199: Jeremy Thorpe 17

from “Private Eye”, 24 November 1978

On 20 November 1978, committal proceedings opened at Minehead Magistrate’s Court. Deakin applied that reporting restrictions be lifted, and so much of the matter of the case was revealed then before the actual trial in 1979. Most of the cartoons about the start of the proceedings were jokes based on the scramble to get seats, but this “Private Eye” cover includes a few dreadful gay-tinted puns, just to remind everyone what is really at stake.

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by David Austin
from “Private Eye”, 15 September 1978

There was much foot-dragging by the prosecution service, but finally on 3rd August 1978, Jeremy Thorpe, Holmes, David Holmes, and George Deakin were formally charged with conspiracy to murder Norman Scott.
A little later in September there were suggestions of homosexual shenanigans at the National Liberal Club. The National Liberal Club had originally been founded by the Liberal Party but had been sold on a couple of years ealrier. So this was nothing to do with Thorpe, but David Austin conflates it all into one big Liberals = homosexual satirical shorthand. Whether “Sodom and Gomorrah” is anymore original than the contemporary tittering about Liberal “seats” is another matter.

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from “Private Eye” 11 November 1977

On the 27th October, 1977, Thorpe gave a press conference giving an account of acquaintance with Norman Scott but denying any sexual activity. It was a catastrophic media circus. William Rees-Mogg, however, the editor of the “the Times” ran an editorial in which he avoided any questions about Thorpe’s truthfulness, and instead equivocated about Christian morals and prejudice against homosexuals. This piece is aimed sharply at Rees-Mogg, painting him as a pettifogging trendy liberal vicar (and the main writers at “Private Eye” at this time had some strong opinions about trendy vicars). This parody adopts a deliberate sermon-like style, with all sorts of references to unseemly gay practises, and then resolutely fails to point any finger at Thorpe about his homosexuality, let alone conspiracy to murder. The deliberately addled references to Profumo and Nixon show what "Private Eye" really think though. The reference to "cottaging" arises from the posthumous publication of Tom Driberg's memoir "Ruling Passions" earlier in 1977.

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by Auberon Waugh
from "Auberon Waugh's Diary" in "Private Eye", 29 October 1977

After 45 years loyal membership of the Labour Party - years in which it is true to say, I devoted most of my life to the Labour movement and all it stood for - I think the moment may have come for me to join the Liberals.
The attraction of David's Bunny Club may not seem obvious at the present time, but the whole idea of the death penalty for homosexuals has always interested me very much, although I do not approve of capital punishment. Liberals, with their introduction of the bungled execution, seem to have found a compromise which works. Since the attempt on his life, Norman Scott has settled down with a nice young woman who has already given him a baby.
Perhaps the general use of attempted murder to tidy up a party's electoral appeal should be approached with greater caution, although I have always argued that an element of drama is needed to stimulate interest in the democratic process. If all members of an outgoing administration were hanged or imprisoned, as they usually deserve, this might whip up a bit of interest in election results.
The Tories are constantly moaning about how much better their chances would be if Grocer Heath could disappear. Heath is not, of course, a homosexualist, any more than Mr Thorpe is, but nobody can deny that lovely, oyster-eyed William Whitelaw would be leader of the Tories today if it were not for his unfortunate friendship with Grocer. Whenever I make the obvious suggestion to Tory policy groups, they receive it with a nervous giggle. Liberals seem to be made of sterner stuff.

