We believe what we want to believe. In the 1970's, Jeremy Thorpe was my favourite politician and I didn't want to believe that idealistic Liberals arranged to have troublesome people's dogs shot (1). I clung, like a drowning man to a disintegrating raft, to Harold Wilson's claim that it was all a plot by the South African government to discredit the anti-apartheid cause. It wasn't, though.
Even during Michael Bloch's biography and John Preston's televised A Very English Scandal, I still had some regard for the charismatic charlatan in his struggles to rid himself of the feckless pest, Norman Scott, as one might be led into sympathy for an anti-hero on the run in a Hitchcock film.
Quentin Letts, in The Times, said he 'believed about half of' Norman Scott's account, published only now at the age of 82, but Mr. Letts is one of those who doesn't entertain versions of the world that are not as he imagines it and, being 'libertarian' rather than liberal, he is steadfastly still of that same 'establishment' that saved Jeremy Thorpe, who was 'one of them', in a travesty of justice.
I can't see what there is to disbelieve about Scott's detailed report. He was itinerant, unstable, with a dysfunctional family background and by nature a victim, it seems, and so easy prey for a manipulative predator with a sense of entitlement like Thorpe. Scott has such anxieties that he took vast quantities of pills for his nerves but in due course he had good reason to be anxious. There were people out there who were trying to kill him but if much of this book is the story we had already been told from a different point of view, I don't think we knew that Norman had considered killing Thorpe a long time before the compliment was returned and the farcical episodes of shady money men and incompetent hitmen unravelled so badly. It is only the minor characters that are likeable and they emigrate out of the picture as soon as they can or, like the Great Dane, Rinka, become innocent collateral damage.
Thorpe was a fantasist addicted to high risk. Duplicitous, ambitious but with a talent for publicity, it is surprising that he thought he could become Prime Minister via the route of the leadership of the ramshackle Liberal Party with its 12 seats in the Commons, or that he could marry Princess Margaret. By now we know that the first ambition, at least, can be achieved by mendacity on an industrial scale but you need to be in the Conservative Party.
Scott's nature made him naturally vulnerable and, like many who have difficulties with other humans, he found great solace in the more reliable companionship of animals, mostly horses and dogs, and had considerable success in dressage and other equestrian events. To adapt Oscar Wilde's line, he might have been in the gutter but he mixed with stars in the society of Francis Bacon, in the infamous Colony Room Club, and he manages to include Margot Fonteyn in his litany of friends.
But the item at the very centre of the story is his National Insurance cards which are withheld by a previous employer and Thorpe is chronically undertaking to retrieve for him. Without such, he can't get legitimate work but Thorpe never comes up with the goods. It is a story so outlandish that Shakespeare, Franz Kakfa or Cervantes would have decided against using it but fiction is a pale imitation of fact. When Norman talks about 'hitting rock bottom', he knows what he's talking about, having once used a public toilet in Barnstaple to sleep in.
Beneath the ongoing traumas of Scott's life is the leitmotif of all the people and animals that are credited with being the sweetest-natured of any he ever encountered but they always, until his partner of 26 years standing, either leave him (perfectly understandably) or he loses them as his life moves on from one rented, country beauty spot with stables to the next short-term refuge. But he has enough resilience to be left to tell the tale and reflect on Thorpe's brilliant House of Commons speech in 1962 when Harold MacMillan sacked seven members of his cabinet and Thorpe said,
' Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his friends for his life.'
which is precisely what Thorpe did when his case came to trial.
Our lives are all possibly the story of our loss of innocence, however gradually it happens. It might be best to begin with as little as possible of it to lose and be born with the cynicism and self-seeking of Boris, Trump and, indeed, Jeremy Thorpe but what sort of world would that be. A number of long-standing heroes of mine have had to be demoted from that status over the years but none as utterly and comprehensively as Thorpe and the seismic effect continues to rumble on. I didn't always vote Liberal when Labour or Green seemed preferable options but I regarded the non-conformist, radical agenda as my natural place. I'm not even sure I do that any more and maybe the satirists and those worried about the threat from wholesome, well-meaning vegetarians were right and the Liberal Party was just where a disparate agglomeration mis-fits gathered. I don't know.
Footnote
1. page 266, People felt sorry for Jeremy and perhaps they weren't prepared to question his character because it would mean changing their ideals.
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