young man. He came from a politically active family - his father was a trade union leader and his mother was the mayor of Southampton, a city on the south coast of England.
[00:06:55] John Stonehouse had strong political beliefs from a young age, and joined the British Labour party at the age of 16.
[00:07:04] After a stint in Uganda, where he worked with co-operative businesses, he entered the world of politics, and successfully won a seat as an MP, a member of parliament, at the age of 32.
[00:07:18] He was charismatic, decisive, and principled.
[00:07:22] People hung on his every word, and soon he found that people clung to him, believing that this was not just a future leader of the Labour party, but a future British Prime Minister.
[00:07:35] His political rise was not stellar, but he was rewarded with increasing responsibility. He became the Minister of State for Technology and then something called the “Postmaster General”, which was a political role related to the post office.
[00:07:52] When the Labour party then lost the election in 1970 his ministerial career was over, but he remained a member of parliament, representing the constituency of Wednesbury, in north Birmingham.
[00:08:07] He also had a busy life outside of politics.
[00:08:11] He had got involved in numerous business interests, even attempting to start his own bank and profit from London’s property boom.
[00:08:19] He was well-known around London for his snappy style, being well-dressed, good looking and stylish, and he had all of the trimmings of a wealthy and successful businessman.
[00:08:32] But a combination of bad luck and poor judgement had meant that several of these businesses were heavily in debt, and Stonehouse owed today’s equivalent of millions of pounds.
[00:08:47] He might have looked the part, but his finances were a mess.
[00:08:53] On a personal level, he had also made some bad decisions. He had been married since 1948, since he was 23. His wife had stood by him while he pursued his political ambitions, and the pair had two daughters together.
[00:09:10] But some time in the late 1960s he had started an affair with his secretary, a woman 21 years his junior. His wife had discovered the affair, was understandably furious, and had threatened to leave him.
[00:09:27] So, he was in deep financial trouble, his marriage was in tatters, and he was having a now open affair with his secretary, who he had refused to leave even after his wife had discovered the affair.
[00:09:42] His political ambitions had also been scuppered, they were over, because the then Labour leader, Harold Wilson, had decided that Stonehouse was “corruptible”, that he could be corrupted.
[00:09:56] And it is here that we must go into some controversial territory.
[00:10:02] It would later be alleged that Stonehouse had been spying for Czechoslovakia since the late 1960s.
[00:10:09] He had been passing the Czechs information about British technology, he had been asking questions in parliament that his Czech handlers had passed him, he was a full-on spy, although it was never agreed how effective a spy he was.
[00:10:24] He had, reportedly, been targeted right at the start of his political career because the Czechoslovakian intelligence agency had thought that this was a man who was “on the up”, someone who could in theory ascend right to the top of British politics, becoming Prime Minister.
[00:10:43] If they got him young, then by the time he was at the top he would be an invaluable asset.
[00:10:50] He had, again reportedly, been compromised because Czechoslovakian intelligence agents had taken photographs of him in bed with another woman, and had threatened to show these to his wife.
[00:11:03] What’s more, they had paid him handsomely, which partially helped explain his unusually lavish lifestyle.
[00:11:12] Now, I should add that he always denied this, and his daughter vehemently denied it in a book from 2021. He was no spy, she says, he was a “rabid anti-communist”, and the claims that he was one come from his political enemies.
[00:11:30] Unfortunately for Stonehouse, and for his daughter, there is some evidence to suggest that he was passing secrets to the Czechs. There is a photograph of him strolling around London with a well-known Czech spy, and there is the testimony of a high-ranking Czech spy, who had no discernible motive to lie.
[00:11:52] Anyway, spy or no spy, John Stonehouse was in a bit of a pickle by 1974. He was drowning in debt, and was at risk of having to declare personal bankruptcy.
[00:12:07] And the UK isn’t quite as forgiving as countries like the United States when it comes to bankruptcy. If you declare bankruptcy in the UK there are several things you cannot do, including stand as an MP, as a member of parliament.
[00:12:23] So this was the backdrop to the “disappearance” of John Stonehouse.
