The Quorn Hunt, usually called the Quorn, established in
1696, is one of the world's oldest fox hunting packs and claims to be the
United Kingdom's most famous hunt. Its country is mostly in Leicestershire,
together with some smaller areas of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.
Despite the abolition of fox hunting intended by the Hunting
Act 2004, the Quorn continues to go out on four days of the week during the
autumn and winter months.
History
The hunt traces its origins to a pack of foxhounds
established in 1696 at Tooley Park, Leicestershire, by the youthful Thomas
Boothby (1677–1752). Its present name comes from the village of Quorn (also
known as Quorndon), where the hounds were kennelled between 1753 and 1904. They
were established there by the hunt's second master, Hugo Meynell, who bought
Quorndon Hall from the 4th Earl Ferrers.Following more than half a century
under the leadership of Boothby, Meynell was Master for forty-seven years. He
was known for his innovative mastery of fox hunting so that he has been called
'The Primate of the Science'.
In 1905 new kennels and stables were built at Paudy Lane,
Seagrave; these are now listed buildings.The hunt's present-day kennels are at
Gaddesby Lane, Kirby Bellars, near Melton Mowbray.
Before gaining its present title in the mid-19th century,
the hunt was often known by the name of its Master: for instance, from 1827 to
1831 it was called 'Lord Southampton's Hounds'. Until 1884, the hounds were
owned by the Master, and a change of mastership took place either by purchase
or inheritance. The hounds are now said to be "owned by the country",
that is, by the hunt organization.
George Osbaldeston, Master 1817–1821 and 1823–1827
Among many notable Masters was George Osbaldeston, who in
1823 became the first to return to the Mastership after having previously
retired.
Three Hunt-class warships of the Royal Navy have been called
HMS Quorn, after the Hunt.
Country
English Foxhound
The Quorn hunts a wide area of Leicestershire, plus some
coverts in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, stretching from just south of
Nottingham to the edge of the city of Leicester and from Melton Mowbray
westwards to Ashby de la Zouch. On the eastern side of the country lies a
rolling open landscape, with good fences to jump, while to the west are the
wooded uplands of Charnwood Forest and the Pennine Chain. The best centres are
around Melton Mowbray, Leicester and Loughborough.
In 1853, the southern part of its country was separated off
to form the Fernie.
The adjoining hunts are the Meynell and South Staffs (to the
north west), the South Notts (to the north), the Belvoir (to the north east),
the Cottesmore (to the south east), the Fernie (to the south), and the
Atherstone (to the south west).
Season and supporters
Hunting takes place on Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays and
Saturdays, in the autumn and winter months only. More open country is hunted on
Mondays and Fridays, the most popular days, with usually between one hundred
and one hundred and fifty mounted followers, plus about twice as many who
follow hounds on foot and with cars and bicycles. The smallest number of
followers is on Tuesdays. Over eight hundred farmers in the country of the
Quorn allow the hunt to use their land. There is a Supporters' Association.
The hunt's 'Saturday Country' is around Belton, Staunton
Harold and Kingston and has its own 'Saturday Country Wire and Damage Fund'.
Squire Osbaldeston
George Osbaldeston (26 December 1786 – 1 August 1866), best
known as Squire Osbaldeston, was an English politician who served as a Member
of Parliament but who had his greatest impact as a sportsman and first-class
cricketer.
He was born 26 December 1786 in Westminster, London, and
named for his father, George Osbaldeston, a member of parliament for
Scarborough. His father, born George Wickins, inherited the Hutton Buscel
estates from his uncle Fountayne Wentworth Osbaldeston and adopted his name.
Squire's mother, Jane, was the daughter of Sir Thomas Head of Langley Hall,
Berkshire.
Osbaldeston spent his childhood at Hutton Buscel, the family
estate in Yorkshire. His father died in 1793; from age 6, George and his three
sisters were brought up by their mother, who despite being a great political
hostess, was wildly extravagant and squandered much of his inheritance. He
spent most of his life trying to recover from this poverty, mainly by trying to
win bets and sporting competitions.
