Stephen Hastings
Encyclopedia
Sir Stephen Lewis Edmonstone Hastings, Kt, MC
, MFH, (4 May 1921, Knightsbridge
, London–10 January 2005, Wansford, Cambridgeshire) was a war hero, former MI6 operative, Master of Foxhounds, author, painter, sculptor, and British
Conservative Party
politician who was elected as Member of Parliament
for Mid Bedfordshire
in a 1960 by-election
caused by the elevation to the peerage of Alan Lennox-Boyd
. He retained his seat in the subsequent general elections in 1964
, 1966
, 1970
, February 1974
, October 1974
, and 1979
, but stood down at the 1983 general election
, when he was succeeded by fellow-Conservative Sir Nicholas Lyell
.
The son of a Rhodesian farmer, Hastings had visited the country only briefly as a young child, but he grew up with tales of the veldt and the farm. A year after he was elected to Parliament for Mid-Bedfordshire in 1960, he accepted an invitation from the British South Africa Company
to visit the country, and from then on made frequent visits, getting to know the leading white politicians.
Over the next 20 years, Hastings devoted his political energies to injecting what he felt was much needed balance into the debate about Rhodesia
's future. When Rhodesia's Prime Minister, Ian Smith
, unilaterally declared the independence of Rhodesia
in 1964, Hastings was a prominent member of the Rhodesia lobby opposing sanctions - against the official party line. At the 1964 Conservative Party Conference, he was cheered to the rafters by conference delegates for a speech deeply critical of the party leadership. In consequence he was never invited to speak again.
Fourteen years later, he strongly supported the internal settlement between Ian Smith and the moderate nationalist leaders under which Bishop Abel Muzorewa
became Prime Minister, though effective power remained in white hands. He saw the Lancaster House Agreement
of 1979, which created an independent Zimbabwe
and led to Robert Mugabe
's election, as a disaster caused by "unnecessary deference to the delusion of the Commonwealth, the Afro-Asian lobby and to the Americans by a series of British governments".
Although Hastings claimed to have been invited to join Edward Heath
's administration, his stance on Rhodesia effectively rendered him ineligible for office. Even Margaret Thatcher
, whom he counted as an ally, kept him on the backbenches, though she recommended him for a knighthood in 1983. In his latter years at his Cambridgeshire home, Stibbington
House, the only person whose photographs were displayed in more than one room (apart from those of his beloved late wife, Elizabeth Anne) were those of Ian Smith
.
at the age of 17 after a disagreement with his father, and, after the First World War, bought a farm there. For the first two years of his life, Stephen lived with his parents on the farm; then he and his younger sister were sent home to England, where they were brought up by their doting and affluent maternal grandmother in Berkshire, who was a Lumsden of Pitcapel. Hastings was proud of his Scottish ancestry, among whose relations were the MacDonalds of Sleat. He had an abiding affection for his cousin the historian and journalist Sir Max Hastings
.
He learned to ride in Windsor Great Park
, becoming an accomplished horseman. He attended Durnford School
in Dorset
(1929-34) and Eton
(1934-39). At Eton he managed to combine an undistinguished academic career, and with the clandestine help of his grandmother and her chauffeur, to engage in racing as an amateur jockey and, more importantly for his future, Hastings began a lifelong love for steeplechasing and fox hunting.
. He chose the latter. Commissioned from Royal Military Academy Sandhurst
as the war started, Hastings saw action against the Italians and Germans in the Western Desert, and took part in Operation Crusader
, which relieved Tobruk
and threw Rommel
out of Cyrenaica
.
After disagreements with his company commander he joined the SAS
, and before El Alamein
participated in a successful operation against an airfield, and a disastrous one against Benghazi
, earning a Mention in Dispatches.
Then, after being diagnosed with chronic bronchitis
, he landed a job in Cairo as ADC to the Minister of State, Richard Casey
. By mid-1943 Hastings was pronounced fit again, and joined SOE
. His first assignment was to accompany the Franco-American landing in the south of France. He arrived in the newly-liberated Paris in August 1944, then was dropped with a wireless operator and interpreter behind enemy lines in the Apennines as chief liaison officer to the Italian partisans.
He found them demoralised and largely non-existent, but successfully trained and armed them, despite internal conflicts and frequent enemy attempts to capture him. By early April he had organised three divisions of about 4,000 partisans, which seized Piacenza
and held a bridgehead over the River Po in a three-day operation. Hastings was constantly to the fore, coolly directing and encouraging his men while under constant machine-gun and mortar fire, according to the citation for his Military Cross
.
After the capture of Piacenza
, Hastings and a few companions journeyed through German-held territory, and coolly strode into the piazza of a seaside village on the Adriatic. Hastings thereupon convinced the German officer in charge that it would be in his best interest to provide them with a fine seaside villa and supplies of champagne for the weeks that it would take the Allies to arrive. At the end of April 1945, Hastings was in the Piazzale Loreto
at Milan
and saw the bodies of Benito Mussolini
and Clara Petacci
, who along with other executed fascists, were hanging upside down. He noted that Clara Petacci's skirt had been pinned to her stockings to prevent her underwear from being revealed. Hastings considered this to be a perfect example of the often paradoxical delicacy of the Italian temperament.
