In My Own Time

by Jeremy Thorpe

  Apart from the historic significance of the event, the trip produced two vintage Harold Macmillan remarks. George Brown leaned across and said to Alec Douglas Home: ‘Alec, why don’t you move back into the official Foreign Secretary’s residence looking on to the Mall? Sophie and I were only moved out because they wanted to decorate the place. Now it is occupied by civil servants and filing cabinets.’ Alec replied: ‘It may well be that one of our successors will move back but for the present, Elizabeth and I are very happy with the existing official residence.’ ‘Well’, said George, ‘There is no view and very little sunlight.’ At this point, Macmillan, who, I suspect, had heard every word of the conversation, asked what all the discussion was about. Alec deferentially replied: ‘George was saying that I ought to move back into the Foreign Secretary’s previous official residence. Do you know it?’ ‘Oh yes’, replied Macmillan. ‘I know it well. It is a very pretty house. As a matter of fact, when my father-in-law [the Duke of Devonshire] sold Devonshire house, he bought it in order to have somewhere in London to store the furniture!’ ‘Christ!’, said George – and that was the end of that.

  Before the ceremony in Brussels, we lunched at the British embassy, where the guest of honour was Jean Monnet, often referred to as the Father of Europe. At the conclusion of lunch, Ted said he had been asked to carry out a very pleasant duty on behalf of the Queen, namely to confer an honour upon him. Appropriately, Monnet was made a Companion of Honour. I later remarked to Ted that, in view of the dire warnings that we had been given by our opponents that membership of the EEC would wreck our Commonwealth links, it would have been tempting to confer upon him the GBE (Knight Grand Cross of the British Empire). ‘Oh’, said Ted, ‘He had that years ago!’

  The signing ceremony was delayed by a woman throwing an ink bottle at Ted, which scored a direct hit. Her protest had nothing to do with the Common Market, but arose out of a development plan for Covent Garden. The Treaty was duly signed and I remarked to the Irish Taoiseach that I had seen, to my consternation, that the copies of the Treaty were bound in orange ribbon. I was fearful that this might cause a point of order and consequent delay!

  Our departure was very grand: four Rolls Royces were lined up, each flying the Union Jack, belonging to the UK representatives to Brussels, Paris, NATO and the EEC. Ted thanked them briefly, whereupon Macmillan stepped forward and said: ‘As the back-bencher of this delegation, I would like to thank your Excellencies for the admirable way we have been looked after. We have had available to us secretaries, Rolls Royces and glittering hospitality. We have lived like Russian commissars. When I get home the only question I am asked is: “Do you have a good daily woman?” That’s how the rich live!’

  On the return journey, we broke open a bottle of champagne and, with George’s approval and complete understanding whom I had in mind, I proposed a toast to ‘absent friends’, in which everyone joined.

  Referendum 1975

  The EEC referendum campaign was a unique experience for those taking part in it. Apart from anything else it was a brilliant tactical manoeuvre by Harold Wilson, then Prime Minister. First, he was able to let members of his Cabinet disagree with each other, thus suspending the doctrine of collective responsibility. Second, he pitched the Tory Party into a battle in which they found themselves seeking approval from the nation for Labour’s renegotiated terms of entry. Third, he was able to get money for the campaign to underpin the foreign policy of a Labour government from companies and industries who would not normally so subscribe. After a few teething problems the three-party campaign for a ‘yes’ vote settled down. In particular we rather enjoyed inter-party rallies. I appeared with Roy Jenkins and Willie Whitelaw at Liverpool; Ted Heath and Harold Lever in Harrogate and Ted Heath and Roy Jenkins in Central Hall, Westminster, and also in the great televised debate at the Oxford Union, in which Ted Heath and I took on Barbara Castle and Peter Shore. I deal with my exchange with Barbara Castle in Chapter Four.

