Noel Pemberton Billing (31 January 1881 – 11 November 1948), sometimes known as Noel Pemberton-Billing, was a British aviator, inventor, publisher and Member of Parliament for Hertford. He founded the firm that became Supermarine and promoted air power, and held a strong antipathy towards the Royal Aircraft Factory and its products. He was noted during the First World War for his populist views and for a sensational libel trial.
Early life and education Noel Billing was born in Hampstead, North London, youngest son of Charles Eardley Billing, a Birmingham iron-founder, and Annie Emilia, née Claridge. He was educated at the high school at Hampstead, at Cumming's College, outside Boulogne, at Westcliff College, Ramsgate, and at Craven College, Highgate.
Career Billing ran away from home at the age of 13 and travelled to South Africa. After trying a number of occupations, he joined the mounted police and became a boxer. He was also an actor when he took the extra name Pemberton. He fought in the Second Boer War, and was at the Relief of Ladysmith,Stoney, Barbara Twentieth Century Maverick The Life of Noel Pemberton Billing, Bank House Books (2000), p21 but was later invalided out.
Billing returned to Britain in 1903 and used his savings to open a garage in Kingston upon Thames. This was successful, but he became more interested in aviation, which was then in its infancy. An attempt to open an aerodrome in Essex failed, so he started a short-lived career in property, while studying to become a lawyer. He passed his exams, but instead moved into selling steam yachts. Convinced of the potential of powered aviation, he founded a flying field with extensive facilities on reclaimed marshland at Fambridge in Essex in 1909,The Flying Ground at Fambridge, Flight, 20 February 1909 but this ambitious venture did not prosper, British aviation activity becoming centred at Brooklands. In 1913, he bet Frederick Handley Page that he could earn his pilot's licence within 24 hours of first sitting in an aircraft. He won his bet, gaining licence number 683 and £500, equivalent to more than £28,000 in 2010,According to the UK National Archive's currency converter, £500 in 1910 would have the equivalent purchasing power of over £28,000 in 2010. which he used to found an aircraft business, Pemberton-Billing Ltd, with Hubert Scott-Paine as works manager, in 1913. Billing registered the telegraphic address Supermarine, Southampton for the company, which soon acquired premises at Oakbank Wharf in Woolston, Southampton, and started construction of his flying boat designs. Financial difficulties soon set in, but the onset of the First World War revived the fortunes of the business.
In 1914, Billing joined the Royal Naval Air Service and in October was granted a temporary commission as a lieutenant. He was involved in the air raid on Zeppelin sheds near Lake Constance made in November 1914.Stoney, Barbara Twentieth Century Maverick The Life of Noel Pemberton Billing, Bank House Books (2000), chapter 7 He was able to sell his share in the aviation firm to Scott-Paine in early 1916, who renamed the firm Supermarine Aviation Works Limited after the company's telegraphic address.McKinstry, Leo. Spitfire: Portrait of a Legend, London, UK. John Murray Publisher. 435pp.
Politics Parliament As a man of means, Billing contested the Mile End by-election in 1916 as an independent candidate, but was not successful. He then contested and won the March 1916 by-election in Hertford.
In parliament, Billing consistently advocated the creation of an air force, retaliation against German air raids, that action be taken against war profiteering and that action be taken to lessen the influence of Germans in Britain. In asking awkward questions of the government he was usually supported by Arthur Lynch.
In 1917, after an altercation in parliament, Noel Pemberton Billing offered Martin Archer-Shee MP a duel by boxing in public for charity, but Archer-Shee declined.A Challenge in the Trenches The Times 25 July 1917
Following a disagreement over parliamentary procedure and with Billing refusing to sit down while "Germans are running about this country", Billing was ejected from the House of Commons and suspended as an MP on 1 July 1918.SUSPENSION OF MR. BILLING HC Deb 01 July 1918 vol 107 cc1410-2, Hansard Because Billing refused to leave the chamber even after the House had voted to suspend him, and the Serjeant at Arms had then asked him to leave, he was automatically suspended for the rest of that parliamentary session, rather than the usual five days.
At the 1918 general election, he was one of the few candidates to beat a Coalition Coupon candidate and he doubled his majority.
He resigned his seat in 1921 by accepting the Stewardship of the Manor of Northstead, citing that the House of Commons had been rendered "unwholesome and unfair" by Lloyd George "at the instigation of a camarilla of International financiers".Stoney, Barbara Twentieth Century Maverick The Life of Noel Pemberton Billing, Bank House Books (2000), p159
Advocacy of air power During the First World War, he was notable for his support of air power, constantly accusing the government of neglecting the issue and advocating the creation of a separate air force, unattached to either the British Army or the Royal Navy. During the so-called "Fokker scourge" of late 1915 and early 1916, he became particularly vocal against the Royal Aircraft Factory and its products, raising the question in typically exaggerated terms once he entered parliament. His prejudice against the Factory and its products persisted, and was very influential. He called for air raids against German cities. In 1917, he published Air War and How to Wage it, which emphasised the future role of raids on cities and the need to develop protective measures. His own eccentric quadraplane design for a home defence fighter, the heavily armed and searchlight-equipped "Supermarine Nighthawk", was built in prototype but had insufficient performance to be of any use against Zeppelins.
