Who knows the truth about Francis James, one of Australia’s last great characters? My father Jack Spackman, who knew him better than most, said he never got to the heart of the man, best known for being imprisoned in China in the 1970s on charges of espionage.
Francis was a puzzle to the end but among all the missing pieces there would usually be one piece which, if the rest were untrue, shouldn’t really be in place.
Greg Clark from The Australian newspaper was the first journalist to speak to Francis in Hong Kong after his release from a Chinese prison in 1973. And, after Francis died in 1992, Clark finally told his version of the Francis James story.
It’s a torrid and complex tale. At its heart were the sensational claims by Francis that in early 1969 he had visited a Chinese nuclear facility in the remote region of Xinjiang and interviewed three of China’s leading nuclear scientists.
A tale full of intrigue, including an alleged daughter born of a dalliance with a Chinese nun in a snowbound mountain hut in Xinjiang
His claims were debunked by the Far Eastern Economic Review and, with his reputation in tatters, it appeared that Francis had made a second trip to China later that year to clear his name and instead was arrested in Guangzhou as a spy.
Clark’s tale is full of intrigue and includes an alleged daughter born of a dalliance with a Chinese nun-interpreter in a snowbound mountain hut in Xinjiang.
That union was supposed to have occurred on an earlier visit to China by Francis in 1956 in the company of a bunch of bishops. Very Francis, and Clark is convinced that it’s all more than a bit beyond belief.
And yet… tucked at the end of his article is one of those small details which shouldn’t really be there.
Clark relates that a key part of Francis’ arrest-and-imprisonment story is that the Chinese took his story seriously enough that they took him, blindfolded, to retrace his steps.
And yet… there always seemed to be a piece in the Francis James puzzle that, if the rest was untrue, shouldn’t really be there
“But as they led him off the plane at Urumchi, the Xinjiang capital, his blindfold slipped just long enough for him to read the English words “No Waiting” on the wall of the airport toilet,” said Clark.
“Years later I asked someone visiting Urumchi to check whether that writing in English on the toilet wall really existed. Sure enough, it was there.”
Francis also told Clark that, just before his arrest, he had hidden some documents in a hotel in Guangzhou which the Russians were keen for him to recover.
And, many years later in 1986, it’s possible that those documents may have returned to Francis’ possession.
My sister Alin was in Hong Kong’s Nethersole Hospital recovering from an appendectomy when Dad and Francis visited her sickbed one quiet Sunday afternoon.
There, Francis asked Dad to get hold of David Bonavia, the highly respected Old China Hand. He had been The Times of London’s Man in Hong Kong during the Cultural Revolution before joining the Far Eastern Economic Review.
Francis needed Bonavia’s help, he said, in translating a document which, he claimed, would prove his story about visiting a nuclear establishment in Xinjiang.
Francis told my father he had recovered the document from its hiding place among the pipes in a hotel in Guangzhou, where he had put it before his arrest.
“This was Francis’ story so there was never any question that I would write it, but I certainly recognised it as a cracking good yarn,” Dad said.
“And, given Francis’ record, I was more eager for him to write it than me.”
David Bonavia died four years before Francis and, as far as I know, never wrote a word about that afternoon or the mysterious document. I presume he was as cautious of Francis’ tales as most other journalists.
When my father died, his big file on Francis James was not among his papers. I know there were cuttings, letters, cables, even a note on a paper napkin that Dad had scribbled in the toilet (All the President’s Men style) after a diplomat or a clergyman had dropped a morsel of information on him in a bar.
But to my father, first and foremost, Francis was a friend.
“We had some fine adventures together,” he wrote in a letter to me after Francis’ death in August 1992.
Many of those adventures were shared with Dick Hughes, the most respected of the China Watchers, and another close friend of Francis’.
Hughes is probably best remembered for tracking down and interviewing Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, two of the notorious British double agents known as the Cambridge Five, following their defection to the Soviet Union.
He used to correspond in Latin with his former classmate Gough Whitlam
Like ‘The Cardinal,’ as Dick was known, Francis was wont to adopt a clerical air and, being Francis, could be said to have gone one better.
He apparently used to correspond in Latin with his former classmate Gough Whitlam, the Australian prime minister whose efforts helped to secure Francis’ eventual release from captivity.
Francis was also a previous Editor of The Anglican newspaper in Australia and continued to contribute to religious publications in later years.
“I once asked Francis about his predilection for bishops,” Dad said. “He had, for instance, dined with Archbishop Makarios of Cyprus and I shudder to think what that pair cooked up.
“Everywhere he went, he made contact with bishops. He had deep roots in religion, his father having been a cleric.
Bishops, said Francis, were great political animals
“But why would he desert the companionship of David Bonavia, Dick Hughes and Co at the Foreign Correspondents Club to stroll over to the Bishop’s House?”
Bishops, said Francis, were great political animals. “If you can get them talking there’s always a chance of picking up a tidbit that just might yield a story,” he said.
“And don’t forget that many have foresworn some of the earthly pleasures. It should come as no great surprise that they reserve enjoyment for the few remaining.
“They therefore tend to put down a fine table. And they certainly know their wines.”
When Francis was discharged from Hong Kong’s Matilda Hospital after recovering from the rigours of his imprisonment, he came to stay with us at the Spackman flat in Macdonnell Road.
A small group of dignitaries were invited to our home when Francis was ready to receive guests, an occasion missed by your young Girl Reporter, but related by Dad in his letter to me on Francis’ death.
“In my own home, I stood with the Reverend Gilbert Baker, Anglican Archbishop of Hong Kong, waiting to get Francis’ attention to tell him his guest of honour had arrived,” Dad said.
“But Francis was busy at the time, greeting His Eminence, Cardinal Dick Hughes, going down on one knee and kissing his Catholic hand…
“… and Dick, addressing Francis as ‘Monsignor James,’ brushes him aside with ‘a plenary indulgence, my son, on the usual conditions’, before loudly urging the gathering to ‘give thanks for the safe return of Brother James from the hands of the Infidel.’
“A plenary indulgence, my son, on the usual conditions” – Dick Hughes
“Francis criticised me next day because I had not paid enough attention to the Archbishop’s reaction to this display of popery. I was too busy watching Francis and Dick to gauge adequately whether Bishop Gilbert had a sense of humour.”
Dad said he was advised, perhaps by his mother, to never get in to arguments about, or displays of, politics and religion.
“So, in my Hong Kong home I once managed to upset a senior Chinese journalist with Taiwan interests when he saw a Mao poster on my wall – in the days of the Cultural Revolution when these things counted more than they do now – and then Francis and Dick top that with a bit of religious mockery in the presence of an archbishop.
“There must be a special place in heaven for someone who gets the quinella – politics and religion – under one roof.”
© Maria Spackman 2018
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