  The biggest attendance at any rally was in Barnstaple Pannier Market in my own constituency of North Devon. Ted and Roy were unable to accept my invitation to speak – in fact I suspect meetings were hurriedly organised for them in other parts of the West Country, it being widely thought by the party bosses that their presence in North Devon would underpin my political standing as local Member! I therefore decided to gather together the best possible box-office draw, and in this succeeded, with Quintin Hailsham, George Brown and Vic Feather in the chair. There was an audience of over 2,000. We left the mayor’s parlour to go into the Pannier Market and were confronted by a noisy group of protesters, one of whom held aloft a placard saying: ‘Don’t sell out the Commonwealth’. Quintin turned to me and said: ‘Who is that idiot?’ ‘That’, I replied, ‘is your former Conservative parliamentary candidate!’

  The whole campaign was a most enjoyable operation. In contrast to Liberal campaigns, where I had myself to raise much of the cash to pay for initiatives such as closed-circuit television, enabling me to take my London press conference from North Devon, the 1974 hovercraft tour, which reached 60,000 people, or part of the expenses for the hire of a helicopter, in this case the referendum money was raised centrally and it rolled in without too much effort. The result was decisive. Nearly 26 million people voted, of whom 67.2 per cent voted ‘yes’ and 32.8 per cent voted ‘no’ – or 17,378,581 said ‘yes’ and 8,470,073 ‘no’, making a majority of 8,908,508.

  In the campaign we held a crowded and highly successful meeting in Birmingham Town Hall, in Powellite country, addressed by the president of the Canadian Liberal Party, Senator Stanbury, two former Liberal Prime Ministers of Denmark, Poul Hartling and Hilmar Baunsgaard, and myself. It was refreshing to take part in a campaign which was organised by someone else, and to be on the winning side!

  Conclusion

  When Harold Macmillan announced on 31 July 1961 that the UK would apply to join the EEC, this represented a complete, but welcome, somersault. Harold Wilson changed his views on the EEC no less than four times. Europe is one of the most divisive issues within parties and between parties. Unhappily there is no doubt in my mind that our relations with Europe will represent a political football between government and opposition, and within government and opposition, for many years to come. Europe could be the cause of a split, either in the Labour Party or, more probably, in the Tory Party, which would be as significant and dramatic as the events following the repeal of the Corn Laws.

  The Tory Party have got themselves into a terrible muddle over the euro. They have polled their paid-up members and come up with a policy of saying: ‘no’ to the euro in this parliament; ‘no’ again in the next election and possibly ‘no’ in the parliament after next. It is the first time that a political party has sought to bind the vote of those who may become MPs but who have not yet been selected, still less elected. This will remain a divisive issue in the Tory Party for several years to come.

  At the end of the day, I believe that the European case will prevail and that the UK will remain a member of the European Union. There will be occasions when the government of the day will need rebel votes from the Opposition to win the European debate. However, having said that, I also believe that the issue of the European single currency will cause tremendous bitterness within and between political parties, all the way down to individual families. It could change the whole face of British politics.

  Chapter Eight

  Britain

  The Trial

  On 14 December 1978, at the Minehead Magistrates’ Court, I was committed to stand trial at the Old Bailey. With three co-defendants I was charged with conspiracy to murder one Norman Scott, and in my case alone, with incitement to murder Scott. The trial took place almost twenty years ago, relating to allegations of events upwards of thirty-five years ago. The jury acquitted all defendants – an outcome of which I never had any doubt.

  I do not intend to rake over the embers of the trial. Its proceedings were exhaustively covered by the media, both at th
e committal and the trial itself, day after day, week after week, month after month. However, there are one or two reflections that I wish to set down.

  The arrival of the co-defendants at the Minehead committal proceedings was not without irony. Under English law it is possible to conspire with someone whom one has never spoken to or met. It is sufficient that one link in the chain joins the next link in the chain, and so on. I had, in fact, never met, nor spoken to, the second or third defendants (John le Mesurier and George Deakin), and since the waiting room was filled with solicitors, plainclothes policemen and others with duties to perform, I did not know which were my two unknown co-defendants, and they had to be introduced. At the far end of the room there was a distinguished, white-haired man; I asked who he was, to be told that he was the Chief Constable of Avon & Somerset Police. ‘Sir’, I said, ‘you do us much honour’.

