Douglas Hyde (author)
Douglas Arnold Hyde (8 April 1911, Worthing, Sussex – 19 September 1996, Kingston upon Thames) was an English political journalist and writer. Originally a communist and the news editor of the "Daily Worker," he resigned in 1948 and converted to Catholicism. After his conversion, he gained an international reputation in the late 1940s and 1950s as a prominent and outspoken critic of communism. His magnum opus "I Believed" was a great financial success, created with the help of MI6, with reprints secretly being sponsored by the UK Foreign Office's Information Research Department (IRD) to be used as  anti-soviet propaganda. Background. Hyde grew up in Bristol and was brought up as a Methodist. In his youth he was active in a number of political organisations which brought him into contact with communists. He became a Methodist lay preacher and continued this work for some time in parallel with membership of the Communist Party of Great Britain. He was an early convert to communism, at age 17 in 1928. Career. After a period working in North Wales, he moved to London in 1938 and became the news editor of the "Daily Worker". He announced his resignation from the  newspaper and from the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1948, expressing disillusionment with the Soviet Union's post-war foreign policy. Work with the British secret service. After his resignation, he converted to Catholicism and published an autobiography, "I Believed: The Autobiography of a Former British Communist", detailing his political and religious journey. During this period, his activities received funding from the British Foreign Office's Information Research Department, and "I Believed" was republished by an IRD front called Ampersand which translated and distributed the book overseas. The book was written with help from MI6. Hyde also wrote a  book, "Dedication and Leadership", about his experiences and the specific tactics of the communists especially in the way that they recruited their members and built them into leaders. He embarked on international anti-communist lecturing tours, and contributed a long-running column to the "Catholic Herald" newspaper which was syndicated in several countries. His writings and speeches attracted considerable global attention, "I Believed: The Autobiography of a Former British Communist", selling over one million copies in its first ten years of publication. Later life and death. Hyde was sympathetic to the emergence of liberation theology, and was dismayed by Pope  John Paul II's opposition to it. He became disillusioned with and distanced himself from the Catholic Church in the 1980s and 1990s, listing himself as an "agnostic Christian" on his last hospital admission form. He blocked the republication of his book "I Believed", claiming it no longer represented his views. He was on good terms with several veterans of the Communist Party of Great Britain such as former MP Phil Piratin in the years before his death in 1996. The "Catholic Herald" obituary noted that Hyde, a former assistant editor of the newspaper, "ended his life no longer a  practising Catholic, but with a renewed interest in Socialism".