There are similarities as well with connections with and mentions of the Royal Family. In the case of Gregory it was a close friendship with the then Duke of York, later King George VI whilst in today’s scandal there have been allegations that Prince Charles’s valet Michael Fawcett and the granting of an honour to a member of the Saudi Royal Family. On this matter The Week magazine said in September of this year: There are also claims that Gregory was involved in the Zinoviev letter affair that influenced the defeat of the Labour Party in the 1924 General Election. [ citation needed] Look at it this way; one year Reid is a brawling projectionist in Leeds Brighouse, the next he is the respectable manager of a chain of Empire Theatres spanning Chelmsford, Dover and Folkestone.

Grayson & Mann’s’s friend, E.J.B Allen (Ernest John Bartlett Allen) sub-editor of The Syndicalist emigrated to New Zealand in 1913 to become editor of The Maoriland Worker, a newspaper that played a crucial role in Grayson’s wartime development and pro-war campaigning. The Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, that makes the sale of peerages or any other honours illegal. The act was passed by the Parliament in the wake of David Lloyd George's 1922 cash-for-honours scandal. In 2006 a number of people connected to the Labour Party government of Tony Blair were interviewed voluntarily at Downing Street in connection with alleged offences under the 1925 Act. Eric H Albury was born Henry Rothenburg in 1879. He had spent his early career working for the British Government’s Cape Colonial Services, attached to the High Commissioner of South Africa, Joubert Brunt. During the war Albury had served with the 3rd (Reserve) Wessex Field Ambulance R.A.M.C. under his family name Private Henry Rothenburg (2202). He served in Germany and suffered gassing. He was demobbed in August 1919 and was subsequently was taken on by Stoll Pictures. Arthur Maundy Gregory was born at 9 Portland Terrace in 1877, the son of the vicar of St Michael’s Church. He attended Banister Court School (at the same time as Harold Davidson) and later went to Oxford University, but left before graduating. He became a teacher in Southampton, possibly at Banister Court School, until 1901 when he became the manager of the Prince of Wales Theatre in Southampton for a short time. The following year he started a touring company and in 1908 put an unsuccessful production on in the West End of London ( Dorothy, part-funded by Harold Davidson). By 1914 he had become a private detective, and when the war began he is said to have worked for the Secret Service, though the evidence for this is mainly from his own papers.Grayson was subject to an amusing assessment by Winston Churchill in 1908: "The Socialism of the Christian era was based on the idea that, 'All mine is yours,' but the Socialism of Mr Grayson is based on the idea that 'All yours is mine. '" [2] Writing of Grayson in 1913 in an article on British radical politics in Pravda, Vladimir Lenin noted that Grayson was "a very fiery socialist, but one not strong in principles and given to phrase-mongering." [3] Shortly after being demobbed, The Bioscope cinema journal reports Reid’s appointment as manager of the Royal Cinema in Belfast (11 September 1919 – The Bioscope – London, London, England, p.95) From here he finds employment as Regional Manager with Ideal Films Ltd in Dublin (The Bioscope 27 May 1920, p.9). Interestingly, the company’s founders, Simon and Harry Rowson (born Rosenbaum to Russian immigrant parents in Manchester’s Cheetham Hill) played a key role in a legendary biopic of David Lloyd George, shelved rather unceremoniously in 1918. The film’s screenwriter was journalist and historian, Sir Sidney Low and its director, Maurice Elvey. Low’s niece incidentally, was Ivy Low Litvinov, wife of the Bolshevik minister Maxim Litvinov. Eventually the couple, having got the help they needed to get themselves straight, started to distance themselves on the advice of senior courtiers but Gregory went on selling honours (despite an apparent legal ban on the practice) for some years.

