YES, I THINK IT'S TRUE

Joe Haines does not dismiss this week's claim that Lord Goodman was a thief

AT FIRST, I didn't believe it. Not of Arnold. Not Lord Goodman, Companion of Honour, adviser to the Prince of Wales and assorted prime ministers, especially Harold Wilson, and chairman, director, solicitor or patron of most of Britain's dis- tinguished institutions, including the BBC, the Arts Council, the British Coun- cil, the English National Opera, the Royal Opera House and the Newspaper Publish- ers' Association, for starters. If the Almighty had ever had need of a lawyer, Arnold would have been His automatic choice.

To suggest that he might have robbed Viscount Portman, one of his rich, titled and influential clients (I suppose he had unrich, untitled and uninfluential clients, but I bet there weren't many) would have been as unthinkable as saying Mother Teresa was no better than she ought to be.

`No, not Arnold,' I said. And then, I thought, 'Why not Arnold?'

He was a fixer. The fixer. He fixed any- thing: newspaper owners, strikes, Ian Smith of Rhodesia or a ticket for the opera, provided you were the king or pres- ident of somewhere high up in the pecking order of the United Nations. But fixers can't have principles. So, why not Arnold?

Arnold didn't like problems reaching the High Court. He liked to sort them out without bothering m'Lud. An action was a defeat. He invariably opposed his clients suing for libel; he also stopped the libelled suing his clients.

After Private Eye had defamed me in the early 1970s, Harold Wilson advised me to consult Arnold. 'Dear boy,' he said (he always called me 'dear boy' or `Mr Haines', never Joe), 'this is the grossest libel I have ever seen. But my advice to you is not to sue. There are so many people queuing up to sue that rag that it'll be bankrupt by the time your turn is reached.'

So I decided not to sue. Only later did I discover that among the queue of those who had issued or threatened writs against Pri- vate Eye was Arnold over an account, writ- ten by Paul Foot, suggesting that the sainted solicitor had overdrawn £17,000 as adminis- trator of a trust for the Portman estate. I would have been queuing behind him. I think that's what's called chutzpah by Arnold's co-religionists. But seeing that he is now under the gravest suspicion of rob- bing the Portman estate of some I1 mil- lion, the Fraud Squad would probably call his writ something else.

Nevertheless, Arnold!

It's an unfortunate fact of my life that work in politics and newspapers has brought me into contact with several men who turned out to be crooks on a middling or large scale, including the obnoxious Joe Kagan, the charming Eric Miller and the amiable old duffer Desmond Brayley, all businessmen attracted both to politics and the funds of the companies they owned. And there was, of course, Robert Maxwell, who, on the scale of his thefts, ranks high among the biggest crooks of our time who have been found out.

But Arnold was in a different class to all of them. The amount of money stolen isn't important. It's the size of the man. Some figures, after a life of public service, gradu- ate to the ranks of the great and the good. But he was the great and the Goodman. He was unique.

Everybody deferred to him. If Wilson, or Heath, or Thatcher, had made him lord chancellor, he would have invited compar- isons with Thomas Wolsey (thus robbing Lord Irvine of the chance) and no one would have been surprised. Society would have curtsied and bowed.

Everyone sought his advice, especially Wilson, to whom he was known as 'the late Lord Goodman', on account of the fact that he never turned up on time. (If Goodman was due at 6 p.m., Wilson would double book his engagements, knowing for certain that he wouldn't arrive before 6.30.) When Rhodesia seemed a problem more intractable than ever, Wilson sent for Arnold. When his personal and political secretary, Lady Falkender, was faced with an income tax demand she couldn't meet, he sent for Arnold, rather than for his excellent accountant. When the Daily Express decided it would splash the story of Lady Falkender's two children by Walter Terry, who happened, at the time, to be the Express's political editor, he sent for Arnold.

It was fascinating to watch him operate. Arnold didn't deal with the low life of Fleet Street, such as editors. He dealt with pro- prietors, in that particular instance Max Aitken who, unfortunately, was flying between islands in the Bahamas with his mistress and unreachable even by his Lord- ship.

Still, the story didn't appear.

As Wilson approached resignation, timed for March 1976, he became paranoid about what the press would say when, eventually, I had to announce his departure. It was Arnold who had the solution. He invited some of the most senior figures in Fleet Street to dinner at his flat, at which Harold would have the opportunity to drop a signifi- cant hint to which he could afterwards point if anyone claimed his going was sudden.

At a suitable moment, Arnold indicated the time for the hint was ripe. 'By the way, Arnold,' said the Prime Minister loudly, 'I've spoken to the Queen about that matter.'

The cream of editors and owners heard and were mystified, but were too polite to ask what Wilson and Goodman were talk- ing about and the whole purpose of the dinner was defeated. But it was an inge- nious try and ingenuity was Arnold's mid- dle name.

My abiding memory of him, though, goes back to some years earlier during a mam- moth row with the BBC over its political satire, Yesterday's Men. Wilson had threat- ened an injunction to prevent the pro- gramme being shown, and Goodman summoned, in the hour after midnight, the director-general, Charles Curran, and the director of television, Huw Wheldon, to his flat at Portland Place, close to Broadcast- ing House.

Because of a terrorist threat, I had insist- ed that the programme should not include film of Wilson's house in the Bucking- hamshire countryside. In fact, a BBC pho- tographer climbed over Wilson's back fence and photographed it, instead.

When taxed with this by Goodman, Wheldon excitedly said, `Ah, we promised not to film it; we didn't promise not to pho- tograph it.'

`In the morning,' said Goodman magiste- rially — meaning, 'when you are sober' 'you will regret that remark.'

After the two men, crestfallen and suit- ably rebuked, had left the flat, I asked him if he would be handling our application for an injunction against the programme later that day.

`Oh, no, dear boy,' he answered, shocked. 'I'll be at Royal Ascot as the guest of the BBC.'

Yes, I do believe it.

The author was Harold Wilson's chief press secretary, 1969-1976.