195: Jeremy Thorpe 13

“Lloyd George Knew My Father”
by Alan Coren
in “Punch”, 26 October 1977

It is with a heavy heart and a lovely thick nib that I now set down the dire events in which I became inextricably enmeshed more than a year ago. Events that were ultimately to shake the entire civilised world; or, at any rate, that part of it which feels that man's dark destiny and the future of the Parliamentary Liberal Party are really one and the same thing.
It was at a small souper intime in September 1976 that I first made the acquaintance of Mr X. The acquaintance was Mr Y, and Mr X was very nice about it, really, although I must say he did give me a couple of those very sharp Looks of his when Mr Y and I came in from the balcony, but I think it was only because we just happened to have chosen the same emerald green for our safari suits, and though I says it as shouldn't, you have to be slim for emerald, and Mr X is, well, let's say a little bit portly compared with some people not a million miles from this desk!
Where was I?
Oh, yes, that little supper in Polperro.
Well, after the avgolemono soup (everybody had to bring one course; 1'd done the lime sorbet, which would have been really terrific if I hadn't stopped the car on the way to chat to this nice boy at a Greenline stop, and it went all runny), I was just peeling one of Mr Y's plover's eggs for him (he's got these huge fumbly hands, not one of your delicate ones at all, great big pink fingers like saveloys), when suddenly Lord Z looked up, terribly seriously, and said: "Look here, someone's going to have to do something about this bugger, sorry, this swine who's trying to blackmail the entire Liberal Party with his vile innuendo!"
We stared, aghast! Many a mouth dropped open.
"Vile Innuendo?" enquired W, first of us to recover. "Wasn't he that whippy little Wop that T found on the Spanish Steps during last summer's fact-finding mission?"
"You shut up!" cried T, purpling. "You just shut your rotten face!"
"Stop that!" thundered Lord Z, who can be terribly masterful at times, "This is no time for personal slanging matches. A piece of absolute muck has threatened to sell his grimy tale to the Sunday rags unless he hears from me in folding oncers by the end of the month!"
"Is there any truth in the rumour?" shrieked E.
"There is no truth in the rumour," replied Lord Z firmly. "The person in question, a stoker who is totally unknown to me – “
""Incredible," murmured that spiteful little bitch J.
"- claims to have compromised the entire Parliamentary Liberal Party on the upper deck of a Number Eleven bus during our visit to the London Planetarium last April. "
"1 remember that trip," murmured E absently. "W went all funny when the moon came up. I never realised he had hair on his hands till that moment."
"Never mind that," snapped Lord Z. "The fact of the matter, as many of you here know full well, is that nothing at all untoward happened on that day. Even the stationmaster at Baker Street Underground went out of his way to remark that he had never met a group of gentlemen who had used his Foto-Me booth with more discretion. "
"An absolute sweetie," said J, nodding. "I do like those new little brimless caps they wear."
"You wouldn't say the red piping's superfluous?" enquired X.
"GENTLEMEN!" shouted Lord Z, with rather more force than accuracy. "Can we not address ourselves whole-heartedly to the fact that the great and glorious party of which several of us here are proud members is presently teetering on the brink of outrageous scandal? What are we to do about this awful stoker person?"
"Pay him off?" suggested T. "Personally, I have often found that a bag of boiled sweets and a Judy Garland LP will work wonders on the most - "
"He wants," muttered Lord Z, "twenty thousand pounds. In practical terms, that represents the Party's entire political broadcast budget."
"That's not our fault," protested W, "my friend and I offered to do one for nothing. I got this snotty little note from Party HQ, didn't I, saying the executive didn't feel that the tango was a vote catcher at this moment in time. They're so hidebound, sometimes, you could scream!"
"Why didn't we offer him a safe Liberal seat?" asked X.
Nobody said anything at all. I mean, we all enjoy a joke as much as the next man, but there's a time and a place for everything.
"I know," said V, who up until then had. said nothing, "why don't we lean on him a little? 1 could put you in touch with a couple of big navvies who would go round there and scratch his eyes out."
There were one or two "Oooohs!" at this, but I happened to catch Lord Z's eye, and I could see that it was a suggestion with which he was not totally unsympathetic.