He was educated at Eton from 1802 until 1803, when he was
expelled.[2] Thereafter he studied at Brighton (1803–04), where his behaviour
was little improved. He matriculated at Brasenose College, Oxford in 1805. The
combination of his absolute avoidance of academic work (even by the standards
of the day) and his rowdy behaviour (including incidents such as pouring hot
gravy over the head of a fellow student he disliked during hall) meant that he
narrowly avoided being sent down. Ultimately, he left Oxford without a degree
in 1807. On the other hand, during his student days he excelled in all sports,
setting a pattern for the rest of his life.
Osbaldeston excelled at sport, and rowed at his various
schools, at Oxford and into middle age. He was particularly famous for his
racing abilities, in flat, steeplechase, endurance and carriage races. In 1826,
he won a celebrated steeplechase for a purse of 1,000 guineas on his horse,
Clasher, against Dick Christian riding Clinker, a horse owned by Horatio Ross.
On one occasion, in 1831 at Newmarket, he rode 200 miles (320 km) in 8 hours
and 42 minutes, using 28 horses. On another occasion he wagered 100 guineas
with Paul Methuen that he could drive a stage-coach from St. Paul's churchyard
to Greenwich in an hour with a full complement of passengers. Osbaldeston won
his bet, although the coach was loaded with a number of hefty Life-Guardsmen
and despite being sent back from the bottom of Ludgate Hill for a false start. His
last race was at the age of 69, and he also bred racehorses.
A noted shot at the Old Hat and Red House clubs, Osbaldeston
there used a gun with a bore of 1½ inches. Sir Richard Sutton recorded that he
once shot 98 pheasants with 100 shots.[6] He brought his marksmanship to the
track; on one occasion, when the notorious gambler Lord George Bentinck fired
his pistol in the air while watching a race, Osbaldeston responded by shooting
Bentinck cleanly through the hat as a warning.
In cricket, he was a fine all-rounder who batted and bowled
right-handed, his bowling style being fast underarm. An outstanding Single
Wicket player, he was chiefly associated with Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) but
he also represented Surrey, Sussex and Hampshire. He played 34 important
matches between 1808 and 1830 as an amateur. His highest score was 112 for
M.C.C. v Middlesex in 1816, where Osbaldeston also scored 68 in the second
innings. His record in important matches was 1002 runs at 18.21, 2 centuries,
43 wickets, 15 catches and 2 stumpings.
Above all though, his passion was fox hunting. He had his
own pack of hounds from the age of 16, and was later master of nine hunts,
notably the Atherstone (1815–17), the Quorn (1817–21, 1823–27), and the
Pytchley (1827–34). He was regarded by contemporaries as one of the best
sportsmen of his generation, and became something of a folk hero in later
hunting circles.
An anecdote demonstrates the passion with which he pursued
"the hunt":
"Just when, in 1809, the 24 year old fourth Lord Monson
was warming to the task of keeping his pack of foxhounds amongst the best blood
in the country, nature accounted for him. The gentlemen of Lincolnshire cast
around for a new master and up turned one of those adventurous amateurs whose
exploits with hounds and the ladies either break or make a hunt. George
Osbaldeston was 25 and he soon fell out with everyone except the foxes which he
pursued with great noise, energy, boastfulness, courage and determination, to
the far corners of the country."
Personal life
The money he made from racing wins were overshadowed by
gambling debts of around £200,000 (equivalent to £1,842,835 in 2016), which
eventually forced him to sell his lands in 1848 and led to his dying almost
penniless. His will states that he left effects to the value of under ₤100.
