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News From Britain ACTION
NOW.
HEY gay the British Tlose every battle except
'the last.
Con-
Perhaps Britain's servative Party are drawing some consolation from this. For their own sakes, it would be better if they left nalde 'consolution and sought positive, militant action.
For with the defeat at Torrington, by-election, they face
1
crins which cries out for dynamic immediate action.
Torrington is 'their fourth, by- election defeat since Mr Harold Macmillot succeeded to the pre- miership.
But this time the defeat is all the more stinging. For Torring top is 'rural constituency, and il is a truism of British politics that the forms and the villages are strongholds of Conservatism.
It is significant, 100, because the Torrington fight was between Comervative and Liberal, with the Labour candidate an also-ran from the start. And the pundits are saying that Torrington's awing to Liberalism is the signal fur other rurhl cansätuencies lu the West of England to do like- wise when their turn comes.
Any really marked swing to- wards Liberalism in the country could spell electoral Ulsaster for the Tories.
MINISTRY TRANSPORT,
NATIONAL TRAINING SCHEME CHILD CYCLISTE
THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, APRIL 5, 1958,
Pago 5
THIS is the Gin
'Goodbye, Mr. Frosbite. Goodbya, Mrs. Wolks. Goodbyo, Mr. Banks,
The Liberals could never win | FROM RAGS TO RICHES (AND BACK AGAIN): 6
General Election. But they
could certainly lose it for the Tories.
Nor is I un domestic issues atone that the Tories klond in danger. Traditionally, foreign affairs play a minor role, in Brith elections. But there is a growing feeling here that just because America' drags his feet over the question of suminit talks with the Russians that is no reason for Beltoin to do the
Fame.
A General Election reached without a forthright, constructive gesture by the British Govern- meut this
by John Cottrell
One Talent Too Many
NEW of the men who have progressed from rags to rate gambler hui also because power, He founded the popular
riches, have been endowed with such remarkable talents ns oratío. William Bottomley, son of a London journeyman tailor.
He was eloquent and shrewd, and a burn leader of men. He was once tipped as a future Prime Minister, ed horses, direction, might well £0 hord with Mr. He showed tremendous “ubility ns a lawyer, politician, Macmillan's party.
journudist and businessman.
HAIL, FAREWELL
BOLD
experiment
A collapsed. In perille, toplas stalemate there ended the bid to munke Malto a part of Britain,
"Integration" was the word they used to describe It. And it seemed in its conception to be the one solution to the problem uf Malla's fiúture,
word.
no!
£2,000 from a successful City financier, Patrick O'Hagan,
Yot today he is remem bered not for these talents, to borrow but for another-of a very different kind. He has taken his place in history as one of the greatest and most successful swindlers of all time.
Bottomley, started
life
He asked O'Hagan to loan him the money for a publish-
After the war, Bottomley, still riding high on the wave of patriotie fervour, started a Vie- Mory Bond Club, Citizens were offered a sture in a Govern- ment bond for £1.
Nearly £000,000 poured Into the club's offices. Where 11 went efterwards was uncertain,
he loved horses, which he kept magazine John Bull, which, Had outlived under his direction, attained an their usefulness, long after they
enormous circulation. He backed stage shows with On the front page he printed even less success than he back, the slogan "Without fear or But if the musical favour"," "having remembered it, comedles and plays made no perhaps, from the oath which
their uses, Jurles money, they had
Iduk before they tried providing Bottomley with a him.
In 1921 he was prosecuted succession of girl friends whom
for fraudulent conversion. Many he treated very generously.
Living
poor people whose savings had Raeleg, women, entertaining Dottomley attacked everything disappeared into his Bond Club and champagne - that's how and everybody with a reckless geva evidenco for the prosecu- Bottomley spent the milons disregard for libel laws. Kotion. which flowed through his hands, became regarded as the cham- pian of the "little man"--some- one who did not shrink to criti- cise Authority.
ing business he was run Champagne And
ning without much success, O'Hagan wanted nothing to
7
Kippers
╚-----
Wor
up lo
his slogan,
Bottomley was once again his
this own advocate, But
time he lost the case.. He got seven years' penal' servitude.
The comlag of the arst world
He emerged from prison in gave Bottomley his big--1927 a broken man, forgotten The problem was, und ugain with nothing and nobody do with it, but told Bottom-
gest ever target the whole Ger- is, that Malin in politically nd-behind him. Neither of his ley: "If it had been a print- Champagne was his life blood, man nation. John Bull believet by his friends and his darling public alike. He applied for an vanced and economically back-parents was able to support ing company now, I might He lunched on it, dined on it, that the only good German was old-age pension and got 11-£1
a week. The Maltese do want him, so he was sent to a have been interested." the island to remain a colony.charity school in Birming- And the British sympathise ham. His first job was as with them.
