March 22, 2013

Finest Hour 155, Summer 2012

Page 37

Television – Churchill’s “Cover-Up”

By David Freeman

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Professor Freeman teaches History at California State University Fullerton.

A New BBC Documentary titled “The Fall of Singapore” has been given predictably sensational attention in the predictably sensational New York Post [“The Traitor of Pearl Harbor” 27 May 2012]. The gist of the story is that as Prime Minister, Winston Churchill covered up the treachery of a British peer who had been discovered passing information to the Japanese before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

According to the Post, “when Churchill first learned of this longtime friend’s activities in 1941, he was terrified that the world would learn that he had been casually chatting about military secrets with a friend who was then passing them along to their enemy.”

The friend was William Forbes- Sempill, who had succeeded his father as the 19th Baron Sempill in 1934. Of Churchill and the Baron, Prof. Richard Aldrich of the University of Warwick is quoted as saying, “They were social friends,” and that the revelation was a “potential death knell” for Churchill:

“Sempill goes around for a cup of tea, Churchill’s talking about the war, and then Sempill goes to the Japanese Embassy to tell them what Churchill told him. If this comes into court, Churchill’s going to be tremendously embarrassed, because he’s been blabbing. He drinks a lot, and he’s very gregarious. Who knows what he said?” All of this is supposedly the product of “recently discovered” information.

Oh, really?

Eleven years ago in 2001 Sir Martin Gilbert published the following declassified document in volume three of The Churchill War Papers, page 1240:

WINSTON S. CHURCHILL TO ANTHONY EDEN
AND DESMOND MORTON [CHURCHILL PAPERS,
20, 36] 20 SEPTEMBER 1941. SECRET

I regard the attached [a report on the sources available to the Japanese Embassy] as most serious. At any moment we may be at war with Japan, and here are all these Englishmen, many of them respectable, two of whom I know personally, moving around collecting information and sending it to the Japanese Embassy. I cannot believe that the Master of Sempill and Commander McGrath have any idea of what their position would be on the morrow of a Japanese declaration of war. Immediate internment would be the least of their troubles. I consider Lord Swinton [Chairman of the Security Executive] should see them all and caution them, and require them to cease their activities, failing which other measures will have to be taken. Meanwhile, none of them must have access to any Government Department. It is possible for Lord Sempill to continue to be employed at the Admiralty, [but] I do
not know in what capacity.

“Some time ago I directed that the Japanese Embassy were to have no more facilities in London and about the country than, for instance, the American Embassy is accorded at the present time in Berlin. This should certainly carry with it the effectual closing down of the activities of this English nebula.

“Pray let me know what action can be taken.”

Clearly when Churchill first learned of Lord Sempill’s activities, which so far as the PM then knew were perfectly legal, he took immediate steps to shut down the supply line of information.

Evidently this long-public information has eluded both the filmmakers and the New York Post reporter, who also failed to discover that Sempill was no more than a very minor acquaintance of Churchill’s. As for Prof. Aldrich, does he really know so little about Churchill as to concoct fantasies about the Prime Minister regularly inviting around casual acquaintances for a cup of tea and
drunkenly revealing government secrets?

Possibly somebody connected with this story had been drinking, but it wasn’t Winston Churchill.