Lord Grade of Yarmouth – Chair

Ofcom

Riverside House

2a Southwark Bridge Road

London SE1 9HA

27 May 2022

Dear Lord Grade,

“The Spy Who Died Twice” – Channel 4 - documentary broadcast 9pm, 9 May 2022

Producers: Firecrest Films Ltd and Typer Productions

On the producer/director’s website typerproductions.com, I am told that over 800,000 viewers watched this documentary about my father, John Stonehouse – ex Labour party government minister. And no doubt many will also watch it on All 4. All these people will come away with the impression that John Stonehouse was a spy. At 1:25 minutes words on screen state “New evidence reveals how John Stonehouse spied for the Soviet Bloc while he was a minister” and at 45:45 the words on screen say “The Czech Government’s 500-page intelligence file on Stonehouse confirms him as the only known minister to have worked for an adversarial power.”

I am writing to you directly because I believe this to be a political issue in that branding a Labour politician a communist “Spy” could cause negativity and suspicion to fall over Labour Party politicians in general, and because this subject is a part of British history and deserves to the treated honestly and fairly.

I am making this complaint under Section 7 of your Guidelines, Fairness, because I believe the director and producers of this documentary have misrepresented the Czech documents shown and have omitted information known to them which conflicts with their overall presentation of the so-called facts. I also suspect that they have edited commentary so that “The Spy” narrative can be maintained throughout. 

The numerical timings at the left of each complaint indicate the minutes into the programme as shown on All 4:

2:20 Narrator says “then became Minister of Aviation”, followed by voice recording of John Stonehouse saying “my talks with the Czechs were exceptionally frank” without explaining that his talks were about selling the Czech commercial airline, CSA, British-built VC-10 planes. Given that the entire programme is about a “Spy”, taking this quote about talking frankly with the Czechs out of the context of actually being involved in government export business leads the viewer to perceive these “talks” to be about clandestine issues. (See also 26:59)

14:24 Dr Daniela Richterova is introduced as professor of intelligence studies. I have been in correspondence with Dr Richteova who told me, in writing, that the Stb file contains no state secrets. She is also on record as saying the file contains no classified information and no incriminating signatures. I am curious to know why this crucial opinion of Dr Richterova is not reflected in her commentary, which continues throughout, and whether any such recorded statement by her has been cut out of the programme thus allowing the director to create a narrative more in line with the title, which includes the word “Spy”.  

15:26 Interview with defector Josef Frolik. In this interview, but not shown in the documentary, Frolik says that 40 of the 45 personnel at the Czech embassy were spies. There is no questioning by the producers/director as to how anyone doing legitimate business with the Czechs are supposed to judge who are the real diplomats and who are StB spies masquerading as diplomats. 

16:06 Shows Czech document from file with number 174 at top right corner. This is in fact StB document number 43075_43075_000_0435. The director has cut this document under his date of birth on line two, “1925”, not showing the fourth line which details my father’s address incorrectly as “22 Aldwyne Road” – as you can see from the actual document below. And the narration does not say why this incorrect address was so significant.  

According the the StB file, detailed in sixteen separate reports, my father was called to meetings with StB agents by sending a cutting from The Times newspaper to his home address, with the printed date showing. Meetings would supposedly be a week hence. The time was always lunchtime, and the location would be, by default, Beals restaurant on Holloway Road, and if the Roman numeral “II” was put by the date, that would indicate they wanted to meet him at the Black Horse pub in Catford, south London. The date of this document is 15 November 1961, after the StB agents said they recruited John Stonehouse – so the obvious question is, if he was an agent for the StB and expecting cuttings from The Times to indicate meeting dates, why didn’t he give them his correct address for the cuttings to be sent to? And if it was established that the wrong address was being used, why didn’t my father or the StB spies correct it? Winstone doesn’t raise this as an issue as to the veracity of the file. In fact, over the entire 12 year period of this file, the StB never once had our correct address. The director Keely Winstone is well aware of this because she has read my book John Stonehouse, My Father – the true story of the runaway MP, published July 2021. By omitting this crucial detail – evident in sixteen separate reports – Winstone has been disingenuous so that she can keep to the narrative she has chosen: Stonehouse was a “Spy”. This is unfair and imbalanced reporting.

