NO NEW INSIGHT

Richard Moore points to the flaws and

inaccuracies in the book, and serialisation, claiming to re-examine the Jeremy Thorpe case

IT USED to be a characteristic of the English that an acquittal closed a case not only for the courts but for the country. Only grave injustice to somebody else or the emergence of serious new evidence on a matter of public interest could justify attempts to discuss publicly a case in which a jury had pronounced in favour of the accused.

Sadly, this-rule of decency has not been followed for Jeremy Thorpe. The latest example of venom, directed at a man who was with his co-defendants acquitted over 17 years ago, is a book by Simon Freeman — described as a freelance writer — called, with its author's unwavering taste for cliche, Rinkagate (other examples of his originality are that the Liberal Party had to be 'dragged into the 20th century' while `fate steps in' from time to time). Freeman has been assisted by Barrie Penrose, described as a freelance journalist, and in the introduction we are made aware of how privileged we are to read the research of these brave seekers after truth. Free- man and Penrose, we are told, 'were briefly co-editors of Insight, the legendary [my italics] investigative unit, which had a hierarchy of editor, reporters, researchers and secretaries, a budget and an office packed with neatly labelled files'. Wow!

Freeman's attitude to smears and rumours was already well-established when he was working for the Sunday Times. That Roger Hollis, the former director-general of MI5, 'was himself suspected of being a KGB agent' was `fun' to write about, although Hollis was cleared of these wounding charges by official inquiry. To Freeman, the fact that it was an offi- cial inquiry is probably enough to damn it. He is convinced that nearly everything, including the acquittal of Thorpe, was due to the existence of the Establishment.

`Some of the jurors might in theory have been Liberals, anarchists or revolutionar- ies, but they had been brought up in a society where the idea of class and that a privileged minority were inherently superi- or was implanted deep in the subconscious of the majority — and to the jurors Cant- ley [the judge] and Thorpe would unques- tionably have belonged to the elite, who, rightly or wrongly, had always run the country.' This was in 1979, when Labour had been in office for nearly 11 of the past 15 years and when the Conservative Party had been led by the Grocer and by the grocer's daughter since 1965.

Freeman also believes, or at any rate asserts, that the 'old guard' in the BBC objected to Penrose, who was in their employ in the Seventies, because he was `opinionated'. This was `simplisitic' (sic) because the 'old BBC had embodied just as many prejudices. For example, that the Empire and the class system were good and that socialism and egalitarianism were bad.' One had not realised that Reith still ruled in the age of the Beatles and that Hugh Carleton Greene had had so little impact.

The 'British Establishment', according to Freeman, had not been pleased by the marriage of Marion Stein (now Mrs Jere- my Thorpe) to Lord Harewood because she was 'foreign, a commoner and, worst of all, half Jewish'. As, until recently, most royal marriages were of foreigners to for- eigners and as one of the virtues of the Establishment in general and the royal family in particular was that they were not anti-Semitic, this seems odd. Freeman, who if the blurb is to be believed read modern history at Oxford, might have recalled Queen Victoria's high regard for Disraeli, Edward VII's friendship with the Roth- schilds, Balfour and Churchill's Zionism. But this would have complicated the scene `since the most talented reporters saw the world in terms of cover-ups and conspira- cies, exploiters and exploited'. The author seems to think this a commendation.

Part of this exploitation, in Freeman's view, seems to be the fact that Thorpe's engagement announcement to his first wife in the Times was 'a regal paragraph'. Actu- ally, its form was exactly that of all other engagement announcements in that then relatively serious newspaper. But no doubt it offended those eager to he offended. According to Freeman, the wedding recep- tion 'promised to be even more offensive' than the wedding had been — this, because the•reception was at the Royal Academy, while the wedding had been in the private chapel at Lambeth Palace. That the then archbishop and the then president of the Royal Academy were friends of Thorpe is not mentioned.

Thorpe apparently also incurred censure from 'many Liberals' for celebrating his second marriage by holding a 'Musical Evening' at Covent Garden and by sending out invitations 'embossed with gold'. Per- haps he did, but many Liberals were pre- sent and seemed to enjoy themselves.

Accuracy is not Freeman's forte. Accord- ing to him, at the Lambeth Palace wedding `apart from a few relatives, there were only two guests', Lillian Prowse and David Holmes. Neither Tom Dale nor myself are relations — to name only two other guests. This would be of no importance except that Freeman makes such a parade of scholarly apparatus with 12 pages of 'source notes'.

Errors in such a book are bound to occur, but one's confidence is shaken when one realises that a huge number of the sources cited are interviews with Bessell or Scott, anonymous interviews or quotations from such books as Gordon Winter's Inside BOSS and The Pencourt File. Freeman admits the unreliability of Bessell, Scott and Winter, while of The Pencourt File he writes: 'I gave up trying to make use of the jumble of names and dates.' The jumble included much that Freeman later admits to be groundless if sensational, but then, as he points out, the authors 'were journalists who craved recognition from their colleagues'.

