John Stonehouse and Barbara. Photo: Julia Stonehouse

IT happened half a century ago, but the story of how a popular and high-ranking left-wing former Labour Minister from Islington faked his own death after accusations of spying still creates shock and dismay.

That MP was John Stonehouse. And now his daughter, Julia Stonehouse, who lived with him, her sister Jane and mother Barbara in Alwyne Road, Canonbury, has written a poignant new book in support and praise of her father, who died in 1988.

John Stonehouse, accused of spying for Czechoslovakia during the Cold War, became Postmaster General in Harold Wilson’s Government in the 1960s. He was later imprisoned for fraud.

Julia maintained that her father was not a spy but “one of the most maligned men in British history”.

Her book is called John Stonehouse, My Father: The True Story of the Runaway MP.

However, not everyone in the extended family agrees with Julia.

Her cousin Julian Hayes, a solicitor, and great nephew of the politician, has also written a book – claiming that Stonehouse did indeed spy. His book is called Stonehouse Cabinet Minister, Fraudster, Spy. He includes details of Stonehouse’s mistress and Parliamentary Private Secretary, Sheila Buckley, who was holed up in a hotel in Fitzjohn’s Avenue, Hampstead, prior to allegedly seeking to join Stonehouse under his new identity.

What is not in doubt was that in 1974 the MP, who had serious financial problems, fooled everyone, including his wife and children, by pretending to drown off the Florida coast. He went to a beach in Miami, rolled his clothes into a neat bundle, left them while he went for a swim, and vanished.

In a move borrowed from the thriller Day of the Jackal, he used two passports belonging to dead constituents, and fled to Australia, where he was eventually apprehended.

Julia Stonehouse

Julia Stonehouse’s story:

Even at nine years old, John Stonehouse’s daughter Julia, who attended William Tyndale School in Upper Street, Islington, felt under threat.

Today a professional ghost writer, Julia tells in her book of receiving menacing phone calls, and coming out of her front door in Alwyne Road, a three-storey Victorian villa overlooking the River Walk, and stepping on a big pile of industrial superglue. She describes being unable to move her feet, and feeling “paralysed”.

She recounts another occasion when a man rang the house and told her father that there was a plan to kidnap his other daughter, Jane, who attended Parliament Hill School, Highgate.

Talking to Review, Julia said that the family had lived in Islington for eight years. “We loved Islington and would have stayed. But it was the threats against our lives that made us leave.”

The family were apparently victims of anti-immigrant and fascist organisations who resented Stonehouse’s support for black and ethnic issues and campaigns on behalf of anti-colonialists.

Stonehouse was 22 when he met and married Julia’s mother, Barbara, a member of the Labour Party, who lived at Highbury New Park.

Julia said: “These were very racist times and our house was always full of people discussing the issues like African independence.”

She describes her father as always caring and generous. “Many people of my generation were burdened by their parents’ racist, homophobic, or class-ridden prejudices,” she writes. “My father couldn’t care less what colour someone’s skin was, what race or creed they were, what their sexual orientation was, where they came from and how much money they had.”

The spy accusation meant that he lost his job in a Shadow Labour government. “Nobody likes a traitor, but in my father’s case it just wasn’t true,” said Julia. “There was nothing he could do about the allegations.” She argues that an entire Czech file on her father was fabricated.

He also became heavily depressed and resorted to banned drugs for insomnia. “The drugs made my father spiral out of control and do mad, out of character things, and contributed to what he called his ‘psychological suicide’.”

Julian Hayes

Julian Hayes’s story:

Stonehouse’s mistress Sheila Buckley – 21 years his junior – had moved into a hotel in Hampstead while he was in America, about to attempt to fake his own death.

In his absorbing book, Hayes describes how Sheila Buckley became friendly with Stonehouse in 1968, not long after he had reached the pinnacle of his career after being promoted to Postmaster General. It was also a period, according to Hayes, when the Czechs were beginning to sound him out.

Six years later, Buckley was accompanied by Stonehouse to Highfield House Hotel in Fitzjohn’s Avenue, where he requested a room for his “wife” while he was away, according to Hayes. He was of course still married and living with Barbara at the time.

Later, amid news that Stonehouse had “drowned” off the coast of Miami, Buckley was the first to receive a phone call at the hotel from the politician, who declared he was very much alive.

In fact Stonehouse, who had changed his name to Markham, was apparently ringing her from Hawaii.

Buckley later told police that Stonehouse “sounded upset” and “his voice was high-pitched and distressed.”

He insisted that he didn’t want Buckley to inform his family that he was alive and was sorry to put her in this predicament.

Hayes maintains that at first he was very sceptical about Stonehouse being a spy. He told Review: “I looked at source documents in Prague and in this country and spent many hours sifting through them.

“I got handwriting experts to check them and they were his (Stonehouse’s). One Hansard report said the Czechs mentored him and got him to ask questions in the Commons for money.”

Hayes’s father, Michael, now 78, was unwittingly drawn into Stonehouse’s world. “My father and his uncle John were incredibly close. But dad later felt betrayed.”

• John Stonehouse, My Father The True Story of the Runaway MP. By Julia Stonehouse, Icon, £16.99.
• Stonehouse Cabinet Minister, Fraudster, Spy. By Julian Hayes, Robinson, £25.