Walter Guinness, 1st Baron Moyne

Walter Guinness was born in Dublin, Ireland, the third son of the 1st Earl of Iveagh. His family homes were at Farmleigh near Dublin, and at Elveden in Suffolk. At Eton, Guinness was elected head of 'Pop', a self-appointing group whose members have a status similar to school prefects, and was also appointed as Captain of Boats.[2]

On 24 June 1903, Guinness married Lady Evelyn Hilda Stuart Erskine (1883–1939), third daughter of Shipley Gordon Stuart Erskine, 14th Earl of Buchan. They had three children:

• Bryan Walter Guinness, 2nd Baron Moyne (born 27 October 1905, died 6 July 1992)
• Hon. Murtogh David Guinness (born 7 May 1913, died 30 January 2002)
• Hon. Grania Meve Rosaura Guinness (born 14 April 1920, died 15 January 2018), married Oswald Phipps, 4th Marquess of Normanby, and had issue, including Constantine Phipps, 5th Marquess of Normanby.[3][4]

Guinness joined the yeomanry regiment The Loyal Suffolk Hussars as a second lieutenant on 15 November 1899, and volunteered for service in the Second Boer War, commissioned as a lieutenant in the 44th (Suffolk) company of the 12th Battalion of the Imperial Yeomanry on 7 February 1900.[5][6][7] The company left London on the SS Cornwall for South Africa in early March 1900,[8] and during the service he received the honorary rank of captain in the army. According to Wilson, "they had a devil-may-care ethos and distaste for military discipline ... they made lightning raids on Afrikaner positions; they skirmished ahead of advancing columns." At the end of May 1900, led by Major-General Hamilton, they assaulted the ridge at Doornkop, though Guinness was wounded immediately after the battle in mopping-up at Witpoortjie.[9] For his war effort, he was Mentioned in Despatches and was awarded the Queen's South Africa Medal with four clasps. Following the war, he was promoted to the substantive rank of lieutenant in the Suffolk Imperial Yeomanry (the Duke of York's Own Loyal Suffolk Hussars) on 12 March 1902,[10] and promoted to the substantive rank of captain the next month, on 5 April 1902.[11]

During World War I, he served with distinction in the Suffolk Yeomanry in Egypt, and at Gallipoli. He was appointed a brigade major in the 25th division in 1916. In the fighting around Passchendaele, he was awarded the DSO in 1917, and a bar to it in 1918 during the German spring offensive, for personal bravery, which was rare for an elected politician.[12][13] He ended the war as a lieutenant-colonel attached to the 66th division. His laconic war diaries were published in 1987, edited by Professor Brian Bond.[14]

In the 1906 general election as a Conservative candidate, he unsuccessfully contested Stowmarket, a constituency in which he had a family estate. A year later, in 1907, Guinness was elected to the London County Council on which he sat until 1910 and also, at a 1907 by-election,[15] to the House of Commons as Conservative member for Bury St Edmunds,[16] which he continued to represent until 1931. He took the conservative line on Home Rule for Ireland,[17] suffragism[18] and reform of the House of Lords.[19] In 1912, the editor of the magazine Guinness owned, The Outlook, broke the Marconi scandal, accusing Lloyd George and other Liberal ministers of share frauds. Other publications developed the story, but it could not be proven even after lengthy debate. When his role was debated, Guinness explained that he was on safari in Africa at the start, and that his editor's target was inefficiency, not corruption.[20] He visited eastern Anatolia in 1913 and reported that Armenians were being armed secretly by Russia.[21][22]

World War I reduced Guinness's attendances and opponents accused him of cowardice for being in the House at all.[23] In a heated Armistice speech, he insisted that Germany pay full war reparations, that no ties be made with Russian Bolshevism, and that "Since the days of Mahomet no prophet has been listened to with more superstitious respect than has President Wilson" (of the USA).[24] Irish political developments after 1916 were a concern as the Guinness business was in Dublin. During the Easter Rebellion the brewery first-aid teams helped both sides. The Guinnesses were opposed to the Sinn Féin rebels, who hailed the Central Powers as "gallant allies." This attitude had to change, and by the time of the Treaty debates in 1922 which established the Irish Free State, he said he preferred "a slippery slope to a precipice" and voted in favour.[25] Despite their politics, during the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War his family was popular enough to escape loss or injury. In 1922, the Chanak crisis caused the coalition Prime Minister Lloyd George to step down unexpectedly in favour of Bonar Law. Guinness's comments on Turkey were a part of the debate; he had come to admire Atatürk, despite serving at Gallipoli and he was appointed Under-Secretary of State for War under Lord Derby. Thereafter, his pronouncements appear less dogmatic. He lost office when a Labour government came to power in January 1924, but the following month, Guinness was sworn of the Privy Council.