Gregory attended Banister Court school in Southampton. A classmate was Harold Davidson, later known as the Rector of Stiffkey. He attended Oxford University as a non-collegiate student, but left in 1899, before graduation. [10] Gregory became a teacher, and later worked as an actor and theatre producer. Gregory became friends with Vernon Kell, Director of the Home Section of the Secret Service Bureau with responsibility for investigating espionage, sabotage and subversion in Britain. Kell employed Gregory to compile dossiers of possible foreign spies living in London. Later, Gregory was recruited by Sidney Reilly, the top agent the recently formed MI6. He also did work for Basil Thomson, the head of Special Branch. That Madeira and the Canary Isles would subsequently become a base for a German spy networks only adds to the layers of intrigue. Was it just a coincidence that one of the first movie features that Clifford Reid unveiled to audiences at Chelmsford’s Palace Theatre in 1911 was a propaganda film featuring British Secretary of War, Lord Haldane during a visit to the town on Trafalgar Day? Uncle of the deeply mysterious spymaster, George Makgill? (Chelmsford Chronicle 27 October 1911, p.5). The former culture secretary announced this week she was penning a book titled The Plot: The Political Assassination of Boris Johnson. It will be published days before the Conservative party conference in early autumn.

The scandal led to the passing of the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act in 1925, and Gregory would eventually become the only person to be convicted under the act, continuing to falsely offer honours to the wealthy and connected into the 1930s. Wilson’s Lavender List Grierson, Jamie (19 September 2021). "Prince Charles 'cash-for-honours' scandal grows with fresh allegations". the Guardian.

a b c Coman, Julian (10 May 2020). "A century on, whatever happened to Labour's firebrand lost leader?". The Observer . Retrieved 10 May 2020.

More Queer Goings-On at Porter’s Georgian House

Gregory made many friends who were prominent members of British society, including the Duke of York, later King George VI, and the Earl of Birkenhead. He clashed, however, with the radical left-wing politician, and supporter of Lenin, Victor Grayson, [11] who had reportedly discovered that Gregory was selling honours, but who waited to denounce him until he had gathered further proof. Grayson also suspected Gregory of having forged Roger Casement's diaries, which were used to convict him of treason, although it later turned out that Casement had engaged in the homosexual activities described. [11] Arthur John Maundy Gregory, [1] [2] [3] who later used the name Arthur John Peter Michael Maundy Gregory [4] [5] (1 July 1877 – 28 September 1941) was a British theatre producer and political fixer who is best remembered for selling honours for Prime Minister David Lloyd George. [6] He may also have been involved with the Zinoviev Letter, the disappearance of Victor Grayson, and the suspicious death of his platonic companion, Edith Rosse. Gregory claimed to be a spy for British intelligence. In early 1918 Basil Thomson asked Gregory to spy on Victor Grayson, the former MP for Colne Valley, who was described as a "dangerous communist revolutionary". Gregory was told: "We believe this man may have friends among the Irish rebels. Whatever it is, Grayson always spells trouble. He can't keep out of it... he will either link up with the Sinn Feiners or the Reds." Gregory became friendly with Grayson. David Howell, Grayson's biographer, writes that "Grayson subsequently lived in apparent affluence - a contrast with his recent poverty - in a West End flat. His associates included Maundy Gregory... The significance of this relationship and the source of Grayson's income remain unknown." A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, 8th edition, Sir Bernard Burke, 1894, vol. II, p. 1369, 'Mayow of Bray and Hanworth' pedigree Arthur Maundy Gregory, like other members of establishment, was appalled by the idea of a Prime Minister who was a socialist. As Gill Bennett pointed out in her book, Churchill's Man of Mystery (2009): "It was not just the intelligence community, but more precisely the community of an elite - senior officials in government departments, men in "the City", men in politics, men who controlled the Press - which was narrow, interconnected (sometimes intermarried) and mutually supportive. Many of these men... had been to the same schools and universities, and belonged to the same clubs. Feeling themselves part of a special and closed community, they exchanged confidences secure in the knowledge, as they thought, that they were protected by that community from indiscretion."