"I had thought of something like that," he said quietly. "But would it not be better it the arrangement were rather more, er, permanent?"
There was a very long, and very uneasy silence.
I cleared my throat.
"Don't these, ahem, matters cost rather a lot of money, too?" I said.
Lord Z peered tetchily through his diamantine lorgnette.
"Who said that?" he enquired.
"It was C," said T. "She's ever such a quiet one. You haven't opened your mouth all evening, have you, C?"
Despite the unseemly tittering, I persisted. Y's little squeeze on my forearm helped.
"It's just that I've heard about these things," I said, "and I'm not sure that Party funds would cover it."
"We've got twenty-eight pounds forty in the kitty, to my certain knowledge," snap¬ped Lord Z, "and we haven't had our jumble sale yet."
"Won't, either," muttered T bitterly. "I understand that the scout hut will not be made available this year. I'm not naming any names, but there's some little unpleasantness still hanging over from last year when that big red-headed Ranger won the cherry cake."
"He guessed its weight fair and square!" shouted J.
"Guessed?" shrieked T. "Guessed? I suppose it couldn't be that the person who made the cake might have written down its weight on a piece of paper just large enough to be pressed into a sweaty little palm while that person and the person with the sweaty little palm were putting up. the bunting together?"
"I'm not listening to any more of this slander!" cried J, shoving back his chair.
"All the thanks I get, you can have a bloody shop gateau this year, I hope it chokes - "
"Now, now," interrupted Lord Z. "Let us put the Party first. Are you telling me, C, that we could not get this person shot for £28.40?"
"I do not," I replied, "believe we could buy a gun for less than about a hundred, let alone someone to fire it."
"Couldn't we have him stabbed?" said T.
"You can buy a hatpin for under a pound."
"Not of any quality," murmured W.
"God knows that's true," nodded X. "I've never known Kirby grips snap as much as they do these days."
"We could poison him," suggested T. "J's probably got a cake or two put by, haven't you, dear?"
"Oh, God," said W, "now you've made him cry, you silly cow!"
"Good training," replied T, firmly, "he'll have to get used to heckling. No good dreaming about being Prime Minister one day if you break down and blub every time the going gets personal."
"Is there no cheaper way of getting at this beast?" cried Lord Z. "Couldn't we frighten him?"
"Has he got a dog?" enquired X. "We could shoot it for him."
"Very risky, that," countered T. "It could cost untold votes, shooting someone's dog. I can't see anyone in the Party wishing to associate themselves with anything of that order."
"Blighter hasn't got a dog, anyway," said Lord Z. "Closest he comes is a ginger teddy-bear with one eye. Got a great sentimental attachment to it, mind. I understand he's had it since he was thirty."
"Perhaps we could knock it about a bit?" offered X. "Pull its other eye off, something of that order."
"Doubt if it'd frighten him much," said Lord Z, shaking his head. "'Make him nastier, if anything. No, our only course is to have him put away for good. No messing about. Bang, bang, and on to the broad sunny uplands of the next election, that's what I say."
"But surely," I said, blushing even as I put myself forward, "we have not dealt with the matter of the fee? It could run as high as ten thousand pounds. Whom do we know who would be prepared to back us with that kind of money?"
We were all silent for a time. Then X said, very slowly:
"No individual would take the risk, of course. Nor is the Liberal Party in a position to offer, er, favours to any businesses, industries, property men, that kind of thing, is it? I mean, we're not ever going to be able to put anything their way, are we, or even - "
"Oh, do get on, dear, for heaven's sake!" cried T. "I know you when you've got something up your sleeve."
"And that's not all," said J, who had blown his nose, retouched his eyeliner, and was almost back to his old self.
"All right," said X, smirking rather unappealingly. "There is just one powerful and rich organisation who might be prepared to carry out the mission on our behalf, provided we could offer them something concrete in return!"
We held our breath! We craned! We positively gawped!
"Do we have something concrete to offer?" breathed Lord Z.
X paused for a long time. He can be such a tease, on occasion.
"Well, it's just a silly idea off the top of my thingy," he said, at last, "but how would you feel about some kind of political pact?"

