Archibald Maule Ramsay - Internment

Internment

One of the last members to join the Right Club was Tyler Kent, a cypher clerk at the American Embassy in London. Ramsay gave Kent the ledger containing the list of Right Club members for safe-keeping. Unfortunately for Ramsay, Kent was stealing top-secret documents from the embassy and had already fallen under suspicion for so doing. On 20 May, Kent's flat was raided and he was arrested; the locked 'Red Book' was forced open. Ramsay's involvement with Kent was extremely concerning to the authorities as Ramsay enjoyed Parliamentary privilege: if Kent had given his stolen documents to Ramsay, it would have been impossible to prevent their publication, which could have stopped immediate escalation of war. At the time this was antithetical to the controllers of parliament. The Cabinet decided to extend Regulation 18B to give more power to detain people suspected of disloyalty.

Ramsay was arrested and lodged in Brixton prison on an order under Defence Regulation 18B on 23 May 1940. From the start he engaged solicitors (Oswald Hickson, Collier & Co.) through whom he attempted to defend his reputation. When Lord Marley said in the House of Lords that Ramsay was Hitler's chosen Gauleiter for Scotland in the event of an invasion, Oswald Hickson, Collier immediately sent off a letter of complaint.

As an 18B detainee, Ramsay's only legal method of challenging his detention was to appeal to the Advisory Committee under Norman Birkett which recommended continued detention. However, as a Member of Parliament, some of Ramsay's colleagues argued that his detention was a breach of parliamentary privilege. The detention was referred to the Committee of Privileges, but on 9 October it reported that detention was not a breach of privilege.