16:33 Immediately after a voiced clip of Vlado Koudelka saying “I have the impression he will accept the invitation at any time” there is a graphic of a signed letter my father wrote to Koudelka rearranging a meeting. What the director has not made clear here, or even mentioned anywhere in this documentary, is that my father met the Czechs to arrange the twinning of his constituency of Wednesbury (from 1957 to 1974, when boundary changes made it Walsall North) with the Czech town of Kladno (where there is a street called Wednesbury still today). This letter, document 21968_43075_000_0007, is dated 18 November 1958, over a year before the Czech agents said they recruited my father, and relates to adjacent document 0006 regarding the same meeting. These are the only two signatures of my father in the file. The film then continues showing a brief glimpse of the top of the following document dated 19 November (43075_43075_000_0099):

Keely Winstone knows perfectly well that many of the documents in this file pertain to the twinning of Wednesbury with Kladno, including this document which states at the end “Dale jsme hovorili o vymene delagaci mezi Wednesbury a Kladnem - vyrizuji po linil MZV,” which translates into “We also talked about the exchange of delegation between Wednesbury and Kladno - I will handle the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” My complaint is that Winstone has chosen to completely omit the innocent reason my father met Koudelka, the twinning of his constituency, and has put clips together to create a false impression of clandestine collaboration for the purpose of spying.

16:40 Film clips of the Hungarian Restaurant, White Tower, and Café Royal, interspersed with reports saying Stonehouse met the Stb agents at these places, with the voice of Daniela Richterova saying that StB agents had to somehow befriend their UK contacts - in which she doesn’t say anything about my father, speaking in general terms only. At 16:49 Winstone has cropped the date out of a letter from my father saying “I am sorry I was unable to come along …” – which, in the context of these photos of restaurants and reports saying the StB agent met my father at these locations, makes it look as if my father was involved in those other meetings when, in fact, that letter is document 21968_43075_000_0006, referred to above, regarding the rearranging of the meeting at the Hungarian Restaurant on 19/11/58 to discuss the twinning of Wednesbury and Kladno. The juxtaposition of this letter, implicating my father in meetings other than the Hungarian Restaurant meeting, is deliberate and disingenuous. Keely Winstone knows perfectly well that there are only two letters to Koudelka relating to one meeting, but she has split the context of those two letters to spread the ‘proof’ of his involvement in a multitude of meetings. This is all about how a director cuts the film – and to do so in this manner is not an honest representation of either the documents or the events. 

17:02 Shows letter from Lennox-Boyd’s office dated 4 June 1959 regarding Nigeria. Winstone is well aware of the context of this letter which I fully explain in my book (first published July 2021). I have sent you a copy of the paperback edition as a supplement to this complaint as this Lennox-Boyd letter is a subject too lengthy for a letter, and it is discussed over four pages, 280-283. By ignoring this context Winstone has misrepresented the facts.

17:09 The Nigeria letter is then immediately followed by a voiced StB agent saying my father agreed to receiving a Christmas present of £50 for the “intervention” (six months earlier) and the following graphic of an StB report dated 10 December 1959, document 43075_43075_000_0151, is shown: 

This document in fact says the following: “Incoming correspondence 642/11980 Received 10 Dec. 1959: At the meeting, Kolon agreed to receive the Christmas present as a monetary fee for asking questions in parliament. I propose that Kugler hand him over 50 pounds at the meeting on 21 Dec. Written up by Hanč”. But there is no evidence that my father asked questions in parliament on behalf of the Czechs - a fact easily established because every word my father ever said in the House of Commons can be viewed at Historic Hansard online, and nor is there any evidence that he received a penny from them. There is, however, evidence from the Czech defector Josef Frolik that the StB agents in London fabricated British “agents” and “contacts” for the purpose of pretending to pay them monies which the StB agents then put in their own pockets (see my book pages 271-272.) Winstone is aware of the Josef Frolik book, The Frolik Defection, where this device to extract money from central office in Prague was employed. For her not to mention any of this is disingenuous to say the least. At no point does she question the veracity of the Czech spies.