When Freeman could be reasonably sure of the reliability of his sources, as when he refers to election results, he falters. Lady Megan Lloyd George lasted longer in the Commons than 1945. The Asquith-Lloyd George split occurred in 1916, as anybody with the slightest knowledge of British political history knows, and the two wings of the Liberal Party fought each other in the 1918 general election. But for Freeman it all happened 'in the 1920s'. More signficantly, because closer to his theme, Freeman asserts that Thorpe's mother 'was his most loyal supporter and adviser on everything from the content of his speeches to the style of his hats'. As Thorpe's political secretary for seven years from 1967, when he became leader of the Liberal Party, I do not recall a single instance of advice or opinion from Ursula Thorpe on anything political. Then again, having written, correctly, that Bessell did not contest the June 1970 election, Freeman gives a detailed account of Scott telephoning Bessell in Bessell's office in the Commons in October 1970. This absurdity is on a par with Freeman's assertion that in the 1970 election, thanks to a generous £150,00 cheque from Mr Jack Hayward, the Liberals 'were able to compete on equal financial terms with the big two'.

There are other easily detected sole- cisms. Thorpe, in the 1959 general elec- tion, 'persuaded almost 11,588 people to vote Liberal' in North Devon. Perhaps he persuaded 11,5873/4 people!

Another absurdity about an alleged homosexual contact: 'Thorpe behaved as if they had never met, either because he had a poor memory for faces or because he was so promiscuous he could not remember who he had last slept with.' Thorpe's worst enemies could not deny he had an extraor- dinary memory for people. Indeed, Free- man quotes Thorpe's agent, Lillian Prowse ,in this regard: 'He had an incredible mem- ory. He would talk to someone who would tell him that their dog was ill. A year later he would meet the same person again and ask, "How is your dog?" and he did it all without notes.'

Freeman's blundering brutality contin- ues with his account of the trial at the Old Bailey. 'Thorpe received the decisive boost when Mr Justice Cantley was appointed trial judge. He was 68 years old and, unlike many of his colleagues, was not the prod- uct of a wealthy home and Oxbridge.' If Cantley had been from either of the ancient English universities or, horror of horrors, an Old Etonian, what blood ves- sels Freeman would have burst! As it was, the judge was 'probably selected because he had spent most of his judicial career outside London and was therefore untaint- ed by metropolitan prejudice'. Poor Cant- ley was a mere Mancunian.

Freeman appears to regret that the pros- ecution tad a duty to present the evidence against Thorpe and his co-defendants fair- ly and objectively, even if that undermined their own case'. So they informed the defence that Bessell, a self-confessed liar at the committal hearings, had been offered by the Sunday Telegraph £25,000 for his story and £50,000 if Thorpe was convicted. All who care for justice can only be grateful that the prosecution respected their duty, but to Freeman it seems lamentable that 'they did brief the defence on it, though they knew they were destroy- ing one of their star witnesses'.

Freeman tries to make out that Thorpe betrayed his co-defendants Holmes and Le Mesurier by suggesting, through his lawyer, that there could have been a con- spiracy to murder Scott without Thorpe's knowledge. Holmes and Le Mesurier are alleged to have been outraged. Yet, according to Freeman, when the verdict of not guilty was returned Le Mesurier gripped Thorpe's arm and soon after vol- unteered to the News of the World that `Thorpe did not know about the plot'. These are hardly the actions of a man betrayed.

But anything will do for Freeman to throw dirt at Thorpe and his friends. Thus he writes that David Holmes 'whinged' because after being 'a few hours in cus- tody' he complained that he 'had to have medical treatment for bed bugs'; while Thorpe is implicitly criticised for not liking `being stalked by camera-toting reporters who had no respect for English law, which said that a man was innocent until proven guilty'. The presumption of innocence is appar- ently offensive to Freeman, but I can only recall with sadness the article in Le Figaro which expressed shock and disillusionment about the circus at the Minehead commit- tal proceedings. English justice was once highly regarded on the Continent, but all the cheques for articles by witnesses and the guffaws in court of journalists men- tioned approvingly by Freeman diminished this respect.

That the Old Bailey judge dismissed the evidence of Bessell, Scott and Newton as worthless shocks Freeman, but should reas- sure anybody who cares for justice. After all, as Freeman writes: 'Scott [was] a venge- ful hysteric, Bessell a self-confessed fraud and Newton a braggart who would say any- thing for money.'

But the perversity of the author of Rink- agate — incidentally Rinka, a dog, is sever- al times described as being 'murdered', once as being `executed'! — does not end at the Old Bailey.

In his epilogue he describes visiting Jere- my and Marion Thorpe at their home in Devon in 1995. He says he did not tell them 'a lie nor the whole truth' — which was that he was putting together his book. But he cannot resist giving a detailed, gloating account of Thorpe's physical decay, the result of Parkinson's disease. This is low even by Freeman's standards.

The book has found an appropriate level by being serialised in one of Murdoch's newspapers.

The author was Jeremy Thorpe's political secretary from January 1967 to January 1974.