IT HAS been a good year for Ian Fleming, James Bond and the rest of the spooky flummery. What with the centenary of the debonair writer’s birth, celebrated by a new biography, the autumn release of Quantum of Solace, the second film starring Daniel Craig as Bond which may be even bigger hit than its predecessor, Casino Royale, a new Bond thriller from Sebastian Faulks, the autobiography of original screen Bond Sean Connery and sundry “revelations” from CIA files, it is practically impossible to escape from the phenomenon.
Not even, I discovered, on the rain-sodden Costa del Caledonia in Galloway, far distant from the Flemings’ native city of Dundee. The charity (in Scotland, “community”) shop in Port William had nothing to offer once my little store of holiday reading was exhausted, except for a 40-year old biography of Bond’s creator. But that, together with the discovery in a Newton Stewart second-hand bookshop of his brother Peter’s practically unknown novel, The Sixth Column, was enough to set all sorts of political thoughts in train.
James Bond is usually regarded as a man of action, devoid of all interest in politics, modelled on his only true begetter. Not so, or at any rate, no more than Sean Connery, donor extraordinaire to the SNP, is apolitical. Connery’s first job, he reveals in his new autobiography, was as a delivery boy for the Co-op in Edinburgh. He doesn’t mention that the late Alex Kitson, then a branch secretary in the Scottish Horse and Commercial Motormen’s Union and latterly number two in the Transport and General Workers’ Union, actually drove the milk cart. Or that, in Scots labour legend, the store horse won the Grand National.
But I digress. Ian Fleming, Old Etonian scion of the family banking firm, lived a dashing life as a stockbroker in 1930s London at 22a Ebury Street, former home of Sir Oswald Mosley. He presided over an intimate gang, Le Cercle, whose numbers include John Fox-Strangeways, who once tried to kick Nye Bevan down the steps of White’s Club. In the ’30s, Fleming went to Moscow for Reuters to report on Stalin’s show trials. Just before the outbreak of the Second World War, he returned “officially for The Times and unofficially for the Foreign Office”.
Fleming was of “dubious value” as a spy, although no doubt he gleaned much first-hand material for the Bond books. According to John Pearson’s first-rate biography, Fleming also toyed with the idea of becoming an MP – Conservative, of course, in the early 1950s. He still enjoyed the company of top Tories – Anthony Eden recuperated from the Suez debacle at Goldeneye, his Jamaican hideaway. And Fleming hob-nobbed with Labour’s top-drawer politicians. Hugh Gaitskell scribbled a note of thanks for the gift of a first edition of Dr No, blushing that the combination of sex, violence and alcohol was “irresistible” to one who lived such a circumscribed life as he did.
So James Bond/Ian Fleming, who shared a contempt for “the Great Unwashed”, is scarcely the non-political figure of popular imagination. With his elder brother, Peter, there is no attempt at casting a veil over reactionary attitudes. Fleming senior, often seen as the last of the great English writer-explorers, wrote his novel The Sixth Column in 1950. It is a mirthless satire on Clement Attlee, whose Government stands accused of bringing the country to its knees by undermining the national character.
The anti-hero is a modish broadcaster with close affinity to “current Socialist doctrine” (capital letters are always a giveaway) who collaborates with a Soviet playwright faking defection to implement “Plan D” – a dastardly plot to destroy the fabric of the nation through a “Peace Guild”.
Naturally, with the aid of a string of sub-prime Buchanite characters with names such as Colonel Hackforth, Sir Archie Strume and General Freeth – solid fox-hunting, dog-loving English characters all – the conspiracy is frustrated and olde England lives to fight another war. MI5 is always just in the background – not surprisingly, since both brothers had close links with the security services, Ian having served in naval intelligence during the war.
Last month, The Times breathlessly revealed that Ian Fleming had “only half in jest” claimed that he helped to create the CIA. This was old news, fully disclosed in the 1966 biography, which described his close relationship with General William “Wild Bill” Donovan, head of the OSS, the forerunner of the CIA.
Fleming/Bond (it is sometimes difficult to tell the two apart) received a .38 Colt revolver inscribed “For Special Services” after submitting a 72-page paper to the Americans on how to set up a secret service. The rest is deeply unpleasant history. Thanks a lot, Brothers Spook.
The only question is: if they didn’t go into Westminster politics, just who of their ilk did?