[00:12:29] He was on holiday in Miami in November of 1974. He had had lunch with a business associate, and the pair had arranged to meet in the bar later that evening for a drink before dinner.
[00:12:42] Stonehouse had told his friend that he was going to go for a quick swim, and then perhaps do a bit of shopping for his wife and kids.
[00:12:51] Afternoon turned to evening and his friend sat waiting in the bar.
[00:12:57] But there was no sign of Stonehouse.
[00:13:01] His friend asked around, and the last anyone had seen of him was at about 4pm, at the hotel’s private beach. Stonehouse was in his swimming trunks, he had handed his clothes to an attendant, and waded out into the crystal clear water.
[00:13:20] And that was the last anyone had seen of him, until he was apprehended on the other side of the world, in Melbourne, just over a month later.
[00:13:31] It’s now believed that he swam a little out into the water and then swam along the shore to the beach of another hotel, retrieved his “getaway kit”, which he had stashed earlier, and then made a beeline for, he rushed to, Miami airport.
[00:13:49] He had a series of fake identities which he had created from recently deceased members of his constituency, so he was able to get onto flights undetected.
[00:14:00] And when he was finally apprehended in Australia, he insisted that he'd done nothing wrong. He said that he had been suffering a psychotic “episode” in which he was trying to escape the problems at home and that he had tried to commit “psychiatric suicide”, killing the identity of John Stonehouse and resurrecting himself with a completely new identity.
[00:14:27] Few people bought this excuse.
[00:14:30] After some tense diplomatic negotiations, he was eventually extradited to Britain in July of 1975, 8 months after he was found in Melbourne.
[00:14:41] And there was this utterly bizarre situation in which he was both on trial for the crime of conspiracy, fraud and theft AND acting as an MP, a member of parliament.
[00:14:56] Under normal circumstances, the Labour party would have most likely dismissed him immediately, but they had a very small majority in parliament, a majority of only three MPs.
[00:15:09] It was a very tense situation, and although he might have committed a serious crime, they couldn’t risk losing him as an MP otherwise they risked losing political power.
[00:15:22] Stonehouse clearly thought he was going to get away with it, and he even proudly announced at his criminal trial that he didn’t need to be represented by a professional lawyer. Despite having no legal training, he was going to represent himself.
[00:15:38] It didn’t work.
[00:15:39] He was found guilty and sent to prison.
[00:15:43] And this had knock-on consequences for British politics. It meant that he had to resign as an MP, Labour lost its majority and had to form a coalition with the Liberals, which–some argue–cleared the path for Margaret Thatcher’s route to power.
[00:16:02] He ended up serving just three years in prison, and was released early because of good behaviour and health problems.
[00:16:10] He died in 1988 at the age of 62, and to his last breath he insisted that he had done nothing wrong, and that he certainly had not been a Czech spy.
[00:16:23] Whether this is true or not, I cannot tell you, but what is undoubtedly true is that this is the story of a man who could have had it all, perhaps would have had it all, but managed to blow it in the most spectacular fashion.
[00:16:39] He said he'd been overwhelmed and had created a parallel personality for himself.
[00:16:45] It certainly seems that he had lost all grip on reality.
[00:16:50] He assumed that he could keep both his marriage and his lover, that he could start a new life for himself unnoticed, that he could simply “kill” John Stonehouse and re-emerge as Clive Mildoon.
[00:17:04] Perhaps the greatest example of his losing all grip on reality was that he thought he would get away with it.
[00:17:13] OK then, that is it for today's episode on John Stonehouse, the potential future prime minister who faked his own death.
[00:17:20] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that you've learnt something new.
[00:17:24] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:17:27] Are there similar stories of politicians getting into trouble and resorting to desperate measures in your country?
[00:17:33] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:17:40] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:17:45] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about the story of a man called John Stonehouse.
[00:00:28] He was a charismatic British politician, once even tipped to be Prime Minister, who made a series of very bad decisions.
[00:00:37] I won’t give too much away, but this is a story that involves politics, the cold war, sexual affairs, secrets, spies, a beach in Miami and more.