He was also known for his romantic escapades, such as
attempting to seduce a friend of his mother's, Lady Monson (an unrequited love
affair, despite his claims that she was the one woman he had really loved),
staying at the house of a friend and seducing both his daughters on the same
night, and leaving a ball for two hours to pick flowers from his garden for a
lady there. He was rumoured to have a son by a Miss Green, a prostitute, whom
he sent abroad. He finally married an Elizabeth Williams in 1851 at the age of
65, most likely as he was then able to live in her Regent's Park house.
His relationship with his mother, Jane, was ambivalent. In
his autobiography he claims that: "a cleverer woman never existed, not a
better mother."By all accounts Jane doted on her only son. On the other
hand, he resented her extravagance, her misuse of his inheritance, and her
attempts to force him to pursue a political career. Ultimately, he exiled her
to a house in London which he had bought.
He had a great rivalry with his fellow cricketer Lord
Frederick Beauclerk. In 1818 this resulted in Osbaldeston being barred for life
from membership of MCC (after an intemperate resignation in disgust at the
outcome of a single-wicket match and despite the attempted intercession of E.
H. Budd);[6] this event effectively finished Osbaldeston's career in important
cricket. He also fought a duel with Lord George Bentinck, in the aftermath of a
race of 1831, the outcome of which was disputed. Neither was hurt and they were
later reconciled.
Of his brilliant beginning and impoverished end, his great
friend and rival Horatio Ross commented, "He was open-hearted and trusted
others; he was constantly deceived and robbed, and when his affairs were
getting into confusion, he had not the moral nerve to pull up in time; nor had
he a sufficiently business-head on his shoulders to guide him safely out of his
troubles."He died 1 August 1866 in St John's Wood, London.
Descendants
In about 1812, Miss Ann Green of Lincoln (born about 1786)
bore him a son, named George Osbaldeston Green. Mother and son were sent to
Tasmania. George Green married a woman named Mary Ann Heastwood (b. Yorkshire
1819). Eventually George Osbaldeston Green and Mary Ann moved to the Gippsland
area of Victoria. George was a butcher. They had 16 children, many of whom died
in infancy or childhood; nevertheless ‘The Squire’ spawned quite a group of
grandchildren. Their many descendants live mainly in Australia today. George
Osbaldeston Green died in 1887 in Maffra, Victoria, and his wife Mary Ann died
in 1908 in Heyfield, in the Gippsland region of Victoria.
Family historians report that Mary Ann Green was
well-travelled and made some journeys to England, so whether there was contact
maintained between "The Squire" and his Australian family is subject
to speculation. Certainly their existence was known about, and recorded in
Osbaldeston's autobiography.
Miss Green was described in George Osbaldeston's
Autobiography as' a member of the frail sisterhood' (i.e., a prostitute). She
was reputedly a natural (illegitimate) daughter of one of the Monson family.
The boy was ‘sent abroad, has done well in the world, and is married with a
family.’". No record of either the birth or death of Miss Green has been
found.
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.
A Very English Scandal is a British three-part television
miniseries based on John Preston's book of the same name.The series premiered
on BBC One on 20 May 2018.
The series is a dramatisation of the 1970s Jeremy Thorpe
scandal in Britain, in which MP Jeremy Thorpe was tried and acquitted of
conspiring to murder his former lover, Norman Scott.
-------------------------------
A Very English Scandal finale review – leaves you reeling,
seething and laughing
5 / 5 stars 5 out of 5 stars.
Fabulous performances all round as Jeremy Thorpe finally
comes to trial in a sea of hypocrisy, prejudice, ghastly snobbery, injustice
and a chorus of tittering from the public gallery
Sam Wollaston
@samwollaston
Sun 3 Jun 2018 22.01 BST Last modified on Mon 4 Jun 2018
00.10 BST
Absolutely splendid … Hugh Grant as Jeremy Thorpe.
Photograph: Sophie Mutevelian/BBC/Blueprint Television Ltd
Where were we, then? That’s right, a lonely moorland road,
where Andrew Newton, the airline pilot, has failed to shoot Norman Scott in the
head because his gun jammed after he shot Rinka the great dane. And Norman –
covered in blood, tears and rain and cradling his huge dead dog – is shouting
that it was the leader of the Liberal party who dunnit.
