The sinister secret of Eisteddfod conductor
ON APRIL 30, 1945, as Soviet troops captured Berlin, Adolf Hitler bit down on a cyanide capsule while hiding in his underground bunker then shot himself in the head.
But, while the German dictator’s plans for world domination might have come to an abrupt and violent end, the Welshman who’d secretly planned to aid him in an armed invasion of Britain would take to the stage at the National Eisteddfod, near Wrexham, to applause and cheers.
Those watching – and, indeed, those in the orchestra he was conducting – likely knew nothing of composer Leigh Vaughan-Henry’s plot to launch a bloody coup d’etat, which included buying £250k-worth of guns and ammo, for the Third Reich to take over this country.
But, to the Secret Services, Vaughan-Henry had long been known as a dangerous individual – a die-hard fascist and anti-Semite whose attempts at insurrection they’d long been monitoring.
Yet, strangely, no real detailed information exists about the man otherwise known as Dr Leigh Francis Howell Wynne Sackville de Montmorency Vaughan-Henry.
Although born in Liverpool in 1889, as the son of Porthmadog composer John Henry, he revelled in his Welsh heritage – joining the Gorsedd (the modern-day Bardic community), claiming a direct familial lineage to Celtic druidry and publishing many poems and short stories and performing at numerous eisteddfodau.
In 1926 he also became musical adviser to the Royal Welsh Ladies Choir on a tour of Australia and North America, was a regular on the radio, and even conducted several orchestral performances for the royal family.
Yet, behind that public face, he was an integral member of Hitler’s British Fifth Column, a shadowy cabal of fascist sympathisers who’d meet behind closed doors to discuss their scheme to replace the British government and the King with an authoritarian proNazi regime, just as soon as German troops landed in Britain.
“He was a very dangerous man,” says Tim Tate, the author, documentary maker and investigative journalist behind a new book, Hitler’s British Traitors.
“It’s really puzzling to me how he’s so little known – I only came across him because his name cropped up while I was researching another coup plotter called John Beckett.
“In Beckett’s file were some misplaced reports from undercover MI5 agents who’d infiltrated VaughanHenry’s organisation – just fragments really.”
They’d been monitoring him for some years, it seems – a known antiSemite, Vaughan-Henry had a 1930s criminal conviction for causing a breach of the peace at a lunchtime meeting of a fascist organisation in London, during which he told the crowd that Jews were a menace to society and challenged any who might be in the audience to come up and fight him.
“Prior to that he’d been corresponding with Nazi leaders like Joseph Goebbels, and he also went over there to meet them, essentially acting as a disseminator of fascist propaganda,” adds Tate.
“He’d hold secret meetings at his address in Ladbroke Grove, west London, for other Nazi sympathisers.
“Their intentions were made clear at these gatherings – go onto the street and intimidate and act against certain people, even threaten their wives and children. The reports read that this was to ‘be organised with great care’ so that they could replace the existing UK Government with a puppet regime working on behalf of Berlin.
“This revolution was to take place ‘after the total loss of the Channel ports and the defeat of Allied Forces on the Western Front.’”
Most chillingly, when VaughanHenry’s address was raided, agents found a shipping receipt for a quarter of a million pounds-worth of weapons and ammunition.
Whether that deadly cache was ever found the files don’t say, and Vaughan-Henry refused to divulge their whereabouts.
Under emergency wartime regulations he was then interned for the duration of World War Two – perceived threats to national security were locked up as a preventative measure – but was released when hostilities ceased.
His beloved Adolf and his armies defeated, Vaughan-Henry resumed his normal life and it’s likely only people close to him would have known of his time in prison or his true nature.
Certainly anyone who’d shared the Maes with him at the Rhosllanerchrugog Eisteddfod in ’45 would have had no clue.