John Stonehouse

John Thomson Stonehouse (28 July 1925 – 14 April 1988) was a British Labour and Co-operative Party politician, businessman and minister who was a member of the Cabinet under Prime Minister Harold Wilson. He is remembered for his unsuccessful attempt at faking his own death in 1974. It is alleged that Stonehouse had been an agent for Czechoslovak military intelligence.

John Thomson Stonehouse was born on 28 July 1925 in Southampton, the second son and youngest of four children of Post Office engineer and later dockyard engine-fitter William Mitchell Stonehouse, and Rosina Marie (née Taylor). His father was local secretary of his trade union; Stonehouse joined the Labour Party at the age of sixteen. His mother, a former scullery maid, was the sixth female mayor of Southampton and a councillor on Southampton City Council from 1936 to 1970.

Stonehouse was educated at Taunton's School (now Richard Taunton Sixth Form College), Southampton, and served as a Royal Air Force pilot from 1944 until 1946. He then attended the London School of Economics (LSE), where he read for a BSc (Econ.) degree. During his time at the LSE, he was chairman of both the chess club and the Labour society. The political scientist Bernard Crick, who was a contemporary of Stonehouse at university, recalls that his then nickname was 'Lord John', and that "his conversation was openly and restlessly about how best to get a parliamentary seat."

Stonehouse stood unsuccessfully in Norwood at the 1949 London County Council election. He was first elected as the Labour Co-operative Member of Parliament (MP) for Wednesbury in Staffordshire in a 1957 by-election, having contested Twickenham in 1950 and Burton in 1951.

In February 1959, Stonehouse travelled to the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland on a fact-finding tour in which he condemned the white minority government of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Speaking to the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress, he encouraged indigenous Rhodesians to stand up for their rights and said they had the support of the British Labour Party. Stonehouse was promptly deported from Southern Rhodesia and banned from returning a year later.

Stonehouse served as a junior minister of aviation, where he was involved in the British Overseas Airways Corporation's order of Boeing 707 aircraft from the United States, against his own recommendation that they should buy the Super Vickers VC10, a British-made aircraft. This led to accusations by Stonehouse against colleagues about the reasons for the decision. In March 1968, Stonehouse negotiated an agreement providing a framework for the long-term development of technological co-operation between Britain and Czechoslovakia providing for the exchange of specialists and information, facilities for study and research in technology, and such other forms of industrial co-operation which might be agreed.

Stonehouse's rise continued while in the Colonial Office, and in 1967 he became Minister for Technology under Wilson. He later served as Postmaster General, where his greatest contribution to the postal system was the introduction of first and second-class postage in 1968, often called the two-tier post, which was met with a full day of debate on the floor of Parliament after a bungled marketing campaign. The debates over Stonehouse's leadership were followed shortly after by the abolition of the office of Postmaster General by the Post Office Act 1969. As Minister of Posts and Telecommunications in 1970, Stonehouse oversaw the controversial jamming of the offshore radio station Radio North Sea International. When Labour was defeated at the 1970 general election, he was not appointed to the Shadow Cabinet.

When the Wednesbury constituency was abolished in 1974, Stonehouse stood for and was elected to the nearby Walsall North constituency in the February general election. With Labour a minority government, another election was called in September, and Stonehouse was re-elected with an increased majority of nearly 16,000 in the October election, just six weeks before his disappearance. Stonehouse's last Parliamentary contribution before his disappearance was at Prime Minister's Questions on 14 November 1974, a few days before leaving for Miami, Florida.