Lord Haw-Haw and the Black and Tans

[PF]

Did "LORD HA-HA" William Joyce served with the Black and Tans in Ireland in the 1920's?

Correct spelling: Haw-Haw
Dieter Zinke, moderator

[Oracle]

William Joyce was born in New York City on 24th April 1906. His mother was English and his father was a naturalized Irishman. He lived for a time in Ireland as a child and in 1922 he emigrated to England with his family.

It seems that he left the Irish Free State on idependence and was in London in 1922 studying his Matriculation. However he did apply to join Univesrity of London's OTC just after. It would appear prima facie that Joyce was not involved with the 'Black and Tans' therefore.

I still believe, as a former lawyer, and having studied the appeal to the House of Lords on his charge of Treason that he was wrongly convicted as from memory he travelled on a forged British passport and was either a US or Irish citizen [ignoring conveniently British citizenship through his father as born pre-1922]. Nowadays the courts would no doubt have a different attitude.

[PF]

My mistake-HAW HAW instead of HA HA

[Ben Dekho]

There is some evidence to suggest that William Joyce acted as an informer for British forces in Galway during the Irish War of Independence, but was not an active combatant in the 'Black and Tans'.

Ben Dekho

[Ben Dekho]

Oracle made the following statement in his post:

It seems that he left the Irish Free State on idependence and was in London in 1922 studying his Matriculation. However he did apply to join Univesrity of London's OTC just after. It would appear prima facie that Joyce was not involved with the 'Black and Tans' therefore.

The Irish War of Independence was between 1919 and late 1921, when there was a truce leading to the creation of the Irish Free State early in 1922. It is entirely obvious then, if Joyce left on independence, that he was in Ireland for that crucial 1919-21 period when British forces (the 'Black and Tans', 'Auxies' and police services) were fighting the IRA. So Oracle's information rather serves to support the allegation that Joyce was in 'Black and Tans' service, not the other way around.

What's more, the daughter of a Galway IRA man whom I have interviewed says Joyce was a rather well-known informant for Crown forces during the War of Independence, and was always "skulking around" assembly areas, meetings, and so forth. If this is true, it might indicate at least some of his motives for leaving the country once the Free State was established.

Ben Dekho

[Oracle]

Joyce was born in New York of an Irish father and an English mother on 24 April 1906, but when he was only three the family moved to Ireland, settling in County Mayo. Joyce was educated at a convent school in Galway – the College of St. Ignatius Layola [1915-21?]. It was here that during a fist fight with another boy that Joyce had his nose broken. He kept quiet about the injury and his nose never properly set – giving him the nasal broken drawl so familiar in his later broadcasts from Germany.

The Joyce family were in Ireland at the time of the Sinn Fein insurrections and because they were Conservative and pro-Union they were very unpopular with the rebels. Joyce's early life was marked by violence, including an attack on his father's business and attacks on the family home by Sinn Feiners. When the British Prime Minister Lloyd George announced the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and the creation of the Irish State the Joyce family left for England. Joyce was then 15 years old.

Far from being the puny figure described by the press during World War II, William Joyce was of average height and strongly built. During his youth he excelled at boxing, swimming and fencing. This was to hold him in good stead later when he was involved in many street battles.

This is a review of the biography Title:
Germany Calling - A Biography of
William Joyce, Lord Haw-Haw
Author: Mary Kenny
Publisher: New Island

Most of William Joyce’s relations are too ashamed of him even to speak about the connection. His English relatives, having suffered verbal abuse and even loss of employment because of William, are ashamed that he was hanged as a pro-Nazi traitor. His Irish family associates are ashamed that he had been so pro-British as a young boy that he aided and abetted the notorious Black and Tans in Galway in the 1920s, which, among a certain generation of Irish people, was almost worse than going over to Hitler. (A Galway historian remembers his Sinn Féin aunt calling Willie Joyce, loathesomely, “a scut” when he was running around with the Crown forces as a lad, but considerably softening towards him, and being amused by him, when she heard him verbally bashing the Brits from wartime Berlin.)

So, it seems that I was wrong!

[PF]

So that it explains a remark he being with "Black and Tans" as an SPy-not an combantant.
From Spy to Fascist to traitor to the gallows.

[Oracle]

I feel very strongly that he was NOT a traitor at least to the British..he was American-born and thus a US citizen, but was Irish on his father's side and as his father was pre-1922 he was technically able to claim British citizenship but I do not think he ever did. He travelled on a FORGED British passport not a genuinely-issued one. The House of Lords decided that as he had a fake, repeat fake, passport, he was entitled to the protection from His Majesty. This is stretching things far too far. Arguably though his wife was indeed a traitor but it was apparently decided not to prosecute her as well...two for the price of one was deemed to be too likely to stir up a hornet's nest. However I do not recall that those men who joined the British Freikorps and donned SS uniform were hung?

However the law has changed now and whilst may men who were genuinely innocent were hung [or in the case of WW1 shell-shocked troops shot] and over the years been given posthumous pardons or even posthumous appeals against conviction, we have to consider at the time that 'Lord Haw-Haw' was deemed to be a British traitor and traitors that committed treason were executed after due judicial process.

[CGetty]

The passport William Joyce travelled on was genuine, but obtained through falsely swearing he was a British citizen. It was certainly not fake. The Joyce case controversially expanded the law of Treason to apply to aliens outside the British realm who were able to call on the protection of the British crown, in Joyce's case through possession of the passport.

