Jeremy Thorpe scandal: attempted
murder case to reopen
Police say man allegedly hired to kill former Liberal
leader’s ex-lover may still be alive
Jamie Doward
Sat 2 Jun 2018 12.11 BST Last modified on Mon 4 Jun 2018
17.39 BST
The BBC drama about the rise and fall of the Liberal leader
Jeremy Thorpe, A Very English Scandal, which concludes on Saturday, may need a
sequel.
For the extraordinary tale of sex, power and corruption – in
which Hugh Grant has been lavished with praise for his portrayal of Thorpe, who
was acquitted of plotting to have his gay lover murdered – has taken another
tragicomic twist.
Yesterday, police confirmed that an investigation into the
murky affair will be reopened on the grounds that they had wrongly assumed one
of the main suspects was dead. Easily verifiable evidence had emerged to
suggest that he was indeed alive.
Andrew “Gino” Newton was allegedly the hitman hired to
murder Thorpe’s lover, a male model called Norman Scott, on Exmoor in 1975. A
pilot from Blackpool, Newton gave evidence for the prosecution of Thorpe and
three others at what was described as “the trial of the century”, only to be
branded by the judge as a “perjurer” who was “determined to milk the case as
hard as he can”.
Newton, known as “Snaz” because of his flamboyant style of
dress, claimed that he had agreed to murder Scott for between £10,000 and
£20,000. After shooting dead Scott’s dog, a great dane called Rinka, he
allegedly aimed the gun at Scott, only for it to jam. He was jailed for two
years for killing Rinka.
Even though Thorpe was acquitted, the 1979 trial ended his
career. Lurid speculation about what really happened and why dogged him for the
rest of his life. Whether Newton was meant to only frighten Scott and stop him
going public about his relationship with Thorpe, or indeed kill him, as he
maintained, remains the stuff of conjecture. Hopes for a breakthrough came when
a new inquiry was launched by Gwent police in 2015 – the year after Thorpe’s
death. But it was dramatically scrapped after the force learned that Newton had
died.
A quick spot of Googling, however, might have given
detectives enough leads to ascertain what became of him. He resurfaces in
numerous articles written in 1994, when a coroner ruled out foul play after one
Caroline Mayorcas fell 900ft to her death while climbing the Eiger in
Switzerland with her partner, Hann Redwin. At the inquest, it emerged that
Redwin was, in fact, Newton, and was living in Chiswick, west London.
Throughout the first decade of the millennium, the unusually
named Redwin (there is speculation he chose his new name as an anagram of
“winner hand”) became an avid contributor to a journal, the Geo Quarterly –
“the independent amateur quarterly publication for Earth observation and
weather satellite enthusiasts”.
He surfaced again in a 2015 edition of Pilot magazine, in an
article about Redhill airfield near Gatwick. “I get into conversation with Hann
Redwin whose Pipistrel motorised glider I spotted in a small hangar near the
Tower,” the article recounts. “He’s here with his companion Patsy Frankham to
conduct some tests on the Pipistrel.”
As an excited press pack beat a path to Redhill, relatives
of Frankham broke cover to confirm to MailOnline that he was alive and had
moved his plane to a farm in Surrey. The news will do nothing to dissuade Scott
from his view that the investigation into what he has always insisted was an
attempt to murder him was a stitch-up by the political establishment.
“I just don’t think
anyone’s tried hard enough to look for him,” Scott tells the makers of a BBC
Four documentary, The Jeremy Thorpe Scandal, to be broadcast tonight. “I
thought [Gwent police] were doing something at last and soon found out that
absolutely they weren’t: they were continuing the cover-up as far as I can
see.”
Gwent police told the documentary makers: “Inquiries were
completed which indicated Mr Newton was deceased. We have now revisited these
inquiries and have identified information which indicates that Mr Newton may
still be alive.”
• This article was corrected on 4 June 2018 because it said
an alleged murder attempt on Norman Scott took place on Bodmin Moor.
Thorpe affair
Bessell's evidence against Thorpe, reported in the Daily
Mirror during the pre-trial committal proceedings, November 1978. Such
headlines may have contributed to Thorpe's 1979 electoral defeat, even though
he and his co-defendants were found not guilty in court.
The Thorpe affair of the 1970s was a British political and
sex scandal that ended the career of Jeremy Thorpe, the leader of the Liberal
Party and Member of Parliament (MP) for North Devon. The scandal arose from
allegations by Norman Josiffe (otherwise known as Norman Scott) that he and
Thorpe had shared a homosexual relationship in the early 1960s.
Thorpe denied any such relationship, while admitting that
the two had been friends. With the help of political colleagues and a compliant
press, he was able to ensure that rumours of misconduct went unreported for
more than a decade. Scott's allegations were a persistent threat, however, and
by the mid-1970s he was regarded as a danger both to Thorpe and to the Liberal
Party, which was then enjoying a resurgence of popularity and was close to a
place in government.
Attempts to buy or frighten Scott into silence were
unsuccessful, and the problem deepened, until the fallout following the
shooting of his dog during a possible murder attempt by a hired gunman in
October 1975 brought the matter into the open. After further newspaper
revelations, Thorpe was forced to resign the Liberal leadership in May 1976,
and subsequent police investigations led to his being charged, with three
others, with conspiracy to murder Scott. Before the case came to trial, Thorpe
lost his parliamentary seat at the 1979 general election.
At the trial in May 1979, the prosecution's case depended
heavily on the evidence of Scott, of Thorpe's former parliamentary colleague
Peter Bessell, and of the hired gunman, Andrew Newton. None of these witnesses
impressed the court; Bessell's credibility was undermined by the revelations of
his financial arrangements with The Sunday Telegraph. In his summing-up, the
judge was scathing about the prosecution's evidence and all four defendants
were acquitted. Nevertheless, Thorpe's public reputation was damaged
irreparably by the case. He had chosen not to testify at the trial, which left
several matters unexplained amid public disquiet.
