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Airey Neave

Airey Middleton Sheffield Neave, DSO, OBE, MC, (23 January 1916 – 30 March 1979) was a British soldier, barrister and politician.

During World War II he was one of the few servicemen to escape from Colditz Castle. Later he became a Conservative politician sitting as Member of Parliament for Abingdon.

Neave was assassinated in 1979, in a car-bomb attack at a House of Commons carpark attributed to the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA).

Early life

Neave was the son of Sheffield Airey Neave (1879-1961), a well-known entomologist, and his wife Dorothy (d. 1943), daughter of Arthur Thomson Middleton. His father was the grandson of Sheffield Neave, third son of Sir Thomas Neave, 2nd Baronet (see Neave Baronets). He spent his early years in Knightsbridge in London, before moving to Beaconsfield. In 1929, he went to Eton College and went on to study law at Merton College, Oxford. Whilst at Eton, Neave wrote a prize-winning essay in 1933 examining the likely consequences of Adolf Hitler's rise to power and predicted war. He had earlier been to Germany and witnessed Nazi methods of gaining power. When he went to Oxford he purchased and read the full works of Carl von Clausewitz and when asked why, answered: "since war [is] coming, it [is] only sensible to learn as much as possible about the art of waging it". In 1938 Neave obtained a Third-class degree in Jurisprudence. By his own admission he did only the minimum of what was required whilst at Oxford regarding academic work.

Wartime service

Neave joined the Territorial Army and became an officer of the Royal Artillery in the regular British Army at the beginning of World War II. He was sent to France in February 1940 as part of a searchlight regiment. He was wounded and captured by the Germans in Calais on 23 May 1940. He was imprisoned at Oflag IX near Spangenberg and in February 1941 moved to Stalag XXa near Thorn in German-occupied western Poland. In April 1941 he escaped from Thorn with Norman Forbes. They were captured near Itow while trying to enter Soviet-controlled Poland and were briefly in the hands of the Gestapo. In May, they were both sent to Oflag IV-C (often referred to as Colditz Castle because of its location).

Neave made an attempt to escape from Colditz on 28 August 1941, but his poor German uniform disguise (fashioned from an RAF tunic dyed green, and a cap made out of a blanket - allegedly a bright green colour due to Neave being colour blind) led to him being captured while still within the castle (he passed one sentry post without being halted, but was stopped at the second). He tried again on 5 January 1942, again in disguise, together with Dutch officer Anthony Luteyn. Better uniforms and escape route (they made a quick exit from a theatrical production using the trap door beneath the stage) got them out of the prison and by train and on foot they made it to Switzerland via Leipzig, Ulm and Singen by 9 January 1942. He returned to Britain through France, Spain and Gibraltar and was the first British officer to make a "home run" from Colditz.

He was later recruited as an intelligence agent for MI9. While at MI9, he was the immediate superior of Michael Bentine. He also served with the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, investigating Krupp. As a well-known war hero - as well as a qualified lawyer with fluent German - he was honoured with the role of reading the indictments to the Nazi leaders on trial. He wrote several books about his war experiences including an account of the Nuremberg Trial.

Political career

Neave stood at the 1950 election in Thurrock and at Ealing North in 1951. He was elected for Abingdon in a by-election in June 1953, but his career was held back by a heart attack he suffered in 1959. In the early 1970s, Neave is alleged to have been involved with right-wing security service plots against Harold Wilson's Labour government, such as the Clockwork Orange project in Northern Ireland.

Airey Neave was a Governor of the Imperial College between 1963] and 1971 and was a member of the House of Commons select committee on Science and Technology between 1965 and 1970.

Edward Heath, when Chief Whip, was alleged to have told Neave that after he suffered his Heart Attack his career was finished but in his 1998 autobiography, Heath strongly denied ever making such a remark. He admitted that in December 1974 Neave had told him to stand down for the good of the party. During the final two months of 1974, Neave had asked Keith Joseph, William Whitelaw and Edward du Cann to stand against Heath, and said that in the case of any of them challenging for the party leadership, he would be their campaign manager. When all three refused to stand, Neave agreed to be the campaign manager for Margaret Thatcher's attempt to become leader of the Conservative Party, that was eventually victorious. When Thatcher was elected leader in February 1975, he was rewarded with the post of head of her private office. He was then appointed Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and was poised to attain the equivalent Cabinet position at the time of his death. In opposition, he was a strong supporter of Roy Mason, who took a hard line against both loyalist and Republican paramilitaries.

Death

Airey Neave was killed on 30 March 1979, when a car bomb fitted with a mercury tilt switch exploded under his car at 2.58pm as he drove out of the Palace of Westminster car park. Both of his legs were blown off and he died in hospital an hour after being freed from the wreckage. The Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), an Irish Republican organisation banned in the United Kingdom under anti-terrorism legislation claimed responsibility for the killing.

Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher led tributes to Neave saying: "He was one of freedom's warriors. No one knew of the great man he was, how great a man he was, except those nearest to him. He was staunch, brave, true, strong; but he was very gentle and kind and loyal. It's a rare combination of qualities. There's no one else who can quite fill them. I, and so many other people, owe so much to him and now we must carry on for the things he fought for and not let the people who got him triumph." Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan said: "No effort will be spared to bring the murderers to justice and to rid the United Kingdom of the scourge of terrorism." The INLA issued a statement regarding the killing in the August edition of The Starry Plough, saying that "In March, retired terrorist and supporter of capital punishment, Airey Neave, got a taste of his own medicine when an INLA unit pulled off the operation of the decade and blew him to bits inside the 'impregnable' Palace of Westminster. The nauseous Margaret Thatcher snivelled on television that he was an 'incalculable loss'—and so he was—to the British ruling class".

Neave's death came a few weeks before the 1979 general election which brought about a Conservative party victory and Margaret Thatcher to power as Prime Minister. Neave's wife Diana, whom he married 29 December 1942, was subsequently elevated to the House of Lords as Baroness Airey of Abingdon.

Neave's biographer Paul Routledge met with a member of the Irish Republican Socialist Party (the political wing of INLA) who was involved in the killing of Neave and who told Routledge that Neave "would have been very successful at that job [Northern Ireland Secretary]. He would have brought the armed struggle to its knees".

Conspiracy theories

The left wing politician Tony Benn records in his diary (17 February 1981) that a journalist from the New Statesman, Duncan Campbell, told him that he had received information from an intelligence agent two years previously that Neave had planned to have Benn assassinated if a Labour Government was elected, James Callaghan resigned and there was a possibility that Benn might be elected Party Leader in his place. Campbell claimed that the agent was ready to give his name and the New Statesman was going to print the story. Benn, however, discounted the validity of the story and wrote in his diary: "No one will believe for a moment that Airey Neave would have done such a thing". However the magazine printed the story on 20 February 1981, naming the agent as Lee Tracey. Tracey claimed to have met Neave and was asked to join a team of intelligence and security specialists which would "make sure Benn was stopped". Tracey planned a second meeting with Neave but Neave was killed before they could meet again.

Kevin Cahill, an Irish investigative journalist, claims Neave was on the verge of a massive overhaul of the security services, possibly involving a merger of MI5 and MI6 and arising from his belief in corruption in the security services. Cahill suggests a link between Neave's murder and Sir Richard Sykes' murder and the attempted murder of Christopher Tugendhat in December 1980. Cahill claims that Neave would have been head of the combined security services with Sykes and Tugendhat as his deputies, with Sykes responsible for foreign operations and Tugendhat responsible for home operations.

Cahill claims to have had a conversation with a drunken Neave on St. Patrick's Day 1979 in the foyer of the Irish embassy in London. Cahill had left a party and was waiting for a taxi. He saw Neave in the room and introduced himself to him as an admirer. Cahill claims that Neave was inebriated and responded "quite out of the blue" by saying "There are going to be changes here, big changes, soon. There is going to be cleaning of the stables...There has been serious corruption." Neave then said that there was "no use playing games. We have to win...We will win when the [corruption] is sorted out. Count on that." Cahill found Neave's remarks surprising because he seemed internally preoccupied with the UK, with his Northern Ireland brief "almost a sideline". Cahill also thought that Neave's mention of corruption meant Soviet penetration.

Whilst working in the House of Commons as Paddy Ashdown's research assistant Cahill claims to have had around six conversations with the security staff there. The most frequent remark was that "everyone knew" the story behind Neave's death but that no one could talk about it in detail because it would have been too dangerous. Cahill claims they did not believe INLA murdered Neave but that it was an "inside job".

Cahill concluded that Neave was murdered by the security services; MI6 agents working with the CIA because Neave sought to prosecute senior figures in the intelligence establishment for corruption.

Another person who did not accept the generally accepted version of events was Enoch Powell, the Ulster Unionist MP. Powell claimed in an interview with The Guardian on 9 January 1984 that the Americans had murdered Neave, along with Lord Mountbatten and Robert Bradford MP. He claimed the evidence came from a member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary with whom he had a conversation.

On 18 October 1986 Powell returned to the subject of Neave's death in a speech to Conservative students in Birmingham. He told them that INLA had not killed Neave, but that he had been assassinated by "MI6 and their friends". Powell claimed Neave's Northern Ireland policy had been one of integration with the rest of the UK and that the Americans feared that this process, if implemented by Neave, would have been irreversible. His murder, alleged Powell, was intended to make the British Government adopt a policy more acceptable to America in her aim of a united Ireland within NATO.