Joyce was certainly an American citizen by birth. I doubt he was ever genuinely able to obtain British citizenship, as his father, although originally Irish, adopted American nationality before Joyce was born in New York. The case is still extremely controversial. Hartley Shawcross, the prosecuting lawyer, later admitted in his memoirs that he felt Joyce should should not have been hanged. There was a government consultation paper about reforming the law of Treason put out in the 1970s which suggested the decision in Joyce's case should, effectively, be overturned. As the law has not been used since 1946 and is unlikely to be used again, this reform will not take place, I would think. There is also an Irish documentary ('Lord Haw-Haw'), recently made, in which various academics and writers claim that if he had evaded capture for another year, and allowed the spirit of vengeance that was prevalent in the UK after the war to die down, then the most he would have been charged with is obtaining a passport under false pretences.

There is perhaps some grim poetic justice in a man who was so determined to be British being hanged for treason to the British crown, despite not being a British citizen.

Regarding the British Free Corps: one member, Thomas Cooper, was charged with treason, found guilty and sentenced to death. However his sentence was remitted to life imprisonment and he was released in the mid 1950s. Cooper was a civilian in Germany when the war began. The other BFC men, being Army personnel, were court martialed, and received, peversely, lesser sentences under army law. The luck of the draw.

[Oracle]

his father, although originally Irish, adopted American nationality before Joyce was born in New York.

The fact that Joyce's father was born in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland made him a British/UK citizen pre-Irish Free State. Any children that Joyce Snr. had would have been British by descent. After partition I seem to recall that those born in the island of Ireland pre-1922 were able to claim either British or Irish citizenship. Now of course anyone born in Northern Ireland can claim under the Irish constitution Irish citizenship and thus become a citizen of the EU..this was demonstrated recently when a baby was born in Northern Ireland of Chinese parents..the child became a citizen of Eire and thus an EU citizen and his parents, parents of an EU citizen with consequential right of abode. I should add that whereas the United States apparently has an aversion to dual-citizenship, and in my experience has suggested that they would decline to offer consular services to a dual-national with US citizenship, the UK to my knowledge has not had any such hangups. However whereas other countries such as the Netherlands have nationality by descent from either parent, especially the mother, the UK has always held to descent from paternal grandfather [for certain rights] and father. A coundrum of whether a man living in England of British mother, born in New Zealand to Australian father was resolved by him deciding when told he was not British, but either a New Zealander or Australian, was he might as well be an Australian and go and live there because it would be better than a country where he had lived for all but two years of his life and refused to give him a passport because only his mother was British!

I remind myself of the dire threats against deserters and yet after things had cooled down after VJ-Day the then Labour Government allowed an amnesty for a time which enabled men who were living with an eye permanently over their shoulder to hand themselves into the Police and then rejoin their units until they had served their time apparently without fear of prosecution.

[Ben Dekho]

One can listen to sound files of William Joyce's broadcasts via this webpage. I thoroughly recommend his final broadcast: he's totally drunk, and full of various excuses and explanations. Well worth the download.

http://www.earthstation1.com/Lord_Haw_Haw.html

Ben Dekho

[British Sapper]

I spoke with Prof. David Marquand, who wrote for example, 'THE' Ramsey McDonald biography.


Joyce was not British. Therefore he should not have been executed.

Victors vengeance.

Also, why was Julius Streicher executed ?

For editing a stupid newspaper ?

It's no wonder that we now find that the CIA have secret interrogation/torture camps.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,17 ... l?from=rss

It seems that we have allowed our rulers to behave worse than the nazis and communists.

[Michal78]

Lord Haw Haw (William Joyce) upon his capture by British soldiers.

[Adrian Weale]

The nationality question was fairly straightforward and was actually dealt with at the time of Joyce's trial when the first two counts against him - that he had traitorously become a German citizen and 'giving aid and comfort to the enemies of our Lord, the King' between 1939 and 1945 - were dismissed. The grounds for his conviction were that having applied for and received a British passport by - falsely as it happens - claiming to be a native born British subject, he received the same protection that a native born British subject would have received and thus owed the same duty of loyalty both inside and outside the UK. This does appear to be worryingly narrow but, if you think about it, Joyce had spent most of his life claiming to be a hyper-loyal British subject and concealing the fact that he wasn't quite as British as he made out. He was certainly entitled to British citizenship by descent and residence and may even have thought he was a British subject by default. There can be no question that morally he was a traitor and Shawcross established that technically he was as well.

Whether he should have been executed is a different question. His broadcasts (and those of Amery) caused anger and annoyance but didn't have any tangible material impact: nobody died or suffered as a result. Joyce was a political crank who found an outlet for his obsessions. Executing him - and Amery - seems a pretty extreme reaction and I should think that, if there had been a longer 'cooling off' period before their trial and perhaps a different Home Secretary, it is conceivable that their sentences might have been commuted.

On the other hand, I suspect that if some of the more egregious aspects of Thomas Cooper's SS career had been followed up, particularly his period as a guard at the Heidelager/Debica labour camp and his participation in 'Aktions' in the Krakow Ghetto, he might not have been treated as leniently as he was.

[northbear]

Adrain Weale, looking to contact Adrian re new info on british freecorp. Gary Barratt [email protected]