King Edward VII bugged during abdication crisis 1936

[David Guyatt]

Big Bro was watching back then.

King Edward VIII bugged during abdication crisis

After his abdication, Edward was given the title Duke of Windsor
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King Edward VIII was bugged by the government at the height of the 1936 abdication crisis, files released by the National Archives show.
The Home Office ordered "interception of telephone communications" between royal residences and "the continent of Europe".
The King's divorced mistress, Wallis Simpson, was in France at the time.
The files also show police had earlier investigated a reported bomb threat against Mrs Simpson in London.
The revelations are included in the papers from the Foreign Office and the Cabinet Office, which date from the World War II and early Cold War periods.
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The Home Secretary asks me to confirm... that you will arrange for the interception of telephone communications between Fort Belvedere and Buckingham Palace on the one hand and the continent of Europe on the other"

In November 1936 - a time when the Church of England would not remarry a divorcee while their former spouse was still alive - the yet-to-be-crowned new king told Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin he planned to wed Mrs Simpson.
Mr Baldwin took the view this would be impossible if Edward was to remain king.
After the story broke in the press, it was thought he might go ahead with the marriage, forcing Mr Baldwin to resign.
With the King holed up at Fort Belvedere, in Windsor Great Park, and Mrs Simpson staying with friends in the south of France, Home Secretary Sir John Simon instructed the General Post Office (GPO) to covertly monitor the king's phone calls.
A note from the Home Office to GPO head Sir Thomas Gardiner - dated 5 December 1936 and marked "most secret" - read: "The home secretary asks me to confirm the information conveyed to you orally, with his authority by, by Sir Horace Wilson that you will arrange for the interception of telephone communications between Fort Belvedere and Buckingham Palace on the one hand and the continent of Europe on the other."
No records of any intercepted calls are included in the file.
Five days later, Edward accepted his fate, signing the instruments of his abdication to end his 326-day reign.
The files show that, on 6 December, a Home Office official said he had been rung by a GPO clerk to report two telegrams sent by journalist Neil Forbes - London editor of the Cape Times - who claimed the king had already resigned.
Met Police officers were alerted to a report running in the US of a bomb threat to Mrs Simpson's central London home
Writing about a subsequent dressing down of the journalist, Home Secretary Sir John noted: "I asked him if he did not realise that his responsibilities as a journalist and an Englishman made the sending of such a message without definite authority as to its truth very improper and reckless."
Meanwhile, in a November 1936 letter to the home secretary, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Philip Game said officers had been alerted in the early hours of one morning to a report running in the US of a bomb threat to Mrs Simpson's central London home.

I note that there is no explanation why "The Home Office ordered "interception of telephone communications" between royal residences and "the continent of Europe" - when the "continent of Europe" is almost certainly a reference to Adolf Hitler's Third Reich with which Edward Windsor had considerable sympathies.