PROPOSED ITV STONEHOUSE DRAMA
To: ████████████@itv.com
08/11/21 10:27
Stonehouse Corr. Re Hayes Book to 2.11.21.docx.pdf
Dear ██████ and █████,
On Friday Ruth Kenley-Letts informed me that their proposed Stonehouse drama is to include the story-line "his involvement as a spy for the Czechs", saying that the narrative is based on their own research as well as contemporary reports of the time and books dealing with the events of the period. The 54-page pdf file I have attached contains my correspondence, to date, to the Editorial Legal Director at Hachette, the publishers of the 2021 Julian Hayes book
Stonehouse - Cabinet Minister, Fraudster, Spy. At the top of the document is my latest letter dated 2 November and at the end of the document an initial letter from my mother dated 7 October. This will by no means be the end of my communication with them as I have many more issues to raise regarding the spy accusation as well as other subjects not yet touched upon. As you can see from that file, there has been extensive misrepresentation in the Hayes book, and similar misrepresentation has been absolutely rife since 1974 in a plethora of articles and books as well as, in recent decades, internet sources, podcasts, etc.
As a family we have hitherto watched from a distance as writers and commentators have run with the "spy" narrative without having any evidence. And as we know so much about the source material we have been able to observe one person copy another with a little twist here and there, and pieces of information being spun into false narratives. Throughout all this we have yet to see one piece of evidence that my father was a spy, and just because there have been decades of cashing in on the "spy" narrative, that does not make it truthful.
Within the Hachette correspondence I refer to other documents. Some are embedded in the letters themselves, some are attached in the file I am sending you, and some StB documents that are referred to and were sent as attachments to Hachette are not included here as they have copyright issues. If you would like me to send them to you I will on the proviso that you will not distribute them without the express permission of the StB archives in Prague. Documents from the StB archives that are embedded within my correspondence also need to be treated as StB copyright. I have given all StB documents references in the correspondence, so you can alternatively acquire them from John Preston.
My reputation can be damaged by the contention that my father was a spy because in my book 'John Stonehouse, my father - the true story of the runaway MP' I say he was not a spy and my veracity and character can be brought into question. In addition my entire family have been and continue to be hurt by the spy claim, including not only my mother and siblings but Sheila and her son. In terms of damage, clearly a 3-part TV drama is of a far greater magnitude of seriousness than, for example, an article in a newspaper, or even a book. Millions of viewers will absorb your spy narrative, not only on the night of UK broadcast, but when available on other platforms, and in perpetuity.
In your 'Producers Handbook (October 2021)', pages 5-6, under 'Viewer Trust', it states: "Whatever the genre of programme, it should always be clear to viewers what it is they are watching, and truth must not be sacrificed to make programmes more entertaining or impactful" and "But programmes must not invent or fake events, or pass them off as being actuality, or present dramatised reconstructions of events as being actual events."
I am now formally making the complaint to ITV plc that the proposed John Preston drama is not intending to present the actuality.
In his lifetime, MI5 could find no evidence my father was a spy and since his death no de-classified documents have provided evidence. If the British government were never prepared to charge my father with the crime of treason, what gives John Preston, his producers, and ITV, the right to act as judge and jury? In any court of law evidence could be examined by the defence. However, you are collectively making extremely serious claims and plan to skip to the stage of financial exploitation without questioning. This is what I am contesting. The very least you owe the Stonehouse family is to provide documentary evidence that John Stonehouse was a spy. Certainly he met with persons at the Czech embassy as he a) twinned his constituency of Wednesbury with the Czech town of Kladno, and b) tried to sell them VC-10 commercial planes in his capacity as a minister - but that did not make him a spy. And if John Preston is prepared to claim that he was, he should also be prepared to substantiate that extremely serious claim with documentary evidence.
I am now insisting that John Preston's evidence is provided to me so that I can examine it and comment on it. It would be wholly unreasonable for you to exploit my family for your collective financial gain and cause the Stonehouse family so much damage and pain without first providing us with your justification for doing so.
Yours sincerely,
Julia Stonehouse.
ITV Stonehouse Drama
To: ████████████@itv.com
01/12/21 16:57
Dear ██████ and █████,
You do not appear to have read the PDF that I sent you of my correspondence to the publishers of Julian Hayes' book because had you done so I don't think you would write to me that Julian Hayes believes there is evidence my father was a spy. Julian Hayes has provided no evidence and has instead misrepresented both English and Czech documents in the StB file as well as government papers and, clearly, he would not have felt the need to 'doctor' the paperwork if he believed the file provided any actual evidence.
