English Personal Experiences: Gareth Richard Vaughan Jones (Wales, 1905-35)


Figure 1.-- Threre is a photogrtaph of Gareth with his mum when he was about 6. Photograph attached

Gareth was born in Wales in 1905. His father was the headmaster of Barry County Boy’s School. His mother had worked in the Ukraine in the late 19th century. She had been the governess to the children of a steel industrialist. It was position she enjoyed. Gareth’s mum also liked living the Ukraine. As a boy Gareth listened to the stories his mother told about as the adventurous life she led as a governess in the Ukraine. His mother’s stories had given him a longing to visit the Ukraine. The chance to go came in the early 1930’s after he had graduated from university. He joined Lloyd George’s staff has its Foreign Affairs Adviser. This position came with opportunity to travel. The first country he visited was the Ukraine. It was his reporting that revealed the causes of the wide spread famine which had gripped the region. He had the makings of becoming a great journalist but in 1935 he was murdered while investigating a news story in China.

Parents

Gareth's mother was Annie Gwen Jones. She had worked in the Ukraine as a governess to Arthur Hughes. He had been appointed by Tsar Nicholas to manage a steel mill in the She worked there for 3 years. It was her experiences in this position and stories she recounted tob the young Gareth then gave Gareth a longing to visit the Ukraine. His father was Major Edgar Jones. He was headmaster of Barry County Boy’s School. It was a position he held for 35 years.

Childhood

Jones was born in Barry, Vale of Glamorgan in Wales. We have, however, been able to d=find little informatiion about his childhood.

Education

Gareth was a pupil at his father’s school in Barry. He attended university College of Wales, afterwards he studied at the University of Strasbourg. He won a scholarship to Trinity College Cambridge. He gained a first in Russian. This was a language he spoke fluently. He was also fluent in French and German.

Diplomatic Work

Jones worked on the staff of Primeminister Lloyd George after World war I. The post Jones held was Foreign Affairs Adviser. This was a position that involved overseas travel. And because of his language skills, he was a rare individual who could move easily in British, America, Germanhy, and the Soviet Union. He was able to visit the Ukraine.

Depression in the West (1932)

Stalin's Great Famine by an accident of history coincided with the peak of the Great Depression in the West. While Stalin set out to destroy the Ukranian peasantry, Western countries reacted differently to the Depression which also caused widespread destitution and hunger. Americanns elected New York Govenor Franklin D. Roosevelt (November 1932). President-elect Roosevelt began assembling hiscBrain Trust and planning what would become the New Deal. He would not actually become president for four months and during this period the situation rapidly deteriorated and the country's financial system tetered on the verge of collapse would have caused even greater misery for the American people, about a third of wehich were already hungary and unemployed. Meanwhile in Germany, the people turned to a very different type of leader. Germany had been particularly impacted by gthe Depression because the economy had been so dependent on exports as well as American financing. While Roosevelt and the American people waited for the new administration, President Hindenberg in Berlin appointed NAZI leader Adolf Hitler Chancellor (January 1933). The NAZIs were not a majority party, but many unemployed Germans turned to the NAZIs and the Communists, losing faith in the democratic parties. A British journalist, Garenth Jones. chronicled these developments. He wrote, "I saw hundreds and hundreds of poor fellows in single file, some of them in clothes which once were good, all wating to be handed out two sanwiches, a doughnut, a cup of coffeee and a cigarette." [Colley, p. 161.] He saw the same in Germany. There were many reporters obseving and reporting on the same bleak situtation in these abd other Western countries. What made Jones different was he then went east to the Soviet Union (March 1933). There the Soviet Government was elated with the economic crisis in the West, it seem to presage the collapse of capitalism which Marxists believed was inevitable. And it was not just the Soviets who promoted this idea. Many in West were attracted by Marxist ideology and believed it. Many believed that in cotrast to the dispair in their countries, the Soviet Union was full of well-fed workers and happy peasants. Soviet officals very effectively prevented reports from the Soviet breadbasket from leaking out to the West. And reports that did surface were often dismissed by Wesrernn Markists abnd even liberals. Jones proved to be a rare Western journalist who reported on the Great Famine.

Ukranian Famine (1933)

After reporting on Hitler's accession to power, Jines wnt to the Soviet UnioN. He was there during the Great Famine of the early 1930sc engineered by Stalin. He reporting alerted the British public to the terrible things that were then happening in the Ukraine by starteling reports published in The Times. His reports were the first and the depressinglyv few accurate reoorts appearing in Western newspapers. Some historians report that a British Official at the Embassy in Moscow travelled all over Russia to places that he was not supposed to go to and reported on the Great Famine. The British Government thus apparently knew before Gareth Jones reported in The Times. Jones accurately reoorted on the extent of the disaster abd connected the Famine with Stalins Five Year Plan and Collectivation. He did not, however, fully understabd the extent to which Stalin enginerred the Famine to destroy the Ukranian peasantry. Still Jones wrote some of the few accurate reports to appear in Wesern newspapers. He honestly described what he saw, " I walked along through villages and twelve collective farms. Everywhere was the cry, 'There is no bread. We are dying'. This cry came from every part of Russia, from the Volga, Siberia, White Russia, the North Caucasus, and Central Asia. I tramped through the black earth region because that was once the richest farmland in Russia and because the correspondents have been forbidden to go there to see for themselves what is happening. In the train a Communist denied to me that there was a famine. I flung a crust of bread which I had been eating from my own supply into a spittoon. A peasant fellow-passenger fished it out and ravenously ate it. I threw an orange peel into the spittoon and the peasant again grabbed it and devoured it. The Communist subsided. I stayed overnight in a village where there used to be two hundred oxen and where there now are six. The peasants were eating the cattle fodder and had only a month's supply left. They told me that many had already died of hunger. Two soldiers came to arrest a thief. They warned me against travel by night, as there were too many 'starving' desperate men. 'We are waiting for death' was my welcome, but see, we still, have our cattle fodder. Go farther south. There they have nothing. Many houses are empty of people already dead,' they cried."

China (1935)

Jones was covering a news story in China in its pursuit he was reportedly murdered by bandits (1935). It cannot be proved but there is a strong possibilty that his death in China was ordered by Stalin because of his incriminating Ukraine famine reports published in the British Press.

Source:

Collery, Margaret Siriol. Internet Web site: "A Pictorial History of Gareth Vaughan Jones". Lecture given to the Oxford Ukrainian Society, May 11, 2006. Photograph from this source also.

Colley, Margaret Siriol. More than a Grain of Truth: The Biography of Gareth Richard Vaughan Jones (Newark, self published, 2006).






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Created: 5:08 AM 1/4/2008
Last updated: 1:42 AM 7/14/2013