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- A Man Who Knew Too Much
- www.garethjones.org
- © 2006. All rights reserved. Nigel Linsan Colley
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- Part 1 – Who Was Gareth Jones?
- Early Life / Education / Credentials.
- Part 2 – The Gareth Jones Diaries
- Personal Diaries, Letters & Newspaper Articles of his Eyewitness
Observations of Ukrainian Famine Conditions in 1930, 31 & 33.
- Part 3 – Covering-up the Famine
- Denigration by Walter Duranty in The New York Times in 1933.
- Gareth’s Forgotten Role in Randolph Hearst’s ‘Famine’ in 1935.
- The Thomas Walker (Fake Photo) Affair - Hearst Stooge or Soviet Patsy?
- Part 4 – Shooting the Messenger & Airbrushing the Truth
- Aftermath… Mysteriously Murdered by Japanese-Controlled Chinese Bandits
in 1935 (or Soviet Retribution)?
- Memorial Plaque - Aberystwyth, Wales, 2006
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- Mother, Former Governess to John Hughes’ family between 1889-92, founder
of Hughesovka (now Donetsk).
- Father, Headmaster Barry County Grammar School.
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- Mother, Former Governess to John Hughes’ family between 1889-92, founder
of Hughesovka (now Donetsk).
- Father, Headmaster Barry County Grammar School.
- Gareth, Born 1905 in Barry, South Wales.
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- 1922-26 – 1st Class Honours Degree in French & German from
Aberystwyth University, Wales.
- 1923-25 - Université de Strasbourg: Diplôme Supérieur des Etudes
Françaises.
- 1926 – Exhibition Scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge.
- 1927, 1928 & 1929 - College Prizeman – Plus Senior Scholar in 1928.
- 1929 – 1st Class Honours in German and Russian, with distinction in Oral
Examinations.
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6
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- One month unsuccessful trial with The Times and through family
acquaintance Tom Jones, (the long-standing British Government Cabinet
Secretary) is introduced to Former World War One British Prime Minister
David Lloyd George.
- Appointed Foreign Affairs Advisor to Lloyd George Jan 1st
1930.
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7
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- Visits USSR for 1st time as the eyes & the ears of the
Lloyd George, but with an ‘open mind’ in August 1930; soon after British
Diplomatic relations are restored.
- On Leaving USSR, Gareth writes candidly to his parents:
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Hurray! It is wonderful
to be in Germany again, absolutely wonderful.
Russia is in a very bad state; rotten, no food, only bread; oppression,
injustice, misery among the workers and 90% discontented. I saw some
very bad things, which made me mad to think that people like [the Webbs] go
there and come back, after having been led round by the nose and had enough
to eat, and say that Russia is a paradise. In the South there is talk
of a new revolution, but it will never come off,
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- “…foreign delegations [are] blissfully ignorant of the hunger,
discontent, opposition, and hatred.”
- “…Donetz Basin, where there has been a serious breakdown in food
supplies.”
- A miner expressed …“Everybody is going away from the Donetz Basin,
because there is no food here. There is nothing in Russia.
The situation is terrible.”
- “The present food shortage was attributed by most Russians to two causes
– the agricultural revolution begun last year and the absence of a free
market... “It is all the fault of this collectivisation, which the
peasants hate. There is no meat, nothing at all.”
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13
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- Head-hunted from Lloyd George’s Secretariat to work for world’s leading
PR agency on Wall Street as their Soviet expert,
- Chaperoned 21 year old Jack Heinz’s on a month-long ‘unescorted’ visit
to USSR in August 1931.
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14
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- Afterwards, Heinz compiled a privately published & ‘Anonymously
written’ book in spring 1932, entitled: “Experiences of Russia – 1931 –
A Diary” – i.e., Gareth’s Diaries.
- Arguably, the first Western book to ‘honestly’ report the onset of
famine conditions within the Soviet Union, again citing variations of
the word ‘starve’ on half a dozen occasions…
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- Gareth signed the Foreword:
- “With knowledge of Russia and the Russian language, it was possible to
get off the beaten path, to talk with grimy workers and rough peasants,
as well as such leaders as Lenin’s widow and Karl Radek [editor of
Pravda].
- We visited vast engineering projects and factories, slept on the
bug-infested floors of peasants’ huts, shared black bread and cabbage
soup with the villagers - in short, got into direct touch with the
Russian people in their struggle for existence and were thus able to
test their reactions to the Soviet Government’s dramatic moves.”
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- A doctor’s wife on the boat said to Jones:
- “Exiles? The peasants have been
sent away in thousands to starve.
They were exiled just because they worked hard all their lives.
- It’s terrible how they have treated them; they have not given them
anything; no bread cards even. They sent a lot to Tashkent, where I was,
and just left them on the square.