Though they had generally been political opponents in 1907–21, Guinness's working political relationship with Winston Churchill started after the Conservative election victory in October 1924, when he was made Financial Secretary under Churchill, the new Chancellor. Together, they put the Pound sterling back on the gold standard; a point of pride, but not a policy that lasted for long. A ministerial vacancy enabled him to join the Cabinet as Minister of Agriculture from November 1925 until June 1929, where his main success was in increasing the sugar beet area. The first beet processing factory was built in his constituency, partly on the advice of Martin Neumann (a grandfather of Stephen Fry), who became a manager there.[26]

After the Conservative defeat in 1929, he had to retire from office. He did not stand for re-election in the 1931 election and was created Baron Moyne, of Bury St Edmunds in the County of Suffolk on 21 January 1932.[27]

Kenwood House

During his adult life, Moyne was a director of the brewing firm Guinness, established at the St. James's Gate Brewery by his great-great-grandfather Arthur Guinness in 1759.[28] The firm had been listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1886 by his father.[29]

Moyne also established British Pacific Properties in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.[30] There he commissioned the Lion's Gate Bridge, then the longest bridge in the British Empire, which was opened by King George VI in 1938.[31]

He was also a trustee of the two charitable housing trusts set up by his father, the Guinness Trust in London (established 1888)[32] and the Iveagh Trust in Dublin (established 1890).[33] In 1927–28, he helped arrange the gift to the nation of Kenwood House which contains his father's art collection.

Even though an elevation to the Lords ends many political lives, Moyne spent part of 1932 in the colony of Kenya overseeing its finances. In 1933, he chaired a parliamentary committee supervising English slum clearances, in light of his experience gained in his family's charitable trusts mentioned above. In 1934, he joined the Royal Commission examining Durham University, as well as a 1936 committee investigating the British film industry.[41]

In 1938, Moyne was appointed chairman of the West Indies Royal Commission, which was asked to investigate how best the British colonies in the Caribbean should be governed, after labour unrest. The Report and notes were published in 1939 and are held by the PRO at Kew, London.[42] Just before he returned from the Caribbean, his wife Evelyn died on 21 July 1939.[43]

From the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Moyne sought the internment of Diana Mosley, his former daughter-in-law, who had left his son Bryan in 1932. She had remarried in 1936 in Berlin to the British fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley, with Hitler and Goebbels as witnesses. File No KV 2/1363 at the PRO, Kew is part of a collection released in 2004 on British right-wing extremists. The PRO's on-line archivist notes that "Diana Mosley was not interned on the outbreak of war, and remained at liberty for some time. There is a Home Office letter of May 1940 explaining the Home Secretary's decision not to intern her at that time, and then correspondence from her former father-in-law, Lord Moyne, which seems to have resulted in her detention the following month." Moyne's friend Churchill had become prime minister on 10 May 1940. Moyne's last letter, dated 26 June 1940, is quoted in Anne de Courcy's book on Diana Mosley. Later that day her order of detention was signed by J.S. Hale, a principal Secretary of State.[44]

From September 1939, given Hitler's Invasion of Poland (1939), Moyne chaired the Polish Relief Fund in London and gave over his London house at 11 Grosvenor Place, in Belgravia near Buckingham Palace, for the use of Polish officers.[45] From the elevation of Churchill in May 1940, Moyne held several positions in the Churchill war ministry, starting with a Joint Secretaryship in the Ministry of Agriculture. In a cabinet reshuffle in February 1941, he took on his post in the Colonial Office and led the Churchill government's business in the House of Lords, with the honorific title of Leader of the House of Lords.[45]

Largely as a result of his travels and his work in the West Indies, Lord Moyne was appointed Secretary of State for the Colonies by Churchill, serving from 8 February 1941 to 22 February 1942. Moyne was next appointed Deputy Resident Minister of State in Cairo from August 1942 to January 1944 and Minister-Resident for the Middle East from then until his death. Within the British system at that time, this meant control over Persia, the Middle East, including Mandatory Palestine, and Africa. The main task was to ensure the defeat of the Axis forces in North Africa, principally the Afrika Korps led by General Rommel. Another concern was the influence on Arab opinion of the Grand Mufti, a leader of the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, who had moved on to Nazi German sanctuary in Berlin in 1941.