There are three sources of so-called 'evidence':
1. Before 2008 when the StB file became available to the public there was a great deal of 'gossip' - people cashing in on the spy narrative when they had absolutely no proof, but couldn't be argued with because the file was not then available for their narrative to be checked or challenged.
2. Christopher Andrew, author of Defence of the Realm
- the authorized history of MI5: Andrew has clearly not read the file otherwise he wouldn't dedicate so much of his text to a honey trap hypothesis when the file itself shows that no honey trap took place.
3. People who have seen the file but have not examined the documents with regard to their plausibility or veracity. They need to explain, to take just one example, why the only address for us in the file was "22 Aldwyne Road, N1" but we never lived there, although the StB agents claimed to be sending to that address cuttings from The Times
newspaper with the date showing, calling meetings a week hence. People who have seen the file and take it on face value need to explain why, if my father was an StB agent, he didn't give them his correct address so The Times
method could actually be employed, and why if there was a mistake in the address at the outset it was never corrected either by my father or the StB agents? The logical answer is that this whole 'modus operandi' never took place, despite the fact that the "22 Aldwyne Road" address and/or The Times
newspaper system is reported so many times in the file (see StB documents 43075_43075_000_: 0029/0043/0341/0363/0367/0375/0389/0391/0393/ 0407/ 0415/0427/0435/0541/0579/0585).
People with access to the file have not asked questions about its contents either because they can't be bothered and the subject of whether John Stonehouse was a spy is not of any particular interest to them, or because they don't want to examine the documents closely preferring to take the StB account on face value so they can cash in on the spy narrative. That is what Julian Hayes has done and, presumably, what John Preston is doing.
You say in your email of 17 November that there are "those" who believe there is evidence he was a spy but you cannot include Julian Hayes in that number, nor can you include Christopher Andrew's book, nor can you include people who have seen that there is a file but have not examined it closely enough to ascertain that it is full of 'holes' and does not in fact provide 'proof'. So, I am asking you again, would John Preston please provide the evidence that my father was a spy so I can examine it and comment on it. I can appreciate that, having seen the Hachette PDF he is reluctant to do so, but it is not acceptable for a writer to propagate a myth just because it is lucrative to do so and because he thinks he can get away with it.
When accusing a person of treason, 'belief' is not the issue - evidence is the issue and there is a great deal of evidence against
my father being a spy and the StB file itself provides that evidence. To ignore that is disingenuous, to say the very least. The file shows that meetings that were claimed to have occurred did not; that payments that were claimed to have been made were not; and the StB made forgeries to 'cover their tracks'. If John Preston is going to ignore all this just for the sake of 'a good story' and damage myself and my family in the process, I must tell you that I am prepared to take this matter further.
In your email you say 'factual drama' is based on true events but it appears John Preston, the producers Ruth Kenley-Letts and Ellie Wood, and ITV plc are not prepared to provide evidence for their version of truth. You say in your email that you are under no obligation to provide me with evidence so now please tell me under what law, Ofcom rule, or ITV editorial guideline you are basing this statement.
If ITV can say whatever they like about a person just because that person is dead and can't sue, I think we find ourselves in a dangerous situation. As I told John Preston and Ellie Wood on 16 September 2019, the Stonehouse family have been advised that we can pursue a case against the author, producers, and other persons involved, as well as the broadcaster ITV, at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasburg as precedent has been set in the case of Putiskin versus Ukraine (16882/03). In that case, the name of the father was almost unseen in the media being objected to and so the case was lost but in this case, with the entire 'Stonehouse' project being broadcast worldwide by ITV plc, we shall have a strong case to bring. Given that one cannot in UK law defame the dead because they no longer have a reputation to defend, I think it would be a valuable exercise on behalf of other people too, and long overdue, to assert the rights of deceased persons not to be exploited for the sake of a lucrative 'good story'.
If John Preston is basing his narrative on genuine evidence rather than on historical gossip and superficial and inadequate research then let him bring that forward. If he is not prepared to do so, the conclusion must be that he has no evidence.
Yours sincerely,
Julia Stonehouse
