Bernard Floud

Bernard Francis Castle Floud (22 March, 1915 - 10 October, 1967) was a British farmer, television company executive and politician.

Before Parliament

Floud went to Gresham's School in Holt, Norfolk, and Wadham College, Oxford University. He served in the Army from 1939 to 1942, then as a wartime civil servant in the Ministry of Information from 1942 to 1945. With the end of war, he moved to the Board of Trade before leaving the Civil Service in 1951. He then became a farmer in Essex.

In 1937 Floud had joined the Labour Party. He was a Labour councillor in Kelvedon Hatch Parish Council from 1952 to 1961 and Ongar Rural District Council from 1952 to 1955. From 1955, he was an executive with Granada Television. He also fought Chelmsford for the Labour Party at the 1955 general election and Hemel Hempstead at the 1959 general election. He was Chairman of the Independent Television Labour Relations Committee in 1963.

Parliament and death

Floud was elected to Parliament in the 1964 general election for Acton, winning the marginal seat from the Conservatives with a majority of 2,599, and was re-elected in 1966 with an increased majority of 4,941. He was very depressed after the death of his wife Ailsa after a long illness in January 1967, and he too had suffered from ill-health for some time. In March he agreed to undergo psychiatric treatment, but had a relapse in June, and after a holiday in August he returned to his constituency work.

Harold Wilson had mentioned that he was considering appointing Floud to the government, and MI5 was asked to approve his security clearance. Although Wilson had a standing policy to deny MI5 the right to interrogate MPs, the service strenuously objected; Wilson subsequently allowed an interrogation after being sent a brief on Floud. Floud had been friends with many Communists while at Oxford, and was directly named by two separate inactive agents as having worked a spy in the past, handling recruitment. The interrogation by Peter Wright was intense, lasting two days and producing neither an admission nor denial of guilt, even when Wright explained that without any further clarification on the matter, MI5 would be forced to deny him the clearance for the appointment. [Wright, Peter and Paul Greengrass. "Spycatcher", Viking Press, 1987. p. 264-266.] He returned to work shortly after the conclusion of the second day of questioning, but upon leaving his Granada TV office he said he was 'unable to go on'. The next day, 10 October 1967, he killed himself by taking an overdose of barbiturates and also gassing himself with Carbon monoxide.

Acton was regained by the Conservatives in the subsequent by-election in March 1968.

In 1981, the author Chapman Pincher, in 'Their trade is treachery', alleged that Floud had been presented by MI5 with evidence that he had worked for the KGB and recruited others to its service. This was firmly rebutted in a letter to "The Times" by his sister-in-law Jean Floud, but was confirmed by Wright in 1987 upon the release of his autobiography, "Spycatcher".

References

* "Who's Who of British Members of Parliament", Volume IV
* "Who's Who 1967" (A & C. Black, London, 1967)
* "The Times", 14 October 1967
* "The Times", letter by Jean Floud, 30 March 1981

###@@@KEY@@@###succession box
title=Member of Parliament for Acton
years=1964–1967
before=Philip Holland
after=Kenneth Baker