[00:00:49] OK then, the story of John Stonehouse.
[00:00:54] In the winter of 1974, Britain was a nation grappling with uncertainty and upheaval.
[00:01:02] It was a time of economic strife and political instability, which saw two general elections in the same year.
[00:01:10] Labour’s Harold Wilson had managed to secure a tenuous grip on power in October, following a hung parliament in February.
[00:01:19] The spectre of industrial action loomed large, with miners’ strikes crippling the nation and leading to the implementation of the three-day working week in an attempt to conserve electricity.
[00:01:34] Amidst this backdrop of turmoil, two high-profile disappearances captured the public’s imagination and dominated newspaper headlines.
[00:01:46] The first was one you may remember from episode number 354, or indeed from a recent interview I did on Luke’s English Podcast, that of Lord Lucan.
[00:01:58] He was the aristocratic gambler who vanished in November 1974 following the brutal murder of his children’s nanny, Sandra Rivett.
[00:02:09] Lucan’s car was found abandoned, spattered with blood, but the man himself seemed to have vanished into thin air.
[00:02:20] Just 12 days later, in November 1974, the nation was stunned once more when John Stonehouse, a former Labour minister and MP, mysteriously disappeared.
[00:02:35] Stonehouse was presumed drowned, or even eaten by sharks, after his clothes were found neatly folded on a Miami beach.
[00:02:46] Both men had disappeared into thin air. Had they died at sea in tragic accidents, had they killed themselves out of shame of what they had done?
[00:02:56] Or was there another explanation?
[00:03:00] The case of John Stonehouse seemed to be more clear cut, more obvious, and indeed he was declared dead, and his obituary was published in the newspapers.
[00:03:12] The case of Lord Lucan was less so, and he was the chief suspect in a brutal murder.
[00:03:20] Police around the world were told to keep a look out for a tall, handsome British man with a smooth, polished accent. He might have changed appearance, he might have even changed name, and he would probably be behaving in an unusual way.
[00:03:37] On the other side of the world, in Melbourne Australia, in December of 1974, a bank clerk did notice something a little odd.
[00:03:48] A tall and handsome British man had come into the bank one day and made a large withdrawal, only to stroll across the street and go into another bank.
[00:04:00] The man had given his name as Clive Mildoon, and he seemed to have all of the required documents.
[00:04:08] But something seemed off, something just didn’t feel right.
[00:04:14] She asked around and heard from an associate working in the other bank that the tall Englishman had given his name as “Joseph Markham”, not Clive Mildoon, but again he seemed to have all of the required documents.
[00:04:30] The teller had read about the murdered nanny and the fugitive British aristocrat, and suspected “Clive Mildoon” and “Joseph Markham” were in fact Lord Lucan.
[00:04:42] She called the police, and several days later the tall, handsome man was tracked down and stopped by the police. The Australians had contacted their British counterparts before making the arrest, to ask how they could confirm whether it was indeed Lord Lucan.
[00:05:01] There was a way, they had been told.
[00:05:04] Ask him to pull down his trousers, the British police instructed them.
[00:05:09] Lucan had a large scar, 30 centimetres long, on his right thigh. Nobody could cover that up. Find the scar and you’ve found Lucan.
[00:05:21] So the Australian police politely asked this man, Clive Mildoon, to pull down his trousers.
[00:05:29] To their surprise, there was no scar.
[00:05:32] The man was not Lord Lucan, but if he wasn’t the disappeared suspected murderer, who was he?
[00:05:40] It was only after they consulted photographs of the other high-profile disappearance that year that they made the connection. Clive Mildoon was the spitting image, he was an exact match, for John Stonehouse, the Labour politician who had either drowned or been eaten by sharks off the coast of Miami a month prior.
[00:06:03] Upon further questioning, Clive Mildoon cracked. Or rather, John Stonehouse admitted that there was no Mildoon. He had faked his own death and had been living in Australia under a fake name.
