Sidney Stanley
Sidney Stanley (also Sydney Stanley; born Solomon Wulkan or Koszycki, also known as Rechtand and later as Shlomo Ben-Chaim; c. 1900–1969) was a Polish-born "business agent" and fraudster. He was at the centre of the Lynskey Tribunal of 1948, the inquiry into corruption in the Attlee government. MI5's authorised historian, Christopher Andrew, concluded that Stanley was also "a member of the Irgun intelligence network in Britain". No such allegation appears in the Tribunal's report. In 1949, facing deportation, he left Britain for Israel, where he died.
MI5 opened a personal file on Stanley (PF 603777) in November 1947. It has been released at The National Archives as KV 2/3176 (1947–49) and KV 2/3177 (1949–57). The catalogue describes him as having "claimed acquaintance with senior political figures and to act as intermediary between them and Samuel LANDMAN for the latter's Zionist activities".
Background
According to the Tribunal's report, Stanley's name on his alien registration card was Solomon Kohsyzcky, alias Rechtand. He was "a Pole by birth" who came to Britain in 1913 at the age of 12. In 1927 he was made bankrupt under the name Wulkan and was still an undischarged bankrupt in 1948. A deportation order was made against him on 1 June 1933 as "Solomon Koszycki, alias Rechtand, known as Sid Wulkan", but the police lost track of him until after the outbreak of war. From 1945 his wife held the tenancy of a flat at 4 Aldford House, Park Lane, from which he worked as a "business agent" (paras 61–63). The MI5 file gives his aliases as Sidney Chaim, Sidney Rechtand, Shlomo Ben Chaim and Solomon Wulkan, and his nationality variously as British, Austrian, Polish and Israeli.
Landman's go-between with Shinwell, 1947
Stanley came to MI5's notice through its telephone check on Samuel Landman, a suspended solicitor and leading Revisionist Zionist. In early November 1947 MI5's B3a section reported that Landman "has contacts with, and is getting information from, official Government circles, through a friend of his named 'STANLEY'", who was then "not definitely identified" (KV 2/3133). Andrew quotes the same intercepts: Stanley told Landman he had seen "Mannie", presumably Emanuel Shinwell, the Secretary of State for War, and claimed an appointment with the Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, or failing that with Ernest Bevin.
A top secret MI5 summary of 5 December 1947 identified Landman's intermediary as "a certain S. STANLEY, now living at 4, Aldford House, Park Lane, W.1., of whom we have no other record". It recorded that Stanley claimed to have put before Shinwell "a memorandum prepared by LANDMAN's Revisionist colleagues on the basis of information obtained in Palestine", alleging that the Transjordan Frontier Force was being prepared under British direction to take the offensive against the Jews. The same paper noted an anonymous tip to Special Branch that Cyril Ross, managing director of Swears and Wells and a close associate of Stanley, was "associated with LANDMAN in work on behalf of the IRGUN ZVAI LEUMI" (KV 2/3176, pp. 54–55).
J.C. Robertson of B3a warned that MI5's source on the Shinwell contacts "is mainly the intermediary STANLEY", so "allowance must therefore be made for inaccuracies and possible misrepresentations". He nevertheless wanted the matter seen "because of its bearing on potential sources of leakage from the Cabinet". Separate enquiries had shown that Landman's associates, including Werner Aron, "have lately been interested in the purchase of arms from the United States for export to an unknown destination - possibly the Middle East" (minute 4, p. 4). The Director-General, Sir Percy Sillitoe, raised the case with Sir Eric Speed, Permanent Under-Secretary at the War Office. Speed found that Stanley had seen Shinwell on 28 October, 4 November (alone, at Stanley's insistence) and 7 November 1947, and that Stanley and Ross were "in each other's pockets". He judged that Shinwell "has acted with the utmost propriety, but does not know what STANLEY's game is" (minutes 5–6, pp. 4–6). Andrew concludes that Stanley's claims of influence were "a mixture of invention and exaggeration", but that he did acquire confidential information on the disbandment of the Transjordan Frontier Force, "for which the War Office may (or may not) have been the source".
MI5's assessment
MI5 never took Stanley at his own valuation. The December 1947 summary called him "a boastful person of doubtful reliability" (p. 54). On 19 April 1948 an officer described him as "essentially a racketeer living by his wits". On 28 April H.L. Brown of B3a wrote that there was "considerable doubt" about his claims, since "he is something of a mountebank who puts them forward as window-dressing for his financial transactions". Brown noted that Stanley lived "at the rate of over £40,000 a year, without apparently having any regular business" (KV 2/3176, p. 13, minutes 38–39). Another minute recorded that he had received "nearly £35,000" from Ross between November and December 1947 (p. 8).
The Lynskey Tribunal
In October 1948 the government appointed a tribunal under Mr Justice Lynskey to investigate allegations that ministers and officials had been paid in connection with licences. In October 1948 Stanley was briefly detained in Brixton Prison as a witness. The Tribunal sat at Church House, Westminster, from 15 November to 21 December 1948. Its report (Cmd. 7616, January 1949) found that Stanley had given John Belcher, Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, gifts and hospitality to secure favourable treatment for people he introduced, and that Belcher had accepted them knowing their purpose. It also found that Stanley had offered George Gibson, a director of the Bank of England, the chairmanship of a company as an inducement. The allegations of large cash payments to ministers were, in the Tribunal's view, "largely the result of the statements and activities of Mr. Sydney Stanley", who was "a man who will make any statement, whether true or untrue, if he thinks that it [is] to his own advantage so to do" (para 335). Stanley had also used the names of Isaac Wolfson and Great Universal Stores to impress ministers (see Isaac Wolfson). The distiller Sir Maurice Bloch was found to have given Belcher wines and spirits for licences, but the report treats that as a separate case and records no dealings between Bloch and Stanley.