Thorpe's retirement into private life was hastened by the
onset of Parkinson's disease in the mid-1980s, and he made few public
statements afterwards. He achieved a reconciliation with the North Devon
Liberal Democrat constituency party, of which he was honorary president from
1988 until his death in 2014. Allegations of suppression of evidence by the
police before the trial were under investigation from 2015.
 |
| Norman Josiffe / Norman Scott |
Homosexuality and English law
Before the passage of the Sexual Offences Act 1967, which
decriminalised most homosexual acts in England and Wales (but did not apply to
Scotland or Northern Ireland), all sexual activity between men was illegal
throughout the United Kingdom, and carried heavy criminal penalties. Antony
Grey, a secretary of the Homosexual Law Reform Society, wrote of "a
hideous aura of criminality and degeneracy and abnormality surrounding the
matter".
Political figures were particularly vulnerable to exposure;
William Field, the Labour MP for Paddington North, was forced to resign his
seat in 1953 after a conviction for soliciting in a public lavatory. In the following
year Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, the youngest peer in the House of Lords, was
imprisoned for a year after being convicted of "gross indecency",
victim of a virulent "drive against male vice" led by the Home
Secretary, Sir David Maxwell Fyfe.
Four years later public attitudes had changed little. When
Ian Harvey, a junior Foreign Office minister in Harold Macmillan's government,
was found guilty of indecent behaviour with a Coldstream Guardsman in November
1958, he lost both his ministerial job and his parliamentary seat at Harrow
East. He was ostracised by the Conservative Party and by most of his former
friends, and never again held a position in public life.Thus, anyone entering
politics at that time knew that revelations of homosexual activity would likely
bring such a career to a swift end.
Thorp
John Jeremy Thorpe was born in 1929, the son and grandson of
Conservative MPs. He attended Eton, then studied law at Trinity College,
Oxford, where, having decided on a political career; he devoted his main
energies to making a personal impact rather than to his studies. Rejecting his
Conservative background, he joined the small, centrist Liberal Party—which by
the late 1940s was a declining force in British politics, but still offered a
national platform and a challenge to an ambitious young politician. He became
secretary, and eventually President of the Oxford Liberal Club, and met many of
the party's leading figures. In the Hilary term (January–March) of 1950–51
Thorpe served as President of the Oxford Union.
In 1952, while studying at the Inner Temple prior to his
call to the bar, Thorpe was adopted as prospective Liberal parliamentary
candidate for the North Devon constituency, a Conservative-held seat where, at
the 1951 general election, the Liberals had finished in third place behind
Labour.Thorpe worked in the constituency tirelessly, using the slogan "A
Vote for the Liberals is a Vote for Freedom", and at the 1955 general
election, had halved the sitting Conservative MP James Lindsay's majority.Four
years later, in October 1959, he captured the seat with a majority of 362, one
of six successful Liberals in what was generally an electoral triumph for the
Conservative Macmillan government.
The writer and former MP Matthew Parris described Thorpe as
one of the more dashing among the new MPs elected in 1959.Thorpe's chief
political interest lay in the field of human rights, and his speeches
criticising apartheid in South Africa attracted the attention of the South
African Bureau of State Security (BOSS), who took note of this rising star in
the Liberal Party. Thorpe was briefly considered as best man at the 1960
wedding of his Eton contemporary Antony Armstrong-Jones to Princess Margaret,
but was rejected when vetting checks indicated that he might have homosexual
tendencies. The security agency MI5, which routinely keeps records on all
Members of Parliament, added this information to Thorpe's file.
Norman Josiffe was born in Sidcup, Kent, on 12 February 1940—he
did not assume the name Scott until 1967. His mother was Ena Josiffe, née
Lynch; Albert Josiffe, her second husband, abandoned the family home soon after
Norman's birth. Norman's early childhood was relatively happy and stable. After
leaving school at 15 with no qualifications, he acquired a pony by means of an
animal charity, and became a competent rider. When he was 16 he was prosecuted
for the theft of a saddle and some pony feed, and was put on probation. With
the encouragement of his probation officer he took lessons at Westerham Riding
School at Oxted in Surrey, and eventually found work at a stable in Altrincham
in Cheshire. After moving there he chose to cut all links with his family, and
began to call himself "Lianche-Josiffe" ("Lianche" being a
stylised version of "Lynch"). He also hinted at an aristocratic
background, and of family tragedies that had left him orphaned and alone.
In 1959 Josiffe moved to the Kingham Stables in Chipping
Norton, Oxfordshire, where he learned dressage while working as a groom. The
stables were owned by Norman Vater, the self-made son of a coalminer who, like
Josiffe, had inflated his name and was known as "Brecht Van de
Vater". In the course of his rise, Vater had made numerous friends in
higher social circles, among them Thorpe. Initially, Josiffe was settled and
happy at the stables, but his relationship with Vater deteriorated in the face
of the latter's assertive and demanding manner, and he was unable to form good
relationships with his fellow-workers.He began to evidence the kind of
behaviour which a journalist would later summarise as his "extraordinary
talent for wheedling his way into people's sympathy before turning their lives
to misery with his hysterical temper-tantrums."
Bessell
Peter Bessell, eight years older than Thorpe, had a
successful business career before entering Liberal politics in the 1950s. He
came to the party leadership's attention in 1955 when, as the Liberal candidate
in the Torquay by-election, he substantially increased his party's vote in the
first of a series of impressive Liberal results during the 1955–59 parliament.