The exiles did not know what to do and many starved to death.”
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- “On Friday, I had exceptionally interesting talks … with Prof. Jules
Menken (LSE) a very well known economist. He was appalled with the
prospects: what he had seen was the complete failure of Marxism.
He dreaded this winter, when he thought millions would die of hunger.
- He had never seen such bungling & such breakdowns. What struck
him was the unfairness & the inequality. He had seen hungry
people one moment & the next moment he had lunched with Soviet
Commissars in the Kremlin with the best caviar, fish, game & the
most luxurious wines.”
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- Gareth immediately penned two articles for the Cardiff Western Mail
published on Oct 15 & 17, 1932 to highlight the tragic situation
entitled; “Will there be Soup?”
- In line with his Welsh Non-Conformist beliefs & virtues; Gareth
decided to make a trip to view the conditions firsthand.
- On 23 February 1933, Gareth became the first foreign journalist to fly
with the newly appointed German Chancellor (& afterwards dining
privately with Goebbels…)
- He prophetically wrote in the Western Mail:
- “If this aeroplane should crash then the whole history of Europe would
be changed. For a few feet away sits Adolf Hitler, Chancellor of
Germany and leader of the most volcanic nationalist awakening which the
world has seen.”
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- After two days ‘tramping’ along the track, according to one of Gareth’s
1935 American syndicated articles for Randolph Hearst, his trek came to
an abrupt end:
- “It happened in a small station, where I was talking with a group of
peasants: “We are dying,” they wailed and poured out the old story of
their woes. A red-faced, well-fed OGPU policeman in uniform approached
us and stood listening for a few moments.
- Then came the outburst, and from his lips poured a series of Russian
curses. “Clear away, you! Stop
telling him about hunger! Can’t you see he’s a foreigner?”
- He turned to me and roared: “Come along. What are you doing here? Show
me your documents.”
- Visions of a secret police prison darted before my mind. The OGPU man
looked at my passport and beckoned to one of the crowd, whom I had taken
to be an ordinary passenger, but who was obviously in the secret police.
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- He came to me and in the most polite and respectful terms bade me follow
him. “I shall have to take you to
the nearest city, Kharkov.”
- Throughout the journey I impressed him with the fact that I had
interviewed Lenin’s widow, and a number of commissars and great
panjandrums of the Soviet régime, and by the time we reached Kharkov I
believed he was thoroughly convinced that any real arrest of myself
would plunge Russia and Europe and the United States into a world war.
- For he decided to accompany me to a foreign consulate in Kharkov
and he left me at the doorstep, while I, rejoicing at my freedom bade
him a polite farewell – an anti-climax but a welcome one.
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- “I have just arrived back from Russia, where I found the situation
disastrous. The 5-year Plan has been a complete disaster in that it has
destroyed the peasantry & brought famine to every part of the
country. I tramped alone for several days through a part of Ukraine…
- The situation is so grave, so much worse than in 1921 that I am amazed
at your admiration for Stalin."
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- “The first reliable report of the Russian famine was given to the world
by an ‘English’ journalist, a certain Gareth Jones, at one time
secretary to Lloyd George. Jones had a conscientious streak in his
make-up which took him on a secret journey into the Ukraine and a brief
walking tour through its countryside.
- That same streak was to take him a few years later into the interior of
China during political disturbances, and was to cost him his life at the
hands of Chinese military bandits. An earnest and meticulous little man,
Gareth Jones was the sort who carries a note-book and unashamedly
records your words as you talk. Patiently he went from one correspondent
to the next, asking questions and writing down the answers...”
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- On emerging from Russia, Jones made a statement which, startling though
it sounded, was little more than a summary of what the correspondents
and foreign diplomats had told him. To protect us… he emphasized his
Ukrainian foray rather than our conversations as the chief source of his
information.
- In any case… with preparations under way for the trial of the British
[Metrovik] engineers, the need to remain on friendly terms with the
censors … was for all of us a compelling professional necessity.
- Throwing down Jones was as unpleasant a chore as fell to any of us in
years of juggling facts to please dictatorial regimes, but throw him
down we did… Poor Gareth Jones must have been the most surprised human
being alive when the facts he so painstakingly garnered from our mouths
were snowed under by our denials.
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- “Mr. Jones is a man of a keen and active mind, and he has taken the
trouble to learn Russian, which he speaks with considerable fluency, but
the writer thought Mr. Jones' judgment was somewhat hasty and asked him
on what it was based. It appeared that he had made a forty-mile walk
through villages in the neighborhood of Kharkov and had found conditions
sad.”
- “…There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation, but there is
widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition.”
