One of my highlights while working in Africa over 60 years ago was my association with Britain’s World War 11 arch spymaster, Sir Percy Sillitoe, when he was on the trail of illegal ‘Red’ diamonds, named after the fact they were used to support pro-Communist political activities on the continent.
I first met this affable man of cloak-and-dagger fame when he arrived in Tanganyika with a bang in the 1950s to investigate the possibility of gemstones being stolen from African mines and then being freely sold to buy arms and ammunition for pro-Communist insurgents.
As a modern Sherlock Holmes, Sir Percy was a former head of Britain’s MI5 spy agency after working as chief constable to various police forces in South Africa, Northern Rhodesia, Britain and East Africa in spite of being born in the United Kingdom.
My object in meeting this great detective and wartime private eye was when I was on the track of ‘Red’ diamonds mined in West Africa and then sold under the counter to finance Communist inspired African Nationalist insurgency, terrorism and at least one African warlord’s armoury.
On this occasion, I was interested in discovering how the stolen West African gemstones were supporting various pro-Russian terrorists then in the early stages of planning to create political havoc in Portuguese East Africa.
The story I was intent on following involved gemstones illegally taken from an active mine and then sold through various Black-market hands before the money was used to buy modern guns and ammunition for what would be pro-Independence hostilities in Mozambique against both loyal White and Black Portuguese settlers and farmers.
My own amateur sleuthing and investigations had also revealed that these stolen ‘Red’ diamonds were eventually re-sold in the world’s top and most sophisticated diamond markets — to eventually end up on the fingers of unsuspecting brides-to-be in Europe and the United States.
It was also at about this time that Sir Percy was introduced to Mr Ian Fleming, resulting in him writing a book entitled ‘The Diamond Smugglers’ in which he created his famous super spy, 007, under the name of James Bond, largely based on Sir Percy’s personal iron stature and spying experiences.
During my professional association with this interesting man of justice, he was working for the chairman of De Beers Diamonds, Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, who had set up the International Diamond Security Organisation which, with Sir Percy’s valuable help, later put an end to major multi-million-dollar diamond theft carried out between Cairo and Cape Town.
Interestingly, however, Sir Percy and I met up on one occasion with a very senior Tanganyikan police officer who, unknown to us, was later accused in secret by the Tanganyika Government of buying illicit diamonds sourced from near the shores of Lake Victoria.
This policeman-turned-criminal was not, however, arrested or hauled before the Courts in Dar es Salaam for his misdemeanours. Instead, he was immediately and silently spirited out of the United Nations’ Trust Territory under the cloak of darkness as the top brass of the Tanganyika Government feared serious repercussions from New York and London. The accused senior police officer later came to Australia, presumably with some of his ill-gotten gains.
My meetings with Britain’s former secret eye always roughly coincided with a major Sillitoe campaign against what had become the world’s biggest smuggling racket to the tune of over $20 million a year, which can now be computed at about eighty times of that amount in today’s currency values.
With the indomitable Sir Percy at the helm of the International Diamond Security Organisation, it took only 40 months for the job to be completed. During this time, his underground investigations saw him travelling in disguise to London, Paris, Amsterdam, Beirut, Johannesburg — and even cheekily to Moscow behind the Cold War’s Iron Curtain.
On one occasion during my African diamond research, I met up with Sir Ernest shortly after he had created a new policy of persuading the world-wide legal diamond industry to freeze all highly exaggerated diamond prices by creating a secret cartel between the various diamond companies. But I smiled some 60 years later when his company was forced to abandon the cartel after facing possible talk of unfair trading practices.
My only claim to fame with Sir Percy was that I had unearthed diamonds being stolen from Williamson’s mine near Mwadui in Tanganyika. There, illegal gemstones were being swallowed wholesalely by mine employees for them to be later retrieved and sold for princely sums to finance a young and growing movement known as “Young Communists in Africa.”
These would-be politicians and freedom fighters were allegedly arming political factions in Central Africa against the activities of Brigadier “Mad Mike” Hoare, a mercenary fighting against Cuban-led Communist forces in the neighbouring Belgian Congo’s Katanga region.
Now looking back on my journalistic dealings with the indomitable Sir Percy, I realise that, among all the rough diamonds he saved from being sold for warring purposes, here was a man very far from being a rough diamond himself.
I also distinctly remember that, as a leading police chief constable working in Scotland before his becoming the leader of Britain’s top spies, he was credited with designing the black and white chessboard hat and cap band still worn by all policemen throughout the world.
He also had the distinction of defeating and arresting the intractable and infamous Glasgow “razor gangs” but he did employ for MI5 one Klaus Fuchs, a highly trained physicist who managed to evade Sir Percy’s piercing investigative eyes.
Within a short while, Fuchs unfortunately hit the newspaper headlines for his arrest after he had brazenly handed Britain’s new hydrogen bomb secrets to the Soviet Union during the days of the Cold War between East and West.