He was subsequently selected as candidate for the more winnable constituency of
Bodmin, and became both an admirer and personal friend of Thorpe, who in turn
was impressed by Bessell's apparent business acumen.[26] At Bodmin in the 1959
general election, Bessell reduced the Conservative majority, and he followed
this in the October 1964 election with victory by over 3,000 votes. With the
prestige of the letters "MP" after his name, Bessell set out in
pursuit of serious money-making, while staying close to Thorpe whom he considered
the likely next leader of the Liberal Party.
Bessell noted that Thorpe, for all his gregariousness and
warmth, appeared to have no female friends and lacked any interest in girls.
The former Liberal MP Frank Owen confided to Bessell his suspicions that Thorpe
was a homosexual; other West Country Liberals had formed the same opinion.Aware
that exposure as a homosexual would end Thorpe's career, Bessell became his
self-appointed protector, even to the extent, he later said, of falsely
claiming to be bisexual, as a means of acquiring his friend's confidence.
Origins
Thorpe–Scott friendship
In late 1960 or early 1961, Thorpe visited Vater at the
Kingham Stables, and briefly met Josiffe. He was sufficiently taken with the
young man to suggest that, should Josiffe ever need help, he should call on him
at the House of Commons. Soon after this, Josiffe left the stables after a
serious disagreement with Vater. He then suffered a mental breakdown, and for
much of 1961 was under psychiatric care. On 8 November 1961, a week after
discharging himself from the Ashurst clinic in Oxford, Josiffe went to the
House of Commons to see Thorpe. He was penniless, homeless and, worse, had left
Vater's employment without the National Insurance card which, at that time, was
essential for obtaining regular work and access to social and unemployment
benefits. Thorpe promised he would help.
According to Josiffe's account, a homosexual liaison with
Thorpe began that same evening, at Thorpe's mother's home in Oxted, and
continued for several years. Thorpe, while acknowledging that a friendship
developed, denied any sexual dimension in the relationship. He organised
accommodation for Josiffe in London, and a longer-term stay with a family in
Barnstaple, within the North Devon constituency. He paid for advertisements in
Country Life magazine, in an effort to find work with horses for his friend,
arranged various temporary jobs, and promised to help Josiffe to realise an
ambition to study dressage in France. On the basis of Josiffe's claim that his
father had died in an air crash, Thorpe's solicitors investigated whether any
money was due, but found that Albert Josiffe was alive and well in Orpington.
When early in 1962, the police questioned Josiffe about the
alleged theft of a suede jacket. Thorpe persuaded the investigating officer
that Josiffe was recovering from mental illness, and was under his care. No
further action was taken. In April 1962 Josiffe obtained a replacement National
Insurance card which, he later said, was retained by Thorpe who had assumed the
role of his employer. This was denied by Thorpe, and the "missing
card" remained an ongoing source of grievance for Josiffe.[ He began to
feel marginalised by Thorpe, and in December 1962, in a fit of depression,
confided to a friend his intention to shoot the MP and commit suicide. The
friend alerted the police, to whom Josiffe gave a detailed statement of his
sexual relations with Thorpe, and produced letters to support his story.None of
this evidence impressed the police sufficiently for them to take action,
although a report on the matter was added to Thorpe's MI5 file.
In 1963, a relatively calm period in Josiffe's life as a
riding instructor in Northern Ireland ended after he was seriously hurt in an
accident at the Dublin Horse Show.He moved back to England, and eventually
found a job at a riding school in Wolverhampton, where he stayed for several
months before his erratic behaviour proved too much, and he was asked to leave.After
a period of aimlessness in London, Josiffe saw an advertisement for a groom's
post in Porrentruy in Switzerland. Thorpe used his influence to secure him the
job. Josiffe left for Switzerland in December 1964, but returned to England
almost immediately with complaints that conditions were impossible. In his
hurry to depart he left his suitcase behind, which contained letters and other
documents that, he believed, supported his claims to a sexual relationship with
Thorpe.
Threats and counter-measures
Thorpe proved to be a lively and witty performer in the cut
and thrust of parliamentary debates, and his presence in the House of Commons
was soon noticed. In July 1962, in the wake of some disastrous Conservative
by-election performances, Macmillan sacked seven cabinet ministers in what was
known as the "Night of the Long Knives". Thorpe's
comment—"Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his friends
for his life"—was widely regarded in the press as the most apt verdict on
the prime minister.Thorpe raised his political profile with effective attacks
on government bureaucracy, and in the October 1964 general election was
returned in North Devon with an increased majority. A year later he secured the
office of Liberal Party treasurer, a significant step towards his ambition to
become the next party leader.
By early 1965 Josiffe was in Dublin, where he worked at
various horse-related jobs while continuing to badger Thorpe by letter about
his missing luggage and the continuing National Insurance card issue.However,
Thorpe rejected any responsibility for these matters. In mid-March 1965 Josiffe
wrote a long letter to Thorpe's mother, which began: "For the last five
years, as you probably know, Jeremy and I have had a homosexual
relationship." The letter blamed Thorpe for awakening "this vice that
lies latent in every man", and accused him of callousness and disloyalty.
Ursula Thorpe gave the letter to her son, who drafted a quasi-legal statement
rejecting the "damaging and groundless accusations" and accusing
Josiffe of attempting to blackmail him. The document was never sent; instead,
Thorpe turned to Bessell for advice.