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by Osbert Lancaster
in “The Daily Express”, 20 October 1977

On 19th October 1977, after a year and a half’s quiet for the Liberals, the “Evening News” published an interview with the newly freed Andrew Newton – “I Was Hired to Kill Scott”. This set off a chain of revelations over the next couple of days. Various investigative journalist scrambled to beat each other to the punchline, as the public was reminded of things they may have forgotten in the meantime, alongside new shocking details. A lot of circumspection, however, would result from the fact that Newton only said he had been hired by a nameless “prominent Liberal”, thereby leaving the newspapers hanging, unwilling and unable to make a direct accusation.

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Thorpe had given his resignation as leader of the Liberal party to David Steel on 10 May 1976. In considering how the great man could have been brought down, if you obviously discount the homosexual affair and murder plot, then you find yourself haring after some bloody strange suppositions.

These two cartoons are based on one of the weirder and more curious byways of investigation shooting off the case. Thorpe had been quite outspoken in his criticism of South Africa, and it was suggested at the time that Scott’s allegations were really sponsored by the South African Bureau Of State Security (BOSS) to smear Thorpe’s reputation. Even Harold Wilson, the soon-to-resign Prime Minister, backed up these odd rumours. Of course, this was all a wrong-headed diversion.

Raymond Jackson, however, takes the opportunity to ring the changes on secret gay conspiracies within several days.

“Evening Standard”, 11 May 1976
In the first, the fat, bearded chap on the far right is a stereotypical thuggish South African, and as far from a gay stereotype as possible, hence the surprise of the joke.

“Evening Standard”, 14 May 1976
In this one, JAK offers us a regiment of stereotypical homosexuals, all looking like variations on Dick Emery’s effeminate Clarence character.

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from “The Rutland Dirty Weekend Book” by Eric Idle, 1976

On 1 May, 1976, Scott sued the Metropolitan Police Force for the return of Thorpe’s letters which Scott had given them in 1962. Immediately, Lord Goodman also sued for them, claiming they were Thorpe’s property. The letters were returned to the Thorpe team. In one of the odder, if not stupider, moments of all this, Thorpe then had the letters printed in the “Sunday Times” of 9 May 1976 in an attempt to clear the situation.

The letters included the notoriously puzzling but memorable assertion by Thorpe that "Bunnies can (and will) go to France". The “Sunday Times” also had a psychiatrist analyse the letters, who declared that while they demonstrated some sort of friendly and affectionate relationship between Thorpe and Scott, this did not necessarily indicate outright homosexuality.

The letters did nothing to strengthen Thorpe’s case with his party, as further revelations of semi-regular payments to Scott continued to appear, alongside accusations from ex-colleague Peter Bessel. Thorpe gave his resignation as leader of the Liberal Party to David Steel the very next day on 10 may 1976.

This is from “The Rutland Dirty Weekend Book” by Eric Idle. The first half tries to drum up salacious interest in dreary bread-and-butter letters. The second half plays off that anxiety about using terms of endearment, or even just “dear” whomever, when writing a letter to another man, as was also used in this sketch by Peter Shaffer during the Vassall case

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cover of “Private Eye” 19 March 1976

Andrew Newton’s trial for attempted murder began on the 16 March 1976, and he was sentenced to two years in prison on 19 March 1976. No mention was made at the trial about a conspiracy by Thorpe to murder Scott. Scott repeated his allegations again.

190: Jeremy Thorpe 8

by Marc
in “Private Eye” 20 February 1976

A good example of how middle-class manners didn’t quite know where to establish themselves in the whole farrago. What could be more English than to ride one’s high horse, claiming one’s sympathy is with the dead dog, just about the only concrete fact at that point? Obsessing about the dog gives one slight ethical kudos. One can then pretend to be above prurient sexual curiosity or deny any homophobic disconcertion about Thorpe’s sexuality, or have to pass any judgement at all on a rather confusing scandal.