the struggle
Denis Herbstein
Attempts to render the lives of solicitors more exciting than they actually are should be viewed with scepticism. But for Martin Bayer, who has died of a heart attack at the age of 66, the term “supporter of revolutionaries” would not be out of place.
One of the few people who knew of his activities was John Collins, Canon of St Paul’s Cathedral, and founder of the International Defence & Aid Fund for Southern Africa (Idaf), which, for more than a quarter of a century, smuggled 100- million into South Africa, most of it to defend political activists in court. When the fund was banned by the Pretoria government in 1966, Bayer provided the clandestine channel through which the money arrived in the offices of sympathetic lawyers in South Africa. BOSS, the security service, never cottoned on.
Bayer, born in Kimberley diamond country, where his father was a doctor, had law degrees from the University of Cape Town and Queens’ College, Cambridge. He lectured in law for a few years in Johannesburg, before returning to England, where he joined the firm Birkbeck, Julius, Coburn & Broad, later to merge with another firm to become Birkbeck Montagu’s. (Ironically, in view of what would happen, the “Julius” part of the firm was solicitor to Consolidated Goldfields and the firm’s offices at 49 Moorgate were also the headquarters of the Southern African mining house.)
Until 1966, Idaf had openly financed the treason and Rivonia trials, earning thanks from Nelson Mandela for saving him and his co-accused from the gallows. As a result of the ban, lawyers funded by the newly internationalised Idaf faced imprisonment and expulsion from their profession. It seemed, initially, that foreign aid for political trials would be blocked.
However, through Neville Rubin, a South African lawyer wanted at home for sabotage, Collins arrived at Birkbeck’s. Rubin suggested the idea of a barriered system of transmitting money to South Africa. He then recommended the politically low-profile solicitor, Bayer, needed to carry the subterfuge through. Bayer met Collins at his home at Amen Court, with his articled clerk, William Frankel, Rubin, and Idaf head of trial aid, Phyllis Altman. Four South African Jews and the Canon of St Paul’s would alone be privy to the workings of a scheme which funded thousands of trials.
The arrangement was elegantly simple. When Altman had a case that Idaf wanted to support, Bayer, code-named “Mr X”, passed it on to a friend at another firm. He scattered the scent more widely through lawyers in New York, France and Switzerland. All were sworn to secrecy about the Birkbeck connection and none knew that Collins was behind it. They would write to a designated attorney in Johannesburg or Cape Town offering the help of a well-known figure.
Bayer also set up a series of trust funds in the name of apparent benefactors, like the Labour peer Lord Mitchison, the author JB Priestley and the Booker sugar baron, Jock Campbell, all friends of Collins. It was another smokescreen. Very little money came out of their pockets. The real paymasters, Scandinavian governments and the United Nations, transferred funds into the bank accounts of these trusts in Zurich, whence Bayer moved it on via the second-line solicitors to South Africa.
In the hiatus between the ban and the take- off of the new secret system, Oliver Tambo, the ANC leader, told Collins its members were being jailed without legal defence. Bayer was dispatched to South Africa to reassure attorneys that money was still available.
As well as his clandestine political activities, Bayer had a conventional life as a City solicitor, rejuvenating Birkbeck, bringing in other international business and opening branches in New York, France and Switzerland. His office and his home in Hampstead, traditional retreat of his well- heeled fellow countrymen, was a place of fine paintings, prints and porcelain. He was, for many years, a director of the Fine Arts Society.
His partners knew only in general terms of a scheme to aid those facing political trials in South Africa and accepted Bayer’s assurance that he was not funding terrorism. South African clients sympathetic to the anti-apartheid struggle knew nothing of his secret activities. The Defence & Aid files were held in a safe to which only Bayer, Frankel and their secretaries had access. As a precaution they were listed as “St Paul’s School”.
Bayer left Birkbeck in 1985 and became senior partner at Bayer Rosin, which in turn was merged into Mishcon de Reya, for whom he became a consultant.
Bayer was recuperating from a heart attack at his home in France when he died. The villagers of Montfort, Gers, gathered to mourn the death of the English aesthete.
ENDS