Bessell, anxious to be of service to his party's
highest-profile figure, flew to Dublin in April 1965. He found that Josiffe was
being advised by a sympathetic Jesuit priest, Father Sweetman, who believed
that at least some of Josiffe's allegations might be true; otherwise, he asked
Bessell, why had he flown all the way from London to deal with them? Bessell
warned Josiffe of the consequences of attempting to blackmail a public figure,
but in a more conciliatory vein promised to help recover the missing luggage
and insurance card. He also hinted at the possibility of an equestrian job in
America. Bessell's intervention appeared to contain the problem, particularly
as Josiffe's suitcase was recovered shortly afterwards—although, according to
Josiffe, letters implicating Thorpe had been removed.For most of the following
two years Josiffe remained largely quiescent in Ireland, attempting to
establish himself in various careers; part of this time was spent in a
monastery. It was during this period that he formally adopted the name of
Scott.
In April 1967 Scott wrote to Bessell from Ireland, asking
for help in obtaining a passport in his changed name so that he could begin a
new life in America.A second, less positive letter, dated July, indicated that
Scott had returned to England and was once again in difficulties, with medical
bills and other debts. His lack of an insurance card prevented him from
claiming benefits. By this time, Thorpe had succeeded Jo Grimond as leader of
the Liberal Party.To resolve Scott's immediate problems, and to prevent a
resumption of his tirades against the new party leader, Bessell began paying
him a "retainer" of between £5 and £10 a week, ostensibly in lieu of
lost national insurance benefits.Bessell also arranged Scott's new passport,
but by this time Scott had abandoned his American plans and wished to establish
a career as a model. He asked Bessell for £200 to set him up; Bessell refused,
but in May 1968 gave him £75, on the understanding there would be no further
demands for a year.
Developments
Incitement
Thorpe's leadership of the Liberals was not, initially, an
unqualified success; his local campaigning skills did not readily transfer to
set speeches on national or international issues, and some sections of the
party became restless.His engagement to Caroline Allpass, announced in April
1968, reassured those in the party who had reservations about his private life;
others were shocked by Thorpe's emphasis on the political motivation for the
marriage—worth five points in the polls, he opined to Mike Steele, the party's
press officer.For much of 1968 Thorpe was untroubled by Scott, who had acquired
new friends and, according to Bessell, had burned his Thorpe letters.His
reappearance in November 1968, again penniless and without prospect of work,
was particularly unwelcome to Thorpe, as he fought to establish his leadership
credentials. Bessell provided immediate relief by resuming the weekly cash
retainer, but this was a short-term respite.
Early in December 1968 Bessell was summoned to Thorpe's
office in the House of Commons. According to Bessell, Thorpe said of Scott:
"We've got to get rid of him", and later: "It is no worse than
shooting a sick dog."Bessell said later that he was unsure whether Thorpe
was serious, but decided to play along, by discussing various ways of getting
rid of Scott's body. Thorpe supposedly thought that disposal down one of
Cornwall's many disused tin mines offered the best option, and also suggested
his friend David Holmes as an appropriate assassin. Holmes, one of four
assistant treasurers of the Liberal Party appointed by Thorpe in 1965, had been
best man at Thorpe's wedding, and was completely loyal to him.
Bessell further maintained that in January 1969 Thorpe
called him to a meeting together with Holmes, and that again Thorpe put forward
suggestions for eliminating Scott. These were dismissed as impractical or
ridiculous by Bessell and Holmes, who nevertheless agreed to give the matter
further consideration. They hoped, said Bessell, that if they stalled, Thorpe
would see the absurdity of his murder scheme and abandon it. Holmes, who
largely confirmed Bessell's account of the meeting, later justified this
decision on the grounds that "if we had simply said no, he might have gone
elsewhere—and that might have led to an even greater disaster."[60]
According to Bessell and Holmes, discussions of the plan ended in May 1969,
after the surprising news of Scott's wedding that month.
Party enquiry
By early 1971, Thorpe's political career had stalled. He had
led the party to a disastrous performance in the United Kingdom general
election of June 1970; in an unexpected victory for the Conservatives under
Edward Heath, the Liberals lost seven of their thirteen parliamentary seats,
and Thorpe's majority in North Devon fell to below 400.Bessell, with mounting
business worries, did not stand for re-election in Bodmin. Thorpe faced censure
for his conduct of a campaign during which he had spent extravagantly and left
the party on the verge of bankruptcy; but the matter was put aside in a wave of
sympathy when his wife Caroline was killed in a road accident 10 days after the
election. Thorpe was devastated; he continued as leader, but for the next year
performed little beyond routine party duties.
Meanwhile, Bessell's efforts ensured that for the time being
the Scott threat was kept at bay. The missing insurance card meant that Scott's
wife, who was pregnant, could not claim maternity benefits. Scott threatened to
talk to newspapers, but the matter was resolved by the issue of an emergency
card after Bessell's intervention at the Department of Health and Social
Security.In 1970 Scott's marriage collapsed; he blamed Thorpe, and again
threatened exposure. Bessell successfully prevented Thorpe's name being
mentioned in court during the divorce proceedings, and arranged that Thorpe
would anonymously pay the legal costs. Early in 1971 Scott moved to a cottage
in the village of Talybont in North Wales, where he befriended a widow, Gwen
Parry-Jones. He sufficiently persuaded her of his mistreatment at the hands of
Thorpe that she contacted the Liberal MP for the adjoining constituency of
Montgomeryshire—Emlyn Hooson, on the right wing of the party and a friend of
neither Thorpe nor Bessell. Hooson suggested a meeting at the House of Commons.