Condemnation of the assassination by official Jewish organizations[65]

In the early afternoon of 6 November 1944, Eliyahu Bet-Zuri and Eliyahu Hakim of the Jewish terrorist group Lehi waited for Moyne near his home in Cairo following a well-planned and much practised plan of action to assassinate Moyne.

Moyne arrived in his car with his driver, Lance Corporal Arthur Fuller, his secretary, Dorothy Osmond, and his ADC, Major Andrew Hughes-Onslow. The ADC went to open the front door of the residence and the driver got out to open the door for Moyne. They were suddenly told not to move, as Bet-Zuri emerged and shot Fuller in the chest, causing him to collapse in the driveway and bleed to death in minutes. Hakim then pulled the car door open and shot Moyne three times. The first bullet hit him in the neck on the right side, just above the clavicle, the second penetrated his abdomen, punctured his colon and large intestine, and became embedded to the right of the second lumbar vertebrae, while the third shot, fired after Moyne raised his right hand, ripped across four of his fingers and went in and out of his chest, causing no serious injuries.[66]

Hakim and Bet-Zuri ran out of the yard, jumped on their rented bicycles, and began pedalling down the street away from the scene. Major Hughes-Onslow rushed to the sentry box and raised the alarm. Hearing it, Hakim and Bet-Zuri turned onto a side street. They had very nearly gotten away when an Egyptian motorcycle policeman, El-Amin Mahomed Abdullah, caught up to them. Bet-Zuri fired a volley of warning shots in his direction, which he ignored. Abdullah then dismounted and ordered him to drop his weapon. Bet-Zuri attempted to shoot out the motorcycle's tires but found that his pistol had run out of ammunition, and as he attempted to reload it, Abdullah fired, hitting Bet-Zuri in the chest. Hearing the commotion, Hakim turned back to help Bet-Zuri, and within minutes, another policeman appeared, and the two were placed under arrest.[66]

Meanwhile, Moyne regained consciousness, and in a few minutes, a doctor and ambulance arrived. Moyne was rushed to a British military hospital in Cairo and admitted at 1:40 p.m., in critical condition, having lost a great deal of blood through gross haemorrhaging and suffering from shock. Five minutes later, he was given the first of three blood transfusions, causing his condition to improve. After he complained of a burning sensation down his right leg and an inability to move it, X-rays revealed an injury to his thoracic vertebrae. Later, his right arm also became paralyzed as a result of the neck wound. Doctors were reluctant to operate until his condition improved, but at 5:30, a lumbar puncture revealed a bloodstain, and it was decided to operate. He was given another blood transfusion, and in the operation that followed, surgeons removed the bullet lodged near the second lumbar vertebra and discovered the injuries to the colon and large intestine, while the neck wound and finger wounds were cleaned. Soon after the operation, his condition began to deteriorate, and he died at 8:40 pm, aged 64.[66]

As the principal witness at the trial, Major Hughes-Onslow became a marked man and was sent to Aden and then to Khartoum for his safety. He subsequently said, "No doubt Lord Moyne could have been regarded as a target for political assassination, but the shooting of the chauffeur was pure murder."[67][68]

Moyne's body was flown home to England and cremated on 17 November at Golders Green Crematorium.[69] His will was proven on 2 December, with his estate valued at £2 million (equivalent to £93,716,249 in 2021).[70][71]

According to a member of the Lehi's three-man executive, Natan Yellin-Mor, the group's founder Ya'ir Stern had considered the possibility of assassinating the British Minister Resident in the Middle East as early as 1941 before Moyne held the position.[72] Moyne's predecessor Richard Casey was deemed unsuitable because he was Australian.[73] When Moyne replaced Casey in 1944, planning for the operation began.

