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Mario Conde - An Iron Mask Award

STONEHOUSE AND CONDE - TWO VICTIMS OF HATE.

Nothing has caused more conspiratorial theories and a deep rooted distrust of the powers that be, than the Man in the Iron Mask. No doubt the very famous one in the French dungeons, some two hundred years ago, is probably one of thousands who have for some inexplicable reason faced the fearsome, imposed isolation. Additionally and very probably, an unjust punishment to save the skins of the real culprits in positions of great influence. I met two of these and to this day I am not entirely certain what it is that they actually did to deserve such a violent and unusually fast removal from the face of the society in which they lived at the time. Behind it all, there is always one determined hunter who through jealousy or envy or bruised pride pulls out every lever to get the partially implicated victim crudely paying for it all, to the point of extinction.

I met two of them. One professionally and the other casually, completely unaware of his social status.

John Stonehouse a renowned British Labour politician was not the sort of person I would have ever assumed would have had anything to do with either a politically incorrect move or worse, anything criminally obvious. He had everything anyone could hope for – personality, high office and public esteem. This it would seem is common to all those who for no apparent reason at all, suddenly find their careers and their very lives explode before them to the point of rendering them helpless in their own defence. Jealousy, is the first thing that comes to mind as a motivating factor of such strength as to be able to creep behind the defences of people who without doubt had no reason at all to indulge in anything underhand. I can vouch for the first but know relatively little about the second - a brilliant Spanish Banker by the name of Mario Conde who took the institution into the end of the 20th. Century with a panache and billowing sails that rocketed him into the frontline of the most admired people in the country.

I used to chat with John Stonehouse in the lobbies of the House of Parliament and found him as professional as any politician in high office. He struck a figure like these victims often do, beyond the average one expects of Government spokesmen. There was nothing grey or dismal about him and he sought me out for one of those interchanges which I had regularly with people who felt that keeping journalists informed about good and bad aspects of issues which concerned them, was a democratic and enjoyable exercise. At the age of 21 or so, he filled my horizon with everything that one could hope for in a future full of success and fulfilled ambition. He had been Postmaster General. He was a front bench labour spokesman in the Wilson Government and without doubt hated by the Conservatives, not just because of his intelligence and aura, but because he was everything a good Conservative should be and I now think that this was a capital sin at the time (from the establishment point of view). The same forces later reached out for Harold Wilson who was also far too capable for his political affiliations.  Labourites were rabble and as such, ones who looked too publicly acceptable were a direct threat to those who felt they had the right to rule. My doubts were dispelled as the grotesque figure of a much overrated conservative giant loomed up and brushed past me with the manners of a drunken lout, practically pinning John against the buttresses of the cloister building. They were equally tall but that was just about all that linked them. The veteran conservative politican known in most politically conscious households for his bombastic front page incursions on popular issues, disliked John to the point of violence and the scene was almost frightening to a mere upstart like me who happened to be able to relate and sometimes be utilized by those with the ability to do so. "And what do you think you can tell this man that you cannot tell us in in the House..." he ranted, as John held his stand and looked on with dismay and perhaps a little disgust. I could not understand how two men of such stature could face each other in front of a public, a journalist at that, with such an obvious breach of good professional behaviour. I was not really that surprised, as I had in the past, faced a variety of drunk politicians in high office who were in the main, bloated figures always courting the press for the attention that gave them greater coverage and potentially increased mayorities at the polls. There was however a sad, obscene tone to this confrontation that told me that John Stonehouse was a much envied man with many enemies in the rarefied atmosphere of the grim House of Commons.

A Man of Destiny

John Stonehouse enjoyed the respect and what is more, the affection of many influential people in the country, probably on both sides of the political divide, including the Royals whose wedding present was a complete and stunning dining suite. I found out when it was sadly offered to me long after he died without knowledge on my part as to whom the antique dealer was referring to. It was a modern artisan copy of Victorian originals made by skilled craftsmen and probably bought at Harrods for him as a wedding gift. After accepting the price, I was shocked to hear whom it had belonged to and having come quite close to and missed him after his disappearance, I could not bear to use them. I sold them off to friends.

The peculiar situation in which the Labour party was placed, with the sudden and inexplicable retirement of Sir Harold Wilson has never been fully explained. It often made me suspect that there were things behind the demands made by the powerful and conservative elements in the society, which could perhaps have shed some light as to why such talent and capacity as that which John demonstrated, could have been blown up so suddenly. The very nature of of the accusations and tacit admissions surroudned what seemed like a hunted (or haunted) man. I suspected that he had, like all iron mask men, gone too deeply into the wrong political quarters where knowledge had become a dangerous thing. When I heard that his clothes had been found in a beach and that he appeared to have disappeared assumed dead, something told me that there was something wrong, I did not believe it, perhaps did not want to believe, but by then, I looked forward to our regular chats with the pleasure that came from exchanging impressions with a solid, unassuming and affectionate man.

He was caught out and linked to an attempt to obtain insurance monies, by deceit. I listened to his wife on the radio and scoured her voice for signs of genuine concern for his loss. Something in me told me, which I confessed to friends at the time, that he was still alive. And so he was, but nobody gave any credible reason for his unnatural behaviour or better still for something so out of accord with what one could expect with mere basic reasoning of a man of such lustre and outstanding capability. Today, many scores of years later, his intense greetings and paternal regard, strikes a bitter chord and when he emerged from prison many years after his incarceration, a broken man, with cancer and little time to live, I felt as helpless and as angry with his hidden persecutors as anyone could in the knowledge that lack of guile had sent him to the wrong corners unnecessarily. Britain had its hanging judges then and in those dark and sinister corridors of high level social undercurrents, anyone caught in the swirls and eddies of rank hypocricy, needed, not just friends, but the right ones to manouvre them to safety. What in my mind, could he have possibly done or been pushed into, to have forced him to set his death up in such a dramatic and childish way ?

