Lord Louis Mountbatten

Introduction

Lord Louis Mountbatten was the last viceroy in India and 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma. Lord Mountbatten was born Prince Louis of Battenberg on 25 June 1900 in Windsor. As the son of Prince Louis of Battenberg and Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, and as the great-grandson of Queen Victoria, Lord Mountbatten was uncle to Prince Philip and a distant cousin of Queen Elizabeth II. He was an officer in the British Royal Navy and in 1947 was appointed the last Viceroy of India, during the partition of British India into India and Pakistan.[1]

Mountbatten and Prince Philip

In 1903, his sister Princess Alice of Battenberg married Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark. Their son Prince Philip was born in 1921 and was sent to attend the Gordonstoun school in Scotland in 1934. During his time in the UK, Philip was cared for by his grandmother, the Dowager Marchioness of Milford Haven who lived in Kensington Palace and his “Uncle Dickie” , a nickname given to Lord Mountbatten. In 1939, Lord Mountbatten introduced Prince Philip to King George VI, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, and the young Princess Elizabeth during a visit to Dartmouth Naval College. Lord Mountbatten encouraged Prince Philip to pursue Princess Elizabeth with the goal of elevating his own family’s social standing.[2]

When Prince Philip was required to renounce his Greek citizenship and become a British subject prior to his wedding to Elizabeth, he took Mountbatten as his surname. Lord Mountbatten provided his Broadlands country home to Elizabeth and Philip after their 1947 wedding. When Prince Philip was posted to Malta, he and Princess Elizabeth lived in Earl Mountbatten’s Villa Guardamangia. Lord Mountbatten had considerable sway over Prince Philip, His daughter Lady Patricia Brabourne once said, “My father was considered pink — very progressive. The worry was that Prince Philip would bring into court modern ideas and make people uncomfortable.”When King George VI died in 1952, Lord Mountbatten is said to have declared to a room full of guests that “the House of Mountbatten now reigned”. [3]

Mountbatten and Prince Charles

Lord Mountbatten was known to have a close relationship with the Prince of Wales, Charles, becoming a mentor and offering him guidance throughout his life. Lord Mountbatten was the great-uncle to Prince Charles and he advised him in ‘matters of the heart’. Mountbatten is reported to have encouraged Charles to ‘sow his wild oats’ and embrace his bachelorhood before settling down. They first met when Prince Charles was age 5. [4]

In 1966, the prolific child rapist Sir James Wilson Vincent Savile, aka Jimmy Savile, became the first civilian to be awarded a Royal Marines’ green beret. Lord Mountbatten was comm­and­ant general at the time. He later introduced Jimmy Savile into royal circles and to Prince Charles. In an interview with Esquire, Savile tells, “The thing about me is I get things done and I work deep cover,” … “I’ve known the Royal Family for a million years.” … “Just because some people are famous or have a lot of money doesn’t mean they don’t have problems.”… ”Coming from Lord Louis, who was the favourite uncle of Prince Philip, that was quite something,” “So obviously I hooked up with the Prince – what was good enough for Lord Louis was good enough for him.” Jimmy Saville was later exposed for having raped and/or sexually assaulted more than 500 people, including hospital patients, children and elders alike. Prince Charles is reported to have identified Jimmy Savile as his ‘best friend’. [5]

In 2015, Prince Charles visited the site of Mountbatten’s death, he said ‘I could not imagine how we would come to terms with the anguish of such a deep loss since, for me, Lord Mountbatten represented the grandfather I never had.’ Prince Charles’s eldest son, Prince William, reportedly named his own son Prince Louis after Lord Mountbatten.[6]

FBI Investigation

Lord Mountbatten was reknowned to be wildly promiscuous, bisexual and to abuse young working class boys or peasant indian boys. [4] An FBI dossier on Lord Mountbatten, released in 2019 revealed his predatory behaviour towards children, especially young boys. The FBI began compiling the Mountbatten dossier in February 1944, shortly after Mountbatten became Supreme Allied Commander of Southeast Asia. They kept adding to it over the next three decades. The 75-year-old intelligence files describe Louis Mountbatten and his wife Edwina Mountbatten as “persons of extremely low morals” and contain information suggesting that Lord Mountbatten was a pedophile with “a perversion for young boys.” [5]

In a 1944 interview with Elizabeth de la Poer Beresford, Baroness Decies, a friend of the royal family. “She states that in these circles Lord Louis Mountbatten and his wife are considered persons of extremely low morals. She stated that Lord Louis Mountbatten was known to be a homosexual with a perversion for young boys,”

“In Lady Decies’ opinion he is an unfit man to direct any sort of military operations because of this condition. She stated further that his wife Lady Mountbatten was considered equally erratic.” [6]

Mountbatten and Kincora

In 1990, writer Robin Bryans reported that Lord Mountbatten, Anthony Blunt and others were part of an old-boy network that held ‘gay orgies’ in country houses on both sides of the UK / Irish border and at the Kincora boys’ home. Decades later a Historical Institutional Abuse (HIA) inquiry concluded that abuse at the home was limited to three staff members and there was no collusion by the state or intelligence services in covering it up.

