Ralph Murray

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Sir Francis Ralph Hay Murray KCMG, CB (3 March 1908 - 1983) was a British radio broadcaster and diplomat. [1] The son of The Rev. Charles Murray, he was educated at Brentwood School and St. Edmund College, Oxford. His father died in 1919 in the Spanish flu pandemic. He married an Austrian aristocrat Mauricette Vladimira Marie Reichsgräfin von Kuenburg in 1935. He and Mauricette had four children; Ingram, Nicholas, Georgina and Simon. His brother Stephen Murray was a successful actor. Comedian Al Murray is his grandson.

A talented linguist - he spoke many languages fluently including French, German, Italian, Spanish, Greek, and some Russian. Prior to the Second world war he worked for the BBC as a journalist, having previously worked for a Bristol newspaper^[1]. In 1935 he reported the Saarland Plebiscite - and succeeded in broadcasting live during the 9 o'clock news holding a microphone out of the window to capture the chants of the mob - a major technical feat, and possibly the first time an international live outside broadcast had been undertaken. In common with many on the periphery of SOE, knowledge of his wartime service is hazy. He was most closely associated with propaganda, and from 1941 was a member of the Underground Propaganda Committee (UPC) which had been formed to fuel a whispering campaign to undermine any invasion^[2]. He was also associated with Bletchley Park, and was involved in supporting resistance activity, notably, from 1943, of the Yugoslavian Partisans where he met Josip Tito. His wife Mauricette was involved in propaganda broadcasting to occupied Europe, notably to Sweden where she had spent several years as a child.

In 1949 he became the director of the Information research department (IRD), This organisation, which had close links with SIS/MI6, was formed by Atlee in 1947 to carry on the work of the wartime "Political Warfare Executive", itself closely affiliated with SOE. At that time the intention was to promote a socialist Britain as an international third way, although in practice its resources were mainly devoted to attacking Communism and the Soviet Union. During this time Murray coined the phrase "Communo-fascism" to emphasise the similarity between Soviet communism and the Nazis^[3].

In a pattern that was later to be repeated, Murray was appointed Minister at the British Embassy in Cairo in Egypt during the tense run up to the Suez crisis in 1956. Personally fond, and having some admiration for President Nasser, he found himself in the invidious situation of having considerable distaste for the policy he was required to implement.

Murray was Knighted (KCMG) in 1962, when he was created British Ambassador to Greece in 1962. He held this post until 1967 and the right wing coup of the Greek army Colonels which led to the formation of the Greek military junta of 1967-1974. He appears to have been frustrated with the passivity of the British government's actions both in the lead up to the coup of which there was some intelligence foreknowledge^[4], and its ineffectual response. In particular he had little regard for George Brown (most famous as the object of the euphemism for intoxication "tired and emotional") the then foreign secretary. He retired from the diplomatic service in 1967. He became a BBC governor 1967. Sir Ralph died in 1983.