How Eve and Tony Hall got their British passports.
I left my home country, South Africa, in February 1964, on a British passport. On page 3 was a stamp which said: "Permanent Depareture" in South African officialdom's misspelt English.
I was looking forward to Nairobi and my new job there, so it surprised me to find my eyes filling with tears as the BOAC comet listed off the runway of Jan Smuts airport. Perhaps it was the strain of taking such a long hard look at sights I knew I wouldn't see again for a very long time. My wife Eve and our three sons, Philip, Andrew and Christopher were to join me a month later in the capital of newly independent Kenya, once I had settled as a reporter on the Daily Nation.
We got our passports with remarkable speed, considering Eve and I were both down on the local political blacklist. Though I did just qualify for British Citizenship through my geologist grandfather who had gone out to settle in Pretoria after the Boer war, as part of Lord Milner's importation of British skills to the Transvaal. But South Africa had been kicked out of the Commonwealth in 1960, 4 years before, and British nationality was by no means automatic by the time we needed it.
I now put the blessed swiftness of the process down to a dinner we had had with a British diplomat in a small house in Johannesburg's northern suburbs some months before.
We were invited out of the blue and met in the centre of town and driven to this quiet street. Not a chink of light showed through the drawn curtains as we walked up the dark path. Eve looked at me, and we sensed that we were about to be milked, not so much for my knowledge as a reporter on The Star, more for hers as a political activist.
Eve and three other women members of the Congress of Democrats, 'white arm' of the Congress Alliance, led by the African National Congress had been in a wave of publicity . They were quite a story at that time. Four middle class white women, three of them mothers, were out on bail and about to serve six month prison sentences after being caught one night preparing to put up ANC posters declaring that the time had come to embark on armed struggle against Apartheid.
It took two years before they found out how they had been caught so red handed. One of the poster raiding party was Gerald (or Gerard) Ludi, an easy going young man always ready to go along with the group. He was not strong on political ideas or discussion.
The night of their arrest Ludi had been questioned separately at the Greys, Special Branch headquarters in Johannesburg. Not so much questioned as debriefed, in his case. He was Sergeant Gerald Ludi, an infiltrator and police spy who went on to worm his way into the South African Communist Party (SACP).
Two years later, when he came out, his evidence was to put some good friends in jail for years.
Our diplomat host at the suburban dinner had somehow fixed on us as a soft touch for a good chat. We don't know why. Perhaps he had heard reports from South African intelligence, as partly revealed by Ludi in one of those later trials that at some point the SACP had decided not to invite Eve and Tony Hall to join the party, something we ourselves had no inkling of. Perhaps he thought we might be deluded liberals.
In any event, we were plied with good food, large whiskies, and questions. We decided not to be hostile, but not to answer questions, and to interpret the diplomat's plotting in a friendly fashion.
By the end of the evening we'd enjoyed the spicy food and in return served up very bland fare to our host.
His name was John Longrigg. We never saw or heard of him after that, until 17 years later I read in the New Statesman that he was now Deputy Head of MI6, a superspy, the next George Smiley. Perhaps it was our readiness to be friendly or that tipped the balance when the time came to ask for passports [and perhaps even Eve's early release].
By Tony Hall in 1981
John (Johnny) Longrigg died in 1982. He won an OBE for his work in Pretoria and Johannesburg in 1964.
After showing no remorse in the South African Truth Comission, Gerlad Ludi (1) ended up living in retirement in White River, Mpumalanga, not far away from my parents. Ludi also had close connections with the CIA.
(1) The reference here for Ludi is from Helen Joseph's book. Andy, Chris and I visited Helen while she under house arrest on both occasions we, as children, were allowed back to South Africa for a visit in 1972 and 1974. She was so kind and solicitous. She didn't look strong at all, I remember her in a blue flowery dress looking a little like Miss Marple. But she had titanic strength, and stood up to the Apartheid government her whole life. Her book, Side by Side, is well worth reading.
Phil Hall
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