Illtyd Harrington: ‘As I Please’

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Published: 19 May, 2011
by ILLTYD HARRINGTON

WHATEVER happened to cold, clean state murderers? Quick, effective and always deadly. 

We have lost our most successful political tool: the public school secret service agent – a man without pity or remorse. In my boyhood Bulldog Drummond and his lady friend saw off foreign scoundrels with un-British ways. His most proper female companion only ever took off her hat. Unlike James Bond’s women who never wore anything.

Bond still has an irresistible pull for gorgeous women, with none of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s steroid-driven physique. Bond outsmarts killers and causes more mayhem than a raid by Bomber Command. Now that virile man can cause régime change on his own.

The current head of MI6 uttered a blasphemy against the spirit of Ian Fleming when he said: “No one has a licence to kill.”

And, at pain of losing my own life, who am I to gainsay him?

So TV’s Spooks was a fantasy world.

Only erudite students of politics will recall the 1945 general election when the Tory seat of North Paddington was contested by the sitting member, redhead Brendan Bracken, reputed to be Churchill’s illegitimate son.

And, for Labour, stood General Sir Noel Mason Macfarlane, who as a young military attaché in pre-war Nazi Berlin was outraged by Hitler and his gang. He worked out a detailed and almost perfect scheme for bumping off the Führer when he took up residence in his eagle-nest retreat. He defied orders not to proceed but conducted a dummy run, evading the swarm of SS men.

Adolf, when Chancellor of Germany, was not averse to a little street violence himself. 

His method of getting rid of the Brownshirts was to stage the Night of the Long Knives. 

An impertinent German later penetrated the home of Churchill at Chartwell, confronting him on the balcony. Eventually Scotland Yard arrived and eliminated the ghastly Hun.

In 1984 the IRA planted the Brighton bomb. Its perpetrator is now a serene middle-aged Irishman, but Margaret Thatcher at 85 is still considered a target.

This month her official car has been upgraded to armoured status. The Old Girl has dementia and will not be aware of her own enhancement in the eyes of the anti-terrorist police.

Only one prime minister, Spencer Perceval, has been assassinated – in the lobby of the House of Commons by a disgruntled businessman who believed that Perceval, the First Lord of the Treasury, was not helping him to pursue a debt.

Clement Attlee travelled on the tube daily after leaving Number 10. He was, in fact, indistinguishable from thousands of bowler-hatted office managers who all flooded in from Aylesbury and points south and took their connections to the City.

Queen Victoria, 1837 to 1901, had several haughty brushes with lethally minded subjects. I’ve counted seven attempts on her life. It became all too much for the Queen matriarch and her consort and comforter John Brown.

The ultimate incident was in 1882 when another deluded subject Roderick Maclean, a disgruntled poet, got close with a loaded pistol. Brown leapt to her defence. But Maclean was found guilty but insane. This was a verdict to save him and others from the gallows by a merciful jury. The royal personage was thrown into a terrible rage. Her momentous bosoms rippled with indignation. She managed to change the law but in spite of her this was the beginning of the concept of diminished responsibility.

That confused the law but it was ignored.

The brutal murder of John and Robert Kennedy made way for the frightening influence of the oil and armaments nexus. Although JFK’s gullibility was fastened on by the CIA and the fiasco of the Bay of Pigs resulted. There were hilarious attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro. An exploding cigar, probably bought in a joke shop, was, of course, not effective.

Pope John Paul – the Polish Pope, God’s Vicar on Earth, was riddled by a gun-toting Bulgarian in St Peter’s Square. His Holiness we know was actively working with American money to challenge the regime in his native Poland.

The Vatican put it about that the Bulgarian had been brainwashed by the KGB, a story plucked from the script of The Manchurian Candidate.

The evil genius of Italian politics Giulio Andreotti hated the left wing and Aldo Moro’s attempts to build a coalition with the left wing. Andreotti a daily communicant held covert meetings with the Mafia. 

Moro’s kidnapping and murder was attributed to the Red Brigades. 

Spare a thought for Rasputin. A group of young Czarist officers shot him so many times that he was like a human sieve.

Refusing to die they flung him into a barrel of water but good old Rasputin kept coming up like a Halloween bobbing apple.

General Sir David Richards. who could pass for the man in the Day of the Jackal, thinks he can sort Muammar Gaddafi out. 

I do hope he extends his activities to the pseudo states of the Gulf.

In conclusion, I would like to make it clear that I do not believe that the murder of that moustachioed man the Archduke of Austria and Hungary and his plump missus caused World War I. 

Life is a little more complicated than that.