| Biography | Noel Pemberton Billing (born 31 January 1881-died 11 November 1948) 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.
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, but was later invalided out. He returned to Britain in 1903 and opened a successful garage in Kingston upon Thames. He became interested in aviation, which was in its infancy. An attempt to open an aerodrome failed, so he started a short-lived career in property, while studying to become a lawyer. He then 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, Essex in 1909, but this venture did not prosper. He earned his pilot's licence in 1913 after a bet with Frederick Handley Page, and set up an aircraft business, Pemberton-Billing Ltd. Financial difficulties soon set in, but the onset of World War I revived the fortunes of the business.
In 1914, Billing joined the Royal Naval Air Service and was granted a temporary commission as a lieutenant. He was involved in the air raid on Zeppelin sheds near Lake Constance made in 1914. 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. This sompany would later create the Spitfire.
In 1916, he turned to politics and won the by-election in Hertford. He 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.
During this time, he 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.
The journal's most famous articles were largely written by Spencer, but under Billing's name, in which it was claimed that the Germans were blackmailing "47,000 highly placed British perverts" 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. The contents of this book revealed that the Germans planned on "exterminating the manhood of Britain" by luring men into homosexuality and paedophilia. He publicly attacked Margot Asquith, wife of the prime minister, hinting that she was caught up in this.
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. |