But independence is more than an office-boy. politiet. A sovereign state must also be
economically inde- pendent. And Malta, rocky and overpopulated, is desperately
poor.
Integration, it seemed, might be the answer, Malta would be- come part of Britain, as much so ns Kent or Perthshire. It would. be represented tyr-Parliament, and the Maltese
people, would then become true citizens of the metropolitan country.
Dut the idea' of integration brought its own problems. Pro- ninent among these was the question whether and when the Maltese people could become the
Public Hero
But he went on to make millioles, spend millions, and become a public hero.
He also went to gäol, and ended his life as he began it -poor and friendless,
Horatio Bottomley was 14 when he left school in 1874. For a time he drifted in and out of a number of dead-
He
ley was back in the office.
Two days afterwards Bottom- Jud founded his printing com- pany--and got the £2,000.
A few years later, fresh from his triumph over the Hansard case, Bottomley turned to deal with the first of many bankrupt-
even breakfasted on 'I — and kippers!
a dend one.
Bottomley, stamped the coun
Bottomley spent his last years At race-meetings he would try drumming up popular senti- being cared for by one of his
making recruiting ex-mistresses in a small London. arrive, with a case or two of ment champagne and corks popped speeches.
ftat, or shuffling dismally with. all day long in his Pall Mall
a sheaf of impractical schemes Ministers come to rely on his around the newspaper offices of chambers where many a dim- cult client was soothed by popularity; he was called on to Fleet Street.
eddress threatened strike meet- regular intakes of "bubbly".
Ings; at one time he thought' he The man who had made:
died in hospital on was about to be, offered a millions Cabinet seat.
May 27, 1933--a pauper.
Although Bottomley eles. He was still unworried by
was a lack of money, He persuaded lavish spender, he did not love He his creditors to accept shares in money for its own sake. various freshly-floated gold- loved it for the power if bought. mining companies.
He loved the power of his There is no record of any of
which could sway a those companies having pro- oratory duced any gold except gold vast audience.. He loved
power of his personal magnetism tovereigns for Mr Bottengry.
which could turn an enemy Into
The
Economic, as well as the politicakond jobs; then he studied. He vorked hard at being the get into Paramenti, finally suc-
quale of the British.
'Malta's Prime Minister, Mr shorthand, and became offi- Dom Mintoft, said that the cial notetaker in the Law Maltese would work towards this equality, but if by a specified Courts. tline they had not reached it, then it should be given to them anyway.
this
And
+
The British could not stomach se for two years the wrangling went on, with growing 1ruculence on the part of the Maltese premier and ever in creasing coolness in Britain.
Throughout it all, Britain's
By keeping his ears and cycl
three open in the years he worked there, he learned enough legal and financial tricks to keep him- self in luxury yet out of prison for most of his life. In later years Bottomley, Colonial Secretary, Mr Alan with no legal training, pit- to the idea of Integration. Untited wits and words-in his the last, he protested that here own defence against the was the only solution,
greatest lawyers the Crown
Lennox-Boyd clung steadfastly
But it became plain that his could employ. And he con- championship was forlorn, And now under the pressure of in-founded them all. creasingly extravagant demands
After Bottomley had won
by Premier Mintoft, integration his first case, the judge was
tuiks in Landon collapsed with an air of finality.
Now the position is worge than it was two years ago when the integration Iden was intro duced. For now there is bit- terness on both sides,
SMOKE RING
the will-
ONDON is to have a smokers'
elinde run on much the same lines as Alcoholics Anonymous. The organisers, tile National. Society of Non-Smokers, have more than already received 3,000 letters from addicts who Avant to break with the weed but just don't, have power.
One husband wrote: "It's ruining us, and it's killing me"." AF the clinic, addicts will have the moral support fellow-sufferers and the advice I can't see what's so difficult
of doctor,
so impressed by his skill that he sent for him and advised him to become barrister.
EL
Thut was the case of the Handsard Union, a publish Ing business of which Bottomley was n director. He advised his co-directors to buy some companies for a mere £325,000, but omitted to tell them the companies had changed hunda shortly before for £87,000 less.
The previous buyer was a clerk in Bottomley's office!
Bottomley was charged with, fraud He conducted his own case, and after t of month-long trial won B
verdict of not gulity.
about giving up smoking. I've
done it hundreds of Umes.
Bollomley spent money as quickly as he made it, He a friend. bought a collage near East-
It was in quest of more power bourne and added wings to it. that he spent 20 years trying to local squire, and contributed to eeeding in 1900, when he was village funds, ito niso set up elected Liberal M.P. (or South lage racing stable in hls Hackney, grounds.
Bottomley Joved racing, not Within a few months Bottomley duly because he was an invete- bad opened, up a new source of
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