Walter Walker
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General Sir Walter Colyear Walker KCB, CBE, DSO & bar (11 November 1912 – 12 August 2001) was a controversial British General.
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[edit] Early life and military career
Walker born on a tea plantation in India to a military family and was one of four sons. At the end of the First World War Walker and his family moved back to Britain and he was sent to Blundell's School in Devon. Even as a child Walker had a militaristic streak; in his memoirs Fighting On he says he ordered the previously "idle, unpatriotic, unkempt" pupils into "showing the school what smartness on the parade ground meant". His teachers became alarmed at Walker's strict behaviour and tried to explain the difference between "driving" and "leading".
He then went to Sandhurst and then in 1933 Walker joined his grandfather's regiment, the 1/8th Gurkha Rifles. During the rest of the decade he orchestrated "punitive operations" against tribesman of the North West Frontier in India and it was here guarding the border he gained his suspicion of the Soviet Union.
During the Second World War Walker fought against the Japanese in Burma where he became ill and thin in the jungle. Nevertheless he was promoted to Colonel and in 1948 was posted to Malaya to help defeat the Communist rebels which had attacked British rubber plantations. Walker (correctly) blamed Chinese Communists for "infiltrating" trade unions and lambasted the British Labour Party for not banning the Malayan Communist Party. During his time in Malaya, Walker formed the plantation owners into a civilian volunteer force and utilised informers and spies. By 1958 he was a brigadier and a Commander of the British Empire.
During 1959 whilst Walker was in Singapore policing that city's first post-colonial elections he ordered the soldiers under his command to know the city intimately in order to deal with the "screeching mobs". After successfully overseeing the election there he was then (1962) stationed in Brunei and Borneo to fight Indonesian attempts to conquer it. It was during this time Walker was promoted to the rank of major-general.
Then in 1965 he was recalled to Britain where he was appointed to Deputy Chief of Staff in charge of Plans, Operations and Intelligence, H.Q., Allied Forces Central Europe, and afterwards General Officer Commander-in-Chief of the British army in northern Britain. His last post was Commander-in-Chief of NATO in Northern Europe from 1969 until his retirement in 1972 after 40 years service in the army.
[edit] Politics
Walker then began giving television interviews and then took part in a documentary named A Day in the Life of a General which was never aired due to security reasons, although Walker believed it was banned because he was "revealing the true state of affairs which the politicians are hiding from the public".
By 1974 Walker had grown "shocked" by the state of the country in general and the "militancy" of the trade unions in particular. In July of that year he wrote a letter to The Daily Telegraph calling for "dynamic, invigorating, uplifting leadership...above party politics" which would "save" the country from "the Communist Trojan horse in our midst". After the publication of this letter Walker claimed he received positive responses from Admiral of the Fleet Sir Varyl Begg, Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir John Slessor, a few British generals, ex-MPs, the Goon comedian Michael Bentine and the shipping industrialist Lord Cayzer.
Shortly after this letter the London Evening News (now defunct) gave Walker a front-page interview and asked him if he could imagine a situation in which the army could take over Britain. Walker responded: "Perhaps the country might choose rule by the gun in preference to anarchy", although Walker always argued he hated the idea of a military government in Britain.
By August 1974 Walker had joined the anti-Communist Unison group (later renamed to Civil Assistance) which claimed would supply volunteers in the event of a general strike. In 1975 Walker travelled to various boardrooms in the City of London in the hope of securing money and support. After Margaret Thatcher was elected Leader of the Conservative Party Walker and Civil Assistance faded from the media although he still travelled abroad, notably to Rhodesia and South Africa.
Walker privately told journalists that he thought Harold Wilson was a "proven Communist" and that there was a "Communist cell" in Downing Street (none of which has been proven). He advocated Enoch Powell as Prime Minister and favoured "tougher" measures against the IRA. He was an early member of the Conservative Monday Club and about 1984, until his death, became Patron of the ultra-conservative, anti-communist, and anti-Marxist pressure-group, the Western Goals Institute.
In 1980 his book The Next Domino?, with a foreword by Monday Club MP Julian Amery, was first published simultaneously in the UK, the U.S., and South Africa.
In the 1980s Walker's health began to decline and two hip operations in military hospitals which went wrong left him permanently disabled which led to Walker suing the Ministry of Defence in 1990. This was eventually settled out of court.
[edit] References
- Pinochet in Piccadilly: Britain and Chile's Hidden History by Andy Beckett (Faber and Faber, 2003) ISBN 0-571-21547-5
- The Wilson Plot by David Leigh (Heineman, 1988) ISBN 0-434-41340-2
[edit] Books
- The Bear At the Back Door, by General Sir Walter Walker, London, 1978.
- The Next Domino?, by General Sir Walter Walker, KCB, CBE, DSO, with a foreword by the Rt. Hon. Julian Amery, P.C., M.P. (1st edition, 1980, London, ISBN 0-85205-005-4; paperback revised edition published 20 August 1982, London).
- Fighting On, by General Sir Walter Walker, London, 1997.