Material Power with a heart.

Mario Conde was of a different order of things. He had, however, a great deal in common with John Stonehouse – the looks – the political potential and in his case the money to buy and make things move. I met him in a social training centre he had himself created on the beachside near Estepona, Costa del Sol. Like everything else he did, it was far reaching and advanced for the time. Much later and after the fall of Banesto Bank which he had raised to the highest levels, it was a forlorn and neglected complex being offered for the sort of money which anyone with reasonable bank savings in a recession economy could have bought for very little. The contrast of the two periods – of rampant optimism and grave devaluation could not have been starker, When I met him, he was every inch the glossy magazine figure he had turned into. I did not know who he was, but with a few years of journalistic experience behind me and a banking friend who had taken me there, I could tell that he was eyed with both desire and jealousy. I later learnt that to some he was a God of great proportions and to others haughty, arrogant and manipulative to the point of dangerous. I did not get either of those sensations and an airline pilot who had known him well for some time, confessed to me that his downfall had been promted by another banker with all the wrong personality profiles who wanted him closer than the seductive Mario would allow. Mario Conde came through as a a very ambitious but genuinely curious person in search of the meaning of everything including, I suspect, life itself. His voracious appetite for knowledge had driven him to the doors of secret institutions, like the Masons and contemporary Knights Templar. It was generally understood that the power behind him was the strange Catholic cult called Opus Dei which was later to be heavily involved with other Templars in Italy and Switzerland. The background links caused them to fuse with the Freemasons to create one of the most dangerous organisations in the world at the time – the P2 Lodge.  Religious power, mystical concepts, money and banking power were to produce waves in every society in the world and create instant captains at the head of giant organisations which challenged the political balance of the societies in which they appeared. Needless to say, when the heads started to roll they did with with obvious political shadows in the periphery. Mario Conde spoke to me with some air of mystery about matters which I had always been aware of even during my early and immature encounters with high political figures and I sensed that my own style of approach to subjects raised provoked his curiousity about my own person. We promised to meet elsewhere after his return for a conference at the centre, but it was the first and last time we were to meet as matters broke like thunder into the world press and this enigmatic but promising world figure hit the dust amidst accusations that have never been either properly clarified or substantiated. His long, lonely and obscene stretch within prison walls are too reminiscent of the man in the Iron Mask to produce anything other than disquiet at the power of the hidden figures who cause this to happen and exonerate others of worse highly defined crimes.

Was Mario Conde the victim of indiscreet incursions into the lives of people with the reins of power? Was he the subject of rejected personal attentions from others who set him up ? Whichever, the social sentiment expresses grave doubts about the reason for his curioius inability to defend himself, despite public support. Like Stonehouse, he had reached high levels of social contact, including it would seem, Royal familiarity, but it is highly unlikely that the weapons arose from those quarters. Royals will be royals and have misbehaved with great elegance throughout the centuries and sired both children and accumulated wealth by virute of their own spheres of influence. In many ways its one of the ways it protects its own interests to be free from political pressures. If anybody was to use that sort of information against Mario Conde it would have mostly likely been the bureaucrats with things to hide about themselves or others they chose to wrap their mantles round. Another factor may have been his open and unrehearsed comments which stemming from a highly intelligent mind, would have bruised the sentiments of the mediocre manipulators incapable of such vision. Mario Condo, like very few others, placed the political party system at the doorstep of the tombstone of democracy. Societies, however democratic, have a hard core of dangerous and ill defined people and movements which contain the sting and the venom for which enterprising and usually naive people with political potential are seriously unprepared. I was once told by a senior civil servant who dared to write about corruption in the service, that the combination of cults, personal bias and hidden treaties with mayor companies, including banks, could nail down anybody with the slightest degree of independent spirit. Behind the scene, these shadowy, cowardly figures, influence the judiciary, law enforcement agencies and fiscal departments. All of which, incidentally, becomes relatively easy through computerised national identity certification and the enormous amount of personal information stored in the grid. Party political privileges, bureaucratic inner cults and guild memberships provide the crisscross pattterns which enable someone somewhere with enough persuasion and vindictiveness to destroy the life of anyone whom they dislike or fear. The recent comments by a leading member of the British Conservative party knew exactly what he was saying when he said that he intended to address the question of returning the power of the bureacracy to the politicians and that of the politicians to the people, Perhaps then, people like Oscar Wilde, Rudolph Hesse, Janie Jones and all those relatively innocent people with too many attractive qualities who break social barriers will not face the loaded barrels of dirty tricks, judicial vengeance. In other words, perhaps those who may have perhaps not shared establishment views will one day cease to be forced to wear the iron masks that drove them to their horrifying, lamentable and clearly manipulated fates.

About the Author

Parliamentary correspondentage at 15. Royal touring writer. Agency Commonwealth writer Publisher Britain's first trade journal for drivers. International writer and TV contributor.Millionaire businessman, hotelier, restauranteur. Contributor to Holy Blood and Holy Grail. Messianic Legacy. Sword and the Grail. Published Britain´s frist trade journal for chauffeurs. Freeman of the City of London. Selected among the 500 most inspirative people in the world by the American BWW Peace Organisation. Elder of the Council of Knights Templars. Author Al Andalus - a trail of discovery. /p>

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