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Lord Haw-Haw was the last man to be hanged for high treason. Whether
we like it or not, Birkbeck was the making of him, writes Mary Kenny
William
Joyce, known as 'Lord Haw-Haw', had two claims to fame in the history
of the twentieth century. Firstly, he was Adolf Hitler's most successful
broadcasting propagandist, reaching a radio audience, in the early
1940s, of over 16 million. Older people still recall his unique,
rasping voice, announcing 'Germany Calling' - or, rather 'Jairmany
Calling' - over the airwaves.
His second claim is that he was the last man to be hanged for high
treason by the Crown, at Wandsworth prison in January 1946. His
treason consisted of carrying out these propaganda broadcasts -
as an apparent British subject - but the trial was, and remains,
controversial. Many who deplored Joyce's views believed his trial
was unfair, with the political system 'fixed' to convict him. What
he said was odious, but there remained an instinctive British feeling
that, however deplorable a man's ideas, he should not be hanged
for them.
The other problem with Joyce's conviction was that he was not, in
fact, a British subject at all, and therefore not technically in
a position to commit treason. Willie Joyce was born in America,
of an Irish father and an Anglo-Irish mother. He came to England
at 16, and from there on, constructed himself as a kind of fake
Englishman. His accent - which people could never quite pin down
- was his own construction of how a posh Englishman should sound.
Joyce, who was born in 1906, grew up in Galway city in the West
of Ireland, to which his family had migrated. As a child, he was
bright, but naughty. He was big trouble at his Jesuit School in
Galway, St Ignatius. He once pulled a gun on a teacher, and spoke
cheekily to the Bishop of Galway at a period when schoolboys were
expected to be deferential. He was more or less expelled and had
to get out of Galway double-quick because the IRA was on his case.
They had already made one attempt to liquidate him - as an ultra-British
loyalist, Joyce was running around Galway as a teenage supporter
of the much-hated Black and Tans.
As a teenager, Joyce reeled from one failure to another. Kicked
out of Ireland, he sought refuge in the Worcester Regiment of the
British Army. It wasn't long before he was kicked out of that. He
applied to Battersea Polytechnic (now the University of Surrey),
but, after a year there, where he engaged in violent political fighting
which horrified the genteel schoolmasters, he was asked to leave.
It was then he decided to apply to Birkbeck: and it has to be said,
whether we like it or not, that Birkbeck was the making of Lord
Haw-Haw. Studying at Birkbeck was the first thing that Willie Joyce
ever did in his life which was a success, and in which he was encouraged.
He enrolled in 1923, when he was 17. He was one of the youngest
students in the college: most of his peers were in their late 20s
or early 30s - people who had missed out on further education because
of the First World War.
Douglas Trew, who died just last year, was at Birkbeck at the same
time (the college was then situated in Bream's Buildings, between
Fetter Lane and Chancery Lane, EC4). "It was a very busy, lively
place, with lots of clubs and societies," Mr Trew told me of
Birkbeck in the 1920s.
William was reading English with history. Douglas remembered how
interested the students were in politics - these were tumultuous
times, after all. William would attend the debating societies at
Birkbeck, where he would soon bore everyone rigid by his anti-Semitic
rants - he already had an obsession with the Jews, blaming Jewish
influence for the rise of Bolshevism. He was repeatedly shouted
down and told to shut up by fellow Birkbeckians.
Joyce was ill-favoured in his appearance. Exceptionally short, he
had an ugly scar running down his right cheek, and struck people
as "a queer little Irishman". Yet, for all that, he worked
hard at his studies. He turned out to have a remarkable brain for
academic work. He mastered Latin and some Greek and became an exceptional
Anglo-Saxon scholar. He was clever at mathematics and accomplished
in music.
The head of the English language and literature, HH Lobban, had
a high opinion of William's ability and gave him virtually the only
good reference he ever got in his life. William had two articles
published: in the spring of 1927, a scholarly essay appeared in
The Lodestone, the Birkbeck magazine of the time. Subsequently,
he wrote for the Review of English Studies on the philological
topic of 'The Mid Back Slack Unround Vowel [a] in the English of
today'.
He graduated from Birkbeck in 1926-27 with a First Class degree
- one of only two in the English faculty to do so. It was said that
he produced the best paper on Shakespeare that the college had seen
in the twentieth century.
His experience at Birkbeck so fulfilled William Joyce that he decided
to continue with a full-time academic career, studying educational
psychology and philology. He began postgraduate work at King's College,
when, suddenly, he was politically swept off his feet by the appearance
of Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists. From
one day to the next, William Joyce walked away from his academic
life, and took the perilous road of fascism that would lead to his
support of the Third Reich, his life in Germany, and ultimately,
the hangman's noose.
If history had turned out differently, Joyce might have become an
eccentric professor, with peculiar views, perhaps, but nevertheless,
a fine teacher. He was admired for his teaching skills at the time.
Instead, he went down in history as 'Lord Haw-Haw', a nickname conferred
on him by the Daily Express for his "haw-haw, get-out-of-my-way"
manner of speaking. Birkbeck has many distinguished alumni, as well
as a few bad hats. It is a kind of tribute to the college's impartiality
that all are given the same chance.
Author
and journalist Mary Kenny was a mature student at Birkbeck herself,
graduating in BA
French Studies in 1997. Her biography of William Joyce, Germany
Calling, was published in 2004 in paperback. A TV documentary
will be transmitted later this year and a film of her book is in
production. For more information, visit www.mary-kenny.com |
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