Call on Stonehouse to resign

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33728, 28 December 1974, Page 13

Call on Stonehouse to resign

(N.Z.P.A. -Reuter— Copyright) LONDON, December 27. The Labour leader in the British House of Commons has called for the resignation of a Laboui* member of Parliament, Mr John Stonehouse, amid growing controversy over his alleged entry to Australia on a forged passport. Mr Edward Short said that Mr Stonehouse’s resignation would be the best way out of the extraordinary situation.

Mr William Molloy, an M.P., called for an inquiry into 49-year-old Mr Stonehouse’s allegations that he was being blackmailed and under immense pressure, as “in the interests of public life in this country.” Mr Stonehouse himself was quoted by the London “Daily Express” as saying that he was blackmailed by men who threatened to use his political career “to squeeze him dry.” “For two years pressures have been building up all around me. They became unbearable. I had built up such a diverse group of companies that it became too much to handle,” he said, according to the “Daily Express.” In Mr Stonehouse’s constituency of Walsall North the widow of Mr Joseph Markham — the name Mr Stonehouse used to enter Australia — said that a member of Parliament, who did not give his name, visited her some months before Mr Stonehouse vanished and asked her details about her husband.

“He asked what I thought were one or two funny questions about my husband’s illness, the name of his doctor and where he died.”

The “Daily Telegraph” said today that Mr Stonehouse, who vanished from a beach in Florida in November, had used the name of another M.P., now dead, to authenticate an application for the Markham passport.

Mr Stonehouse’s secretary, Mrs Sheila Buckley, was quoted by the “Sun” newspaper as saying that she knew why he was blackmailed. “It was about a business deal. It was nothing to do with his personal, private or political life.” The central Labour Party chairman for Walsall joined the call for the resignation of Mr Stonehouse from Parliament. “We should ask him to quit in no uncertain terms,” he said. But Mr Stonehoiise’s political agent, Mr Harry Richards, said that the constitutency was entirely split over whether he should remain as their member of Parliament. A formal con-

stituency meeting is not expected until January 3. In calling for an inquiry, Mr Molloy, a close friend of Mr Stonehouse, said: “One can only assume there was something distasteful in which he was involved, otherwise he would not have been pressurised or blackmailed”

He said that an inquiry would need to investigate what pressures he was under, and who was applying them. Mr Short said that while he was staggered by what had happened he did not think the accusation of possessing a false passport would bring about Mr Stonehouse’s disqualification from the House of Commons.

The “Daily Express,” which received Mr Stonehouse’s comments from his wife after she visited him in the Melbourne detention centre, said that he was discovered through bank accounts in his new names by officials who were trying to trace a series of bank frauds in the city.

Asked if the Mafia were after him because of a SNZB.Bm cement deal in which he was involved, Mr Stonehouse, who has written a book called “Prohibited Immigrant:” replied “in a word—no.” Mrs Stonehouse said that when her husband telephoned her after his arrest on Christmas Eve, he sounded “like a naughty little boy who had just been found out.”

“I realised that despite this terribly selfish action of his I still loved him,” she added.