The Piacenza operation was universally considered a major contribution to the Allied advance. He also found time to assemble a scratch pack - the Brindisi Vale Hounds - which hunted a reported, but probably non-existent, fox.
He was spared a posting to Nagasaki by a friend finding him a job in the economic division of the control commission in Austria
, a post for which, he candidly admitted at his interview, he had no relevant qualifications. When the friend returned to England, Hastings remained in Austria, taking a staff job with the Army with the sole duty of looking after the polo ponies, and occasionally played himself.
He was then sent to a former Wehrmacht
training centre, above the Judenburg
in Styria, where he captained the British troops' ski-racing team but broke a leg during a competition against the French.
. Eventually he was invited by a friend to join MI6, which sent him in 1950 to Finland
, disguised as an assistant military attaché. Four years later he moved to Paris, where he observed the conspiracy over the Suez
operation and the machinations that preceded Charles de Gaulle
's return to power. From 1958 to 1960, he worked in the political office of the Middle East forces in Cyprus
. As a result of his work countering the KGB
, Hastings was one of the few Englishmen of his class and age to enjoy vodka neat, as well as the company of all and sundry. He, like his wife Elizabeth Anne, was utterly unsnobbish.
The unproven imputations put forward in the book Spycatcher
, in which Stephen Hastings was portrayed as participating in an attempt to destabilise the Harold Wilson
government were always vehemently denied by him. The book's author, the late Peter Wright
, was regularly denounced by Hastings as "that traitor", though one was never quite sure as to exactly what betrayal Sir Stephen was alluding.
His disgust at Suez
led to his putting his name down with Conservative Central Office as a candidate, and in 1960 he was offered the safe seat of Mid-Bedfordshire. He entered Parliament the same year in a by-election. Hastings quickly established his credentials on the Right of the party, becoming a stalwart of the Monday Club and an ally of the likes of Julian Amery and Ronald Bell
. He served on various backbench committees, becoming a member of the executive of the 1922 Committee
and vice-chairman of the Conservative backbench Foreign Affairs Committee.
He could be a remarkably effective Commons performer. His self-confident, upper-class drawl and theatrical oratorical style seemed to have been purposely designed to enrage Labour Party
MPs. His special parliamentary gambit was demanding and getting emergency debates; and he was adept at the shrewd thrust when questioning ministers.
Hastings's background in MI6 gave him a certain mystique, and he was often embroiled in controversy concerning Communist infiltration. In 1977 he raised a storm of protest by alleging that five prominent trades union officials were agents for communist countries. This information was culled from tape recordings made by the Czech former spy and defector Joseph Frolik.
The following year, before Margaret Thatcher
came into office, Hastings and Brian Crozier
wrote her a paper setting out "the diabolical nature of the Communist conspiracy" against Britain. Mrs Thatcher was appalled: "Stephen," she said, "I've read every word and I'm shattered. What should we do?"
At Hastings's suggestion she appointed a committee comprising Willie Whitelaw, Lord Carrington, Sir Keith Joseph
and Hastings himself. This came up with the idea of forming a counter-subversion executive - a sort of Cold War equivalent of SOE
. But the scheme was quietly dropped after the Tories came to power in 1979.
In 1986 Hastings successfully sued The Observer
for libel following allegations that he had been one of two Conservative MPs involved in an MI5
plot to oust Harold Wilson
.
Hastings remained a friend of Margaret Thatcher after his retirement from the Commons in 1983. He and his wife Elizabeth Anne entertained the Thatchers and other notables at Milton Hall
, the largest private house in Cambridgeshire
. In 1982 Margaret and her husband Denis were at dinner with Stephen and Elizabeth Anne at Milton
when the butler entered to ask the Prime Minister
to the telephone, by which Margaret was informed of Argentina
's invasion of the British South Atlantic island of South Georgia. This marked the start of the Falklands War
exactly two weeks later on 2 April with the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands
.
Outside his parliamentary duties, Hastings continued to ride, hunting regularly with the Fitzwilliam and other hunts. In 1982 he was elected chairman of the British Field Sports Society in succession to Sir Marcus Kimball. After retiring from Parliament, he became a partner and manager of the Milton Park Stud, a member of the council of the Thoroughbred Breeders' Association, and joint master of the Fitzwilliam Hunt. He had maintained his lifelong love of racing and each evening before dinner, a glass of champagne in hand, he would watch the races of the day, prerecorded by his butler.
Hastings was chairman of the Peterborough Cathedral
Development and Preservation Trust and helped raise millions of pounds for the Cathedral's restoration. He was patron of 32 livings, and took his duty to help provide priests for his parishes seriously. He and Elizabeth Anne could be found in the squire's pew at the Church of St Mary the Virgin, Marholm, any Sunday they were at Milton.