Publishing and libel trial In late 1916, Billing founded and edited a weekly journal, The Imperialist. The journal supported his parliamentary campaigns, also advocating equal voting rights for men and women and electoral reform. The journal was renamed Vigilante in 1918 to reflect his campaign for a Vigilance Committee.
In 1918, Captain Harold Sherwood Spencer became assistant editor and the journal was increasingly left in Spencer's hands.Stoney, Barbara Twentieth Century Maverick The Life of Noel Pemberton Billing, Bank House Books (2000), p112 John Henry Clarke and Henry Hamilton Beamish began to write for Vigilante, and promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories, claiming "the British war effort was being undermined by the "hidden hand" of German sympathisers and German Jews operating in Britain".Erin Carlston, Double Agents: Espionage, Literature, and Liminal Citizens, Columbia University Press, 2013. (p. 34) The journal included attacks on "Jews, German music, Pacifism, Fabianism, Aliens, Financiers, Internationalism, and the Brotherhood of Man".Angela K. Smith, Gender and Warfare in the Twentieth Century: Textual Representations, Manchester University Press, 2004. (p. 63).Gay Wachman, Lesbian Empire: Radical Crosswriting in the Twenties, Rutgers University Press, 2001. (p. 15)
The journal's most famous articles were largely written by Spencer, but under Billing's name,Stoney, Barbara Twentieth Century Maverick The Life of Noel Pemberton Billing, Bank House Books (2000), p113 in which it was claimed that the Germans were blackmailing "47,000 highly placed British perverts""Air power & British Society", Air Minded to "propagate evils which all decent men thought had perished in Sodom and Lesbia". The names were said to be inscribed in the "Berlin Black Book" of the Mbret of Albania."Noel Pemberton-Billing, a flamboyant right-wing MP and owner of the Imperialist newspaper, had published an article by a Captain Harold Spencer in January 1918 in which Spencer alleged he had seen a "black book" at the Castle of Prince William of Wied." Philip Hoare, Noel Coward: A Biography of Noel Coward Simon and Schuster, 2013. (pp. 70–1) The contents of this book revealed that the Germans planned on "exterminating the manhood of Britain" by luring men into homosexuality and paedophilia. "Even to loiter in the streets was not immune. Meretricious agents of the Kaiser were stationed at such places as Marble Arch and Hyde Park Corner. In this black book of sin details were given of the unnatural defloration of children ... wives of men in supreme positions were entangled. In Lesbian ecstasy the most sacred secrets of the state were threatened."Philip Hoare, Oscar Wilde's Last Stand: Decadence, Conspiracy, and the Most Outrageous Trial of the Century, Arcade Publishing, 1999, p.40; see also Kettle, Michael. Salome's Last Veil: The Libel Case of the Century, London: Granada, 1977.; Jodie Medd, "'The Cult of the Clitoris': Anatomy of a National Scandal", Modernism/Modernity 9, no. 1 (2002): 21–49 He publicly attacked Margot Asquith, the wife of the prime minister, hinting that she was caught up in this. He also targeted members of the circle around Robbie Ross, the literary executor of Oscar Wilde, who supported and introduced homosexual poets and writers.
He published an article, "The Cult of the Clitoris", which implied that the actress Maud Allan, then appearing in a private production of Salome organised by Ross, was a lesbian associate of the conspirators. This led to a sensational libel case, at which Billing represented himself and won. Lord Alfred Douglas, a former lover of Oscar Wilde, testified in Billing's favour, as did Billing's mistress Eileen Villiers-Stuart. Villiers-Stuart claimed to have seen the "Black Book" and even asserted in court that the judge, Charles Darling, was in the book.Tammy M. Proctor, Female Intelligence: Women and Espionage in the First World War, NYU Press, 2006, p.44.- Paxman, Jeremy Great Britain's Great War, pp. 245-248
Billing's victory in this case created significant popular publicity. He later indicated he had never believed such a book existed, but that the whole matter had been "to frighten off those in prominent positions whose sexual tastes could have led to them being blackmailed by German agents".Stoney, Barbara Twentieth Century Maverick The Life of Noel Pemberton Billing, Bank House Books (2000), p134 Michael Kettle in his book, Salome's Last Veil: The Libel Case of the Century, claimed that the Maud Allan libel case was part of a plot by generals to stop Lloyd George from making an early peace with Germany.
Vigilance Committee While air power was his main overarching concern Pemberton Billing's primary political campaign was for the establishment of a committee of nine Independent politicians who would watch over the government in the House of Commons. He was highly critical of party politics believing it was a "disease" which made all governments "corrupt".The Imperialist no. 31, 5 May 1917 The name was explicitly in reference to the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance.
He then created a Vigilance Society to stand in the elections. The society was disbanded in 1919 as Billing became disillusioned with Spencer, Beamish and Clarke.Stoney, Barbara Twentieth Century Maverick The Life of Noel Pemberton Billing, Bank House Books (2000), chapter 15
Inter-war years Following the Russian Revolution, Billing began to express strong anti-communist viewpoints, and, in 1919, he supported British military intervention against the Bolsheviks in Russia.Markku Ruotsila, British and American Anticommunism Before the Cold War, Taylor & Francis, 2001 (p. 154).