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- …Journalists, on the other hand, are allowed to write, but the
censorship has turned them into masters of euphemism and
understatement. Hence they give “famine” the polite name of
“food shortage” and “starving to death” is softened down to read as
widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition.”
- … May I in conclusion congratulate the Soviet Foreign Office on its
skill in concealing the true situation in the U.S.S.R.? Moscow is
not Russia, and the sight of well fed people there tends to hide the
real Russia.
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- Snubbed by Lloyd George (for using his name to give credence by
association to Gareth’s famine allegations) and also by London
Intelligentsia.
- 1933-34 - Worked as local reporter for Cardiff Western Mail, initially
on stories relating to Welsh traditional arts & crafts, but later interviewing Irish Prime
Minister, de Valera !
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- June 1934 – Meets Randolph Hearst at his Welsh Castle, St. Donats,
Cardiff – invited to meet again in St. Simeon, California.
- January 1st 1935 – Personally commissioned to repeat 1933
famine observations for Hearst; given carte blanche to write some of the
most vitriolic attacks on the Stalinist regime whilst being equally
heart-rending.
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- Five articles published in American Hearst Press commencing 18 February
1935 relating journalist, ‘Thomas Walker’s’ observations of a continuing
1934 Ukrainian famine & illustrated with secretly taken photographs
from his own camera.
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- Marxist, Louis Fischer in a published letter to left-wing US weekly, The
Nation, showed that:
- Walker’s photos were from different seasons.
- Some photos from 1921 famine.
- Thomas Walker according to unverified Soviet-supplied records to
Fischer, could never have visited Ukraine.
- Not only were all his photos & articles bogus… Even Walker, himself
turned out to be a fake! But whose fake was he? Hearst’s or Stalin’s?
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- In Fisher’s March Letter’s Postscript: “P.S. Would the Hearst press
oblige with a photo of Mr Thomas Walker, and with facsimiles of his US
passport and of the Soviet visa stamped upon it?”
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- Passport Fraud Charged’, New York Times, July 13, 1935
- ‘Indicted Writer Also Accused as Escaped Convict’...
- “Robert Green, a writer of newspaper articles describing famine
conditions in the Ukraine, was indicted yesterday …on the charge that he
had made false statements obtaining a passport.
- George Pfann, Attorney, alleged that Green, who wrote under the pen
name, Thomas Walker, was a fugitive from Colorado prison where he
escaped in 1921 while serving a sentence for forgery…”
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- How did Fisher know Walker was travelling on a false passport, three
months before his London arrest? Was he informed by the Soviets along
with Walker's ‘supposed’ 1934 USSR travel dates? And, who tipped off the British
authorities?
- The American Daily Worker wrote; “Evidence at trial revealed he [Walker]
had made a previous visit to the Soviet Union in 1930, under the name
Thomas J. Burke” and was “expelled for attempting to smuggle out a
‘whiteguard’ out of the country”.
- Yet Walker, according to Soviet supplied information travelled again to
the USSR in Autumn 1934, albeit under another name, but surely a very
risky undertaking for the small remuneration of just five articles –
unless he was perhaps, recruited from a Soviet Prison?
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- Fischer’s letter combined with Walker’s subsequent (re)arrest
effectively for half a century …
- Destroyed the complete credibility of the Worldwide ‘Conservative’
press’ allegations of any Soviet famine in the 1930s.
- Furthermore, in March 1933, when Gareth claimed millions were dying,
Fischer then scoffed: “Who counted them? How could anyone march through
a country count a million people?”
- But in 1935, without ever mentioning Gareth’s name or even attacking
his 1935 articles directly – Gareth’s eyewitness observations of 1933 were not only
tarnished by the same brush as Walkers, but were completely forgotten
for nearly 70 years.
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- Spring 1935
- At the time of Walkers’ articles, Gareth was effectively
‘incommunicado’ having embarked on fact-finding mission of the Far East.
- After interviewing the Japanese Minister of War in Tokyo, he decided
to visit Inner Mongolia to investigate the possibility of the Military
Expansionism of their puppet state of Manchukuo, spreading across
Northern China…
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- German Company, Wostwag kindly supplied vehicle for an extended trip
into Inner Mongolia to witness the Japanese presence in the area.
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- Invite originally from German Journalist, Dr Herbert Mueller.
- Gareth assured by Mueller; “Absolutely Safe, No Bandits”.
- After kidnapping, Mueller released after two days as captive…
- Ransom later obdurately rejected by bandits …
- Gareth was tragically murdered after two weeks on eve of his 30th
birthday -12 Aug 1935 …
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- London publication in The Week by Marxist, Claud Cockburn, claimed that
Dr. Mueller was released because of secret Japanese-German Entente
Cordiale Pact.
- Japanese initially implicated by Foreign Office concluded after 500-page
report; ‘No Foundation Whatsoever’.