Russell T Davies would have had a lot of fun making this up
if he had needed to. He would probably have been told to ease off a little, in
the name of credibility. We really don’t do political scandal like we used to;
I can’t see anyone making a three-part drama about Jeremy Hunt’s property
interests anytime ever.
Would a great dane really fit into the boot of a Morris
Minor police car though? Possibly, pre rigor mortis, with some folding. Morris
should have done an advertising campaign around it – Room for Rinka, too!
Justice seems to be closing in on Thorpe; he can plug one
leak with a payoff, but another one opens up – there is too much out there.
Letters emerge from him to Scott, with the killer word: “bunnies”.
“Bunnies!” exclaims second wife Marion, looking up from her
morning paper, boiled egg and cigarette. Monica Dolan, who plays Marion, has
made A Very English Scandal even better since appearing on the scene. Monica
Dolan improves anything she is in. Rupert, Thorpe’s son, is dispatched to his
room, to protect him from the contents of the newspaper.
Thorpe resigns from the party leadership and Marion makes
cod in parsley sauce (one of many lovely 70s details), so they can talk. Before
marrying, he dabbled (with men), he tells her. “To relieve myself,” he says,
glancing down towards his dabbling area.
A lot has been said of Hugh Grant’s performance and what a
departure it is from the usual. But is it really so very different? There’s com
there; even rom, as well. He just shaves less often, has a side parting, and
throws a cloak of evil over himself. Romcom Hugh plus bad hair plus shadows
(five o’clock, lying, conspiracy to murder etc). Still absolutely splendid,
though.
The evidence piles up, falls from the ceiling of Peter
Bessell’s old office. Bessell is summoned back from California, Thorpe is
arrested. It doesn’t stop him from standing for election while on bail for
conspiracy to murder – that takes something, doesn’t it? Massive misjudgment
mostly: he loses to the Tory candidate (this is the 1979 election, when Margaret
Thatcher became prime minister). Incidentally, that was the Auberon Waugh
(there was only one, unlike John le Mesurier, of whom there were two),
receiving 79 votes as representative of the Dog Lovers’ party, ensuring that
Rinka is not entirely forgotten. Thorpe was a pet hate of Waugh’s, hence the
dogged hounding ...
So, to the Old Bailey, for the “trial of the century”. This
is where Davies has some fun. Ben Whishaw, too. Was it quite like that, with
Scott looking up, seeing his landlady friend Edna Friendship, suddenly gaining
the courage to be smart and funny and to take on George Carman (Adrian
Scarborough)? It doesn’t matter, he deserves the moment: it is a fabulous
performance of a fabulous performance.
Not that it helps to convict Thorpe. Mr “Justice” Cantley
sees to that in his extraordinary summing up. Wow, just wow, and just as it
really happened, it seems. To sum up the summing up: it’s your decision, of
course, jury, but try to find Thorpe not guilty, because he’s a jolly decent
chap. Also pretty much as it really happened was Peter Cook’s sketch about the
trial, a snippet of which appears in the postscript. More court reporting than
satire.
As well as the outrageous judge, there is so much going on
in that courtroom. Oxbridge chums passing each other notes, doing each other
favours. Hypocrisy, prejudice, ghastly snobbery, injustice and a chorus of
tittering from the public gallery. The 70s, eh? Thank God nothing like it
happens today – men of the establishment abusing their power for their own
personal gratification and getting away with it.
I have heard the odd moan about the tone being wrong.
Nonsense. Just because something involves serious matters doesn’t mean it needs
to be dry. The trial recreation – the whole thing – leaves you reeling,
seething and laughing, all at the same time. It’s both scandalous and very
English.
Then the postscript, with the real Norman Scott, alive and
well outside his cottage. Still no national insurance card, but finally some
good news for dog lovers: he has 11. Woof.
