MEDIA STUDIES
Owner of top people's store says Home Secretary took bribe! No story
STEPHEN GLOVER
Such a charge is almost unprecedented. A million pounds! The Home Secretary! But newspapers reported the matter in a surprisingly brief and deadpan way. Only the Daily Telegraph carried the story on its front page, and even so it was rather buried at the bottom. An account in the Times, barely 250 words long, was tucked away on Page ten. Two days later the Sunday broad- sheets, which might have been expected to investigate the background of this amazing tale, almost ignored it. The Scotsman has so far been the only newspaper to take it very seriously. What is going on? It is not as if the allega- tions that Mr Howard took bribes were wearily familiar to readers. No very specific mention of them had appeared in the press until last Friday. On 15 December 1996 the investigative reporter David Leigh wrote a Piece in the Observer which suggested that Mr Al Fayed's 'real target' in his anti-sleaze campaign was Mr Howard, but he felt too constrained to go into any detail. Then last Thursday Sir Gordon Downey, the Parlia- mentary Commissioner for Standards, pub- lishes his privileged report blowing the whole affair wide open, and the next day the news- papers fail to work up much enthusiasm. A few of them may regard Mr Al Fayed as being a couple of apples short of a pic- nic, and so unworthy of serious attention. But the Guardian and Observer have given a great deal of credence to his much less damaging allegations against the Tory MP Neil Hamilton and the former Cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken. So why did they show so little interest in these far more sen- sational ones? My best guess is that they, Ike other newspapers, regard this as a dead story, 'Minister comprehensively cleared' is not news in the same way as 'Minister took bribes,. But if they believe that Sir Gor- don's report is the end of the affair, they may be much mistaken.
Mr Al Fayed told me earlier this week that he is considering sending several thousand copies of a press release to Mr Howard's Folkestone and Hythe constituents criticising aspects of the Downey report. The point is that the affair is now public, and Sir Gordon Downey has made it so, though his purpose was unequivocally to exonerate Mr Howard. Mr Al Fayed may not like the report, but he is clearly happy that it has put the matter into the public arena. He says that he will now try to obtain a judicial review. His greatest hope, he told me, is that Mr Howard will feel obliged to sue him. Mr Al Fayed craves a public fight.
The 'evidence' which Mr Al Fayed pro- duced against Mr Howard — and which was painstakingly considered by Sir Gordon — is unimpressive. It relies entirely on one man, Tiny Rowland. Until 1993 Mr Al Fayed and Mr Rowland were bitter ene- mies. It was, and remains, Mr Al Fayed's contention that Mr Rowland persuaded Mr Howard to institute a DTI report into the takeover of Harrods. This report was very damaging to Mr Al Fayed, accusing him of lying, and, so he believes, giving the British government a pretext for refusing him British citizenship.
In 1993 Mr Al Fayed and Mr Rowland, who was by this time no longer chief execu- tive of Lonrho, made up. But it was, as Sir Gordon notes in his report, a less than com- plete reconciliation. There was no great mutual trust. Mr Al Fayed thought fit secret- ly to videotape many conversations that he had with Mr Rowland. The apparent pur- pose of these meetings was to induce Mr Rowland to say that he had bribed Mr Howard. It has been Mr Al Fayed's con- tention that the bribe was paid to Mr Howard by Harry Landy, a senior employee of Lonrho who happens to be Mr Howard's second cousin. Mr Landy, now ill and elderly, has rebutted this allegation via his wife.
I went along to Harrods to watch a com- pilation of these videotapes. (Substantial transcripts are reproduced in Sir Gordon's report.) If nothing else, they are extremely amusing. The most entertaining videotape of all involves not Mr Rowland and Mr Al Fayed but Mr Al Fayed and Carla Powell, wife of Sir Charles Powell, Lady Thatcher's former private secretary. It was recorded on 26 September 1995 without Lady Pow- ell's knowledge. She can be seen dancing and affectionately grasping Mr Al Fayed by both hands. In a high-spirited and obvious- ly innocent way she calls him 'Darling' and says 'I love you'. She amusingly claims that Lady Thatcher 'has ruined our lives' by 'not putting him [Sir Charles] in the House of Lords'.
Throughout Mr Rowlands's and Mr Al Fayed's many exchanges, neither man appears capable of calling a spade a spade. Mr Al Fayed's technique is to try to push Mr Rowland into saying that Harry Landy gave money to Mr Howard. Mr Rowland is charming, evasive and playful. He calls Mr Al Fayed 'footsie', and even 'Tootsie- Wootsie'. Two or three times he comes close to giving Mr Al Fayed what he wants, on one occasion saying 'That's possible' when Mr Al Fayed asks whether Landy gave £1 million to Mr Howard. At other times, he appears to squash such an idea.
Mr Rowland has told Sir Gordon Downey that he was merely teasing Mr Al Fayed while trying to give the impression that he knew more than he did in order to induce Mr Al Fayed to tell him other secrets. This seems plausible. It would be altogether impossible to form the view, on the basis of these videotapes, that Mr Howard was bribed. Mr Rowland has sworn an affidavit to the effect that no money passed hands. So Mr Al Fayed's sole `witness' falls away.
But this will not prevent Mr Al Fayed from continuing his campaign against Mr Howard. He is a driven man who believes he is the victim of a great injustice. His hope is that he will force Mr Howard into issuing a writ, facilitating the disclosure of documents which he believes will help his case. The question is whether Mr Howard can resist. He is, after all, a man with hopes of leading the Tory party, and one wonders how long he can tolerate Mr Al Fayed pub- licly repeating allegations which Sir Gor- don Downey has shown to be false.
Previous page
