AND ANOTHER THING
A tribute to a gallant swashbuckler, at present in hot water
PAUL JOHNSON
The Guardian-Aitken affair raises important issues, above all the abuse of power by the media, which affect every man, woman and child in this country. We have not heard the last of it and the ulti- mate outcome of this case will be quite dif- ferent to what it appears at present. I shall be dealing with these aspects next week. Today I want to write about my friend Jonathan Aitken. People who read the newspapers last Saturday, or watched the loaded presentation of the case on televi- sion, were given the impression that he is a wicked and arrogant man betrayed into a catastrophic fall by his own hubris. I want to say to them, you are the victims of what Goebbels called the Big Lie. The presenta- tion of the case by the media, beginning with the Evening Standard on Friday and continuing up to and including the sleazy Sundays, was a travesty of the facts.
The Guardian printed and repeated innumerable libels about Aitken — that is, statements about him which were both false and defamatory. It was forced to withdraw the most serious of them on the eve of the case, because it knew by then it could not possibly prove them in court. And a further chunk of its worst accusations had to be withdrawn last Tuesday, for the same rea- son. What was left was quite a narrow issue, and in itself an unimportant one. But that settled the case, by making it impossi- ble for Aitken to pursue it. As a result, it became legally safe for the Guardian, fol- lowed by the rest of the media, to publish any lies they liked about Aitken, and they proceeded to do so, with relish.
You may ask, why should journalists behave towards a stricken man with such malice? The answer is lamentably simple envy. Most journalists lead frustrated lives, close observers but never participants in the exciting or glamorous events they describe for a living. They peer at them hungrily from the outside, like Victorian slum-children salivating at the window of a pastrycook's. Jonathan Aitken was the cynosure of this media envy. Journalists tend to be ugly, stunted — or, if tall, uncouth — poor, because they spend their money on drink or in the betting shop, with bedraggled wives and unwelcoming homes, to which they return late and reluctantly. When I asked one of the most famous of the current crop of editors why he had split up with his wife he said bitterly, 'Because I am sick of having the crockery thrown at me when I get in.' Hacks are fragile, inse- cure creatures, terrified of being fired and ending up finished in their fifties, as most of them are. Somehow, the books they believe they can write which will establish their genius and bring them fame and wealth never get published. Jonathan was what all the hacks were not: tall, handsome, irresistible to countless women, with a delightful family, one of the most beautiful and historic houses in London, rich and successful, not only in business but as a writer, a Cabinet minister, a confidant of the great, cultured and well-educated, with innumerable friends, fine manners, natural charm and terrific panache. Last week you could almost feel the rancorous jealousy as the hacks dipped their pens in poison, writ- ing their 'intimate portraits' of a man most of them had never even met. It was the media at its most hateful — and pathetic. One felt sorry for them and their drab exis- tence.
The picture of Aitken that emerged was false in every particular. First, let us deal with his veracity. I have known Jonathan for over 30 years and I do not recall him ever lying to me. I spoke to other friends of his last weekend and they all agreed that he is a man of unusual frankness, the very reverse of devious or deceptive, inclined to tell the unvarnished truth even when it hurts his interests. Of course any gentle- man, to protect his family from harm or a lady from exposure, may tell a lie under pressure — if it is a lie: we have it on the authority of Cardinal Newman, soon to be a saint, that such deception may be without sin. Jonathan's misfortune was that as an inexperienced liar — an amateur — he was up against professional liars, men who lie routinely for their daily bread and beer, and are not against a bit of forgery, too, on occasion. So he was exposed and they got away with it. I am looking forward to read- 'Certainly it's racist, let's destroy Earth!' ing the full story when Jonathan, as I have no doubt he will, writes his book about the business.
As for the supposed arrogance and hubris, Jonathan has always struck me as rather diffident, shy in important respects, never boastful, surprisingly insecure for such a glittering figure. I have gone on long tramps with him in the Scottish Highlands, a sure way of finding out about a man. He is an old-fashioned romantic, someone who will never learn that the world cannot be changed for the better, that it is a vale of tears and man a fallen creature. I like this side of Jonathan, which gives him a kind of innocence. Of course there is the other side to his romanticism, the swashbuckling, cav- alier side, which sees life in terms of sword- play and challenges. He wants to kill drag- ons, like sleazy newspapers. This side has kept him in hot water all his life, and he has come close to disaster before. It also makes him ruthless, and inclined to cut a corner or two. So it may be true that Jonathan is not always 16 annas to the rupee; but he is 15- and-a-half. I would rate the Guardian edi- tor a mere six, even on a good day when it pays him to produce an honest paper.
Jonathan's other outstanding characteris- tic is good nature. He has always been free with his money, long before he made a lot of it. As a rich man, his house, his purse, his time, his energy have invariably been at the disposal of people in need, even when they didn't deserve it. Lord Longford has already paid tribute to the part he played in founding the Catherine Pakenham Memo- rial Prize for young women journalists, per- haps the most consistently successful media award of the lot. Without Jonathan's gen- erosity, the Tory Philosophy Group, Lon- don's most distinguished political debating society, could not have flourished. But most of his acts of kindness are secret. The idea of him cadging money off an Arab to pay a hotel bill is ludicrous to anyone who knows him. Of course that is precisely what Guardian hacks do themselves, and they are incapable of making the imaginative leap into the minds of people who are above their own squalid level. Jonathan was the intimate friend of the most saintly and gallant politician I ever knew, the late Hugh Fraser, and that alone makes him AI in my Lloyd's Register. As we used to say in the army, 'I'd share a slit-trench with that fellow.' You may be sure Jonathan will be back killing dragons again.
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