If You Know Where To Look

One of the features of modern life is the homosexualisation of public figures. It seems that not a month goes by without some important person of past or present being declared a closet homosexual. It would appear that throughout its history the United Kingdom and its predecessor states have been run by a self-supporting network of closet homosexuals.

There may be some truth in some of these claims. They do however avoid the real issue. The country has indeed always been run by people who pretend to be something they are not. But it is not sexuality which is the issue.

Underneath the old War Office building in London is a small room which is hardly ever opened. This is not as you might expect a secret strategy room where generals and admirals devised their cunning plans. It is known in government circles as the dead letter room. It does not contain the sort of letters people write to each other on paper. It contains actual letters. Each one is signed by its original owner and placed there in an individual drawer with a combination lock. These letters are the last remnants of the true identities of certain famous people who discarded them to move on to bigger and better things.

Each drawer in the dead letter room bears the date the letter was placed in it. One bears the date 1832. This contains the letter 'w' with a signature upon it familiar to all political biographers. It originally belonged to William Ewart Gladstone who subsequently became a celebrated Prime Minister. It is the second letter of his surname. Gladstone had property in North Wales because he was actually born Gwillym Evan Gwladstone. Changing the first part was easy because anglicisation of forenames was forced upon the Welsh. The surname however was never changed as the English needed a means of identifying members of the conquered nation who strayed outside their pale of settlement. Gwladstone had enough friends to protect him when he first stood for parliament without telling people he was Welsh. When he was elected however he removed the w from his name in order to be allowed to visit certain English border towns which still had mediaeval bye-laws against the Welsh setting foot there. Anyone who aspired to high office would of course be obliged to respect these laws. Not until damp threatened the dead letter room in 1998 did the secret come out. But then other secrets began emerging too.

Gladstone was once succeeded as Prime Minister by the brilliant Lord Rosebery. This highly intelligent nobleman had come from nowhere and quickly disappeared there again. We now know why he came from nowhere. The dead letter room contains a 'h' subtracted from his name and a receipt for a missing 'e'. He was originally LLoyd Rhosbery. He altered the original anglicisation of his forename from Leonard to Lord when the real Earl of Rosebery died leaving no heir and then discarded the 'h' and borrowed the 'e' to complete the deception. Various details of the life of Rhosbery have always been elusive to biographers. Now we know why he was so secretive. There was no crime in being Welsh in itself as David LLoyd George later demonstrated. But admitting it in polite society was quite another which is why David LLoyd George took to selling peerages to create a new polite society that would find his origins acceptable.

At first the men who treated the dead letter room for damp thought the discarding of Cambrianising letters was a nineteenth century phenomenon. How wrong they have subsequently been proved to be. There is the now well-known case of Ramsay MacDonald who was originally known as Ram's Ear Machynlleth before his accent was mistaken for Scottish and a way out presented itself. The Ram's Ear refers to an unfortunate family incident. From the eighteenth century there were the two William Pitts who were in fact miners called Gil the Pit. Even in the late twentieth century the pattern persisted. James Callaghan was driven to represent Cardiff Southeast by his original surname of Caradoghan. Sir Alec Douglas-Home was originally Siraloc Dwglas Huw. Few also could forget the most recent unmasking when former Israeli Premier Menachem Begin who had started his political life as a London Zionist was shown to be a Reformed monk called Mynach am Brecon. Few also could forget the anger this exposure provoked in Welsh speakers whom Begin had refused to make a priority when Prime Minister of Israel.

There are too many names to be merely coincidence. The United Kingdom has been run not by a network of closet homosexuals but a network of closet Welshmen. Other evidence? Politicians always think they are being picked on and driven out by dark forces. This is the entire Welsh character is it not? Each individual will now decide for themselves whether being homosexual or being Welsh is the greater threat to what we know as civilization.