[00:06:19] He was brought back to Britain, bizarrely was allowed to continue as a member of parliament before being sent to prison a year and a half later.
[00:06:28] And to think, this was a man who many had tipped to become the British Prime Minister.
[00:06:36] According to his university classmates, he had had his eyes set on the top job since he was a young man. He came from a politically active family - his father was a trade union leader and his mother was the mayor of Southampton, a city on the south coast of England.
[00:06:55] John Stonehouse had strong political beliefs from a young age, and joined the British Labour party at the age of 16.
[00:07:04] After a stint in Uganda, where he worked with co-operative businesses, he entered the world of politics, and successfully won a seat as an MP, a member of parliament, at the age of 32.
[00:07:18] He was charismatic, decisive, and principled.
[00:07:22] People hung on his every word, and soon he found that people clung to him, believing that this was not just a future leader of the Labour party, but a future British Prime Minister.
[00:07:35] His political rise was not stellar, but he was rewarded with increasing responsibility. He became the Minister of State for Technology and then something called the “Postmaster General”, which was a political role related to the post office.
[00:07:52] When the Labour party then lost the election in 1970 his ministerial career was over, but he remained a member of parliament, representing the constituency of Wednesbury, in north Birmingham.
[00:08:07] He also had a busy life outside of politics.
[00:08:11] He had got involved in numerous business interests, even attempting to start his own bank and profit from London’s property boom.
[00:08:19] He was well-known around London for his snappy style, being well-dressed, good looking and stylish, and he had all of the trimmings of a wealthy and successful businessman.
[00:08:32] But a combination of bad luck and poor judgement had meant that several of these businesses were heavily in debt, and Stonehouse owed today’s equivalent of millions of pounds.
[00:08:47] He might have looked the part, but his finances were a mess.
[00:08:53] On a personal level, he had also made some bad decisions. He had been married since 1948, since he was 23. His wife had stood by him while he pursued his political ambitions, and the pair had two daughters together.
[00:09:10] But some time in the late 1960s he had started an affair with his secretary, a woman 21 years his junior. His wife had discovered the affair, was understandably furious, and had threatened to leave him.
[00:09:27] So, he was in deep financial trouble, his marriage was in tatters, and he was having a now open affair with his secretary, who he had refused to leave even after his wife had discovered the affair.
[00:09:42] His political ambitions had also been scuppered, they were over, because the then Labour leader, Harold Wilson, had decided that Stonehouse was “corruptible”, that he could be corrupted.
[00:09:56] And it is here that we must go into some controversial territory.
[00:10:02] It would later be alleged that Stonehouse had been spying for Czechoslovakia since the late 1960s.
[00:10:09] He had been passing the Czechs information about British technology, he had been asking questions in parliament that his Czech handlers had passed him, he was a full-on spy, although it was never agreed how effective a spy he was.
[00:10:24] He had, reportedly, been targeted right at the start of his political career because the Czechoslovakian intelligence agency had thought that this was a man who was “on the up”, someone who could in theory ascend right to the top of British politics, becoming Prime Minister.
[00:10:43] If they got him young, then by the time he was at the top he would be an invaluable asset.
[00:10:50] He had, again reportedly, been compromised because Czechoslovakian intelligence agents had taken photographs of him in bed with another woman, and had threatened to show these to his wife.
[00:11:03] What’s more, they had paid him handsomely, which partially helped explain his unusually lavish lifestyle.
[00:11:12] Now, I should add that he always denied this, and his daughter vehemently denied it in a book from 2021. He was no spy, she says, he was a “rabid anti-communist”, and the claims that he was one come from his political enemies.
[00:11:30] Unfortunately for Stonehouse, and for his daughter, there is some evidence to suggest that he was passing secrets to the Czechs. There is a photograph of him strolling around London with a well-known Czech spy, and there is the testimony of a high-ranking Czech spy, who had no discernible motive to lie.
[00:11:52] Anyway, spy or no spy, John Stonehouse was in a bit of a pickle by 1974. He was drowning in debt, and was at risk of having to declare personal bankruptcy.
