A Very English Scandal - BBC1

[Nick Armstrong]

The final episode on Sunday is to be followed, at 10pm on BBC4, by an updated version of the Panorama programme which was prepared in 1979 for broadcast immediately after the trial, in the confident expectation of a different verdict , but which couldn't be shown. Tom Mangold, now 82, presents. He was ordered to destroy all copies by the DG at the time, but kept one, on VHS, which he later transferred to CD, which was nearly eaten by his dog. Sounds even more remarkable than the TV series, and includes interviews with Scott, Newton and Bissell.

See link in my post #7

[Richard Tarleton]

See link in my post #7

sorry Cali - don't know how I missed that.... Mangold was on Today, today, talking about it......

[Nick Armstrong]

sorry Cali - don't know how I missed that.... Mangold was on Today, today, talking about it......

Yes, and see my #29 - he's cropping up hourly on BBC News 24 too... (And no worries - well worth a bump for what should be an absorbing documentary)

[jean]

And then there's this:

As the BBC TV dramatisation of the Thorpe scandal reaches its denouement this Sunday, millions will ask: why was Jeremy Thorpe acquitted of conspiring to kill Norman Scott? Because the judge was biased in his favour; because of the skill of his barrister, George Carman; or because he was innocent?

None of the above. He was acquitted because of the dirtiest deal in media history, made by a rightwing newspaper. The significance of this deal was revealed by a jury member in the New Statesman, which was then itself prosecuted by the Thatcher government for contempt of court. The magazine’s victory for free speech was reversed when that government passed a law that today remains the only legacy of the Thorpe trial: creating the very British crime of refusing to cover up wrongdoing, at least when it takes place in the jury room. That, along with the verve and panache of the TV show, should now be central to our debate...

[Richard Tarleton]

Yes, and see my #29 - he's cropping up hourly on BBC News 24 too... (And no worries - well worth a bump for what should be an absorbing documentary)

- well, I did sprain my ankle this morning so am not entirely with it .

Riveting stuff, jean.......

[Lat-Literal]

Detailed segment about it all on BBC News 24 - doubtless to be repeated hourly throughout the day. Part "info-mercial" for tomorrow's final episode and documentary (Tom Mangold features heavily in the report), but covering the possible survival of Newton.

In my lawyering days, I had a case concerning another notorious 'very British scandal' in which an organ of the media had proceeded on the basis that all relevant people had died (and hence libel was not a risk as far as they were concerned) only to find that after publication, one of them popped up very much alive, having simply retired to Australia, and promptly sued the entity for libel. A very interesting case indeed, it was.....

I wonder if the lawyers who cleared the Thorpe drama for the BBC on the basis that Newton had died are sweating slightly today

Thank you - and I am mindful of this in any commenting here which I would intend to be appropriate. Let us know if it inadvertently goes pear shaped. It isn't quite clear why Gwent constabulary is in the lead although I recall them cropping up in the news just a few years ago around the time of Savile. Scott, of course, claimed to have been "groomed" when being of what age - 19? So from today's perspective the question would be less about legality than the character of an individual with establishment power vis a vis someone who was a nobody. It is that part rather than sex per se which might suggest establishment abuse. Carman, of course, was prepared to defend Janner but then someone in a professional position had to be and he was professionally one who enjoyed representing unpopular causes from parties in the Battersea funfair disaster onwards. That doesn't absolve any huge cover up.

The mystery around Newton - known as Gino rather than Andrew and one might ask why : I can only think of one Gino at that time and immediately earlier and it is a Geno - Geno Washington - is not so much around his character as who he was in the overall whole. I know that a fairly serious journalist rather than a usual conspiracy theorist noted the name he took on - Hann Redwin - was an anagram of "Winner Hand". One could speculate till the cows come home on if the winning hand was the one in which the trigger jammed - had it not jammed the repercussions would have been considerable - or whether it could refer to the leniency of the judgement. On the surface, the sums of money involved were not immense.

But I am more inclined to see that pseudonym as representing a range of random thoughts combining in one with perhaps some eccentricity. Han Solo of Star Wars of that time may have suggested something identifiable to an atypical pilot. Very many of the letters in Andrew Newton and Hann Redwin are actually the same, down to the three Ns in each case. Just the "ewto" is removed from one and the letters "hi" placed into the other of which I see little meaning. A "red win" could, of course, imply politically that the Labour Party would be expected to benefit but that's not necessarily suggested as a likely priority in the man's character and the greater likelihood with a Liberal vote collapse was a Tory victory in 1979.

Bear in mind that while it didn't seem so at the time so much was riding from the early to mid 70s onwards on whether there would be an old post war cross-party consensus or a new international neo-order, notwithstanding the other option here of a Benn style socialism. We can consider the significant sexual relationship between Jenkins and Crosland a bit later.

[Lat-Literal]

In fact, let's comment on it now.

It would be very many years before the relationship between Jenkins and Crosland, both of whom at slightly different times had considerable potential to take the post-war politics beyond 1979 in opposition to American neo-con forces and Keith Joseph here, would become known to the general public. One was dead and the other was probably almost so at the very least. But the establishment knew about it. It didn't really have any issues with it, not that from today's broader perspective it should have done, or with any other of their other same sex flings apart from the fact that if widely known there could have been a loss of votes. Both went on to marry. Jenkins especially could be more typically characterised as one who enjoyed having affairs with women rather than men. Again, the public didn't know. I would think that the average bloke in 1981 saw him as another family man in the office.

