Another voice
Rupert's godfather
Auberon Waugh
Minehead, Somerset Sad to say, the atmosphere among those following the committal proceedings became one of frivolity towards the end. Nobody expected the verdict to be any different, but as we reporters who had sat jammed together for three weeks stretched our legs and prepared to face the world outside the courtroom, one question was bound to arise: what is the proper attitude to take to all the filthy things we have heard, the allegations of perversion and cruelty, cowardice, injustice, spite, lying, misapplication of funds, treachery and attempted murder, press bribery and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice?
Morris West, the distinguished Australian novelist who was covering the event for Esquire, decided in the first week that the proper attitude to adopt was one of compassion. Well yes, we old hacks agreed, that was quite a good line but compassion towards whom? To Scott, to Thorpe, to Rinka, to George Deakin, John Le Mesurier and David Holmes? To all their mothers, wives, children, cousins, uncles, aunts, girl-friends, boy-friends or pet animals, as the case may be? If compassion is to be the dominant emotion, plainly we should not be reporting the event at all. Should the charges ever have been made?
A saner attitude is surely the one I have been advocating, of suspended indignation. We cannot yet know whether the indignation should be directed against Mr Thorpe and his alleged conspirators for the cowardly and when all is said and done despicable crime of which they are accused; or whether it should be directed against the Crown, the press, the Somerset police and all who have been guilty of concocting this monstrous accusation against a man of impeccable character in public life.
In the first week, there were two awkward moments, when Mr Besse11 quoted Thorpe as saying he would take his own life if ever the story of his alleged relationship with Scott came out. But of course, Thorpe had not taken his life although the alleged story was now on everybody's lips, being set to music in the bar of the Beach Hotel, Minehead, every night and adding new words to the national repertory of jokes jokes about nodules and warts under the arm, jokes about holding Liberal discussions and Liberalising, jokes about biting on the pillow and 'how do you like your eggs done?'
All of which would seem to be honest fun but for a small puritan voice inside which insists we should not be joking. In trying to rationalise this small voice, the modern mind is reluctant to say that allegations of sodomy, attempted murder and the betrayal of public trust are no laughing matter. Nobody cares much, either, about the alleged suppression of evidence, or conspiracy to pervert justice, or abuse of executive power for personal and political ends all of which are alleged or about the monstrous web of lies which surrounds the case on any interpretation of it. The only point on which everyone agrees, in the strange moral climate of the time, is that it must all be perfectly horrible for Thorpe's nine-year-old son, Rupert.
Oddly enough, nobody seems so concerned about Scott's two children Diggory Benjamin, born six months after Rupert, and a reportedly fine daughter, born more recently. Perhaps the popular imagination does not endow them with the same range of sensitivity. But in the strange moral climate of our time, as I say, and even More in the desperate need to find something about which we can all agree, the Rupert question threatens to overshadow all discussion of the case. Reporting of the committal proceedings having been condemned out of hand, one wonders whether the trial itself should be reported; whether it would not have been better to defer all charges against Mr Thorpe until Rupert was a little bit older and better able to face the agony of it.
More alert readers may suspect a hint of irony in that last sentence, but I well remember an incident two years ago when a judge in the Family Division ordered a book about the war in Vietnam to be suppressed. Its author had described the unedifying death of a journalist in Saigon. This journalist had a highly strung teenage daughter; on her stepfather's petition, the judge agreed and apparently possessed the power to order the book's withdrawal in case the teenage daughter should find it, read it and be upset. Eventually the decision was reversed on appeal, but a surprising number of journalists supported the petitioner, who was himself a journalist. Of course I am not suggesting for a moment that our society is wrong to be anxious and worried about its kiddies. I merely observe how almost any incident of public or private anxiety expresses itself in a demand for further restrictions on the freedom of information.
However, since young Rupert Thorpe is plainly cast, at any rate in the public mind, as a major force, let us examine his role. He is one of the few characters in the drama whose story has not yet been bought hY a newspaper, so far as I know, although , can't help feeling that Beano or Dandy maY be missing out on something. Young RuPernl had a very narrow squeak indeed on 27 June 1970 as a fourteen-month-old baby when his father decided to take him t° London by train in time for the reintr4; duction of the Speaker after the genes" election, leaving Caroline Thorpe to make the journey from Devon alone by car. But the only time his name appeared in de t committal proceedings was as godson ill one of the few witnesses whose integrity OS not impugned by the defence. Most of the other witnesses-and all the key ones-were, self-confessed liars or crooks, at any rate.aL some stage of their careers. Mr Nadir Di11' shaw, rumoured to be a Parsee whose par,; ents live in Karachi, is a businessman base', in Jersey. He met Mr Thorpe on an ail-Poll bus at Heathrow some time in 1969. BY the time Rupert was born in the spring of that year their friendship had advanced to the point where Mr Thorpe felt he could ask Mr Dinshaw to be the lad's godfather. Later, when Mr Thorpe wrote to Jal Hayward asking for two sums of f10,004 for special ielection expenses, he specific,that the money should be sent to Rupert 5 godfather in Jersey. On that point even'. body seems to be agreed. In fact, as ThorPe puts it in his alleged statement to the police of 3 June 1978, 'by reason of other donabons at the relevant time it became unnecessary to have recourse to those two sums'. The statement continues: the fore made arrangements for the sum °I £20,000 to be deposited with accountants and to be held as an iron reserve against an): shortage of funds at a subsequent election. He goes on to deny that he ever auill°,r; ised the use of these funds to pay Scott Mt his letters or Newton for his alleged services. But it is on the earlier part that that Thorpe's memory seems to differ from tha of Mr Dinshaw. According to Dinshaw' Thorpe instructed him to pay the money t.° David Holmes, another defendant, which Is.. what he did. Dinshaw also avers that Thorpe, alarmed in case such instructio.05, might seem to cast doubt on his financial, competence, threatened his friend that it ever he revealed these instructions the authorities would send him back to Pakistan. It is at this point that the head swims, the mind boggles and a drowsy numbness paitt! my sense. How can one be concerned about the mental sufferings of English children when, in the Third World, parents aret allowed to give them names like Nadir? 151 normal in this ecumenical age to have a Parsee as godfather to a Christian batlY even if one has met him on the bus a fers weeks earlier? Are we to suppose that thl, former Liberal leader, on threatening tu send the Zoroastrian godfather back t°5 Pakistan, clapped his hands, rolled his elei and sang 'Alleluia!' I give up. Next wee' shall write about something else.
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