The inquiry was confined to corruption, and its report says nothing about Zionism, Landman, Palestine or arms. MI5 was watching the proceedings. On 25 October 1948 D.J. Scherr of B3a told the Deputy Director-General that the "Solomon WULKAN" detained as a witness was "none other than Sidney STANLEY, the subject of this file" (KV 2/3176, p. 21, minute 93).
The Irgun question: what the file shows
Andrew, writing with full access to the Security Service archive, states that Stanley's "cheerfulness at the end of a tribunal which had exposed him as a fraud probably reflected his relief that he had not also been exposed as a member of the Irgun intelligence network in Britain". He adds that "during the Tribunal hearings, the Chief of SIS, Sir Stewart Menzies, personally informed Sillitoe that he had 'learned from a reliable informant'" that Stanley was part of a group of extreme Zionists running arms to Palestine (The Defence of the Realm, pp. 361–362).
The original record of that report survives in Stanley's file as serial 101a, a top secret note dated 10 December 1948 by the Director of B Division, Dick White (KV 2/3176, p. 42):
- "'C' personally informed the D.G. today that he had learned from a reliable informant that STANLEY, SIEFF, WOLFZER and ROSS comprise a group of extreme Zionists intent on running arms to Palestine. 'C's' informant further alleged that they hoped to persuade Shinwell to assist them in this.
- The D.G. replied that STANLEY's connection with Shinwell in a Zionist context had already come to our notice, that he had spoken to Sir Eric Speed about it and that as a result of enquiries made by the latter it was clear that Shinwell had acted perfectly correctly and refused to be drawn on the point."
"SIEFF" and "WOLFZER" are not further identified in the file. "ROSS" is cross-referenced to MI5's file on Cyril Ross (PF 47275).
Three days earlier, on 7 December 1948, White had minuted the Director-General about the Tribunal. "You will remember asking me to have a further search made into STANLEY's file to see if there was any material relating to the Church House Tribunal proceedings hidden there," he wrote. The results were summarised at serial 98a: "It would appear from this summary that the Attorney General is in possession of the vast majority of our evidence ... In short, our evidence substantiates but does not appear to take much further the story as revealed from cross-examinations at the Tribunal" (KV 2/3176, p. 23, minute 100). The Attorney General was Sir Hartley Shawcross, who led the evidence before the Tribunal.
The two documents that would show what MI5 told its own leadership about Stanley and the Tribunal no longer exist. The minute sheet records both as destroyed in June 1961 (pp. 21–22):
- serial 92a, a B3a "note summarising information obtained on STANLEY", 22 October 1948 ("destroyed 12/6/61");
- serial 98a, a B3a "review of the information re the STANLEY case", 3 December 1948, the summary on which White based his minute ("destroyed 17/6/61").
The surviving file therefore shows:
- the SIS report on arms-running reached MI5 on 10 December 1948, while the Tribunal was still sitting;
- MI5 had already concluded that the Attorney General held "the vast majority of our evidence", meaning the corruption evidence;
- there is no minute recording that the SIS report was passed to the Attorney General or the Tribunal, and none recording a decision to withhold it. The entries that follow 101a on the minute sheet are routine;
- the summaries prepared on Stanley and the Tribunal were destroyed in 1961.
The file does not document a decision to suppress. It does raise the question. An intelligence report that the Tribunal's central witness belonged to an arms-running group seeking to recruit a Cabinet minister reached MI5's Director-General during the hearings. No trace survives of it going any further, and the papers that would show what MI5 knew and decided were destroyed. Andrew says the Tribunal did not expose Stanley as an Irgun agent. He does not say why, or whether anyone decided that it should not.
Deportation and Israel
In the Commons debate on the report on 3 February 1949, Attlee announced that the Home Secretary was "satisfied from the information about Mr. Stanley's activities brought to light by the Tribunal that it is conducive to the public good that he should leave this country". According to Andrew, "what he did not reveal to the House was that the main threat which Stanley posed was far less the much reduced risk that he would corrupt people in public life than that he would assist Irgun". Andrew adds that "there is no evidence, however, that Stanley became involved in plans for terrorist attacks in Britain".
Poland refused to accept him, and in 1949 he left Britain for Israel. A British Legation minute of July 1949 recorded that Stanley, "now known as Ben Chaim", had offered to "turn King's evidence" on the smuggling of gold and diamonds out of Britain "to the value of £15,000,000 per annum" (KV 2/3176, p. 30). In May 1949 B.A. Hill of MI5 had written that he had "no doubt that STANLEY whilst domiciled in the U.K. was concerned with the smuggling of gold and diamonds", but that his move "is not one which concerns in any way the Security Service" (p. 25).
The writ against Isaac Wolfson
From Israel, Stanley issued a writ against Isaac Wolfson, chairman of Great Universal Stores, for £150,000 "in respect of various services performed in the past". According to the Foreign Office, Stanley wanted to use the claim to uncover "illicit financial dealings" by which Wolfson had allegedly deprived the government of income tax "to the tune of some ten million pounds" (KV 2/3177, p. 39, 16 March 1954). In August 1954 the British Embassy in Tel Aviv reported that Stanley was "convinced that his LONDON lawyers and his wife have been bribed by Mr. WOLFSON" (p. 34). The Foreign Office thought Stanley "something of a crank", and MI5 that he was "entirely unreliable" (p. 9). These are Stanley's allegations alone, and there is no record that the action came to trial. The News Chronicle reported the writ in November 1957 (p. 11).
Stanley died in Tel Aviv in 1969 (New York Times, 26 May 1969).