On 26 and 27 May 1971 Scott told his story to Hooson and
David Steel, the Liberals' chief whip. Neither was fully convinced, but felt
the matter warranted further investigation. Against Thorpe's wishes, a
confidential party enquiry was arranged for 9 June, to be chaired by Lord
Byers, the leader of the Liberals in the House of Lords. At the enquiry Byers
took a tough line against Scott, failing to offer him a chair and treating him,
Scott said, "like a boy at school up before the headmaster." Byers's
unsympathetic manner quickly unsettled Scott, who changed the details of his
story several times and frequently broke down in tears. Byers suggested that
Scott was a common blackmailer who needed psychiatric help. Declaring that
Byers was a "pontificating old sod", Scott fled the room.The enquiry
then questioned police officers about letters which Scott had shown to the
police in 1962, but were told that these were inconclusive. Thorpe persuaded
the Home Secretary, Reginald Maudling, and the Metropolitan Police
Commissioner, John Waldron, to inform Byers that there was no police interest
in Thorpe's activities, and no evidence of wrongdoing on his part. As a result,
the enquiry dismissed Scott's allegations.
Further threats
Angry at his treatment by the Byers enquiry, Scott sought
other means of pursuing his vendetta against Thorpe. In June 1971 he met Gordon
Winter, a South African journalist who was also an agent for the South African
intelligence agency BOSS. Scott provided details of his supposed seduction by
Thorpe, a story which Winter assured his BOSS masters would destroy Thorpe and
the Liberal Party. He found that no newspaper would print the story on largely
uncorroborated and unreliable evidence. In March 1972 Scott's friend Gwen
Parry-Jones died; Scott used the inquest to denounce Thorpe for ruining his
life and driving Parry-Jones to her death. None of these accusations was
published. Depressed, Scott retreated into a state of torpor, assisted by
tranquilisers, and for a while presented no threat to Thorpe.
The most disappointing result has been Jeremy Thorpe's
success in North Devon. Thorpe was already conceited enough, and now threatens
to become one of the great embarrassments of politics. Soon I may have to
reveal some of the things in my file on this revolting man.
Private Eye, March 1974.
In 1972 and 1973 Thorpe's political fortunes, and those of
the Liberals, revived. Thorpe's personal standing was enhanced when, on 14
March 1973, he married Marion, Countess of Harewood, whose former husband was a
first cousin to the Queen. After a series of by-election victories and local
government gains, an electoral breakthrough for the party looked plausible when
Heath called a general election in February 1974. In that election, with more than
six million votes (19.3% of those cast), the Liberals achieved by far their
best election result since the Second World War, but under the
first-past-the-post voting system this large vote translated into only 14
seats. However, as neither major party won an overall majority, these seats
gave Thorpe (whose personal majority in North Devon increased to 11,072)
significant leverage.He was briefly in coalition discussions with Heath, who
was prepared to give cabinet posts to Thorpe and other senior Liberals. Thorpe
later denied that there was any serious prospect of agreement,and in March 1974
Harold Wilson formed a minority Labour government. In the second 1974 general
election, in October, Wilson achieved a narrow majority; the Liberals lost
ground, with 5.3 million votes and 13 MPs.
After Parry-Jones's death Scott lived quietly for a while in
the West Country. In January 1974 he met Tim Keigwin, Thorpe's Conservative
opponent in North Devon, and gave his version of his relationship with Thorpe.
Keigwin was advised by the Conservative leadership that the material should not
be used. Scott also confided in his doctor, Ronald Gleadle, who was treating
him for depression. He had shown Gleadle his dossier of documents; the doctor,
without Scott's knowledge or consent, sold the papers to Holmes, who had
assumed the role of Thorpe's protector after Bessell settled permanently in
California in January 1974. Holmes paid £2,500 for the documents, which were
promptly burned in the home of Thorpe's solicitor.A further cache of papers was
discovered in November 1974, by builders renovating a London office formerly
used by Bessell. They found a briefcase containing letters and photographs that
apparently compromised Thorpe, among them Scott's 1965 letter to Ursula Thorpe.
Undecided what to do with their find, they took it to the Sunday Mirror
newspaper. Sidney Jacobson, the paper's deputy chairman, decided not to publish
the material and passed the briefcase and its content to Thorpe. Copies of the
documents were, however, kept in the newspaper's files.
Alleged conspiracy
In their analysis of the case, the journalists Simon Freeman
and Barry Penrose state that Thorpe probably formed the outline of a plan to
silence Scott early in 1974, after the latter's re-emergence became a matter of
increasing concern. Holmes later said that Thorpe was insistent that Scott be
killed: "[Jeremy felt] he would never be safe with that man
around".[86] Uncertain how to proceed, late in 1974 Holmes approached a
business acquaintance, a carpet salesman named John Le Mesurier (not to be
confused with the actor of that name). Le Mesurier introduced Holmes to George
Deakin, a fruit machine salesman who, he thought, would have contacts with people
who might be prepared to deal with Scott. Holmes and Le Mesurier concocted a
story involving a blackmailer who needed to be frightened off; Deakin agreed to
help. In February 1975 Deakin met Andrew Newton, an airline pilot, who said he
was willing to deal with Scott for an appropriate fee—between £5,000 and
£10,000 was suggested. Deakin put Newton in touch with Holmes. Newton always
said that he had been hired to kill, not frighten, citing the size of the fee
that he was offered—too much, he said, simply to scare someone.
While these arrangements proceeded, Thorpe wrote to Sir Jack
Hayward, the Bahamas-based millionaire businessman, who had given generously to
the Liberal Party in the past. In the wake of the Liberals' February 1974
election successes, Thorpe asked for £50,000 to replenish the party's funds. He
further requested that £10,000 of this sum be paid, not into the party's
regular accounts but to Nadir Dinshaw, an acquaintance of Thorpe's who was
resident in the Channel Islands. Thorpe explained that this subterfuge was
necessary to deal with a special category of unspecific election expenses.