Hastings was an accomplished painter, a fine sculptor, and wrote two books, The Murder of TSR2
(1966) and a well-received autobiography, The Drums of Memory (1995). He regularly skied in Switzerland until he was in his ninth decade, and hunted with the Fitzwilliam on his magnificent grey hunter over forty times in the year before his death.
Stephen Hastings married first, in 1948 (dissolved 1971), Harriet Tomlin, with whom he had a son Neil and a daughter Carola. He married secondly, in 1975, Elizabeth Anne Marie Gabrielle, the former Lady Naylor-Leyland. Lady Hastings was born the younger daughter of the 2nd and last Viscount FitzAlan of Derwent and Joyce Langdale of Houghton Hall, West Riding, Yorkshire, who secondly married Thomas Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, 10th and last Earl Fitzwilliam
.
In 1979 Lord Fizwilliam left the bulk of his great art collection and the estates of Milton, Cambridgeshire, Wentworth Woodhouse
, near Doncaster, and Malton
, North Yorkshire
, as well as a grand town house in Belgrave Square
to his widow, and to Elizabeth Anne, who was widely known in society as the daughter of Lord Fitzwilliam, a fact which she was known to confirm from time to time, though with reservations. Lady Hastings died from cancer at Milton in 1997. Her funeral at St Kyneburgha's Church, Castor
, was attended by 800 mourners.
Lady Hastings was succeeded in her stewardship of the Fitzwilliam heritage by her son, Sir Philip Naylor-Leyland
, Bt
.
Sir Stephen Hastings died on 10 January 2005 at Stibbington House, Cambridgeshire, from oesophageal cancer.
Military Cross
The Military Cross is the third-level military decoration awarded to officers and other ranks of the British Armed Forces; and formerly also to officers of other Commonwealth countries....
, MFH, (4 May 1921, Knightsbridge
Knightsbridge
Knightsbridge is a road which gives its name to an exclusive district lying to the west of central London. The road runs along the south side of Hyde Park, west from Hyde Park Corner, spanning the City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea...
, London–10 January 2005, Wansford, Cambridgeshire) was a war hero, former MI6 operative, Master of Foxhounds, author, painter, sculptor, and British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
Conservative Party
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
politician who was elected as Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
for Mid Bedfordshire
Mid Bedfordshire (UK Parliament constituency)
Mid Bedfordshire is a county constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament by the first past the post system of election...
in a 1960 by-election
By-election
A by-election is an election held to fill a political office that has become vacant between regularly scheduled elections....
caused by the elevation to the peerage of Alan Lennox-Boyd
Alan Lennox-Boyd, 1st Viscount Boyd of Merton
Alan Tindal Lennox-Boyd, 1st Viscount Boyd of Merton, CH, PC, DL was a British Conservative politician.-Background, education and military service:...
. He retained his seat in the subsequent general elections in 1964
United Kingdom general election, 1964
The United Kingdom general election of 1964 was held on 15 October 1964, more than five years after the preceding election, and thirteen years after the Conservative Party had retaken power...
, 1966
United Kingdom general election, 1983
The 1983 United Kingdom general election was held on 9 June 1983. It gave the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher the most decisive election victory since that of Labour in 1945...
, 1970
United Kingdom general election, 1983
The 1983 United Kingdom general election was held on 9 June 1983. It gave the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher the most decisive election victory since that of Labour in 1945...
, February 1974
United Kingdom general election, February 1974
The United Kingdom's general election of February 1974 was held on the 28th of that month. It was the first of two United Kingdom general elections held that year, and the first election since the Second World War not to produce an overall majority in the House of Commons for the winning party,...
, October 1974
United Kingdom general election, October 1974
The United Kingdom general election of October 1974 took place on 10 October 1974 to elect 635 members to the British House of Commons. It was the second general election of that year and resulted in the Labour Party led by Harold Wilson, winning by a tiny majority of 3 seats.The election of...
, and 1979
United Kingdom general election, 1979
The United Kingdom general election of 1979 was held on 3 May 1979 to elect 635 members to the British House of Commons. The Conservative Party, led by Margaret Thatcher ousted the incumbent Labour government of James Callaghan with a parliamentary majority of 43 seats...
, but stood down at the 1983 general election
United Kingdom general election, 1983
The 1983 United Kingdom general election was held on 9 June 1983. It gave the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher the most decisive election victory since that of Labour in 1945...
, when he was succeeded by fellow-Conservative Sir Nicholas Lyell
Nicholas Lyell
Nicholas Walter Lyell, Baron Lyell of Markyate, PC QC was an English Conservative politician, known for much of his active political career as Sir Nicholas Lyell.-Early life:...
.
