George Kennedy Young,
CB,
MBE,
M.A.
A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Tho ...
(8 April 1911 – 9 May 1990) was a deputy director of
MI6
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...
, and later involved in British
Conservative Party politics. He was also a
merchant banker
A merchant bank is historically a bank dealing in commercial loans and investment. In modern British usage it is the same as an investment bank. Merchant banks were the first modern banks and evolved from medieval merchants who traded in commodi ...
.
Early life
George Kennedy Young was born in
Dumfries, and was raised by his parents in the
United Free Church. He was educated at
Dumfries Academy
Dumfries ( ; sco, Dumfries; from gd, Dùn Phris ) is a market town and former royal burgh within the Dumfries and Galloway council area of Scotland. It is located near the mouth of the River Nith into the Solway Firth about by road from the ...
and
St. Andrews University, where he studied French and German and spent two years as an exchange student at the Universities of Dijon (now the
University of Burgundy
The University of Burgundy (french: Université de Bourgogne, uB; formerly known as ''Université de Dijon'') is a public university located in Dijon, France.
The University of Burgundy is situated on a large campus (more than 150 ha) in the east ...
) and
Giessen
Giessen, spelled Gießen in German (), is a town in the German state (''Bundesland'') of Hesse, capital of both the district of Giessen and the administrative region of Giessen. The population is approximately 90,000, with roughly 37,000 univer ...
respectively. After graduating with a first-class degree in 1934, Young secured a Commonwealth Fellowship to study Political Science at
Yale University
Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...
. During his undergraduate years he was a left-wing partisan, with "strong
Independent Labour Party
The Independent Labour Party (ILP) was a British political party of the left, established in 1893 at a conference in Bradford, after local and national dissatisfaction with the Liberals' apparent reluctance to endorse working-class candidates ...
views".
Before the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
he was on the editorial staff of the ''
Glasgow Herald
''The Herald'' is a Scottish broadsheet newspaper founded in 1783. ''The Herald'' is the longest running national newspaper in the world and is the eighth oldest daily paper in the world. The title was simplified from ''The Glasgow Herald'' in ...
''.
Career in British intelligence
He was commissioned in 1940 as an officer in the
King's Own Scottish Borderers
The King's Own Scottish Borderers (KOSBs) was a line infantry regiment of the British Army, part of the Scottish Division. On 28 March 2006 the regiment was amalgamated with the Royal Scots, the Royal Highland Fusiliers (Princess Margaret's O ...
regiment but later transferred to
British intelligence
The Government of the United Kingdom maintains intelligence agencies within three government departments, the Foreign Office, the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence. These agencies are responsible for collecting and analysing foreign and d ...
. In his book ''Inside Intelligence'',
Anthony Cavendish, a friend and colleague of Young, includes a seventeen-page summary of Young's career (Young also wrote the foreword for this book). According to Cavendish, Young's intelligence career started in the Second World War. He was employed first in Africa and later in Italy and North-West Europe, where his work involved 'playing back' captured enemy agents as channels for disinformation. Young became an expert in the methods of the Italian Fascist police system and those of the
German secret services.
Following the war, after a brief return to
journalism
Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the " news of the day" and that informs society to at least some degree. The word, a noun, applies to the occupation (pro ...
, Young returned to the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) as head of its
Vienna
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station, where he was involved in running agents in South-East Europe. In 1949 he was made head of SIS's economic requirements section (R6), their point of contact with the Treasury, the Board of Trade and the
Bank of England. In 1951 he was appointed controller of SIS operations in the 'Middle East Area', which stretched from
Morocco
Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria t ...
to
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
and down to
Ethiopia
Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...
. Here he became involved in implementing the Anglo-American decision to
remove the Iranian leader Mossadeq and reinstate the Shah. According to Cavendish, the Shah later said of Young that "In times of crisis he is a man who can take decisions and throw caution to the winds. Young is a man who believes that friendship cuts both ways and that Britain should stand by her friends even at the risk of offending others." In 1953 Young was recalled to London to take over as SIS Director of Requirements and in 1956, during the
Suez crisis, he was again put in charge of Middle East Operations. In 1959 he was appointed Vice Chief of the Secret Service. His dissatisfaction with the
Macmillan government led him to resign as Deputy of
MI6
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...
in 1961 and enter merchant banking.
Political activity
Shortly after settling down into merchant banking, G. K. (as he was commonly known) became Chairman of the libertarian
Society for Individual Freedom. He was also an early and leading member of the
Conservative Monday Club
The Conservative Monday Club (usually known as the Monday Club) is a British political pressure group, aligned with the Conservative Party, though no longer endorsed by it. It also has links to the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Ulster Unioni ...
, serving on the Executive Council and several of its policy committees (he was Chairman of the Action Fund from 1967 to 1969 and later Chairman of the Economics Committee). He was strongly
opposed to immigration, supporting
Enoch Powell
John Enoch Powell, (16 June 1912 – 8 February 1998) was a British politician, classical scholar, author, linguist, soldier, philologist, and poet. He served as a Conservative Member of Parliament (1950–1974) and was Minister of Health (1 ...
