Lynskey Tribunal
The Lynskey Tribunal was a public inquiry appointed on 29 October 1948 under the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921 to investigate allegations that ministers and other public servants had been paid, or offered payments, in connection with licences or the withdrawal of prosecutions. The Home Secretary, James Chuter Ede, told the Commons that he had appointed Sir George Justin Lynskey, a High Court judge, as chairman, with Godfrey Russell Vick KC and Gerald Ritchie Upjohn KC as the other members.
Hearings
According to the Tribunal's report, it sat in public at the Royal Courts of Justice on 1 November 1948 to settle questions of procedure, and at Church House, Westminster, on 15 November 1948 "and thereafter for a further twenty-five days between that date and the 21st December 1948 to hear evidence and arguments". Fifty-eight witnesses gave oral evidence and two gave evidence by affidavit. The Attorney General, Sir Hartley Shawcross, opened the facts and led the evidence. The inquiry was confined to corruption in connection with licences and prosecutions.
The report
The report (Cmd. 7616) was signed on 21 January 1949 and presented to Parliament the same day. It found against two men.
John Belcher, Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade and Labour MP for Sowerby, had accepted gifts and hospitality from Sidney Stanley — including a week's stay at Margate, a gold cigarette case, a suit of clothes, and hospitality at Stanley's flat — knowing they were made to secure favourable treatment for people Stanley introduced. Because of those "benefactions" he had helped applicants over premises at Margate and a hotel licence at Bognor Regis, and had decided to withdraw the prosecution of Shermans Pools Ltd. He had also accepted wines and spirits from the Glasgow distiller Sir Maurice Bloch, knowing they were given to obtain import licences for sherry casks, and had intervened to secure those licences. The Tribunal was not satisfied that Belcher had received any sums of money.
The report also found that Stanley had offered George Gibson, a director of the Bank of England, the chairmanship of a company as an inducement to use his influence with the Capital Issues Committee, and that Gibson, though he refused the offer, continued to help Stanley "in the hope of further material advantage to himself".
Stanley had used the names of Isaac Wolfson and Great Universal Stores to impress ministers; the Tribunal did not find against Wolfson. The other ministers and officials named in the report were all cleared. The allegations of large cash payments to ministers were, the Tribunal said, "largely the result of the statements and activities of Mr. Sydney Stanley", "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).
The report says nothing about Zionism, the Irgun, Palestine or Samuel Landman. MI5 was watching the proceedings; what the Security Service files show, and do not show, is set out on the page for Sidney Stanley.
Aftermath
In the Commons debate on 3 February 1949, Belcher announced that he would apply for the Chiltern Hundreds. The Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, moved that the report be accepted, telling the House that one junior minister had been "influenced in the exercise of his functions by the receipt of benefactions", and that Gibson had been "influenced in his actions by the offer of a directorship". Winston Churchill, for the Opposition, noted that Gibson had already resigned his Bank directorship and his place on the North Western Electricity Board. Attlee also announced that the Home Secretary was satisfied it was "conducive to the public good" that Stanley should leave the country.