OVERVIEW 2003

The Story of the Memory of Gareth Richard Vaughan Jones 1905 -1935

To the reader of this epistle,

About 12 years ago the house where Gareth had lived with his family in Wales was burgled and at the time his sister, an old lady of 94 was living there. The family rushed down to clear the house and amongst the domestic equipment at the flight of the attic stairs we found a suitcase with his diaries. Under his late mother's bed was a box of documents lovingly kept for over 60 years. A book of his articles was also retrieved. Below his bed in the attic were the posters brought back from the Soviet Union in 1931. The diaries, letters and his article have been faithfully transcribed by myself, Margaret Siriol Colley. His tragic death in the hands of bandits has been written as a story in the book, Gareth Jones: A Manchukuo Incident. All his articles which cover not only the Soviet Union, but also America, Germany, Ireland, Wales and the Far East were copied and these have been put on the website www.colley.co.uk/garethjones designed by Nigel Colley and dedicated to the name of Gareth Jones, the journalist. We knew they were of historic importance.

Our family is convinced that Gareth's death in Manchukuo and his exposure of the famine in Ukraine were closely connected. There is more than a strong possibility that the Japanese who controlled the bandits were well aware of Gareth's interest in their designs of territorial expansion in the Far East, believing that on his return to the West, that  he would expose their intentions in his articles and in this, there is a story of intrigue. The word 'incident' (in the title of my book) was a euphemism for which the Japanese described their orchestration of an event to instigate a retaliatory action, most often used in respect to the Chinese.

We were aware that Gareth had travelled in Ukraine in 1933, and that he had been forgotten as being one of two journalists (the other being Malcolm Muggeridge who has not been) who exposed the ruthless man-made genocide-famine the Holodomor engineered by Stalin with the dictator's obsessive endeavour to carry out his Five-year Plan of Industrialisation and Collectivisation. But as Gareth only lived for two more years - he died on the eve of his 30th birthday, - he was never able to tell the world the true story. Or for that matter did he receive any acclaim as Malcolm Muggeridge did for his part in the exposure. Gareth's many articles, perhaps more forty, have laid dormant until now but we hope that those who are interested will have the benefit of reading them in this cd or on the website.

Through the website we have made many friends and must thank E. Morgan Williams for discovering Gareth Jones on it and promoting Gareth's name. The website www.artukraine.com which has been devised by Morgan is also dedicated to the Holodomor and it should be visited for further information devoted to the tragic genocide-famine resulting from Stalin's ruthlessly engineered Five-Year plan, begun in 1927 and culminating in the millions of deaths in 1933.

Our contact with E. Morgan Williams has been a two way process. He has promoted Gareth's involvement in the exposure of the traumatic events in 1933 in Ukraine but on our part we have been able to resurrect treasured documents kept by Gareth's mother and which have never been published until now.

During this year of 2003, we have been closely involved with the campaign to revoke Walter Duranty's 1932 Pulitzer from The New York Times, including writing an Open Letter to the Pulitzer committee to help this cause. There have been many wonderful articles in newspapers across the world, remembering Gareth's courage in telling the truth, including Martin Sieff of UPI, Dr. James Mace in The (Ukrainian) Day, Roman Revkniv of Ukranian Archives and News, to mention but a few. We must not forget Lesia Chernihivska, who undertook diligent work editing the article on Gareth written by us entitled: Gareth Jones: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness for the journal, The Canadian American Slavic Studies.  This is yet to be published but will be available for purchase in autumn 2003. We would like to thank them all for glowing portrayal and treatment of Gareth's memory.

However, we have no doubt that Gareth would have been most pleased with the Martin Sieff's Hero of Ukraine article being reprinted in (Ukrainian) Pravda – which in our opinion, would have been enough to make even Foreign Commissar Litvinov turn in his grave - as Pravda would no doubt have been most obliging (if truth be known) to have vilified Gareth as an 'enemy of the state' at the time.

On the 23rd June, the longest serving employee of the BBC, Alistair Cooke (who has been broadcasting his weekly 'Letter from America' since 1946), spoke about Stalin -'The Maddest and Most Criminal of Tyrants'. He went on to state that: "No Western reporter that I've heard about managed to get a word about the Ukraine through to his/her paper"  (CLICK HERE for an external link to BBC website for transcript of the broadcast.). By sheer coincidence, I had discovered a photograph (below) in Nick Clarke's biography of Alistair Cooke, from his Cambridge University days, and low and behold standing on his right shoulder was Gareth!!

Gareth is standing in the centre of the back row, with Cooke on his left with the moustache.

I contacted Alistair Cooke's personal assistant at the BBC to inform him, that contrary to the statement that no reporter got word out about the famine, and that he was actually pictured standing next to one such journalist. A couple of weeks afterwards, I received a very pleasant and personal reply form Alistair Cooke, but unfortunately he could no longer remember Gareth from the photograph.

Also in June of this year, I was delighted to accept a kind invitation from Sally Muggeridge, to visit the London Garrick club, and join the Centenary celebrations for Malcolm Muggeridge with his family and illustrious friends, including David Frost, Lord Deedes, Jonathon Dimbleby, and Conrad Black of the Daily Telegraph amongst others.

Nevertheless, at the time of production of this CD-rom, the Pulitzer committee has still not made a public decision on the revocation issue, but regardless of the outcome, the publicity generated has helped to educate the whole world about the Holodomor. If nothing else, the Duranty campaign has been a glowing success, and will never sleep until justice has eventually been served. For instance, in two years time, Gareth's Centenary will be another opportunity to bring this outrage of western journalism to the fore, then the 75th anniversary of Famine-Genocide in five years' time and so on...

The numerous articles which Gareth wrote, now in the public domain, have added significantly to the knowledge of the Holodomor. They are a time capsule of history and in my son, Nigel and my own research; we have been able to portray many true facts hither to unknown or forgotten.

In publishing this CD-rom, we should like to dedicate it to Gareth in his fearless and honest portrayal to the world of the true facts as they stood in 1933 and for his concern for all those who suffered and died from hunger and starvation resulting from Stalin's ruthless determination to execute his Five-Year plan.

Gareth’s death was a terrible tragedy his parents, Major and Mrs Edgar Jones.  I remember the weeks of wait that the family had waiting for news, some of it false and hoping that the bandits would release him.  Both his sisters, Miss Gwyneth Vaughan Jones and Mrs Eirian Lewis lived to be a hundred years old and before their deaths, they recounted the story of the traumatic event to his great, great nephews and nieces. So, the family saga has been carried down through the family verbally.  This, we have in common with those Ukrainians who lost loved ones in their own personal tragedies and we have deepest sympathy for them in this respect.

Yours truly,

Margaret Siriol Colley  (& Nigel Linsan Colley)

August 2003