A Very English Scandal, episode 3 review: Hugh Grant gives a
Bafta-worthy performance as Jeremy Thorpe
Thorpe would have hated this drama, though, in that vain,
sneaky way of his, been secretly highly flattered by Grant’s superlative
capture of his personality
Having lived through a dramatised version of the real life
of Norman Scott, the one-time male model who, it was alleged, the leader of the
Liberal Party plotted to murder, it was a pleasant little surprise to see some
contemporary footage of the real Scott at the end of A Very English Scandal,
rather than Ben Whishaw’s rendering of this remarkable man. An enigmatic smile
playing around those full lips – even at pushing 80 you can appreciate the
allure Scott possessed in his youth – and it was confirmed that he is alive and
well, living with 11 dogs (and dogs were quite a big part of this story), and
still hasn’t recovered his national insurance card.
This document, by the way, was the means by which you could
gain legitimate employment and benefits in the years before computers came
along. Scott maintained that Thorpe had retained a replacement card, and would
not release it back to Thorpe. Therefore, Scott was always out of work, short
of money, and always going to be trouble for Thorpe.
The national insurance card fiasco ensured this quite superb
production was maintained right to the end, and the drama and suspense with it.
I especially relished the forensic attention to period detail – the authentic
Hoovers, the Austin Allegro police car, the disco music – Gonzalez (“Haven’t
Stopped Dancing yet”), Amii Stewart (“Knock on Wood”) – people smoking on the
bus, and the BBC Radio 2 jingle. It took me back, I must say.
But what was clearly missing, for the sake of symmetry if
nothing else, was some indication of the health and/or whereabouts of Scott’s
alleged assassin – Andrew “Gino” Newton. This extraordinary figure, played with
a sort of Eric Idle idiocy by Blake Harrison, according to Gwent Police had
been dead for some time. However, subsequent reports indicate that he’s merely
changed his name and lain low. Police have now reopened a probe into the
scandal and the development has become subject to intense speculation. (The new
investigation was prompted by the evidence of Tom Mangold in a previously
unseen Panorama programme from the era.)
However, when all’s said and done, Newton was granted crown
immunity from prosecution in return for giving evidence at the 1979 trial of
the four coconspirators including Thorpe. A run-in between Scott and Newton is
a tantalising though unlikely prospect.
Of course, like all biopics of famous historic
personalities, we know how it all ends, though in the case of Jeremy Thorpe, the
great establishment figure who endured such a painful fall from grace, much of
the detail may have been forgotten, or, indeed, unknown to younger generations.
After all, most of the rest of the people involved are dead, and no one under
the age of 50 can remember the events firsthand. It was, even so, a massive
story.
To borrow the expressions used by Thorpe’s barrister at his
trial (for incitement to murder and conspiracy to murder), George Carman QC
(played with huge, bustling style by Adrian Scarborough), of all the “bastards,
liars, perverts, thieves, blackmailers, inbreds and arsonists” to make their
way into the House of Commons, it was the Right Honourable Jeremy Thorpe who
had the greatest of criminal charges levelled against him – an achievement of
sorts.
Scott made an extremely brave and surprisingly credible
witness. When he told the court that “Jeremy Thorpe lives on a knife-edge of
danger” he summed up the entire scandal. There was much evidence against Thorpe
about both the original homosexual and illicit relationship with Scott, and the
subsequent events that were to end with a great dane, Rinka, being cared for by
Scott, shot dead on the edge of Exmoor, on the dark rainy night of 23 October
1975.
Much of the script was based on documents, memoirs and the
trial transcript, complete with its explicit references to anal penetration,
Vaseline and “biting the pillow”.
