Another voice
Studies in contempt
Auberon Waugh
Minehead, Somerset Reporting restrictions on the Thorpe committal proceedings may have been lifted at the surprise request of Mr George Deakin, one of the defendants, but restrictions on comment, of course, have not. It would be most improper if I were to say anything by way of comment which might influence either the magistrates or a Spectator reader later chosen for the jury in the event of a trial. This is a legal restraint which has to be observed, and there can be no denying it casts a blight on the otherwise festive atmosphere in Minehead. A further blight might be cast but doesn't seem to be by the consideration that the four defendants are accused of a particularly contemptible crime for which, if they are tried and found guilty, they will not only be sentenced but should also be held in odium by all rightthinking people. If the press has a duty to point this out, it is one which it has signally failed to fulfil.
Public confusion may not have been worse confounded by my local newspaper, the West Somerset Free Press, whose Scoop of the Year was to publish the photograph of a Great Dane with the headline 'Elsa is Rinka's niece!' Rinka who, 'as everybody knows, came to a tragic end near County Gate on Exmoor on an October night in 1975 at the hands of Mr Andrew Gino Newton when he and Mr Norman Scott motored there together'. But dog-lovers might easily have been affected by this moving picture of the bereaved niece, and Newton, of course, was due to give evidence as a key witness on the Monday following.
Obviously it would be most improper for me at this stage to record a courtroom impression that anyone involved in the case defendant, witness or magistrate bears resemblance to a drowning rat. But I do not see why I need suppress the feeling, as I listened to Mr Bessell's lugubrious but impressively firm voice over three and a half days' examination and cross-examination, that the former Member for Bodmin reminds me of nothing so much as a corpse which has been kept for three or four weeks, probably under water, after dying of some exceptionally painful and distressing form of cancer. Will it, I wonder, be considered prejudicial, or implying some judgment on Mr Bessell's fascinating and crucial evidence, if I describe it as `adipocerous'? I hope not. In any case, I decided to take the risk, having been looking for an opportunity to use this word for some time. If one is not careful, one begins to see contempt of court in everything, even in the Guardian's report on Friday morning that Young Liberals are holding an emergency meeting to discuss breaking relations with the present Liberal Party. What can be worrying those juicy Young Liberals, one wonders?
That way madness lies. Whatever 1 choose to say can scarcely be more prejudicial than the words uttered by Lord Goodman in an interview with the Daily Telegraph in which he spoke of Mr Bessell's 'demented allegations' about him. As the Sunday Times, in what might yet prove to be its last appearance, put it: 'Lord Goodman's anger is understandable, but if his words are not contempt of court, we find it hard to think what would be. For the Crown's chief witness to be thus characterised by a leading lawyer outside the court-room seems to be a gross intrusion on the course of justice.' Oddly enough, I can think of some words which might be held even more contemptuous, but I shall come to them in a minute. As we heard it in court, Mr Bessell was merely suggesting that Holmes, in urging him to write an untruthful letter claiming to have been blackmailed by Scott about a woman, had stated that it was Lord Goodman's advice that he should do so. Even as I listened to this sensational claim, it occurred to me that there might easily be an innocent and respectable explanation for it. It is safe to assume that Lord Goodman is like most lawyers in larding his advice with conditional tenses and subjective moods: 'If it be the case that Mr Bessell were in a position truthfully to aver that he might have been the victim of a blackmail attempt from Scott, peradventure on some personal matter which need not concern us here. . As anybody who has ever played the game of Russian Whispers will know, nothing could be more natural than that in the transmission of this complicated and highly qualified advice the conditionals, subjectives and 'peradventures' should accidentally be lost. I looked forward to the explanation which Lord Goodman promised in his letter to The Times for the moment when the matter was no longer sub judice, certain that there would be a sensible explanation. But by his premature outburst about 'demented allegations' Lord Goodman seems to be staking his reputation on the proposition that Bessell is an outand-out liar.
As Bessell explains it, the purpose of his untruthful letter was either to discourage Scott from producing his allegations about a homosexual relationship with Mr Thorpe or to discredit him should he produce them at Newton's trial. Let us now examine the record of the Sunday Times over this period. Newton's trial opened on 16 March 1976 at Exeter with Scott as the Crown's chief witness. On 14 March 1976 the SW17 day Times published a personal statement by Mr Jeremy Thorpe describing Scott as an 'incorrigible liar'. Although I am no lawYet' I should judge these words the greater contempt, the grosser intrusion into the course of justice. By odd coincidence, the effect of this contempt would seem to be iii precisely the same direction as that of 13es" sell's untruthful lettereither to discourage Scott from repeating his allegations about Mr Thorpe, or to discredit him if he did'. But on that occasion the jury did 00.` decide that Scott was lying, at least in Ills main evidence. Now we must wait and see what the due processes of law make of Bessell's evidence. But whichever way.tbe law decides, the case has already raised questions which can scarcely be answere"A by a few letters to The Times at the aPP14: rate moment, even if The Times survive' Lord Goodman's reputation is at stake, as, in greater or lesser degree, are the reputations tations of a number of eminent people W" f would seem, on at least one reading events, to have engaged in a cover-1111 When I speak of 'at least one reading L the events' I am referring, of course, to Pg Pencourt File (Seeker and Warburg £5,,' the amazing book by two journalists, Balt Penrose and Roger Courtiour, which greeted on its appearance earlier this Yeart by a succession of wet blankets from alu12s. the whole British press, whether this tuls. courage ment took the form of linstl'e, reviews, or of buying the serial rights and publishing only the most innocuous parts' Anybody who has read the book will unider. stand why this should be the case. It 11.1 been said that the British press is on trial. Possibly to underline this the dock at Minea head Magistrates Court is occupied bY journalists rather than by the defendts; Certainly, the press has much to answer la", whether you are thinking of its eventual decision to repeat Scott's allegations, after the Barnstaple DHSS tribunal on 29 Jann" ary 1976, or of its fourteen-year policy t° suppress or ridicule them, both before and after the alleged murder attempt, or eve° the alleged offer of i100,000 to Mr Newt° by the Evening News if he could incriminate Mr Thorpe on the conspiracy charge. But the most cursory reading of Pencoral will reveal that many more institutions and people-are on trial than the press. LastA week, the Spectator's Notebook remaaeu, on the uncanny way the Crown case seeme" to follow what had already been revealed. or claimed by Pencourt. This convivial pantomime horse also raised other ques" tions: why Mr Wilson resigned; why, a feW weeks after his resignation, he set Pencourt on an apparent trail of revenge against MI5. The questions are too numerous to list this week. In subsequent dispatches from Minehead I shall discuss them as and when they come up, or even if they don't. Hail' stones the size of golf balls fell in West Somerset on Saturday night. Local savants interpreted them as meaning that this scandal is going to run and run.
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