The Wissolini diaries
AFTERTHOUGHT JOHN WELLS
All over the world in recent years the price of works of art has been rising alarmingly. Ideal landscapes, grandiose futuristic designs and pop-art images of every conceivable kind are selling as never before, and it is perhaps inevit- able that there should have been a renaissance of the ancient craft of forgery and fake. Most of the most famous examples have been in the world of painting and sculpture : but there are few things more worth forging than political documents, whose value depends solely on the hand that signed them.
With the astonishing story that broke in this week's Guardian, it now seems that one of the most ambitious hoaxes in criminal history is about to be uncovered. But not before it has cost the country several thousand million pounds and brought the Exchequer to the verge of bankruptcy. It may yet make us no more than a cheap laughing stock in the eyes of the world. What is perhaps most astounding is that this vast deception appears to have fooled the majority of 'experts' and 'political commenta- tors' under whose scrutiny the documents have been for the past three years.
The Wissolini diaries, consisting of a number of grubby exercise books filled with day to day schemes, little plots and wheezes, scraps of quo- tations from J. F. Kennedy, Harold Macmillan and the late Sir. Winston Churchill, jumbled up with rather banal catch-phrases and flat obser- vations about the state of the country—'By God, we are in a mess this time and no mistake,' It cannot go on like this really it cannot' and 'One of these days something will turn up, of that I remain convinced'—have for some time been regarded as worthless in themselves. They have, however, remained invaluable in so far as they represent the admittedly less successful handiwork of the great purposive dictator, Aroldo Wissolini, the legendary and apparently immortal leader of the National Socialist Coali- tion Government.
With the bombshell that burst in the Guardian on Monday of this week. however, it now seems that even this tenuous claim to authenticity may be held up to question. The very idea of the coalition, according to the Guardian's informant, is simply 'not on.' By this, the informant presumably means that the position of power occupied by Aroldo in his heyday was nothing more than an illusion : the appareritly unshakable pillars of rock on which his authority was based no more than papier machd. How, it is argued, could such a 'coali- tion' hold together in times of stress? Are we seriously expected to believe that a man like Michael Foot could remain true to his principles and stay in a coalition that included, let us say, Desmond Donnelly? How would any formal member of the public react in practice to the introduction of 'efficient and intelligent' out- siders into the Government like Patrick Gordon Walker?
Following on this fruitful line of iconoclastic speculation, others were not slow to blow away the remaining cobwebs of myth and legend sur- rounding the Wissolini thousand-year dream. One commentator pointed out that the coali- tion, had it ever been more than a paper project, would have become a 'whips' nightmare.' Mr Woodrow Wyatt, whose opinion should be respected on the grounds that he himself could only achieve prominence under such a farcically catholic administration, has said that such a coalition would " have meant the death of socialism as we know it. He spoke no truer word.
If this was the beginning of the unravelling of Aroldo's political combinations, more was still to come. If the 'party' of which the diaries are so full is no more than a fictional power with no authority to support it, how can we be sure that Aroldo was in fact the author of this bizarre bundle of incoherent ramblings? Indeed the evidence is scant. The historical, and indeed the hysterical Wissolini, it will be remembered, was the weaker partner in the infernal alliance with Adolf Johnson during the darker days of the present century. He was, in his own words, 'a purposive and dynamic leader.' He appealed to his followers in the National Socialist move- ment as the 'strong man' who could lead the country out of the mess created by thirteen years of undynamic and purposeless government by the moribund Conservative party.
Few will forget the cocksure swagger, the flamboyant salute, the echoing loudspeakers at the mass rallies announcing the leader's deter- mination to defend the pound, his intention to raise the school leaving age, his refusal to kow- tow to de Gaulle and the Common Market, his grand and all-embracing National Plan. Even to the inexpert eye, the la& of any stylistic or even physical similarity between this Wissolini and the author of the diaries must be immedi- ately apparent. Is the Wissolini of the diaries an exploded myth? If so, who are the forgers behind the surviving fiction, who are responsible for maintaining the market value of theie droolings, the meaningless posturings of an insubstantial leader at the head of a lunatic coalition of left and right whose authority is no more than a carefully concealed fiction?
For some years now, the agents of Interpol have been on the trail of a ruthless gang of image-makers who are known to have defrauded the public of millions of pounds by offering worthless rubbish to buyers on the strength of a prominently displayed signature. No matter how pappy and insipid the content, the public appears all too eager to buy any work if the name underneath it is sufficiently notorious. The big operators are aware of this, and are pre- pared to go to any lengths to provide what is wanted. It now seems possible that the real authors of the Wissolini diaries, those who originally foisted the hoax on the country three years ago and who are now beginning to regret it, are two 'innocent' old ladies living alone in a tar-papered shack outside Folkestone. Their names : Mrs Cecilia King, eighty-three, and her friend, 'Granny' Thomson, one hundred and six. History may yet deal harshly with them.
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