The Jeremy Thorpe Scandal (2018 TV Movie)

Tom Mangold: Self - Reporter

Quotes 

• [talking about the reaction of Reginald Maudling, the Home Secretary, when he was shown Thorpe's "Bunnies" letter to Scott] 

  Tom Mangold : He read it, held it and mused that he now had Thorpe's career in his hands. Far from wrecking it, he decided to help him out.

• [Andrew Newton has been jailed for shooting Norman Scott's dog, but the attempt to murder Scott is still secret] 

  Tom Mangold : By several strokes of good fortune, Thorpe's attempts to have Scott murdered had remained covered up. So, as a bonus, had details of his affair with Norman Scott. It might have stayed like that, but for one totally unplanned and unexpected development. Out in California, Peter Bessell, the loyal retainer and troubleshooter for thirteen years, finally decided enough was enough. Bessell knew it was now time to tell all.

  Peter Bessell : The most difficult decision I've ever had to make in my life was the fact that all that I knew was because Jeremy trusted me. In other words, I had not picked up my information by hearsay or third parties - it was direct knowledge given to me on the basis that he trusted me totally. So that made it a very hard decision. But we moved from an area of private cover-up of somebody's private life into an area where it was now a cover-up of an attempt at murder. There's a point at which all of us stop, and that was the point at which I stopped. It was a very rough decision to make, but it was one I *had* to make.

• [talking about the bias shown by the judge at Thorpe's trial] 

  Tom Mangold : The judge, Mr Justice Cantley, in one of the most astonishingly partial summing-up speeches ever to a jury, attacked all of the main prosecution witnesses. Peter Bessell, he said, was a humbug. Andrew Newton, the gunman, a buffoon, perjurer and almost certainly a fraud. And Norman Scott, a crook, fraud, sponger, whiner and parasite. Jeremy Thorpe, by contrast, was a national figure with a very distinguished public record. If there was any reasonable doubt that Thorpe had a plan to kill Norman Scott, you will acquit, the judge told the jury. And they did.

• [following Jeremy Thorpe's death, Dennis Meighan has contacted Tom Mangold and admitted that he was the original gunman hired to kill Norman Scott; only after he lost his nerve did he hand his gun to Andrew Newton to complete the job] 

  Tom Mangold : When Newton was arrested in 1975, he gave Meighan's name to the police. Meighan says he gave a statement, he believes to the Metropolitan Police. In it, he says he admitted everything about the contract and the conspiracy to murder Scott. But a few weeks later, Dennis Meighan says he received a strange anonymous phone call inviting him to a police station of his choice. So he went to Brentford and was handed a brand-new statement.

  Dennis Meighan : They give me the envelope and told me to go into one of the interrogation rooms. And I read the statement, which did me no end of favours - but it did Jeremy Thorpe no end of favours as well because it left him completely out of it. So I thought "Well I;ve got to sign this".

  Tom Mangold : But it excludes everything you said about Jeremy Thorpe and the Liberal party, and it takes you off the hook.

  Dennis Meighan : Yes, that's absolutely right. That's why I signed it.

  Tom Mangold : So the effect was, you would never appear in court.

• [talking about the admission that Meighan made in a radio broadcast following Thorpe's death] 

  Norman Scott : I knew there was something to do with Thorpe. There were five different attempts and I was aware of two of them.

  Tom Mangold : And were you ever invited to go to Florida?

  Norman Scott : Yes indeed. The plan was really to get me there and then out me into a helicopter and drop me in the Everglades.

  Tom Mangold : I'm sorry, I'm laughing. I'm not being disrespectful, but they weren't kidding, were they?

  Norman Scott : No they were not. And another one was to get me drunk, I'd fall off the stool and then they would pick me up, take me me out of the pub and then drop me down a tin mine in Cornwall. It's laughable. It's also *very* very serious.

• [final summing up of programme] 

  Tom Mangold : Forty years after the failed attempt to murder Norman Scott, and Britain has become a much more tolerant society. And yet we *still* don't know who had the power and authority to tip the scales of evidence in Jeremy Thorpe's favour, helping him to escape conviction. What we *do* know is that it took a heck of a lot of doing and was then and remains to this day the real Jeremy Thorpe scandal.

• [introduction] 

  Tom Mangold : The programme you're about to see has remained secret almost forty years. It was made here at the old BBC Television Centre but not broadcast. The master copy was put under lock and key. Other copies were ordered to be destroyed by the then Director General, but I as the reporter didn't follow those instructions. I kept a copy and hoped there would come a day when viewers would see it. Tonight, finally, we've reached that point. And here's the story. In 1979, Panorama and BBC Television News spent months investigating the background to the sensational trial of former Liberal leader, Jeremy Thorpe, for a special programme. Thorpe, along with three others, was accused of conspiring to murder his former gay lover Norman Scott, also known as Norman Josiffe.

  Norman Scott : [archive voiceover]  He levelled it at me and then came back, and I suddenly realised that he *was* going to shoot me as well.

  Tom Mangold : We believed that a guilty verdict against Thorpe was a certainty, but when the resounding verdicts of not guilty against all the defendants were returned, the programme was halted on legal grounds.

  Tom Mangold : [archive interview]  Does it occur to you now that you and the Home Secretary of the day were sitting down and conspiring to pervert the course of justice?

  Peter Bessell : [archive interview]  *At the time* it occurred to me, never mind today.

  Tom Mangold : Today there's a strong and widespread view that the Thorpe verdict was a miscarriage of justice, and we're now broadcasting an edited version of the programme. I've waited forty years to tell you the real Jeremy Thorpe story. Tonight's the night - at last.