- Ultimately Gareth’s murder put down to the act of a miscreant Chinese
bandit’s bullet…
- Not a single mention of Gareth’s Soviet ban or any of his famine
reporting in whole report.
- The Soviet Union were never once considered as possibly being culpable despite…
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- Wostwag, the company which gave ‘free transport’ were major arm of NKVD
in China & allegedly ‘de facto’ bankers and arms dealers to Chinese
Communist Party.
- Dr Mueller, who invited Gareth on ‘Safe’ trip, was a known Comitern activist with a secret
dossier on him from 1917 -1951 & at one time lived in the Soviet
Consol at Hankow.
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- MI5 never passed on relevant intelligence to F.O. for their enquiry,
even though:
- Sir Vernon Kell, founder and Director General of MI5, told US
intelligence he knew of Wostwag’s financial tie-up with the Soviet
Security Services back in 1929.
- Mueller’s 34 year dossier from 1917 was active at the time in 1935.
- If they had, then their conclusions may well have been different… As
it was, the F.O armed only with Marxist Cockburn’s allegations in The
Week of a Japanese-German pact, weren’t even on the ‘scent’ of any
Soviet complicity…
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- The embarrassment to the Japanese by being publicly implicated with
Gareth’s murder in Mueller’s German articles resulted in effectively no
further territorial expansion of their Chinese ‘empire’ until the ‘Rape
of Nanking’ in 1937 – allowing Wostwag to continue to ‘operate covertly’
& trade profitably without hindrance.
- As a likely ‘marked’ enemy of the Soviet State for his Holodomor
reporting, liquidation of Gareth by NKVD operatives in Inner Mongolia
would certainly not have displeased the Moscow hierarchy. And not least
of all, by former Chekist, Foreign Commissar Litvinov, who clearly was
incensed by Gareth’s affront to embarrassingly expose the Holodomor ten
days after affording him the privilege of a personal interview in
Moscow…
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- One person who may have later seen through the cover-up of Gareth’s
death by simple bandits, is arguably George Orwell (whose bête noire was
also Cockburn)…
- In Brief:
- Tsar Nicholas was also murdered by ‘Napoleon’.
- ‘Jones’ is primarily a Welsh name, though all Orwell’s names were
carefully & symbolically chosen.
- ‘9 [Ukrainian] hens had died of coccidiosis’ c.f. Duranty; ‘No
Starvation, but …diseases due to malnutrition’ – GO certainly knew of
Gareth & Duranty (having reviewed Eugene Lyons’ book in 1938.)
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- On Friday 16th August, upon hearing of Gareth’s murder, Lloyd
George commented in The London Evening Standard:
- “I was struck with horror when the news of poor Mr Gareth Jones was
conveyed to me. I was uneasy
about his fate from the moment I ascertained that when his companion, Dr
Herbert Müller, was released he was detained.”
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- “That part of the world is a cauldron of conflicting intrigue and one or
other interests concerned probably knew that Mr Gareth Jones knew too
much of what was going on…”
- “He had a passion for finding out what was happening in foreign lands
wherever there was trouble, and in pursuit of his investigations he
shrank from no risk.”
- “…I had always been afraid that he would take one risk too many. Nothing escaped his observation, and
he allowed no obstacle to turn from his course when he thought that
there was some fact, which he could obtain. “
- “He had the almost unfailing knack of getting at things that mattered.”
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- Gareth’s diaries probably represent the only independent Western
verification of Stalin’s Ukrainian famine-genocide.
- His Soviet articles were arguably the most accurate reporting of 5-year
plan.
- With his ‘mysterious’ murder, an heroic ‘loose cannon’ was almost
airbrushed out of history for more than half a century…
- He was indeed a “Man Who Knew Too Much”.
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- Historical tri-lingual bronze bas relief plaque by Toronto sculptor,
Oleh Lesiuk was unveiled at The University of Wales, inscribed: ,
- “In Memory of Gareth Richard Vaughn Jones, born 1905, who graduated from
the University of Aberystwyth and the University of Cambridge. One of
the first journalists to report on the Holodomor, the Great Famine of
1932-33 in the Soviet Ukraine.”
- With my family’s personal thanks to the UCCLA, the Ukrainian Orthodox
Churches of Great Britain and of Canada, the Association of Ukrainians
in Great Britain, the Ukrainian American Civil Liberties Association,
and other donors…
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- And finally, thank you to the
- the Ukrainian Canadian Congress,
- Canadian Friends of Ukraine
- & the Shevchenko Scientific Soc.
- for the kind invitation & opportunity
- to speak to you about my great uncle,
- Gareth Richard Vaughn Jones
- Nigel Linsan Colley
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Notes