  Originally there were apparently to be five co-defendants, but the fifth (David Miller) opted to give evidence for the Crown, as a result of which he was warned in writing that he should say nothing in his evidence which might incriminate him!

  Al the inception of the trial, the prosecution would probably have held the view that Peter Bessell was the chief Crown witness. Bessell had been a Liberal MP for the Cornish seat of Bodmin, and was therefore a parliamentary colleague. Had the prosecution been aware of how he would stand at the end of the trial on the question of honesty and reliability, they might well have taken a different view of the case.

  Bessell’s businesses had failed, in consequence of which he did not stand for re-election. He was living in California when the British police visited him in connection with the case. Bessell was only prepared to make a statement if two British investigative journalists were at all times present during the interviews by the police, including in particular the compilation of Bessell’s statement. In practice, at the conclusion of each session with the police, the two journalists would remain with Bessell. However, none of this inhibited the police from continuing their interviews with Bessell in these unusual circumstances. At the trial, Mr Challis, the policeman in charge of the case, agreed under cross-examination that this was a profoundly unsatisfactory and almost unheard-of arrangement.

  What method of preparing the statement was used we do not know. Bessell was told that if he were to return to the UK to give evidence, he would be granted an immunity, in writing, from any criminal proceedings, the grounds for which might arise out of his evidence to be given at the trial. Bessell insisted that he had not asked for the immunity, nor did he ask for the reason it was offered. Mr Challis took a similar line, whilst the Crown, for their part, thought it necessary to adhere to the arrangement. Mr Challis admitted that it was the most widely drawn immunity in his experience. At least we were able to establish in advance, as the result of my application to the High Court, that the immunity would not cover perjury arising out of evidence given at the trial. It is rash to speculate on the grounds on which the immunity was granted. However, Bessell very probably knew for a start that two letters purporting to come from me addressed to him would be challenged as forgeries at the trial. They were not, in fact, produced. In any event, it would be revealing to know against which crimes Bessell was given such a unique immunity.

  Private Eye disclosed that Bessell had entered into a contract with the Sunday Telegraph newspaper, who had offered him £25,000 for articles if I was acquitted and £50,000 if I was convicted. It was referred to as the ‘double-your-money contract’. The trial judge, Mr Justice Cantley, ordered the Sunday Telegraph to show good reason why they should not be committed to prison for contempt of court. In the end he ruled that Bessell’s evidence had crystallised by the time the agreement was drawn up, but nonetheless criticised the behaviour of the Sunday Telegraph and referred to the contract as ‘deplorable’. To indicate the extent to which Bessell’s motives were coloured by commercialism, it was further discovered that Bessell’s solicitor’s wife was his literary agent. Payment by the media to witnesses involved in criminal cases remains relevant today in view of the publication by the Lord Chancellor of a consultation document on payment to witnesses. The document makes clear that the practice of paying witnesses still represents a threat to the administration of justice.

  Early on, under cross-examination, Bessell agreed that he had difficulty in differentiating between fantasy and fact, and nowhere was this more apparent than his position in regard to the first count, which was that of incitement to commit murder, for which proposition he was the only witness. His recollection of an allegedly highly incriminating conversation with me was remembered in intricate detail in court: the venue where the conversation was said to have taken place was described at the committal proceedings to be in my flat in Ashley Gardens, whereas at the trial, he claimed it was in my room in the House of Commons. No such conversation ever took place, which may explain why Bessell so glibly shifted its location.

  Another example of his Walter Mitty world was that within days of being elected as the Liberal MP for Bodmin, he had inquired of Willie Whitelaw, the Chief Whip of the Conservative Party, about the possibility of taking the Tory Whip, and made a similar inquiry of John Silkin, the Chief Whip of the Labour Party. Bessell conceded this, and intact both Whitelaw and Silkin have confirmed this as well.