Hayward trusted Thorpe, and sent the £10,000 to Dinshaw who, instructed by
Thorpe, passed the money to Holmes. After the October 1974 election Thorpe
again requested funds from Hayward, and again asked that £10,000 be sent via
the Dinshaw route. Hayward obliged, though this time with more reluctance and
after some delay. No accounting of this £20,000 was ever provided; Holmes, Le
Mesurier and Deakin all said that it was used to finance a "conspiracy to
frighten", although they disagreed as to how much was spent. Thorpe later
changed the story he had given Hayward about special categories of election
expenses, and said he had deposited the sum with accountants "as an iron
reserve against any shortage of funds at any subsequent election." He
denied that he had authorised any payment to Newton or to anyone else connected
with the case.
 |
| Newton known as "Gino" |
Shooting
Newton met Holmes early in October 1975 when, the former
claimed, he was given a down payment on a fee of £10,000. Holmes later denied
any such transaction, admitting only an agreement that Newton would carry out a
frightening operation. On 12 October Newton, calling himself "Peter
Keene", drove to Barnstaple in a yellow Mazda car where he approached
Scott, claiming to have been hired to protect Scott from a supposed Canadian
hit man.This seemed plausible to Scott, who had been beaten up a few weeks
earlier, and he agreed to meet "Keene" at a later date. He was
sufficiently cautious to ask a friend to make a note of the stranger's car
registration number.
On 24 October Newton, now driving a Ford saloon, met Scott
by arrangement in Combe Martin, just north of Barnstaple. Newton explained that
he had to drive to Porlock, about 25 miles away, and suggested that Scott
accompany him—he and Scott could talk on the journey. Scott had with him his
recently acquired pet dog, a Great Dane called Rinka; this disconcerted Newton,
who was afraid of dogs, but Scott insisted that Rinka go with them. At Porlock,
Newton left Scott and Rinka at a hotel while he supposedly dealt with his
business. He picked them up shortly after 8 pm, and they began the drive back
to Combe Martin. On a deserted stretch of road, Newton began to drive
erratically, feigning tiredness, and accepted Scott's suggestion that he take
over the driving. They stopped; Scott got out, followed by Rinka, and ran round
to the driver's side, where he found Newton, gun in hand. Newton shot the dog
in the head and, saying "It's your turn now", pointed the gun at
Scott. The pistol failed to fire several times; eventually Newton jumped into
the car and drove away, leaving Scott and the dead or dying dog by the
roadside.
After Scott had been picked up in a distressed state by a
passing car, the police were notified, and began enquiries. Newton was quickly
identified through the Mazda's registration number, and arrested; his story was
that Scott was blackmailing him and that the shooting had been intended to
frighten him. He made no mention of any deal with Holmes, perhaps calculating
that by keeping silent he would maximise his chances of payment from that
quarter.
Revelations
On 12 December 1975 Private Eye included another short
teasing piece by Auberon Waugh which ended: "My only hope is that sorrow
over his friend's dog will not cause Mr Thorpe's premature retirement from
public life". By this time most newspapers knew of the stories surrounding
Thorpe and Scott, but were wary of libel; according to Parris, by keeping
silent they were "serving notice on Thorpe that they knew a bigger story
must break, and could wait for it". In January 1976 Scott appeared before
magistrates on a minor social security fraud charge, and stated that he was
being hounded because of his previous sexual relationship with Thorpe. This
claim, made in court and therefore protected from the libel laws, was widely
reported.
The Daily Mail had meanwhile discovered Bessell's
whereabouts in California, and on 3 February 1976 carried a long interview with
the former MP. Bessell's claim that he had been blackmailed by Scott provided
Thorpe with temporary cover.On 6 March newspapers reported Holmes's purchase of
Scott's dossier from Gleadle, and a few days later David Steel discovered from
Dinshaw, a personal friend, that £20,000 intended for the party had been
diverted to Holmes and was unaccounted for. Steel told Thorpe that he should
resign, but he refused. In an attempt to reassure his wavering parliamentary
colleagues, on 14 March Thorpe made arrangements with The Sunday Times
newspaper to publish a detailed rebuttal of Scott's charges, under the heading
"The Lies of Norman Scott".
The "Bunnies" letter, February 1962
"Since my letters normally go to the House, yours
arrived all by itself at my breakfast table at the Reform, and gave me
tremendous pleasure. I cannot tell you just how happy I am to feel that you are
really settling down ... you can always feel that whatever happens Jimmy and
Mary are right behind you ... no more bloody clinics ... In haste. Bunnies can
(and will) go to France. I miss you"
Extracts from a letter from Thorpe to Josiffe, February
1962.
Newton's trial took place at Exeter Crown Court from 16 to
19 March 1976, where Scott repeated his allegations against Thorpe despite the
efforts of the prosecution's lawyers to steer him away. Newton was found guilty
of possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life, and sentenced to two
years' imprisonment, but he did not incriminate Thorpe.[105][n 5] Thorpe's
difficulties increased when Bessell, fearing for his own position and perhaps
scenting the possibility of making money, changed his stance and confessed in
the Daily Mail on 6 May that he had lied to protect his former friend. A
further concern for Thorpe was the danger that newspapers would publish letters
he had sent to Scott early in their friendship. In an effort to forestall this,
Thorpe arranged for the publication of two of the letters in The Sunday Times,
a paper generally sympathetic towards him. In one of these letters Thorpe
referred to Scott by the pet name "Bunnies". The tone of this letter
convinced readers and commentators that Thorpe had not been frank about the
nature of the relationship. On 10 May 1976 he resigned as Liberal leader amid
rising criticism, again categorically denying Scott's allegations but
acknowledging the damage that they were inflicting on the party.