The son of a Rhodesian farmer, Hastings had visited the country only briefly as a young child, but he grew up with tales of the veldt and the farm. A year after he was elected to Parliament for Mid-Bedfordshire in 1960, he accepted an invitation from the British South Africa Company
British South Africa Company
The British South Africa Company was established by Cecil Rhodes through the amalgamation of the Central Search Association and the Exploring Company Ltd., receiving a royal charter in 1889...
to visit the country, and from then on made frequent visits, getting to know the leading white politicians.
Over the next 20 years, Hastings devoted his political energies to injecting what he felt was much needed balance into the debate about Rhodesia
Rhodesia
Rhodesia , officially the Republic of Rhodesia from 1970, was an unrecognised state located in southern Africa that existed between 1965 and 1979 following its Unilateral Declaration of Independence from the United Kingdom on 11 November 1965...
's future. When Rhodesia's Prime Minister, Ian Smith
Ian Smith
Ian Douglas Smith GCLM ID was a politician active in the government of Southern Rhodesia, the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Rhodesia, Zimbabwe Rhodesia and Zimbabwe from 1948 to 1987, most notably serving as Prime Minister of Rhodesia from 13 April 1964 to 1 June 1979...
, unilaterally declared the independence of Rhodesia
Unilateral Declaration of Independence (Rhodesia)
The Unilateral Declaration of Independence of Rhodesia from the United Kingdom was signed on November 11, 1965, by the administration of Ian Smith, whose Rhodesian Front party opposed black majority rule in the then British colony. Although it declared independence from the United Kingdom it...
in 1964, Hastings was a prominent member of the Rhodesia lobby opposing sanctions - against the official party line. At the 1964 Conservative Party Conference, he was cheered to the rafters by conference delegates for a speech deeply critical of the party leadership. In consequence he was never invited to speak again.
Fourteen years later, he strongly supported the internal settlement between Ian Smith and the moderate nationalist leaders under which Bishop Abel Muzorewa
Abel Muzorewa
Bishop Abel Tendekayi Muzorewa served as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe Rhodesia from the Internal Settlement to the Lancaster House Agreement in 1979...
became Prime Minister, though effective power remained in white hands. He saw the Lancaster House Agreement
Lancaster House Agreement
The negotiations which led to the Lancaster House Agreement brought independence to Rhodesia following Ian Smith’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965. The Agreement covered the Independence Constitution, pre-independence arrangements, and a ceasefire...
of 1979, which created an independent Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe is a landlocked country located in the southern part of the African continent, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. It is bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia and a tip of Namibia to the northwest and Mozambique to the east. Zimbabwe has three...
and led to Robert Mugabe
Robert Mugabe
Robert Gabriel Mugabe is the President of Zimbabwe. As one of the leaders of the liberation movement against white-minority rule, he was elected into power in 1980...
's election, as a disaster caused by "unnecessary deference to the delusion of the Commonwealth, the Afro-Asian lobby and to the Americans by a series of British governments".
Although Hastings claimed to have been invited to join Edward Heath
Edward Heath
Sir Edward Richard George "Ted" Heath, KG, MBE, PC was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and as Leader of the Conservative Party ....
's administration, his stance on Rhodesia effectively rendered him ineligible for office. Even Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...
, whom he counted as an ally, kept him on the backbenches, though she recommended him for a knighthood in 1983. In his latter years at his Cambridgeshire home, Stibbington
Stibbington
Stibbington – in the far north-west corner of Huntingdonshire District, Cambridgeshire, England – is a village which lies in a loop of the River Nene and in the civil parish of Sibson-cum-Stibbington. It is near Wansford on the Great North Road, in Peterborough District.The village is...
House, the only person whose photographs were displayed in more than one room (apart from those of his beloved late wife, Elizabeth Anne) were those of Ian Smith
Ian Smith
Ian Douglas Smith GCLM ID was a politician active in the government of Southern Rhodesia, the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Rhodesia, Zimbabwe Rhodesia and Zimbabwe from 1948 to 1987, most notably serving as Prime Minister of Rhodesia from 13 April 1964 to 1 June 1979...
.
Early life
He was born in London. His father had run away to Southern RhodesiaSouthern Rhodesia
Southern Rhodesia was the name of the British colony situated north of the Limpopo River and the Union of South Africa. From its independence in 1965 until its extinction in 1980, it was known as Rhodesia...
at the age of 17 after a disagreement with his father, and, after the First World War, bought a farm there. For the first two years of his life, Stephen lived with his parents on the farm; then he and his younger sister were sent home to England, where they were brought up by their doting and affluent maternal grandmother in Berkshire, who was a Lumsden of Pitcapel. Hastings was proud of his Scottish ancestry, among whose relations were the MacDonalds of Sleat. He had an abiding affection for his cousin the historian and journalist Sir Max Hastings
Max Hastings
Sir Max Hugh Macdonald Hastings, FRSL is a British journalist, editor, historian and author. He is the son of Macdonald Hastings, the noted British journalist and war correspondent and Anne Scott-James, sometime editor of Harper's Bazaar.-Life and career:Hastings was educated at Charterhouse...
.