  Perhaps the most damaging accusation made by Bessell was that there had been a long, and as far as I was concerned, highly incriminating telephone conversation, when he claimed that he rang me in Devon from Cornwall on Monday morning, 15 June 1970. It was put to him that this could not have taken place, since I was touring the Bodmin and North Cornwall constituencies in the company of Bessell on that morning, and had spent the previous night of 14 June in Bessell’s home with my wife. This he denied. My solicitor, Christopher Murray, had painstakingly undertaken the task of reading through all my press cuttings. He remarked to me that it was a pity that the press cuttings books had been returned to Devon, since he distinctly remembered a photograph appearing on the front page of the Western Morning News on Tuesday 16 June 1970, recording the Bessell, Pardoe, Thorpe tour in Cornwall the previous day (i.e. the day on which Bessell claimed that the alleged telephone call had taken place). My mother-in-law found the relevant press cuttings book on my shelves in Devon. Thanks to a very helpful young farmer, the evidence was brought to London by car through the night.

  The next morning in court, George Carman, my QC, asked that Bessell be recalled. This was granted. Bessell was confronted with the press photograph on the front page of the Western Morning News, which showed that he was with me in Cornwall at the time when he claimed to be telephoning me from his home. Carman remarked: ‘Mr Bessell, it has taken us a long time to nail your lies, but we have done so at last, have we not?’ ‘You have a point’, said Bessell. At that moment, if indeed not before, Bessell’s credibility had been totally destroyed. Where Bessell had gone wrong was that he forgot that whilst I had been due the previous week, on 9 June 1970, to do a tour of Cornwall on the 10th, arriving by helicopter, weather conditions were atrocious and when we got as far as Eggesford the pilot insisted we turn back, and the projected tour was therefore cancelled. It was, however, reinstated the following weekend, when I arrived by car on Sunday evening, 14 June, and spent the night at Bessell’s house, leaving for the Cornish tour the next morning. Had the original tour taken place, I would indeed have been in North Devon to take a call on Monday 15th. As it was, we could prove that I was not In Devon but in Bessell’s company in Cornwall.

  Some years earlier, during the mid-1960s, bankruptcy stared Bessel in the face and he came to me in desperation to ask if I could rescue him. Since he was a colleague and constituency neighbour, I said that I would do my best. Not to put too fine a point on it, Bessell’s bankruptcy would have led to a by-election in Bodmin, which the Liberals would probably have lost with potentially dangerous consequences for John Pardoe’s North Cornwall seat and my own in North Devon. I managed to raise £20,000 and in retrospect it was to become cle
ar to me that Bessell was schizophrenic: on the one hand he seemed to be almost pathetically grateful, but on the other, he would be consumed by bitterness towards me, resentful of the fact that I had seen behind his facade as a successful tycoon. He was to become desperate again and asked me to help further. I indicated that it would be much more difficult this time, but I would try. It became clear at a later stage that he was hell-bent on making as much money as possible and in this case at my expense.

  Bessell’s fantasy was paralleled by that of Scott. Scott made no secret of his lack of mental stability, his delusions, his suicidal tendencies and his treatments in hospitals. Scott claimed that there had been a homosexual relationship with myself – a claim that I have always totally denied. According to Scott this ‘affair’ had started with a chance meeting at the stables of a friend, when I had spoken to him at the most for five minutes. Many months later he arrived unannounced at the House of Commons. It was after this second meeting that he alleged our relationship began. The defence had discovered from two Thames Valley police officers that many years before they had been called to a house at Church Enstone where a young man was threatening suicide – he turned out to be Norman Scott Josiffe. It was difficult to tie Scott down to the date of his first meeting with me, at the stables where he was employed as a groom. It either took place after the Thames Valley police incident or shortly before. At the most, Scott’s contact with me when seen by the police from Thames Valley was a five-minute meeting at the stables. Scott then proceeded to describe me as a ‘friend’ to the police officers, but had to accept under cross-examination at the trial that he had also asserted to those officers that he had had a homosexual relationship with me, which he then had to agree was a lie.