After Thorpe's resignation the relative lack of press
attention to the story for 18 months disguised the extent to which
investigative reporting continued. Barry Penrose and Roger Courtiour,
collectively known as "Pencourt", had originally been hired by Wilson
after his retirement, to investigate the former prime minister's theory that
Thorpe was a target of South African intelligence agencies.[108] Pencourt's
investigations led them to Bessell, who gave them his account of a conspiracy
to murder Scott, and Thorpe's role in it. Before they could publish, they were
scooped; Newton, released from prison in October 1977, sold his story to the
London Evening News. He said that he had been paid £5,000 to kill Scott, and
provided photographs of him receiving payment from Le Mesurier. A lengthy
police inquiry followed, at the end of which Thorpe, Holmes, Le Mesurier and
Deakin were charged with conspiracy to murder. Thorpe was additionally charged
with incitement to murder, on the basis of his 1969 meetings with Bessell and
Holmes. After being released on bail, Thorpe declared: "I am totally
innocent of this charge and will vigorously challenge it".
On 2 August 1978 Thorpe participated in a House of Commons
debate about the future of Rhodesia,but thereafter played no further active
part in parliament, although he remained North Devon's member. At the Liberals'
1978 annual assembly in Southport, he embarrassed the leadership by making a
theatrical entrance and taking his place on the platform.
Committal and trial
The prosecution set out its case at the pre-trial committal
hearing, which began in Minehead on 20 November 1978. At the request of
Deakin's counsel, reporting restrictions were lifted, which meant that
newspapers were free to print anything said in court without fear of the libel
laws.This move infuriated Thorpe, who had hoped for an in camera hearing which
would avoid unfortunate newspaper headlines and perhaps lead to the dismissal
of the case. Whatever the outcome, Thorpe knew that the adverse publicity would
destroy his career, and that Scott would thus have his revenge. As the hearings
began, Bessell described the 1969 meetings where he alleged that Thorpe had
suggested that Holmes should kill Scott, including the comment about the
shooting of a sick dog. The court learned that Bessell had a contract with The
Sunday Telegraph, which was paying him £50,000 for his story. Dinshaw gave
evidence of the £20,000 he had received from Hayward and passed to Holmes, and
of subsequent attempts by Thorpe to obscure the details of these transactions.
Newton testified that Holmes had wanted Scott killed: "He would prefer it
if [Scott] vanished from the face of the earth and was never seen again. It was
left to me how to do it". Scott gave clinical details of his alleged
seduction by Thorpe at Thorpe's mother's house in November 1961 and on other
occasions, and also recounted his ordeal on the moors above Porlock Hill. Scott
contended that homosexuality was an incurable disease, with which Thorpe had
infected him, and that Thorpe therefore should be held responsible for Scott's
lifelong care. At the end of the hearing the presiding magistrate committed the
four defendants for trial at the Central Criminal Court, commonly known as the
Old Bailey.
In March 1979 the Labour government fell on a vote of no
confidence, and a general election was called for 3 May. This led to a brief
delay in the start of the trial as Thorpe, who still had a following among
North Devon Liberals, was adopted as their candidate in the election. Largely
isolated from his party's national campaign, he lost the seat to his
Conservative opponent by over 8,000 votes.
The trial began on 8 May, under Sir Joseph Cantley, a
relatively obscure High Court judge with limited experience of high-profile
cases. To conduct his defence Thorpe engaged George Carman, who had established
a criminal law practice on the Northern Circuit in Manchester; this was his
first high-profile national case.Carman undermined Bessell's credibility by
revealing his financial interest in Thorpe's conviction: his newspaper contract
provided that in the event of acquittal, only half the £50,000 would be paid.The
judge left no doubt as to his own low opinion of Bessell's character;Auberon
Waugh, who was writing a book on the trial, thought that Cantley's general
attitude to other prosecution witnesses became increasingly one-sided. On 7
June Deakin testified that although he had put Newton in touch with Holmes, he
had thought that this was to help someone to deal with a blackmailer—he knew
nothing of a conspiracy to kill.Deakin was the only defendant to testify; the
others all chose to remain silent and call no witnesses, believing that, based
on the testimonies of Bessell, Scott and Newton, the prosecution had failed to
make its case.During his closing speech on behalf of Thorpe, Carman raised the
possibility that Holmes and others might have organised a conspiracy without
Thorpe's knowledge.
On 18 June the judge began his summing-up. He drew the
jury's attention to the previous good character of the defendants, whom he
characterised as "men of hitherto unblemished reputation." Cantley described
Thorpe as "a national figure with a very distinguished public
record".The judge was scathing about the principal witnesses: Bessell was
a "humbug" whose contract with The Sunday Telegraph was
"deplorable"; Scott was a fraud, a sponger, a whiner, a
parasite—"but of course he could still be telling the truth. It is a
question of belief." Newton was characterised as a perjurer and a chump,
"determined to milk the case as hard as he can."The mystery
surrounding the £20,000 that Thorpe had obtained from Hayward was dismissed as
an irrelevance: "The fact that a man obtains money by deceit does not
[prove] that the man was a member of a conspiracy."Waugh felt that the
judge's lack of even-handedness could well provoke a counteraction against the
accused from the jury.The summing-up became the subject of a scathing parody by
the satirist Peter Cook.
Acquittal and aftermath
Thorpe on the trial
All three [principal prosecution witnesses] had ... been
destroyed in cross-examination, and the prosecution's case at its close was
shot through with lies, inaccuracies and admissions to such an extent that the
defence decided not to give evidence. To have done so would have prolonged the
trial unnecessarily.
