Tom Driberg, Baron Bradwell

Thomas Edward Neil Driberg, Baron Bradwell PC (22 May 1905 – 12 August 1976) was a British journalist and politician who was an influential member on the left of the Labour Party from the 1950s to the 1970s. Because of his promiscuous sexuality and connections with gangsters, he has been described as having been "the most disreputable M.P. in the House". [Cullen, Pamela V., "A Stranger in Blood: The Case Files on Dr John Bodkin Adams", London, Elliott & Thompson, 2006, ISBN 1-904027-19-9]

Life

Tom Driberg was born at Crowborough, Sussex, to 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 fifteen. 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 under suspicion of working for MI5.

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. According to the Mitrokhin Archive, Driberg was targeted for blackmail by the KGB around this time, possibly in the belief that he was in fact the leader of the Labour Party. Driberg was photographed in a homosexual encounter during a visit to Moscow to interview his old friend Guy Burgess for a biography. Mitrokhin does not allege any espionage activites on Driberg's part but does claim that the KGB pressured Driberg into removing references to Burgess getting drunk from the biography. [ Andrew and Mitrokhin, 1999, p. 522-6]

He was created a Life peer, as Baron Bradwell, of Bradwell-juxta-Mare in the County of Essex, shortly before his death. His autobiography, "Ruling Passions", was published posthumously and disclosed the conflict between the three passions that drove his life: his homosexuality (he pursued casual and risky encounters compulsively, going cottaging and using rent boys [ Ball, 2004] ), 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." [ [http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-5316833.html A.N. Wilson in the London Evening Standard] ] . Driberg's will insisted that at his memorial service, the reader excoriate him for his sins rather than praise him for his virtues.

One connection Driberg wished to conceal was his early friendship with Aleister Crowley. [John Symonds, The King of the Shadow Realm (London: Duckworth, 1989) pp 407-415] 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. [Symonds pp 414-415]

References

ources

*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

* [http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRdribergT.htm Schoolnet: Tom Driberg]