17:09 The following graphic is shown of document 43075_000_0023, dated 1 March 1960:

This is a report to the Minister of the Interior Rudolf Barak, possibly the most dangerous man in Czechoslovakia at the time. From page 2, red highlighting is given to the words in para 3): “Stonehouse accepted principles of conspiracy and to obey by them”: 

The veracity of the London StB agents is never questioned, even when the documents themselves raise issues of truth. For example, Keely Winstone could have turned to another report to Rudolf Barak in the file dated 22 May 1961, document 43075_43075_000_0373:

On page 2 of this report shown below, document 0375, it says “Schuzka bude vyvolana stanovenym konspirativnim zpusobem (zaslanim vystrizku z TIMESu na KOLONovu adresu) na pevne misto schuzky. Tento zpusob vyvolani schuzky byl jiz proveren” which translates as “The meeting will be called in a conspiratorial manner (by sending a clipping from the TIMES to KOLON's address) to a fixed meeting place. This method of invoking the meeting has already been tested.” But the Czech agents never had our address so no meetings could have been “called in a conspiratorial manner”. The only address they had during the entire duration of this file was “22 Aldwyne Road” and we never lived there. The London StB agents were lying. And to the Minister of the Interior no less. So why should Keely Winstone believe anything they said? This is the ‘pick and mix’ method of documentary making – picking the bits that fit with your dramatic and lucrative narrative, and excluding the bits that conflict with your chosen narrative. This is not fair and balanced reporting.

18:50 An envelope is shown on screen, document 21968_43075_021_0014. This is a forgery, and is reproduced below: 

The handwriting on this envelope is not my father’s, even given it is in capital letters and one could say the handwriting may want to be disguised. My 91 year old mother, who is still mentally sharp as a tack, transcribed my father’s handwriting for 25 years and can confirm this handwriting bears no relation to my father’s. If Keely Winstone has not acquired an opinion from a handwriting expert then that would be a dishonest use of this envelope in her documentary because she knows from my book that the Stonehouse family, who have a multitude of handwritten sources to compare it with, know this envelope to be a forgery. She needs to produce any such handwriting opinion acquired prior to broadcast because if she cannot do so, putting this item in a documentary is a disgrace.



18:52 immediately following the envelope another forgery is shown, a note saying “P.H. Thursday impossible suggest Tuesday In haste”. I urge you to look at this in the documentary and compare it with the original document 21968_43075_020_0013 shown below:

In the original, but curiously less so in the documentary, one of the tell-tale signs of forgery is evident in the way the ink does not flow and one gets places where the writer has stopped to have a think and the next letter has more ink, as in the “u” of Tuesday. The capital “T” of Tuesday has a space between the top bar and the downward stroke, reminiscent of the big gap of the “T” in “GATE” in the envelope above. This non-capitalised handwriting again bears no relation to that of my father, as I have said in my book and Keely Winstone knows.

19:22 Report showing meeting at “Luccullus” restaurant, Mincing Lane. Red highlighting has been added under the words, which are voiced, “Kolon provided short but valuable report on Tanganyika” – but there is no such report in the file to confirm this assertion.

19:26 A report is shown saying that on 8 December 1961 £100 was put in my father’s car on Eden Street, N.W.1, with the car being parked between 8pm and 9.30pm. Winstone doesn’t explain how my father could get from Eden Street at 9.30pm to Dar es Salaam in Tanganyika for the independence day celebrations on the morning of 9 December, given that it is over 7,000 kilometers away, three hours ahead, and would require a change of plane in Cairo. Even today, 60 years later, the shortest flight time is 13.5 hours. 

25:21 Here’s another missed opportunity to explain my father’s connection with the Czechs in that his constituency was twinned with Kladno for 15 years by this time, and he had been trying to sell them VC-10 planes, arranging a test flight in Prague in 1965. Instead of saying any of that, we just hear my father saying “My relationships with the Czechs I value. I like Czechoslovakia, I had some very close connections there”. In the absence of any explanation about the legitimate innocent reasons for having close connections with the Czechs, the viewer is left to draw their own conclusions: his close connections were with spies. This is misleading the public.

26:59 Graphic with the words “In 1964 John Stonehouse is appointed Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Aviation”, followed by him saying “I will say this, my talks with the Czechs were exceptionally frank, they were very frank with me in regard to their requirements”, followed by a letter from Harold Wilson congratulating my father on his successful work on sales of British aircraft. Although the quote from my father is sandwiched between his appointment as PS at the Ministry of Aviation and his success in making export sales it does not explain that this quote is in regard to him having frank talks about VC-10 commercial aircraft sales. In the absence of that key context, the viewer is once again left again with the impression that he had “frank” talks with the Czechs while a Minister – and ask themselves for what purpose’? (See 2:20 where this clip/quote about “frank” talks was also used). I consider this juxtaposition of words/images unfair and misleading.