He learned to ride in Windsor Great Park
Windsor Great Park
Windsor Great Park is a large deer park of , to the south of the town of Windsor on the border of Berkshire and Surrey in England. The park was, for many centuries, the private hunting ground of Windsor Castle and dates primarily from the mid-13th century...
, becoming an accomplished horseman. He attended Durnford School
Durnford School
Durnford School was a notoriously spartan and uncomfortable preparatory school which opened in 1894 on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset. The school occupied Durnford House, in High Street in the village of Langton Matravers near Swanage...
in Dorset
Dorset
Dorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester which is situated in the south. The Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch joined the county with the reorganisation of local government in 1974...
(1929-34) and Eton
Eton College
Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....
(1934-39). At Eton he managed to combine an undistinguished academic career, and with the clandestine help of his grandmother and her chauffeur, to engage in racing as an amateur jockey and, more importantly for his future, Hastings began a lifelong love for steeplechasing and fox hunting.
Military career
On leaving school, his grandmother offered to pull strings to enable him to pursue a career either as a racehorse trainer or in the Scots GuardsScots Guards
The Scots Guards is a regiment of the Guards Division of the British Army, whose origins lie in the personal bodyguard of King Charles I of England and Scotland...
. He chose the latter. Commissioned from Royal Military Academy Sandhurst
Royal Military Academy Sandhurst
The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst , commonly known simply as Sandhurst, is a British Army officer initial training centre located in Sandhurst, Berkshire, England...
as the war started, Hastings saw action against the Italians and Germans in the Western Desert, and took part in Operation Crusader
Operation Crusader
Operation Crusader was a military operation by the British Eighth Army between 18 November–30 December 1941. The operation successfully relieved the 1941 Siege of Tobruk....
, which relieved Tobruk
Tobruk
Tobruk or Tubruq is a city, seaport, and peninsula on Libya's eastern Mediterranean coast, near the border with Egypt. It is the capital of the Butnan District and has a population of 120,000 ....
and threw Rommel
Rommel
Erwin Rommel was a German World War II field marshal.Rommel may also refer to:*Rommel *Rommel Adducul , Filipino basketball player*Rommel Fernández , first Panamanian footballer to play in Europe...
out of Cyrenaica
Cyrenaica
Cyrenaica is the eastern coastal region of Libya.Also known as Pentapolis in antiquity, it was part of the Creta et Cyrenaica province during the Roman period, later divided in Libia Pentapolis and Libia Sicca...
.
After disagreements with his company commander he joined the SAS
Special Air Service
Special Air Service or SAS is a corps of the British Army constituted on 31 May 1950. They are part of the United Kingdom Special Forces and have served as a model for the special forces of many other countries all over the world...
, and before El Alamein
El Alamein
El Alamein is a town in the northern Matrouh Governorate of Egypt. Located on the Mediterranean Sea, it lies west of Alexandria and northwest of Cairo. As of 2007, it has a local population of 7,397 inhabitants.- Climate :...
participated in a successful operation against an airfield, and a disastrous one against Benghazi
Benghazi
Benghazi is the second largest city in Libya, the main city of the Cyrenaica region , and the former provisional capital of the National Transitional Council. The wider metropolitan area is also a district of Libya...
, earning a Mention in Dispatches.
Then, after being diagnosed with chronic bronchitis
Bronchitis
Acute bronchitis is an inflammation of the large bronchi in the lungs that is usually caused by viruses or bacteria and may last several days or weeks. Characteristic symptoms include cough, sputum production, and shortness of breath and wheezing related to the obstruction of the inflamed airways...
, he landed a job in Cairo as ADC to the Minister of State, Richard Casey
Richard Casey, Baron Casey
Richard Gardiner Casey, Baron Casey KG GCMG CH DSO MC KStJ PC was an Australian politician, diplomat and the 16th Governor-General of Australia.-Early life:...
. By mid-1943 Hastings was pronounced fit again, and joined SOE
Special Operations Executive
The Special Operations Executive was a World War II organisation of the United Kingdom. It was officially formed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton on 22 July 1940, to conduct guerrilla warfare against the Axis powers and to instruct and aid local...
. His first assignment was to accompany the Franco-American landing in the south of France. He arrived in the newly-liberated Paris in August 1944, then was dropped with a wireless operator and interpreter behind enemy lines in the Apennines as chief liaison officer to the Italian partisans.
He found them demoralised and largely non-existent, but successfully trained and armed them, despite internal conflicts and frequent enemy attempts to capture him. By early April he had organised three divisions of about 4,000 partisans, which seized Piacenza
Piacenza
Piacenza is a city and comune in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Piacenza...
and held a bridgehead over the River Po in a three-day operation. Hastings was constantly to the fore, coolly directing and encouraging his men while under constant machine-gun and mortar fire, according to the citation for his Military Cross
Military Cross
The Military Cross is the third-level military decoration awarded to officers and other ranks of the British Armed Forces; and formerly also to officers of other Commonwealth countries....
.