In separate allegations, Lord Louis Mountbatten is reported to have raped two teenage boys at the Kincora boys’ home in Belfast in the 1970s. Two unnamed men describe being brought from the home in summer 1977 to Mullaghmore where Lord Mountbatten was on holiday. The men, who were both 16 at the time, claim they were abused by Lord Mountbatten. One of them, known as Seán, recalls being driven from Kincora to the Mountbatten’s, Classiebawn Castle, in Sligo where he was raped by a man.He said he did not recognise him as Lord Mountbatten until he saw a report on the TV news two years later that the Lord Mountbatten had been killed.

The second interviewee, referred to as Amal, claims to have met Lord Mountbatten four times that summer on day trips from the home in Belfast. He said each encounter lasted about an hour and took place in a suite in an hotel by Mullaghmore harbour. “He was very polite, very nice,” Amal is quoted a saying. “I knew he was someone important. He told me he liked dark-skinned people, especially Sri Lankan people as they were very friendly and good-looking.” He also claimed that several other boys were brought to Mountbatten on other occasions.

Death on fishing boat at Mullaghmore harbour

The man responsible for trafficking the boys to Classiebawn was Joseph Mains, the Warden of Kincora. By the time of his assassination in August 27, 1979, Lord Mountbatten had been travelling to Ireland, to stay at Classiebawn Castle, for 30 years.[9]

The bomb on Mountbatten’s boat, Shadow V, killed three other people: his 14-year-old grandson Nicholas Knatchbull, Lady Doreen Brabourne, Nicholas’s 83-year-old paternal grandmother, and Paul Maxwell, a 15-year-old boat boy. Nicholas’s parents – Mountbatten’s daughter Patricia and her husband, John – and his identical twin, Timothy, were badly injured in the blast. Mountbatten had ignored the advice of his personal security officer not to go to Ireland that year and that his security had been reduced. “Why would he ignore that advice and risk his family? That was an extraordinary thing to do.”

It is suggested the IRA may have killed Mountbatten because of the allegations that he was a child rapist rather than because of his position. “There were a lot of IRA people in that area. I am pretty sure they knew [the rumours]. They could have killed him any time in the last 30 years” of his life. Attempts to learn more about Mountbatten’s death have been thwarted by the failure of the UK National Archives to release its files about Kincora Boys’ Home.

“There is so much in this story that has not been looked at.”[10]

Citations:

1. Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten | British statesman. (2021). Retrieved 2 March 2021, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Louis-Mountbatten-1st-Earl-Mountbatten
2. Smith, S. (2021). Inside the Dynastic Struggle That Rocked Queen Elizabeth II’s Marriage. Retrieved 2 March 2021, from https://www.vanityfair.com/style/society/2012/01/queen-elizabeth-201201
3. FBI files allege new royal scandal. (2021). Retrieved 2 March 2021, from https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/royals/fbi-files-claim-lord-louis-mountbatten-had-a-perversion-for-young-boys/news-story/3647da9b3e938ae4aa5d0f3608639479
4. Prince Charles and Lord Mountbatten’s Treasured Relationship. Biography. (2021). Retrieved 3 March 2021, from https://www.biography.com/news/prince-charles-lord-mountbatten-relationship.
5. Edge, S. (2021). How Jim really did fix it. Express.co.uk. Retrieved 3 March 2021, from https://www.express.co.uk/expressyourself/43798/How-Jim-really-did-fix-it.
6. Cope, R. (2021). What was Lord Mountbatten’s relationship with Prince Charles really like?. Tatler. Retrieved 3 March 2021, from https://www.tatler.com/article/lord-mountbatten-relationship-prince-charles-death.
7. Lord Mountbatten linked to Kincora child abuse ring – Indymedia Ireland. Indymedia.ie. (2021). Retrieved 3 March 2021, from http://www.indymedia.ie/article/20885.
8. Lord Mountbatten, murdered by IRA, was a pedophile. IrishCentral.com. (2021). Retrieved 3 March 2021, from https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/lord-mountbatten-pedophile-allegations.
9. Tucker, G. (2021). Lord Mountbatten’s ‘lust for young men’ revealed. Retrieved 2 March 2021, from https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lord-mountbattens-lust-for-young-men-revealed-90swzmgms
10. The Crown and the assassination of Lord Mountbatten: fact or fiction?. The Irish Times. (2021). Retrieved 3 March 2021, from https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/the-crown-and-the-assassination-of-lord-mountbatten-fact-or-fiction-1.4413622.