Daphne Park, Baroness Park of Monmouth

Daphne Margaret Sybil Désirée Park, Baroness Park of Monmouth , CMG , OBE , FRSA (born September 1, 1921 in Surrey , † March 24, 2010 ) was a British top agent of MI6 and a diplomat . During her career she was employed as “Clandestine Senior Controller” in Moscow (1954–1956), Austria (1946–1948), the Congo (1959–1961), Zambia (1964–1967) and Hanoi (1969–1971) . After her time in the secret service , she became a Life Peeress member of the House of Lords and a politician of the Conservative Party on February 27, 1990 .

Life

Daphne Park was the daughter of John Alexander Park and Doreen Gwynneth Park in the County of Surrey born. Park's father was sick with tuberculosis in his youth and, on medical advice , had been sent to Africa to recover , where he initially lived in South Africa , then Nyassaland . During the First World War he worked as an intelligence officer. At the age of six months, Park also came to Africa with her mother in 1922, where her father lived in Tanganyika , today's Tanzania , as a tobacco and coffee farmer and also worked as a gold prospector . Park grew up in a mud house with no electricity or running water . She received her first lessons from her mother, who also taught her to read . As a child, Park read the Iliad and the adventure novels by Rudyard Kipling and John Buchan . Park returned to the UK at the age of 11 .

She attended the Rosa Bassett School , a grammar school for girls, in Streatham and Somerville College at the University of Oxford . There she graduated in 1943 with a Bachelor of Arts in Modern Languages (Modern Languages) from. In 1943, Park volunteered for the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (Princess Royal's Volunteer Corps) (FANY (PRVC)). During this time, she worked in the Special Operations Executive (SEO), a unit that trained specialists in dealing with secret codes , encryption and secret messages. Park received the rank of sergeant and instructed at Milton Hall in the county of Leicestershire, among other things, members of the so-called Jedburgh teams , which were used to support the resistance in France . In 1945, after insubordination , Park was transferred to North Africa as a briefing officer and courier . From 1946 to 1948 she worked in Vienna for the Allied Commission for Austria , where she coordinated the search for scientists who had worked on projects relevant to the war and who were to be interviewed by the Secret Intelligence Service , the British foreign intelligence service .

In 1948, Park officially joined the State Department . She studied from 1950 Russian at Newnham College of the University of Cambridge , where she graduated in 1952 with a diploma. In the following years she worked as a diplomat, but was also always active as an intelligence officer. From 1952 to 1954 she worked as Third Secretary “undercover” as an intelligence officer in the British delegation to NATO in Paris . From 1954 to 1956 she was Second Secretary at the British Embassy in Moscow .

From 1959 to 1961 she was First Secretary and Consul at the British Embassy in Léopoldville (now Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo ), which in fact meant MI6 chief on site. She smuggled the private secretary of the President Patrice Lumumba in the trunk of her car from the Congo . Park admitted in 2010 that he organized the 1961 murder of Lumumba, the first prime minister after Congo gained independence from Belgium . She made her confession in a conversation with David Edward Lea . Lea said in a letter to the editor of the London Review of Books that he had asked Park about a possible involvement of MI6 in the kidnapping and murder of Lumumba. She replied, “We did it. I organized that ”. Lumumba was arrested, tortured and executed just a few months after his election as prime minister.

From 1964 to 1967 she was First Secretary and High Commissioner in Lusaka , Zambia (shortly after the liberation of the former Northern Rhodesia, the colony of Cecil Rhodes ). From 1969 to 1970 she was consul general in Hanoi . She ended her diplomatic career in 1972 as a Chargé d'affaires at the British Embassy in Ulaanbaatar . From 1973 to 1979 Park then worked for the Foreign Office in London . In 1975 she was appointed "Controller Western Hemisphere" in the Foreign Office and thus held the highest office within MI6 that has ever been held by a woman.

From 1980 to 1989 she was the director of Somerville College. Park was particularly committed to the needs of the students. She established connections between industry and science, initiated scholarships and guest lectureships and devoted herself intensively to fundraising to improve study conditions. 1985-1989 she was Vice-Rector (Pro Vice-Chancellor) of the University of Oxford.

Park was unmarried and had no children. Park, who had to rely on a wheelchair for the last few years of her life, died after a long illness.

Membership in the House of Lords

On February 27, 1990, she was made a Life Peeress . It was entitled Baroness Park of Monmouth , of Broadway in the County of Hereford and Worcester . In the House of Lords she was the semi-official spokeswoman for the Secret Service. Baroness Park attended the meetings of the House of Lords regularly until the end. She had a political friendship with Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale , who had also worked as a spy during the Cold War . For the Almanac of the Parliament, she cited “politics and difficult places” as her hobbies.

Offices and honors

Park was from 1982 to 1987 Director (Governor) at the British Broadcasting Corporation under General Manager Alasdair Milne . She was chairman (chairman) of the Legal Aid Advisory Committee to the Lord Chancellor from 1985 to 1991 and member of the British Library Board from 1983 to 1989.

In 1960 Park was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire . In 1971 she became Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (CMG). She was an Honorary Fellow of Somerville College, Fellow of Chatham House (RIIA) and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA).

Web links

• Daphne Park im Hansard (English)
• Daphne Park, MI6 woman with a 30-year secret career, dies at 88th obituary in The Times on March 25, 2010

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Park Daphne Margaret Sybil Désiree , name base, accessed on August 6, 2019
2. ↑ A license to kill? Oh heavens, no! Portrait of Daphne Park in The Daily Telegraph , April 24, 2003.
3. ^ Baroness Park of Monmouth obituary in: The Daily Telegraph , March 25, 2010.
4. ^ Baroness Park of Monmouth, the 'Queen of Spies', dies aged 88. Obituary in: The Daily Telegraph , March 25, 2010.
5. ↑ MI6 organized execution of DRC leader Lumumba, peer claims
6. ^ Letters, We did it. London Review of Books , Vol. 35, No. 7, April 11, 2013.
7. ^ Baroness Park of Monmouth, 1921-2010. Obituary in Conservative Gazette, March 25, 2010.
8. ^ Death of Baroness Park of Monmouth. Announcement on the House of Lords website of March 26, 2010
9. ↑ The true 007. Short portrait in Focus , No. 48, 1993
10. ↑ The Baroness Park of Monmouth, CMG, OBE  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Biography at Debretts (excerpts available online)  
11. ^ Daphne Margaret Sybil Desiree Park, Baroness Park of Monmouth on thepeerage.com , accessed September 12, 2016.