George Kennedy Young

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George Kennedy Young, CB, MBE, M.A., (born 1911, Dumfriesshire), was a deputy director of MI6, and later involved in British right-wing politics. He was also a merchant banker.

George K.Young attended St. Andrews University, Dijon University, University of Giessen, and Yale University. He was commissioned (1940) as an officer in the King's Own Scottish Borderers regiment but later transferred to British Intelligence, where he became an expert in the methods of the Italian Fascist police system and those of the German secret services.

Before World War II he was on the editorial staff of the Glasgow Herald, and after the war he joined the Foreign Office, serving in diplomatic posts in Vienna, the Middle East, and, from 1953, in Whitehall — where he specialised in economic and defence intelligence work. His dissatisfaction with the Macmillan government led him to resign as Deputy of MI6 in 1961 and enter merchant banking.

G.K. (as he was popularly referred to) subsequently became Chairman of the Society for Individual Freedom. He was also an early and leading member of the Conservative Monday Club serving on several of its policy committees (Chairman of the Action Fund 1967-69), (Chairman, Economics Committee), and Executive Council. After losing an acrimonious election for the position of Club chairman to Jonathan Guinness in 1973, he set up another far-right group called Tory Action.

It has been suggested that he was closely associated with attempts to undermine the Labour government of Harold Wilson in the mid-1970s, and that he regarded the Tory government of Edward Heath to be virtually socialist.

[edit] Publications

  • Young, George K., Masters of Indecision, Methuen, London, 1962.
  • Young, George K., Merchant Banking - Practice & Prospects, London, 1966.
  • Young, George K., Finance and World Power, London, 1968.
  • Young, George K., Who Goes Home, Monday Club, London, May 1969, (P/B).
  • Young, George K., Who is My Liege - Loyalty and Betrayal in our Time, London, 1972.
  • Young, George K., Subversion and the British Riposte, Ossian, Glasgow, 1984, ISBN 0-947621-02-4

[edit] References

  • Copping, Robert, The Story of the Monday Club, Current Affairs Information Service, London, April 1972, (P/B).
  • Various dust-jacket summary biographies.