George McMahon (assassin)
George McMahon was an Irish journalist and would-be assassin of King Edward VIII. On 16 July 1936 he pulled a gun as the king was riding through Hyde Park after leaving an army parade during the Colour ceremony. Police quickly acted and managed to disarm McMahon after a struggle, with the revolver falling under Edward's carriage as it continued safely down Constitution Hill. McMahon, a right-wing extremist angered by the Home Secretary, was thought to be mentally ill and later claimed to have been working for MI5.
McMahon had earlier attempted to provide questionable evidence of Irish and Republican plots against the British government, including a claim of plans to ship weapons to the Irish Free State in 1935 as well as reports of Italian agents operation from the Italian embassy, before publishing anti-semitic literature and other letters to The Daily Worker.
Although under the attention of the Security Service, his warnings against a supposed assassination plot by Communists were ignored and, two days later, he managed to throw a loaded revolver at the King during a parade before being arrested by the Metropolitan Police on 16 July 1936.
McMahon was subsequently sentenced to 12 months imprisonment; shortly after his release, however, he continued his subversive activities. During November 1939, he claimed in a letter to have had a personal audience with senior Nazi official Julius Streicher the previous year, and offered information from that meeting to British authorities.
The following year, he began sending anti-Semitic letters (which included an attack on Minister of War Leslie Hore-Belisha) using War Office letterheads on the pretext of official government communications. McMahon continued to be under the surveillance of the Security Service between 1945 and 1951, and they intercepted several letters including one to Oswald Mosley.