Then you have Heath who was also very much of the post-war consensus. An entirely different sort of individual personally from the other two and who was actually more vulnerable to revelations - the actuality appears to have been rather more salacious for its time and the more recent speculation of an entirely different, darker, hue - and yet who still got to "pole position". There must be a question as to why in that sort of climate the Thorpe business wasn't managed in the same way by the establishment and it all got entirely out of hand.

Was it that he was a Liberal and hence was never likely to become Prime Minister? Was it that he had proven he could get them to such a position in elections where he could be Foreign Secretary, the very idea of which in the sixties would have seemed ludicrous? Was it that while Crosland and Jenkins had moved to women, and Heath was thought to be sexually inactive in the seventies, the problem with Thorpe was that he was sexually active and had a long time irritant of some 15 years while he was also married? One could consider wives here. One feels that Jennifer was somewhat nonchalant in regard to Roy's dalliances, especially heterosexual, and academically worldly wise whereas Marion was simply conventional.

Or was it that Thorpe's indiscretions which today would be regarded as adult were permitted to become ever darker and in the full public glare to take the spotlight off an establishment which was actually far darker still and that, loathsome or not, he and indeed Scott were the patsies of that establishment in many ways. Carman, of course, is also remembered as representing Al-Fayed against Neil and Christine Hamilton, a trial if ever there was one involving not a great deal of dark substance on either side, whatever you might think of them, but perhaps in many respects a useful steer away from Ian Greer. If only we could ask one who died in a car crash in the late '90s, she could perhaps tell us. And she probably would.

So, what I sense is that child offending spanned the old post-war establishment and the post 1979 international regime. Consequently, the new could not fully defeat the old on those grounds and in any case it would if tried cause such a furore that in Britain at least Foot and Wedgie Benn would have been in power. But timing wise, the public had not got to grips - or been allowed to get with grips - with the sexual reform of 1967. That it had done so to a degree was sufficient that the mere revelation of adult homosexuality was not, as it would have been in '66, able to bring someone down. Consequently, what was needed was someone who was not in management of his own marital and sexual affairs and something stronger - the alleged decision to murder - to stop him in his tracks. That would enable the new order to seem whiter than white when graver actual child offending was thought to be beyond scrutiny.

My conclusions are: Thorpe was a loathsome sort, Scott often played it but ultimately was to be seen as sympathetic, and what they were really facilitating unwittingly was huge political change in which the lefties were to be kept out, the neo-cons were not merely ushered in but seen as for long-term betterment, and greater abuses were to remain unchallengeable. And that there is a very weird thing about Al-Fayed. He can often be rightly seen by some as cut-throat, conniving, manipulative and deeply unpleasant but he was always the nation's potential sweetheart for changing Britain. It would have been deeply painful for the public. It would have been far worse for the establishment. The telling point was that it feared how the deeply modern capitalist motives in his personality were beginning to combine with a foothold in - and it could never be allowed to happen. The ironies are too numerous to mention.

[LeMartinPecheur]

It's now been reported that the 'hit-man', previously thought to have died, may in fact still be alive. The plot thickens.....

BBC: "Jeremy Thorpe probe to re-open"https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ent...b010565aac2d8a

[LMcD]

Episode 3 was just as good as the previous 2....A fabulous performance, I thought, from Ben Whishaw.
(Am I alone in seeing a striking similarity between Blake Harrison, who plays Mr. Newton, and Eric Idle?)

[jean]

No you aren't - the similarity would be hard to miss.

In that election clip of Auberon Waugh standing against Thorpe for the Dog Lovers' Party, was that the real Waugh we saw?

It did remind me of how disgracefully homophobic was Private Eye's revelling in the case:

http://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2018/06/jeremy-thorpe-and-private-eye.html

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

In that election clip of Auberon Waugh standing against Thorpe for the Dog Lovers' Party, was that the real Waugh we saw?

AW died in 2001.

[LMcD]

No you aren't - the similarity would be hard to miss.

In that election clip of Auberon Waugh standing against Thorpe for the Dog Lovers' Party, was that the real Waugh we saw?

It did remind me of how disgracefully homophobic was Private Eye's revelling in the case:



http://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2018...ivate-eye.html

According to the review in The Guardian: 'Yes, that was the Auberon Waugh' .....

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

According to the review in The Guardian: 'Yes, that was the Auberon Waugh' .....

Sorry - I must have misunderstood; to which "clip" is reference being made?

[jean]

The shot of the announcing of the election results when the Tory beat Thorpe.

It seems more likely that they could have substituted Grant for Thorpe than that they went to the trouble of finding a Waugh lookalike.

AW died in 2001.

But Thorpe lost his seat in 1979!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The shot of the announcing of the election results when the Tory beat Thorpe.
It seems more likely that they could have substituted Grant for Thorpe than that they went to the trouble of finding a Waugh lookalike.

Oh, at around 19mins 30"? - I had presumed the opposite: easier (and cheaper) to get an extra to fill in for the few seconds than to splice into archive footage. ( It didn't even need to be much of a "lookalike", as I would imagine that not many people remember AW's features particularly well.) But far from me to argue with The Guardian!