As well as being the highest British official within Lehi's reach, Moyne was regarded as personally responsible for Britain's Palestine policy. In particular, he was regarded as one of the architects of Britain's strict immigration policy, and to have been responsible for the British hand in the Struma disaster,[72] which followed a refusal to grant visas to Palestine for its Jewish refugee passengers, decided during his time as Colonial Secretary.[69] According to Bell, Lord Moyne was believed by the underground to be an Arabist, who had consistently followed an anti-Zionist line.[74]

However, according to Yellin-Mor:[75]

"Really these acts by Lord Moyne were without meaning for us. They were useful only as propaganda, because they allowed us to explain to the people why we had killed him. What was important to us was that he symbolized the British Empire in Cairo. We weren't yet in a position to try to hit Churchill in London, so the logical second best was to hit Lord Moyne in Cairo."

According to Yaakov Banai (Mazal), who served as the commander of the fighting unit of Lehi, there were three purposes in the assassination:[76]

1. To show the world that this conflict was not between a government and its citizens as Britain had tried to show but between citizens and a foreign ruler.
2. To demonstrate that the conflict was between the Jewish people and British Imperialism.
3. To take the "War of Liberation" out of the Land of Israel and the Yishuv. The trial was not planned, but the action had to capture a place in the world press and lead political thoughts.

Author James Barr suggests that a French intelligence initiative was behind Moyne's murder, because of his support for the Greater Syria plan.[77]

Trial

Telegram sent to Cairo regarding the execution of the assassins of Lord Moyne

After the assassination, Lehi announced:

We accuse Lord Moyne and the government he represents, with murdering hundreds and thousands of our brethren; we accuse him of seizing our country and looting our possessions. We were forced to do justice and to fight.[78]

Bet-Zuri and Hakim initially gave false names, but their true identities were soon discovered. They were tried by an Egyptian military court. Both men were found guilty and, on 18 January 1945, sentenced to death. Their appeals for clemency were dismissed, probably partly in response to pressure from Winston Churchill, who had been Moyne's ally and close personal friend.[79] They were hanged on 23 March 1945.

Although the group had been targeting British Mandate personnel since 1940, Moyne was the first high-profile British official to be killed by them, though several failed attempts had been made to assassinate the British High Commissioner in Palestine, Sir Harold MacMichael. This was therefore the opening shot in the new Lehi campaign.

Jewish authorities in Palestine, fearful of British retribution, were quick to distance themselves from Lehi actions. On the news of Moyne's death, Chaim Weizmann, who later became the first President of Israel, is reported to have said that the death was more painful to him than that of his own son.[80]

British prime minister Winston Churchill, who once described himself as a "Zionist,"[81] taking the view that the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine would provide Britain with a more reliable and powerful ally,[75] for the time-being tempered his support for Zionism.[82][83] Moyne had been sent to Cairo because of their long personal and political friendship, and Churchill told the House of Commons:

If our dreams for Zionism are to end in the smoke of assassins' pistols and our labours for its future to produce only a new set of gangsters worthy of Nazi Germany, many like myself will have to reconsider the position we have maintained so consistently and so long in the past. If there is to be any hope of a peaceful and successful future for Zionism, these wicked activities must cease, and those responsible for them must be destroyed root and branch. [...] In Palestine the executive of the Jewish Agency have called upon the Jewish community—and I quote their actual words: 'To cast out the members of this destructive band, deprive them of all refuge and shelter, to resist their threats, and to render all necessary assistance to the authorities in the prevention of terrorist acts, and in the eradication of the terrorist organisation.' These are strong words, but we must wait for these words to be translated into deeds.[84]

He also added, "I can assure the House that the Jews in Palestine have rarely lost a better or more well-informed friend."[85]

Moyne's parliamentary friend and cousin in law, Henry 'Chips' Channon M.P. wrote in his diary:

I went to sleep last night with strange emotions. Walter Moyne was an extraordinary man, colossally rich, well-meaning, intelligent, scrupulous, yet a viveur, and the only modern Guinness to play a social or political role.... He was careful with his huge fortune, though he had probably about three millions.[86]

The Times of London quoted Ha'aretz's view that the assassins "have done more by this single reprehensible crime to demolish the edifice erected by three generations of Jewish pioneers than is imaginable."[87] The assassination caused the Palestine partition proposals that were awaiting final approval in Cabinet to be immediately shelved and never resurrected. Moyne's successor in Cairo, Sir Edward Grigg, was opposed to partition.[88] Some historians, such as Wasserstein and Porath, have speculated that a Jewish state soon after the war had been a real possibility.[52][89]

