A scholar and a spy – An Irishman’s Diary about James Auchmuty

If the Portadown-born, TCD-educated James Auchmuty was remembered only for his academic achievements, his life would look like one well lived. But, as his biographer Kenneth R Dutton has detailed, Auchmuty was a most peculiar character.

Born on November 29th, 1909, Auchmuty was the eldest son of a Church of Ireland clergyman, also called James, and his wife Annie, née Johnston. After attending the Royal School, Armagh, he went to Trinity College, Dublin, where he got a BA in 1931, an MA in 1934 and a PhD in 1935. He lectured at TCD from 1938 to 1943.

In 1964, when the University of Newcastle in Australia secured autonomy from the University of New South Wales, Auchmuty became its first vice-chancellor. But it is his extra-curricular activities that are of most interest.

The Auchmuty family’s origins were in the lowlands of Scotland, but even there, there was a twist that offers clues as to what was to come. He often told the story of how his first recorded ancestor was a monk who escaped from an abbey to pursue a sexual escapade that founded the family.

Auchmuty wanted to make his mark in the political world of the newly divided Ireland, but his run for a Trinity seat in the Seanad was unsuccessful. When the second World War started, he volunteered for British military service but was rejected due to his poor eyesight. They soon found a more useful role for him, though, in the British secret service. He became a spy, reporting on wartime developments in Ireland.

But Auchmuty overplayed his hand when he took part in the visit to Dublin of Jan Masaryk, representative of the Czech government in exile. Then taoiseach Éamon de Valera named Auchmuty (along with James Douglas, Donal O’Sullivan and JT O’Farrell) in the Dáil, on November 10th, 1944. De Valera said their view that the government did not recognise the right of anyone to study international affairs was “false in every particular”.

“The more interest people take in external affairs the better we like it. What we object to is the misuse of an organisation . . . to bring the Government of its own country into contempt and to create embarrassment for it in external relations”, said de Valera.

Things were getting too hot and there was a danger he could be interned, so Auchmuty was sent to Egypt. His cover in Cairo was as a professor of history. But his real job was to continue his security surveillance in a new and dangerous situation.

Auchmuty became acquainted with the dashing and corrupt young King Farouk. But when Farouk was overthrown in the revolution of 1952, Auchmuty was once again looking for work. Australia turned up.

With his American-born wife Margaret Walters and their children, the family moved to Sydney, where Auchmuty lectured at the New South Wales University of Technology (which later became the University of New South Wales). It seems certain this sinecure was also arranged because of his security connections, especially as he was employed not in his discipline of history but in political science.

Auchmuty served his adopted country well. When he became vice-chancellor in Newcastle, he was determined the university, built in bushland in a city better known for mining and heavy industry, would become a first-class institution. And it did.

After his retirement, Auchmuty moved to the capital, Canberra. There, he chaired two national committees on education. One produced a report that led to a significant increase in the teaching of Asian languages in schools across Australia. The other was an inquiry into teacher training, though few of his recommendations were acted on due to the economic situation of the time.

Throughout his life, Auchmuty had a reputation for anti-Catholicism. He rejected the charge, but there are several stories that suggest the attitudes he learned in Armagh followed him to the other side of the world. One story has it that a history examiner reported to him that a student had written Belgium was divided “between Catholics and Christians”. “Give him top marks”, was Auchmuty’s recommendation.

In Newcastle a rumour spread that Auchmuty had been forced out of Egypt because of dalliances in Farouk’s harem. It wasn’t true. Auchmuty’s life was far more interesting than that and the truth was stranger than fiction.

Auchmuty died in Bloomington, Indiana, in 1981, taking his secrets to the grave.