27:51 Photos of Stonehouse with Husak with Stonehouse saying “Certainly any relationship I had with Husak was absolutely official”: Husak was the translator and embassy contact for the VC1-10 talks, which are mentioned in the file in at least 20 documents so Keely Winstone could not have missed the reference to VC-10s but again, she leaves that out, thus not explaining why there were official talks. This and the other related omissions are deliberate and designed to paint a picture which is not accurate. That is unfair and once again misleads the viewer.



28:32 In the graphic of document 43075_43075_000_0051, below, red highlight is given to text in paragraph 2, lines 1-2, saying it says “I propose to increase Kolon’s reward to £1,500 a year”. However, the document itself doesn’t say that. This is the document, followed by a translation:

“In view of the strong prospects for intelligence gathering by KOLON, I propose giving him a fee in the amount of 1,500 pounds sterling. The reason for paying him this amount is that during the last three years, KOLON has not been paid a cash fee, and he is not willing to undertake the risk that comes with cooperation without it being adequately offset financially, taking into consideration his present standing in British political life. Paying that amount will meet all of the conditions of the agreement on our part, and it will be possible to exert strong pressure on him to make full use of his opportunities. An audio recording will be made of the meeting where he is paid the fee, and that will be highly compromising for KOLON and will prevent him from avoiding future cooperation without risking the loss of his political career, which is of vital interest to him.”

I believe Keely Winstone has chosen to misrepresent this document as saying “I propose to increase Kolon’s reward to £1,500 a year” rather than the actuality, “I propose giving him a fee in the amount of 1,500 pounds sterling. The reason for paying him this amount is that during the last three years, KOLON has not been paid a cash fee.” The £1,500 was supposedly £500 back pay for three years. Keely Winstone has done this to exaggerate the amount of money supposedly paid to my father. I believe she knows this because at 32:20 she quotes from a report by StB agent Karel Pravek, 20 January 1970, which also states “At the meeting on 9 August 1966, which was recorded, he accepted a fee of 1,500 pounds sterling for the past three years.” This is the only so-called payment of £1,500. For a full discussion of supposed payments please see my book pages 392-395.

I have included here the translation of this whole paragraph because it says “An audio recording will be made of the meeting where he is paid the fee,” and I think you should know that there is no physical recording with the file and other reports in the file say that my father’s voice was not captured. For example, document 43075_000_0061 says “The tape recording from the meeting with Hanc on August 9, 1966. Unfortunately, the record is very poor quality, because the soundstage of the restaurant where the meeting took place is very disturbing. The clearer (and only partially) is basically just a monologue by Hanc, while Twister's voice usually disappears completely.” There is of course no evidence this £1,500 was paid to my father, nor indeed evidence of any other payments. 

29:36 Reference to a supposed lunch meeting at the Boudoir Restaurant in Fulham Road on 1 February 1967. On this day my father was on the floor of the House of Commons speaking from 10:45am leading on the Ministry of Aviation (Dissolution Order); at 12:30 the House broke for lunch; and at 2:30pm he was answering oral questions on thirteen subjects to do with aviation. It was a busy day for him and his officials would have been keen to talk to him both after the morning sitting and before the afternoon sitting. It is hard to see how he would have time to leave the confines of Westminster on this particularly busy day.

32:20 Quoting from report by StB agent Karel Pravek 20 January 1970. On page 4 of this report (document 43075_000_0067) it says: “At the meeting on 9 August 1966, which was recorded, he accepted a fee of 1,500 pounds sterling for the past three years. However, the results of his intelligence gathering continued to be practically worthless.” It would have been fair for Winstone to use this quote in her documentary but of course what it says - “his intelligence gathering continued to be practically worthless”- does not suit her lucrative, not to say exploitative, “Spy” narrative.

You will perhaps have noticed from the documentary itself that nobody can say, yet alone prove, what classified information my father handed to the Czechs. That’s because there is none; ergo he was not a spy. Nevertheless, Keely Winstone has taken it upon herself to propagate this myth. I think she is just cashing in because “the spy” story sells. This is unfair to my father and our family, exploitative, and abusive, and that is why I am making this complaint.



Yours sincerely,

Julia Stonehouse 

c.c. Kevin Bakhurst – Group Director for Broadcasting and Online Content

Maggie Carver – Deputy Chair

Melanie Dawes – Chief Executive