The historian Brenner writes that the purpose of the attack on Moyne was also in order to show the efficacy of armed resistance and to demonstrate to the British that they were not safe in any place as long as they remained in Palestine. The assassination also seemed to affect the Arab side, particularly in stimulating Egyptian nationalism. Brenner makes a comparison between Moyne's death and the assassination of pro-British Ahmad Mahir Pasha. There were Lehi members who advocated the formation of a "Semitic Bloc" opposing foreign domination, and this made it possible for Arabs to actually join Lehi.[90]

In 1975, Egypt returned the bodies of Ben Zuri and Hakim to Israel in exchange for 20 prisoners from Gaza and Sinai.[91] They were laid in state in the Jerusalem Hall of Heroism, where they were attended by many dignitaries, including Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and President Ephraim Katzir.[92] Then they were buried in the military section of Mount Herzl in a state funeral with full military honours.[92][93] Britain lodged a formal protest, but Israel rejected the criticism, referring to Ben Zuri and Hakim as "heroic freedom fighters."[94][95] In 1982, postage stamps were issued in their honour.[96][97]

The two pistols used in the assassination were later found to have been used in eight previous murders.[98]

Lord Moyne's large collection of archeological and ethnographic artefacts was acquired by the British Museum in London[99] and the Museum of Archeology and Anthropology in Cambridge.

• Bauer, Yehuda (1978). The Holocaust in Historical Perspective. Canberra: Australian National University Press. ISBN 0708110673.
• Bauer, Yehuda (1994). Jews for Sale?. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-05913-2.
• Ben-Yehuda, Nachman (1993). Political assassinations by Jews: a rhetorical device for justice. Albany: SUNY Press. ISBN 0-585-09119-6.
• Guinness (1st Baron Moyne), Walter Edward; Haddon, Alfred Cort; Cave, Alexander James Edward (1936). Walkabout: A Journey Between the Pacific and Indian Oceans. London: W. Heinemann Ltd. OCLC 5351894.
• Guinness (1st Baron Moyne), Walter Edward (1938). Atlantic Circle. Glasgow: Blackie & Son. OCLC 5509205.
• Guinness (1st Baron Moyne), Walter Edward; Bond, Brian; Robbins, Simon (1987). Staff Officer: The Diaries of Walter Guinness (First Lord Moyne), 1914–1918. London: L. Cooper. ISBN 0-85052-053-3.
• Wilson, Derek A. (1998). Dark and Light: The Story of the Guinness Family. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 0-297-81718-3.

• Wasserstein, Bernard (1979). "The assassination of Lord Moyne". The Jewish Historical Society of England – Transactions & Miscellanies. 27: 72–83.
• Wasserstein, Bernard (1980). "New light on the Moyne murder". Midstream. 26: 30–38.

• Brodie, Marc rev. (May 2006). "Guinness, Walter Edward, first Baron Moyne (1880–1944)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/33605. Retrieved 16 August 2007. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
• Canadian Parliament, 1st Session, 38th Parliament, Issue 13 (2004). "Inquires (Canadian parliamentary statement on the sixtieth anniversary of the assassination of Walter Edward Guinness, Lord Moyne)". Journals of the Senate.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• "Featured Books for "Moyne Commission"". Amazon.
• Guinness, W.E. (1938–1945). "Moyne papers on West India Royal Commission". AIM25: Institute of Commonwealth Studies. GB 0101 ICS 56. Archived from the original on 29 May 2008. Retrieved 14 September 2006.
• Guyana News and Information. "Moyne Commission". guyana.org.
• Trinity College Dublin. "Moyne Institute of Preventative Medicine, designed by Desmond Fitzgerald, opened in 1953, home to the Department of Microbiology". tcd.ie. Retrieved 27 March 2008.

• Heller, Joseph (1995). The Stern Gang: Ideology, Politics and Terror, 1940–1949. Frank Cass Publishers. ISBN 0-7146-4106-5.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Walter Guinness, 1st Baron Moyne.

• Walter Guinness summary contributions (online): Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Walter Guinness
• "Guinness, Lieut.-Col. Hon. Walter Edward" . Thom's Irish Who's Who . Dublin: Alexander Thom and Son Ltd. 1923. p. 99  – via Wikisource.