Tom Driberg born 22 May 1905 (d. 1976)Thomas Edward Neil Driberg, Baron Bradwell was a British journalist and politician who was an influential member on the left of the Labour Party from the 1950s to the 1970s. He was revealed as a spy for the Soviet Union by Vasili Mitrokhin.
Tom Driberg was born at Crowborough, Sussex. Having studied Classics at Christ Church, Oxford (1924-1927) without taking a degree, Driberg worked on the Daily Express from 1928 and created the William Hickey diary and gossip column. He was also connected to the intelligence services of both the United Kingdom and Soviet Union, as demonstrated in the Mitrokhin archives.
In the autumn of 1935 he gave two unemployed miners a place with him in his bed, but when his hands began to wander the men went to report him at the local police station. On 12 November 1935 Tom Driberg ended up in court at the Old Bailey on a charge of indecent assault, but he was found not guilty. His boss at the Express, Lord Beaverbrook (Max Aitken), ensured that there was no press coverage, although Tom Driberg had to go to see the editor of The News of the World. Despite rumours on Fleet Street the story never made the papers.
He was first elected as a Member of Parliament for Maldon in a by-election in June 1942 as an independent candidate. He took the Labour whip in January 1945 and continued to sit for the seat until his retirement at the 1955 general election. He was MP for Barking from 1959 to February 1974. In 1957 he became chairman of the Labour Party.
He left the Express in June 1943 after being sacked by the editor who thought that his parliamentary activities conflicted with his journalism. He was then given a job by the editor of a left-wing Sunday newspaper belonging to the Co-operative movement. He wrote a column under his own name which was more political. The paper became the Sunday Citizen in 1962, but in 1966 Tom Driberg was sacked because the paper could no longer afford his salary. The paper closed in 1967. He subsequently worked freelance and contributed to the 'London Diary' of the New Statesman, and wrote book reviews.
He had a lucky escape when caught with a Norwegian sailor in an air raid shelter in Edinburgh. Fortunately the policeman was an avid reader of the William Hickey column and let him off. In fact the policeman and Tom Driberg became friends and exchanged letters. Tom Driberg related the story to his friends Harold Nicolson and Bob Boothby. It seems that Compton Mackenzie also heard about the story and used it as inspiration for his novel Thin Ice about the life of a homosexual politician.
He was created a Life peer, as Baron Bradwell, of Bradwell-juxta-Mare in the County of Essex, shortly before his death. His autobiography, Ruling Passions, was published posthumously and disclosed the conflict between the three passions that drove his life: his homosexuality (he pursued casual and risky encounters compulsively, going cottaging and using rent boys), his left-wing political beliefs, and his allegiance to the High Church tendency of the Church of England. His will insisted that at his memorial service, the reader excoriate him for his sins rather than praise him for his virtues.