MI5 used the Kray twins to gather intelligence on gay politicians and establishment figures.

 

Ronnie Kray & Lord Boothby

The Conservative MP, Robert Boothby, was married to Diana Cavendish (1935-37) and Wanda Sanna, (1967). He also had a long affair with Lady Dorothy Macmillan, the wife of Harold Macmillan.

In his book on Winston Churchill, Boris Johnson, the former Conservative Prime Minister, refers to him as "Boothby the Bisexual Bounder."  At Oxford, Boothby was nicknamed 'The Palladium', because he was twice a night. Boothby also had an affair with an East End cat burglar called Leslie Holt who introduced him to the London gangster Ronnie Kray.

It has been alleged that Kray supplied Boothby with young boys in return for favours. To the embarrassment of fellow peers, Boothby did campaign for the Krays in the House of Lords. Documents released in 2015, show that MI5 used the Kray twins to gather intelligence on homosexual politicians and establishment figures. The newspapers were aware of Boothby's underworld connections but were afraid to publish a story. It seems that Lord Arnold Goodman, an unmarried lawyer, was active on Boothby's behalf in suppressing stories about him. Journalists that investigated Boothby faced legal threats and even break-ins. The story was eventually reported in the Labour-supporting Sunday Mirror in 1964 and the German magazine Stern. Boothby denied the story and threatened to sue. The Labour leadership got the Mirror to drop the story because the senior Labour MP, Tom Driberg, was also implicated. The Mirror sacked the editor, apologised to Boothby and paid him £40,000 in an out-of-court settlement.

Boothby was friendly with Driberg, a homosexual, who had also known the communist spy, Kim Philby. Driberg also had connections with MI5 and the Kray twins. The journalist Woodrow Wyatt, claimed after the death of the Queen Mother, that she'd told him in an interview in 1991 that the press knew all about Boothby's affairs and had described Boothby as "a bounder but not a cad."

Both Booby and Driberg campaigned for the decriminalisation of homosexual acts. The writer and journalist Christopher Hitchens, who knew Tom Driberg, says that Driberg came to regret that he had voted for the successful repeal of laws criminalising homosexuality. Hitchens says that Driberg would say wistfully, "I rather miss the old days.'

In his memoir called 'Ruling Passions', Driberg described his "chronic, lifelong, love-hate relationship with lavatories." Hitchens says that "he could talk by the hour about the variety and marvel of the 'public conveniences'...that were called 'in gay argot, cottages'. There was a cottage in Leicester Square that specialised in those whose passion was the armed forces. At the Institute of Contemporary Arts, much favoured by aesthetes, someone had written on the toilet door, 'beware of limbo dancers'." Christopher Hitchens says:

"What Driberg told me was this. The "thrills were twofold. First came the exhilaration of danger; the permanent risk of being caught and exposed. Second was the sense of superiority that a double life could give." Hitchens says that Driberg became distinctly melancholy in his later years that he'd voted to repeal laws criminalising homosexuality.