Yet I wondered how fanciful some parts were. The
conversation between Thorpe and his second wife, Marion, for example, over a
supper of cod in parsley sauce (all the rage in the late 1970s). So the choice
of dish was believable, but how much did he tell her about his prior sex life
and affair with the man nicknamed “bunny”? Was there some wary chat with Carman
about bisexuality, and how you could get beaten up after picking up random
guys? I’m not sure Thorpe’s possessive and domineering mother Ursula, devoted
to him but sharp-tongued with it, really did say to him after his acquittal:
“Of course, you’re ruined. You know
that, don’t you?”
Clever as Carman was, the reason Thorpe got off was the
disgracefully loaded summing up to the jury delivered by Mr Justice Cantley.
The drama’s producers cleverly included at the end a little clip of the “Biased
Judge Sketch” by Peter Cook (catch it on YouTube), which was inspired by the
case, one of the finest ever examples of British satire: “And now you must
retire to consider your verdict of not guilty”.
Thorpe was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in the 1980s, and
would live until 2014. The drama, however, and his public life, ended in 1979,
fittingly. Thorpe was then still only 50.
Thorpe lived for far longer than the doctors gave him, he
survived his political and judicial crises far more easily than anyone thought
possible, and, as we witnessed in the earlier episodes, he scaled British
politics much more successfully than seemed likely. In 1959 he was elected a
Liberal MP for North Devon; by 1974 he had almost broken the mould of British
politics and made it to the cabinet.
Thorpe would have hated this drama, though, in that vain,
sneaky way of his, been secretly highly flattered by Hugh Grant’s superlative
capture of his personality, with the inevitable Bafta to follow. A Very English
Scandal, then, and despite its sympathy towards Scott, can be counted yet
another, albeit pyrrhic, victory for Jeremy Thorpe.
'Hugh Grant is uncanny': Liberals glued to A Very English
Scandal
Grant is remarkable as Jeremy Thorpe and the basic thrust is
right, say people linked to the story. Shame about the cars ...
Hugh Grant contacted David Steel for advice on the kind of
person Thorpe was.
Watching Hugh Grant’s TV portrayal of Jeremy Thorpe, it is
almost impossible to believe that such an extraordinarily reckless public
figure could really have prospered in 20th-century British politics. But he
did.
The insouciance, the exhibitionism, the darkness and the
utter unreliability that Grant captures so brilliantly in A Very English
Scandal may seem like a grotesque caricature of Thorpe. But it isn’t.
Forty years on, and especially in the social media age, it
seems inconceivable that a major politician could have led a double life as a
promiscuous gay man and a pillar of the parliamentary and social establishment,
without his colleagues cottoning on. Especially when he tried to have his
former lover murdered. But he did – and they didn’t.
Did you know at the time that Thorpe was gay, I asked his
successor as Liberal leader, David Steel, this week. Steel’s response, speaking
from his home in Scotland, was instant, vehement and almost astonished. “No.
Absolutely not. It was a surprise when it all came out.”
On paper, Thorpe was a mid-20th-century Tory politician from
central casting. Male, white, Eton and Oxford, son and grandson of Conservative
MPs, socially well-connected, brought up in Knightsbridge in a house with a
cook, chauffeur, four maids and a nanny. But an admiration for David Lloyd
George, whom Thorpe met several times as a boy, led him early into the Liberal
party.
“He was a very substantial radical,” Steel recalls,
“especially on foreign policy, but also on issues of individual liberty. I
admired him rather than liked him, but he was very charming, always fun to have
around. He was not someone you warmed to. But until the end everyone was very
loyal to him.
As well they might have been, given Thorpe’s early
achievements as Liberal leader. When he succeeded Jo Grimond as leader in 1967,
the party had 12 MPs and had won 2m votes at the previous election. Seven years
later, in February 1974, Thorpe tripled the Liberal vote to more than 6m,
though still with only 14 MPs, coming close to forming a coalition with Edward
Heath’s Tories. But hubris lay just around the corner in the shape of his trial
for conspiracy to murder his former lover Norman Scott.
