Graham is absolutely correct that £5,000 was an outlandish amount of money to pay an assassin in 1961. Most commentators who believe Alphon was involved in the A6 Case are of the opinion that he received monies for keeping silent about what he knew, not for any bungled ‘'hit,’' and that once the money dried up he started mouthing off to all and sundry. The theory is he could do this with relative impunity since UK justice was not going to admit it had hanged an innocent man, preferring to label him a crank howling at the moon. This impression of Alphon is pretty much the one that survives to this day; his name rarely appears without the epithets '‘drifter'’ or '‘loner’' attached.
The real Alphon is less well known. He appears to have had a circle of friends, prior to the trial at least, but rather like the motoring club members who knew Gregsten and Ms. Storie their voices have never been made public. Alphon was something of a self-styled intellectual with an interest in Theosophy and Right Wing politics, unusual in a man normally associated with dog tracks and selling almanacs. His performance at the Paris hotel in the mid 1960s is rather impressive and probably an indicator that this was not some benighted social outcast but rather a man capable of impressing his views on others. If Alphon was on the fringes of society it was because he chose to be, not because he was incapable of attracting social interaction.
Alphon’'s political sympathies are of interest to me since the fascist movement in the UK ‘had a bad war’ and was only able to regroup in the late 1950s when a new generation much the same age as Alphon- people like Jordan, Tyndall and Webster- began to make their mark. Oswald Mosley, the man who thought we fought the wrong war, was still around as a rallying figure but after being knocked unconscious in Manchester in the early 1962 kept a lower profile thereafter. It has been reported that Alphon attended meetings of far right groups and that would certainly fit with his moralistic utterings when interviewed in Paris. Such groupings are always infiltrated by the security services and I have a lingering suspicion that Alphon was an informer paid to report on such activities, hence his ready income. Any link with Ewer, who may have been either a sympathiser or a security services asset, could have come from there.
All conjecture of course, but I wonder if those of us suspecting the framing of Hanratty and subsequent cover up have been too focused on the crime itself. Moste and myself have long thought there was a political element not just to the subsequent cover up but connected to the A6 investigation itself.
The real Alphon is less well known. He appears to have had a circle of friends, prior to the trial at least, but rather like the motoring club members who knew Gregsten and Ms. Storie their voices have never been made public. Alphon was something of a self-styled intellectual with an interest in Theosophy and Right Wing politics, unusual in a man normally associated with dog tracks and selling almanacs. His performance at the Paris hotel in the mid 1960s is rather impressive and probably an indicator that this was not some benighted social outcast but rather a man capable of impressing his views on others. If Alphon was on the fringes of society it was because he chose to be, not because he was incapable of attracting social interaction.
Alphon’'s political sympathies are of interest to me since the fascist movement in the UK ‘had a bad war’ and was only able to regroup in the late 1950s when a new generation much the same age as Alphon- people like Jordan, Tyndall and Webster- began to make their mark. Oswald Mosley, the man who thought we fought the wrong war, was still around as a rallying figure but after being knocked unconscious in Manchester in the early 1962 kept a lower profile thereafter. It has been reported that Alphon attended meetings of far right groups and that would certainly fit with his moralistic utterings when interviewed in Paris. Such groupings are always infiltrated by the security services and I have a lingering suspicion that Alphon was an informer paid to report on such activities, hence his ready income. Any link with Ewer, who may have been either a sympathiser or a security services asset, could have come from there.
All conjecture of course, but I wonder if those of us suspecting the framing of Hanratty and subsequent cover up have been too focused on the crime itself. Moste and myself have long thought there was a political element not just to the subsequent cover up but connected to the A6 investigation itself.
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