's line, and helped found the club's immigration committee. After losing an acrimonious election for the position of club chairman to
Jonathan Guinness in 1974, in which he had been supported by the
National Front, he set up the right-wing group
Tory Action. That same year, Young stood as the Conservative candidate for
Brent East in the
February General Election, losing badly to the sitting
Labour MP
Reg Freeson
Reginald Yarnitz Freeson (24 February 1926 – 9 October 2006) was a British Labour politician. He was a Member of Parliament for 23 years, from 1964 to 1987, for Willesden East and later Brent East, with 14 years on the front bench. He be ...
in what was later described as a "gesture of principle". In 1976, assisted by the Conservative MP
Frederic Bennett
Sir Frederic Mackarness Bennett (2 December 1918 – 14 September 2002) was a British journalist, author, barrister and Conservative politician who served as a Member of Parliament for 35 years. He was appointed a Privy Counsellor in 1985, a ...
, Young created the vigilante group Unison, described by the academic Rory Cormac as "ready to intervene when law and order broke down amidst a communist takeover."
A London-based Czech spy, Jan Mrazek, has cited Young as a likely conspirator in a
plot to undermine
Edward Heath
Sir Edward Richard George Heath (9 July 191617 July 2005), often known as Ted Heath, was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1970 to 1974 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1965 to 1975. Heath a ...
. David Leigh wrote that Young was closely associated with alleged attempts to undermine the Labour government of
Harold Wilson in the mid-1960s, that he regarded the Tory government of Edward Heath as virtually
socialist
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...
, and planned action to remove those he considered enemies of the state: "a security counter-action need cover no more than 5,000 persons, including some 40 M.P.s., not all of them Labour; several hundred journalists and media employees, plus their supporting academics and clerics; the full-time members and main activists of the
C.P.G.B. and the
Socialist Workers' Party; and the directing elements of the 30 or 40 bodies affecting concern and compassion for youth, age, civil liberties, social research, and minority grievances."
In November 2015, the then Labour MP
John Mann said that information provided to him indicated that Young was involved in a right-wing Conservative group which gathered details on alleged paedophiles within the House of Commons. Young was not named as a paedophile but Mann described him as a “manipulator” who had been involved in "dubious" political activities, including a campaign to set up a private army.
Family
In June 1939 Young married Geraldine Wilhelmine Christine Harthoorn (born 21 December 1913 in Pandang/
Celebes
Sulawesi (), also known as Celebes (), is an island in Indonesia. One of the four Greater Sunda Islands, and the world's eleventh-largest island, it is situated east of Borneo, west of the Maluku Islands, and south of Mindanao and the Sul ...
, Dutch East Indies; died 8 October 2000 in London), a daughter of Prof. Dr. Dr. M. A. G. Harthoorn, a Dutch lawyer and president of the court at
Batavia, Dutch East Indies
Batavia was the capital of the Dutch East Indies. The area corresponds to present-day Jakarta, Indonesia. Batavia can refer to the city proper or its suburbs and hinterland, the Ommelanden, which included the much-larger area of the Residen ...
, and Gerardina Willemina Christina Brunsveld van Hulten. Geraldine (known as Géryke) was a strong supporter of her husband's political convictions, often voicing what
John Bruce Lockhart
John Harold "J.H." Bruce Lockhart (4 March 1889 – 4 June 1956) was a Scotland international cricket player; and a Scotland international rugby union player. He became a schoolmaster. He was part of the noted Bruce Lockhart family.
Cricket ...
euphemistically referred to as "her views about the role of different ethnic groups." Lockhart surmised that "It is hard to estimate the degree of influence she had over Young's change from a left-wing student of the 1930s to a powerful figure in the right-wing Monday Club, but it was substantial."
The marriage remained childless.
References
Publications
* Young, George K., ''Masters of Indecision'', Methuen, London, 1962.
* Young, George K., ''Merchant Banking - Practice & Prospects'', London, 1966.
* Young, George K., ''Finance and World Power'', London, 1968.
* Young, George K., ''Who Goes Home'', Monday Club, London, May 1969, (P/B).
* Young, George K., ''Who is My Liege - Loyalty and Betrayal in our Time'', London, 1972.
* Young, George K., ''Subversion and the British Riposte'', Ossian, Glasgow, 1984,
* Young, George K., ''The Final Testimony of George Kennedy Young'', published ''
Lobster Magazine'' 19, 199
References
* Blake, George, ''No Other Choice'', Jonathan Cape, London, 1990
* Cavendish, Anthony, ''Inside Intelligence'', Harper Collins, London, 1997
* Copping, Robert, ''The Story of the Monday Club'', Current Affairs Information Service, London, April 1972, (P/B).
* Lockhart, John Bruce
'Young, George Kennedy (1911–1990)' ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
* Trahair, Richard C. S., and Miller, Robert L., ''Encyclopedia of Cold War Espionage, Spies, and Secret Operations'', Enigma Books, 2012, ISBN 978-1-929631-75-9
* Various dust-jacket summary biographies.
External links
Imperial War Museum Interview
{{DEFAULTSORT:Young, George
Cold War spies, Young, George Kennedy
Young, George Kennedy
Young, George Kennedy
Young, George Kennedy
Young, George Kennedy
Young, George Kennedy
Young, George Kennedy
King's Own Scottish Borderers officers
University of Burgundy alumni
British Army personnel of World War II
Military personnel from Dumfries and Galloway