The plot thickens in search for Victor
THE disappearance of Victor Grayson remains a mystery 100 years since the former Colne Valley MP was seen leaving his London apartment in the company of two men.
His election as an Independent Socialist caused shock waves through Britain’s political scene. He accused Prime Minister David Lloyd George of selling honours for cash and Special Branch thought he could be a spy for Russia.
What happened to the charismatic and controversial politician?
Speculation suggested he could have been disposed of by powerful men in the establishment, or had voluntarily gone underground to live a new life.
Mike Shaw, former editor of the Colne Valley Guardian and Examiner journalist, said in Monday’s column, that Grayson’s daughter, whom he interviewed in 1985, said her father, brought up in Liverpool by an ordinary family, had actually been the son of an aristocrat whom she refused to identify.
Old friend Chris Marsden has added another layer to the puzzle by sending me a cutting from the Daily Mirror, March 7, 1967.
A letter was featured from
George D Grayson of Wolverhampton who said he was Victor’s nephew.
“I can take this strange story a little further,” he said.
“I was only eight at the time of his disappearance but his mother never tired of talking about him and used to say how her son, a champion of the poor, had come to detest the complacency of parliament.
“In 1949 I was working on a construction site in East Africa
HAD a Covid moment in Tuesday’s column. I used a list of pubs, past and present, that were on the A62 Manchester Road between Huddersfield and the Lancashire border.
Unfortunately, I omitted to add the very pertinent information that these pubs were or had been on the right hand side of the road.
We did the left hand side the week before.
And just to reassure everybody that lockdown is affecting people in other nations, there was this letter in The Irish Times: ”Please reopen the pubs, before we all turn into alcoholics.”
And no, I had not been drinking. when a plant operator asked me if I was a relative of Vic Grayson, a mechanical plant fitter.
“This was my uncle’s job before he entered politics.
“The man told me he had just left a construction project in South America where he had worked with a Vic Grayson.”
George Grayson showed the man a photograph of Victor, taken about 1919.
“My new friend was convinced, allowing for the 30 year time lapse, that it was, indeed, the colleague he had left in South America.
“I then wrote to Victor Grayson, care of the construction company in South America, putting my own address on the back of the envelope with the request: Please forward or return if undelivered.
“My mother wrote similarly from England.
“Neither letter was answered but nor were they returned.
“The Grayson my friend knew kept to himself but would on occasion discuss any subject under the sun – except politics.
“When that subject came up, he would leave the company. I am personally convinced that this was my missing uncle.
“But the mystery remains.”