Awfully Civilised

A Labour peer has stated that the former head of MI6 in Belgian Congo claimed responsibility for the removal and assassination of that country's first democratically elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba. As with those notorious conspiracy theories which insist that the Iraq crusade was mainly about oil, Lord Lea said that Daphne Park was concerned about the possibility of Lumumba treating his country's uranium, diamond and mineral resources as Congolese property. Convincing as this appears, a former intelligence official who was acquainted with Park has denied the whole business in the Murdoch Times: "It doesn't sound like the sort of remark Daphne Park would make. She was never indiscreet", even fifty years after the fact when she knew she'd got away with it. She was, after all, British. "Also MI6 never had a license to kill." Well, that would certainly have stopped them; particularly if they could collaborate with their European partners to get the dirty work done by Belgian troops instead of soiling their own lily-white hands.