After the capture of Piacenza
Piacenza
Piacenza is a city and comune in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Piacenza...
, Hastings and a few companions journeyed through German-held territory, and coolly strode into the piazza of a seaside village on the Adriatic. Hastings thereupon convinced the German officer in charge that it would be in his best interest to provide them with a fine seaside villa and supplies of champagne for the weeks that it would take the Allies to arrive. At the end of April 1945, Hastings was in the Piazzale Loreto
Piazzale Loreto
Piazzale Loreto is a major town square in Milan, Italy.The name Loreto is also used in a wider sense to refer to the district surrounding the square, which is part of the Zone 2 administrative division...
at Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
and saw the bodies of Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
and Clara Petacci
Clara Petacci
Clara Petacci was an upper class Roman whose father had been the personal physician to the Pope. She became the mistress of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, who was twenty-eight years her senior...
, who along with other executed fascists, were hanging upside down. He noted that Clara Petacci's skirt had been pinned to her stockings to prevent her underwear from being revealed. Hastings considered this to be a perfect example of the often paradoxical delicacy of the Italian temperament.
The Piacenza operation was universally considered a major contribution to the Allied advance. He also found time to assemble a scratch pack - the Brindisi Vale Hounds - which hunted a reported, but probably non-existent, fox.
He was spared a posting to Nagasaki by a friend finding him a job in the economic division of the control commission in Austria
Allied-administered Austria
The Allied occupation of Austria lasted from 1945 to 1955. Austria had been regarded by Nazi Germany as a constituent part of the German state, but in 1943 the Allied powers agreed in the Declaration of Moscow that it would be regarded as the first victim of Nazi aggression, and treated as a...
, a post for which, he candidly admitted at his interview, he had no relevant qualifications. When the friend returned to England, Hastings remained in Austria, taking a staff job with the Army with the sole duty of looking after the polo ponies, and occasionally played himself.
He was then sent to a former Wehrmacht
Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
training centre, above the Judenburg
Judenburg
- People :* Renate Götschl* Egon Haar * Herbert Hufnagl, journalist * Gernot Jurtin* Christian Muthspiel, jazz musician, painter* Kurt Muthspiel, composer * Wolfgang Muthspiel* Christian Pfannberger* Walter Pfrimer* Georg Pichler...
in Styria, where he captained the British troops' ski-racing team but broke a leg during a competition against the French.
1948 onwards
Finding peacetime duties unexciting, Hastings left the Army in 1948. He turned down an offer from Gillette and was refused a job by the BBCBBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
. Eventually he was invited by a friend to join MI6, which sent him in 1950 to Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
, disguised as an assistant military attaché. Four years later he moved to Paris, where he observed the conspiracy over the Suez
Suez
Suez is a seaport city in north-eastern Egypt, located on the north coast of the Gulf of Suez , near the southern terminus of the Suez Canal, having the same boundaries as Suez governorate. It has three harbors, Adabya, Ain Sokhna and Port Tawfiq, and extensive port facilities...
operation and the machinations that preceded Charles de Gaulle
Charles de Gaulle
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969....
's return to power. From 1958 to 1960, he worked in the political office of the Middle East forces in Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...
. As a result of his work countering the KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
, Hastings was one of the few Englishmen of his class and age to enjoy vodka neat, as well as the company of all and sundry. He, like his wife Elizabeth Anne, was utterly unsnobbish.
The unproven imputations put forward in the book Spycatcher
Spycatcher
Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer , is a book written by Peter Wright, former MI5 officer and Assistant Director, and co-author Paul Greengrass. It was published first in Australia...
, in which Stephen Hastings was portrayed as participating in an attempt to destabilise the Harold Wilson
Harold Wilson
James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, KG, OBE, FRS, FSS, PC was a British Labour Member of Parliament, Leader of the Labour Party. He was twice Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the 1960s and 1970s, winning four general elections, including a minority government after the...
government were always vehemently denied by him. The book's author, the late Peter Wright
Peter Wright
Peter Maurice Wright was an English scientist and former MI5 counterintelligence officer, noted for writing the controversial book Spycatcher, which became an international bestseller with sales of over two million copies...
, was regularly denounced by Hastings as "that traitor", though one was never quite sure as to exactly what betrayal Sir Stephen was alluding.
His disgust at Suez
Suez Crisis
The Suez Crisis, also referred to as the Tripartite Aggression, Suez War was an offensive war fought by France, the United Kingdom, and Israel against Egypt beginning on 29 October 1956. Less than a day after Israel invaded Egypt, Britain and France issued a joint ultimatum to Egypt and Israel,...
led to his putting his name down with Conservative Central Office as a candidate, and in 1960 he was offered the safe seat of Mid-Bedfordshire. He entered Parliament the same year in a by-election. Hastings quickly established his credentials on the Right of the party, becoming a stalwart of the Monday Club and an ally of the likes of Julian Amery and Ronald Bell
Ronald Bell (UK politician)
Sir Ronald McMillan Bell, , QC , Knight Bachelor , was a Conservative Party Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom representing South Buckinghamshire from 1950 to 1974 and Beaconsfield from 1974 to 1982.-Family and education:The younger son of John Bell, Ronald was educated at Cardiff High...