Jeremy Thorpe, In My Own Time
The jury retired during the morning of 20 June. They
returned just over two days later, and acquitted all four defendants on all
charges. The judge awarded costs to Deakin, but not to Holmes or Le Mesurier
who he thought had been insufficiently co-operative in the enquiry. Thorpe made
no application for costs.In a brief public statement, he said that he
considered the verdict as "totally fair, just and a complete
vindication." David Steel, on behalf of the Liberal Party, welcomed the
verdict as "a great relief", and hoped that Thorpe would, "after
a suitable period of rest and recuperation ... find many avenues where his
great talents may be used." In North Devon Thorpe's acquittal was
celebrated with a thanksgiving service at which the presiding vicar, The Rev.
John Hornby, gave thanks to God "for the ministry of His servant Jeremy
...The darkness is now past and the true light shines. This is the day the Lord
hath made! Now is the day of our salvation!"
Despite the acquittal, the broader public perception was
strong that Thorpe had not behaved well, nor had he adequately explained
himself. The Archdeacon of Barnstaple, who was critical of Hornby's
melodramatic thanksgiving service, wrote: "There is a great deal of
unhappiness about the result at the Old Bailey. As far as most people are
concerned, the trial ended with a big question mark over the case".[150]
Prevented by his party from a return to active politics, in 1982 Thorpe was
appointed by Amnesty International as director of its British section, but
after protests from the organisation's staff, he withdrew.[153] Not long
afterwards, Thorpe first showed signs of the Parkinson's disease that led to
his almost complete withdrawal into private life in the mid-1980s. There was a
political reconciliation when, in 1988, following the merger of the Liberals
and the Social Democratic Party, the newly formed North Devon Liberal Democrat
association made him their honorary president. When he attended the Liberal
Democrat party conference in 1997 he received a standing ovation. In 1999,
Thorpe published his political memoir, In My Own Time, in which he justified
his silence at the trial, and stated that he had never doubted the outcome.Nine
years later, in January 2008, Thorpe gave his first press interview in 25
years, to The Guardian. Referring to the affair he said: "If it happened
now I think the public would be kinder. Back then they were very troubled by it
... It offended their set of values."[154] Thorpe died on 4 December 2014.
After the trial Le Mesurier kept a low profile, after
unsuccessful attempts to sell "the real story" to national
newspapers.[156] In June 1981, in a series of articles printed in the News of
the World, Holmes reasserted his allegation that Thorpe had asked him to kill
Scott: "The incitement charge which Jeremy faced was true, and if I had
gone into the witness box I'd have had to tell the truth.” Holmes, who died in
1990, had previously admitted his participation in a conspiracy to
"frighten" Scott, though not to kill him. Bessell's account of the
affair was published in America in 1980.[159] He died in 1985; his final years
were devoted to a campaign to stop the erosion of the San Diego beaches in
California.[160] Newton, like Le Mesurier, attempted to cash in on the case,
but failed to find a newspaper willing to print his story. Scott's comments on
the affair, immediately after the trial verdict, were that he was unsurprised
by the outcome, but was upset by the aspersions on his character made by the
judge from the safety of the bench.[149] In December 2014, Scott, then aged 74,
was reported to have recently relocated from Devon to Ireland,[162] although
John Preston, in his 2016 account, places him "in a village on Dartmoor
... with seventy hens, three horses, a cat, a parrot, a canary, and five
dogs."
In a BBC investigative documentary broadcast in December
2014, an antique firearms collector named Dennis Meighan claimed that he had
been hired by an unidentified senior Liberal to kill Scott, for a fee of
£13,500. Having initially agreed, Meighan says, he changed his mind, but
provided Newton with the gun used in the shooting. After confessing to the
police, he was asked to sign a prepared statement which, according to him,
"left everything out that was incriminating, but at the same time
everything I said about the Liberal Party, Jeremy Thorpe, et cetera, was left out
as well." The BBC's Tom Mangold said that Meighan's account, if true,
indicated the existence of "a conspiracy at the very highest level".In
2016 the Avon and Somerset police passed their files to Gwent Police, for an
independent review of the original investigation. After the police came to the
conclusion that Andrew Newton had died, the Crown Prosecution Service closed
the case. In 2018, Gwent Police reported that they had, "now revisited
these enquiries and have identified information which indicates that Newton may
still be alive", therefore re-opening lines of inquiry.On 4 June 2018 the
force announced that they had interviewed Newton, who had been living under a
new name, Hann Redwin, in Dorking, Surrey, but that he had given no new useful
information, and so the case would remain closed.
In 1979 punk band The Surprises released Jeremy Thorpe Is
Innocent (We Know Who Did It) and Rex Barker and the Ricochets released Jeremy
Is Innocent!, both songs inspired by the affair.
At the 1979 Secret Policeman's Ball, in aid of Amnesty
International, the biased summing up speech by Mr Justice Cantley was parodied
by Peter Cook. The sketch was written and delivered shortly after the trial as was, according to Freeman and Penrose,
"actually not that different from the original." The nine-minute
opus, "Entirely a Matter for You", is considered by many fans and
critics to be one of the finest works of Cook's career. Cook and show producer
Martin Lewis brought out an album on Virgin Records entitled Here Comes the
Judge: Live of the live performance together with three studio tracks that
further lampooned the Thorpe trial.
In 2016 Viking Press published A Very English Scandal, a
true crime non-fiction novel about the affair by journalist John Preston.
In May 2018 BBC One broadcast a three-part television
miniseries adaptation of the book, written by Russell T Davies, likewise titled
A Very English Scandal, directed by Stephen Frears and starring Hugh Grant as
Thorpe and Ben Whishaw as Scott.
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