[00:12:07] And the UK isn’t quite as forgiving as countries like the United States when it comes to bankruptcy. If you declare bankruptcy in the UK there are several things you cannot do, including stand as an MP, as a member of parliament.
[00:12:23] So this was the backdrop to the “disappearance” of John Stonehouse.
[00:12:29] He was on holiday in Miami in November of 1974. He had had lunch with a business associate, and the pair had arranged to meet in the bar later that evening for a drink before dinner.
[00:12:42] Stonehouse had told his friend that he was going to go for a quick swim, and then perhaps do a bit of shopping for his wife and kids.
[00:12:51] Afternoon turned to evening and his friend sat waiting in the bar.
[00:12:57] But there was no sign of Stonehouse.
[00:13:01] His friend asked around, and the last anyone had seen of him was at about 4pm, at the hotel’s private beach. Stonehouse was in his swimming trunks, he had handed his clothes to an attendant, and waded out into the crystal clear water.
[00:13:20] And that was the last anyone had seen of him, until he was apprehended on the other side of the world, in Melbourne, just over a month later.
[00:13:31] It’s now believed that he swam a little out into the water and then swam along the shore to the beach of another hotel, retrieved his “getaway kit”, which he had stashed earlier, and then made a beeline for, he rushed to, Miami airport.
[00:13:49] He had a series of fake identities which he had created from recently deceased members of his constituency, so he was able to get onto flights undetected.
[00:14:00] And when he was finally apprehended in Australia, he insisted that he'd done nothing wrong. He said that he had been suffering a psychotic “episode” in which he was trying to escape the problems at home and that he had tried to commit “psychiatric suicide”, killing the identity of John Stonehouse and resurrecting himself with a completely new identity.
[00:14:27] Few people bought this excuse.
[00:14:30] After some tense diplomatic negotiations, he was eventually extradited to Britain in July of 1975, 8 months after he was found in Melbourne.
[00:14:41] And there was this utterly bizarre situation in which he was both on trial for the crime of conspiracy, fraud and theft AND acting as an MP, a member of parliament.
[00:14:56] Under normal circumstances, the Labour party would have most likely dismissed him immediately, but they had a very small majority in parliament, a majority of only three MPs.
[00:15:09] It was a very tense situation, and although he might have committed a serious crime, they couldn’t risk losing him as an MP otherwise they risked losing political power.
[00:15:22] Stonehouse clearly thought he was going to get away with it, and he even proudly announced at his criminal trial that he didn’t need to be represented by a professional lawyer. Despite having no legal training, he was going to represent himself.
[00:15:38] It didn’t work.
[00:15:39] He was found guilty and sent to prison.
[00:15:43] And this had knock-on consequences for British politics. It meant that he had to resign as an MP, Labour lost its majority and had to form a coalition with the Liberals, which–some argue–cleared the path for Margaret Thatcher’s route to power.
[00:16:02] He ended up serving just three years in prison, and was released early because of good behaviour and health problems.
[00:16:10] He died in 1988 at the age of 62, and to his last breath he insisted that he had done nothing wrong, and that he certainly had not been a Czech spy.
[00:16:23] Whether this is true or not, I cannot tell you, but what is undoubtedly true is that this is the story of a man who could have had it all, perhaps would have had it all, but managed to blow it in the most spectacular fashion.
[00:16:39] He said he'd been overwhelmed and had created a parallel personality for himself.
[00:16:45] It certainly seems that he had lost all grip on reality.
[00:16:50] He assumed that he could keep both his marriage and his lover, that he could start a new life for himself unnoticed, that he could simply “kill” John Stonehouse and re-emerge as Clive Mildoon.
[00:17:04] Perhaps the greatest example of his losing all grip on reality was that he thought he would get away with it.
[00:17:13] OK then, that is it for today's episode on John Stonehouse, the potential future prime minister who faked his own death.
[00:17:20] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that you've learnt something new.
[00:17:24] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:17:27] Are there similar stories of politicians getting into trouble and resorting to desperate measures in your country?
[00:17:33] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:17:40] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:17:45] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