As one might expect of someone who is portrayed in A Very
English Scandal, Steel has been hooked on the series, the final episode of
which will air on Sunday on BBC One at 9pm. “They have obviously compressed a
lot of the story,” Steel says, “But the basic thrust of it is right. It’s
reasonably accurate in most respects. And Hugh Grant is genuinely remarkable.”
Months ago, Grant got in touch with Steel to ask him for
advice on the kind of person Thorpe was. The two men met at the House of Lords
– exactly the sort of grand setting that recurs so plausibly in the series.
During lunch in a dining room overlooking the Thames, Steel reminisced to Grant
about the events of the 1970s and gave the actor some tips about Thorpe’s
character and quirks, his ways of talking and behaving. Steel is delighted with
the result. “Uncanny,” he says of Grant’s performance.
Steel also has his gripes, though they not political ones.
Mainly they are about the cars that Thorpe drives in the series. “Jeremy drove
a Humber Super Snipe, but they showed him in a Rover 3 litre. And in the second
episode Thorpe is driving a white Triumph Stag when he sees Scott again. That
should have been a white Rover 2000.”
“That scene where I
interview Scott at the House of Commons isn’t right either,” he continued. “Emlyn
Hooson [played by Jason Watkins] wasn’t actually there at all. He had another
commitment and asked me to stand in. It was just me and Scott. I went into the
meeting thinking that Scott was going to complain about Peter Bessell [played
by Alex Jennings]. It was only during the meeting that it became clear he was
talking about Jeremy.”
Steel may have had a ringside seat at some of the political
events as Thorpe fought to save his doomed career, but he is certainly not the
only former Liberal who has been glued to the TV the past two Sundays and will
be again on Sunday. “I’m pretty sure all Liberals are watching it,” says Paddy
Ashdown, who succeeded Steel as leader and who was an aspiring MP during the
Thorpe scandal. “But I think some of them have been dreading it.”
It is true that some of those old enough to remember Thorpe
or who have connections with the real people depicted in the series, have been
worried by the portrayals. Norman Scott, still living in Devon at the age of
78, could be one of them. But, just as Grant talked to Steel, so Ben Whishaw
sought out Scott before the series got under way. Scott was worried that the
series would be “a second trial”, but according to the Radio Times last month
he was “very moved” by the results. “He was very pleased, he laughed and
cried,” reported the director, Stephen Frears.
Alex Carlile, who followed Hooson as the Liberal MP for
Montgomery, is less pleased. “I thought that the portrayal that [Watkins] was
forced to give by the script was rather unfair to Emlyn,” he told the
Shropshire Star. “He was portrayed as devious and conniving whereas in reality
he was extremely frank and never underhand.” Carlile nevertheless joins
enthusiastically in the chorus of praise for Grant’s portrayal of Thorpe.
“We looked on with incredulity,” recalls Tom McNally, now a
Lib Dem peer but from 1974 to 1979 political secretary to Labour’s Jim
Callaghan as foreign secretary and prime minister. “I sat in on meetings he held
with Jim in the 1970s. He was very funny. A great mimic. But I was never
remotely aware in any way of what was happening in his private life, and I’m
not aware that Jim was either.”
Thorpe’s career never recovered from the trial, at which –
spoiler alert – he was acquitted in 1979. He lost his parliamentary seat the
same year. Developing Parkinson’s disease, he died in 2014. For a while, he
haunted party events. Almost to the end, he would attend memorial services for
former colleagues.
“He spent 30 years trying to persuade every successor as
party leader – right up to Nick Clegg – to nominate him for the peerage he
craved,” Steel recalls. But the peerage never came and was never going to come.
In his final years Steel visited Thorpe in his house in Orme
Square, Bayswater. He was physically weak but still focused. “He was difficult
to understand. He spoke through a little microphone thing.” Ashdown also
recalls meeting Thorpe at a memorial service during those bleak later years. “I
put my arm around his shoulders. He was just a bag of bones.”
A Very English Scandal concludes on Sunday at 9pm on BBC One
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