‘Mountbattens’ author on points made in Sligo Weekender article
ANDREW LOWNIE, the author of The Mountbattens: Their Lives and Loves, wrote to the Sligo Weekender this week to respond to several points made in an article in last Thursday’s paper. In that piece, titled “Book defence rejected – Classiebawn abuse stories ‘implausible’”, several people argued that the Earl Mountbatten of Burma could not have abused boys in Mullaghmore in the 1970s. Mr Lownie, in his letter this week, said: “Let me remind readers of the evidence, which includes several FBI files with important individuals who were interviewed on other matters. “This includes the society hostess Lady Decies, ‘an intimate of the British Queen Elizabeth, Queen Mary and her ladies-in-waiting’, who described Mountbatten as ‘a homosexual with a perversion for young boys’.
“The FBI concluded that she ‘appears to have no special motive in making the above statements’.
“The newspaper proprietor Cecil King publicly described Mountbatten as a ‘sexual pervert’.
“In his letter to the Sligo Weekender, Colin Armstrong says ‘no alleged victim of Lord Mountbatten has come forward under his own name in the 41 years since he died’.
“But I include in my book interviews with two victims, whose names are known to many, including me.
“It was only on the advice of my publisher’s lawyer that their real names were not used. I have no doubt they will go public at some point. I suspect there are others but many victims feel shame at what happened to them and are reluctant to come forward.
“Mr Armstrong also says that ‘Amal’ claimed to be at Kincora, which is not true. I simply write he ‘was brought to Mullaghmore in the summer of 1977’. In fact, he was trafficked from London.
“We don’t know exactly where the abuse of ‘Sean’ took place so it is nit-picking and disingenuous to argue it could not have happened in the castle or that the hotels are a few minutes’ drive away rather than the 15 minutes they said. These were 16-year-old boys in an unfamiliar country remembering traumatic events of many years earlier.
“My understanding is that two of the boys were brought to a building where boating items were present.
“On the evidence of one family memoir, Armstrong claims Mountbatten only visited Classiebawn in August and with his family. After spending years looking at Mountbatten’s papers, it is clear that Mountbatten went alone and at other times of the year.
“Armstrong also says that Mountbatten’s car ‘was always followed by Garda vehicles’, but there are plenty of examples of Mountbatten travelling alone. On one occasion he had taken a car ferry to Dublin and disembarked before the Garda knew where he was. “I’ve previously addressed the fact that ‘Sean’ did not give evidence to the Hart enquiry because he felt he would not be given a fair hearing. It’s clear from looking at the various enquiry files now released – and few have been – that there were very proscribed parameters to the enquiries.
“There were numerous errors in the Hart findings, including, just to quote part of the evidence my detractors deploy, saying on one page that boys were abused by Sir Maurice Oldfield and then in the next page saying no such claims were made.
“Hart argued that because the logs for Kincora did not show that boys were being taken out at weekends it could not happened. This assumes a paedophile network would have recorded its activities in an official log available to the department running the Northern Ireland care home system. The report is riddled with similar naivety and Hart cannot be taken as credible evidence that there was not an abuse network surrounding Kincora and that Mountbatten was part of it.
“I have repeatedly asked for the release of the car logs for Classiebawn in 1977, which the Garda admit they still hold, which would establish evidence one way or another about the trafficking but those requests have been refused.
“Mountbatten’s wartime driver Norman Nield has gone on the record as driving Mountbatten to meetings with young children.
“Jeffrey Dudgeon in his Sunday Independent letter says he should have been prosecuted, but Nield only revealed his role in 1987, having read Spycatcher and feeling he had a better story. By the time I researched my book Nield was dead, but I interviewed his son.
“Dudgeon then argues that ‘authors should have respect for a person’s right to a reputation, something protected by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights’. “Mountbatten carefully curated his reputation, even forcing Churchill to change an account of the Dieppe Raid. This continued after his death with access, for example to letters and diaries, only permitted to tame biographies. He is a big enough figure to encompass some criticism.” Mr Lownie concluded: “The responsibility of the author is to tell the truth even if the subject is famous, rich and powerful. We also owe a duty to the abused that even 40 years later they receive justice.”