. He served on various backbench committees, becoming a member of the executive of the 1922 Committee
1922 Committee
In British politics, the 1922 Committee is a committee of Conservative Members of Parliament. Voting membership is limited to backbench MPs although frontbench Conservative MPs have an open invitation to attend meetings. While the party was in opposition, frontbench MPs other than the party leader...
and vice-chairman of the Conservative backbench Foreign Affairs Committee.
He could be a remarkably effective Commons performer. His self-confident, upper-class drawl and theatrical oratorical style seemed to have been purposely designed to enrage Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
MPs. His special parliamentary gambit was demanding and getting emergency debates; and he was adept at the shrewd thrust when questioning ministers.
Hastings's background in MI6 gave him a certain mystique, and he was often embroiled in controversy concerning Communist infiltration. In 1977 he raised a storm of protest by alleging that five prominent trades union officials were agents for communist countries. This information was culled from tape recordings made by the Czech former spy and defector Joseph Frolik.
The following year, before Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...
came into office, Hastings and Brian Crozier
Brian Crozier
Brian Rossiter Crozier is a British-based historian, strategist and journalist.Crozier was born in Australia, although he was raised in France, learning French. Thereafter his family moved to England where he would receive a scholarship to study piano and musical composition at the Trinity College...
wrote her a paper setting out "the diabolical nature of the Communist conspiracy" against Britain. Mrs Thatcher was appalled: "Stephen," she said, "I've read every word and I'm shattered. What should we do?"
At Hastings's suggestion she appointed a committee comprising Willie Whitelaw, Lord Carrington, Sir Keith Joseph
Keith Joseph
Keith St John Joseph, Baron Joseph, Bt, CH, PC , was a British barrister and politician. A member of the Conservative Party, he served in the Cabinet under three Prime Ministers , and is widely regarded to have been the "power behind the throne" in the creation of what came to be known as...
and Hastings himself. This came up with the idea of forming a counter-subversion executive - a sort of Cold War equivalent of SOE
Special Operations Executive
The Special Operations Executive was a World War II organisation of the United Kingdom. It was officially formed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton on 22 July 1940, to conduct guerrilla warfare against the Axis powers and to instruct and aid local...
. But the scheme was quietly dropped after the Tories came to power in 1979.
In 1986 Hastings successfully sued The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
for libel following allegations that he had been one of two Conservative MPs involved in an MI5
MI5
The Security Service, commonly known as MI5 , is the United Kingdom's internal counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its core intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service focused on foreign threats, Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence...
plot to oust Harold Wilson
Harold Wilson
James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, KG, OBE, FRS, FSS, PC was a British Labour Member of Parliament, Leader of the Labour Party. He was twice Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the 1960s and 1970s, winning four general elections, including a minority government after the...
.
Hastings remained a friend of Margaret Thatcher after his retirement from the Commons in 1983. He and his wife Elizabeth Anne entertained the Thatchers and other notables at Milton Hall
Milton Hall
Milton Hall is the largest private house in Cambridgeshire, England, and formerly a part of Northamptonshire. It dates from 1594, being the historical home of the Fitzwilliam family, and is situated in an extensive park in which some original oak trees from an earlier Tudor Deer Park...
, the largest private house in Cambridgeshire
Cambridgeshire
Cambridgeshire is a county in England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the northeast, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to the west...
. In 1982 Margaret and her husband Denis were at dinner with Stephen and Elizabeth Anne at Milton
Milton Hall
Milton Hall is the largest private house in Cambridgeshire, England, and formerly a part of Northamptonshire. It dates from 1594, being the historical home of the Fitzwilliam family, and is situated in an extensive park in which some original oak trees from an earlier Tudor Deer Park...
when the butler entered to ask the Prime Minister
Prime minister
A prime minister is the most senior minister of cabinet in the executive branch of government in a parliamentary system. In many systems, the prime minister selects and may dismiss other members of the cabinet, and allocates posts to members within the government. In most systems, the prime...
to the telephone, by which Margaret was informed of Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
's invasion of the British South Atlantic island of South Georgia. This marked the start of the Falklands War
Falklands War
The Falklands War , also called the Falklands Conflict or Falklands Crisis, was fought in 1982 between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the disputed Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands...
exactly two weeks later on 2 April with the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands
Falkland Islands
The Falkland Islands are an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean, located about from the coast of mainland South America. The archipelago consists of East Falkland, West Falkland and 776 lesser islands. The capital, Stanley, is on East Falkland...
.
Outside his parliamentary duties, Hastings continued to ride, hunting regularly with the Fitzwilliam and other hunts. In 1982 he was elected chairman of the British Field Sports Society in succession to Sir Marcus Kimball. After retiring from Parliament, he became a partner and manager of the Milton Park Stud, a member of the council of the Thoroughbred Breeders' Association, and joint master of the Fitzwilliam Hunt. He had maintained his lifelong love of racing and each evening before dinner, a glass of champagne in hand, he would watch the races of the day, prerecorded by his butler.
Hastings was chairman of the Peterborough Cathedral
Peterborough Cathedral
Peterborough Cathedral, properly the Cathedral Church of St Peter, St Paul and St Andrew – also known as Saint Peter's Cathedral in the United Kingdom – is the seat of the Bishop of Peterborough, dedicated to Saint Peter, Saint Paul and Saint Andrew, whose statues look down from the...
Development and Preservation Trust and helped raise millions of pounds for the Cathedral's restoration. He was patron of 32 livings, and took his duty to help provide priests for his parishes seriously. He and Elizabeth Anne could be found in the squire's pew at the Church of St Mary the Virgin, Marholm, any Sunday they were at Milton.
Hastings was an accomplished painter, a fine sculptor, and wrote two books, The Murder of TSR2
BAC TSR-2
The British Aircraft Corporation TSR-2 was a cancelled Cold War strike and reconnaissance aircraft developed by the British Aircraft Corporation for the Royal Air Force in the late 1950s and early 1960s...
(1966) and a well-received autobiography, The Drums of Memory (1995). He regularly skied in Switzerland until he was in his ninth decade, and hunted with the Fitzwilliam on his magnificent grey hunter over forty times in the year before his death.
Stephen Hastings married first, in 1948 (dissolved 1971), Harriet Tomlin, with whom he had a son Neil and a daughter Carola. He married secondly, in 1975, Elizabeth Anne Marie Gabrielle, the former Lady Naylor-Leyland. Lady Hastings was born the younger daughter of the 2nd and last Viscount FitzAlan of Derwent and Joyce Langdale of Houghton Hall, West Riding, Yorkshire, who secondly married Thomas Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, 10th and last Earl Fitzwilliam
Earl FitzWilliam
Earl Fitzwilliam was a title in both the Peerage of Ireland and the Peerage of Great Britain held by the head of the Fitzwilliam family. This family claim descent from William the Conqueror. The Fitzwilliams acquired extensive holdings in South Yorkshire, largely through strategic alliances through...
.
In 1979 Lord Fizwilliam left the bulk of his great art collection and the estates of Milton, Cambridgeshire, Wentworth Woodhouse
Wentworth Woodhouse
Wentworth Woodhouse is a Grade I listed country house near the village of Wentworth, in the vicinity of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England. "One of the great Whig political palaces", its East Front, long, is the longest country house façade in Europe. The house includes 365 rooms and covers an...
, near Doncaster, and Malton
Malton, North Yorkshire
Malton is a market town and civil parish in North Yorkshire, England. The town is the location of the offices of Ryedale District Council and has a population of around 4,000 people....
, North Yorkshire
North Yorkshire
North Yorkshire is a non-metropolitan or shire county located in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England, and a ceremonial county primarily in that region but partly in North East England. Created in 1974 by the Local Government Act 1972 it covers an area of , making it the largest...
, as well as a grand town house in Belgrave Square
Belgrave Square
Belgrave Square is one of the grandest and largest 19th century squares in London, England. It is the centrepiece of Belgravia, and was laid out by the property contractor Thomas Cubitt for the 2nd Earl Grosvenor, later the 1st Marquess of Westminster, in the 1820s. Most of the houses were occupied...
to his widow, and to Elizabeth Anne, who was widely known in society as the daughter of Lord Fitzwilliam, a fact which she was known to confirm from time to time, though with reservations. Lady Hastings died from cancer at Milton in 1997. Her funeral at St Kyneburgha's Church, Castor
Castor, Cambridgeshire
Castor is a village and civil parish in the City of Peterborough unitary authority, about west of the city centre. The parish is part of the former Soke of Peterborough, which was considered part of Northamptonshire but was more recently part of Cambridgeshire.-History:Castor's toponym is derived...
, was attended by 800 mourners.
Lady Hastings was succeeded in her stewardship of the Fitzwilliam heritage by her son, Sir Philip Naylor-Leyland
Naylor-Leyland Baronets
The Naylor-Leyland Baronetcy, of Hyde Park House, Albert Gate, in the County of London, is a title in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom. It was created on 31 August 1895 for Herbert Naylor-Leyland, Conservative Member of Parliament for Colchester from 1892 to 1895 and Liberal Member of...
, Bt
Baronet
A baronet or the rare female equivalent, a baronetess , is the holder of a hereditary baronetcy awarded by the British Crown...
.
Sir Stephen Hastings died on 10 January 2005 at Stibbington House, Cambridgeshire, from oesophageal cancer.
Further reading
- Sir Stephen Hastings' own autobiography The Drums of Memory.
- Lady Hastings' obituary in Christies magazine, and various personal reminiscences of Sir Stephen and The Hon. Lady Hastings.