The Thorpe affair of the 1970s was a British political and sex scandal that ended the career of Jeremy Thorpe, the leader of the Liberal Party and Member of Parliament (MP) for North Devon. The scandal arose from allegations by Norman Josiffe (otherwise known as Norman Scott) that he and Thorpe had a homosexual relationship in the early 1960s, and that Thorpe had begun a badly planned conspiracy to murder Josiffe, who was threatening to expose their affair.
Thorpe, while admitting that the two had been friends, denied any such relationship. With the help of political colleagues and a compliant press, he was able to ensure that rumours of the affair went unreported for more than a decade. Scott's allegations were a persistent threat, however, and by the mid-1970s he was regarded as a danger both to Thorpe and to the Liberal Party, which was then enjoying a resurgence of popularity and was close to a place in government.
Attempts to buy or frighten Scott into silence were unsuccessful, and the problem deepened, until the fallout following the shooting of Scott’s dog during a possible murder attempt by a hired gunman in October 1975 brought the matter into the open. After further newspaper revelations, Thorpe was forced to resign the Liberal leadership in May 1976, and subsequent police investigations led to him being charged, along with three others, with conspiracy to murder Scott. Before the case came to trial, Thorpe lost his parliamentary seat at the 1979 general election.
At the trial in May 1979, the prosecution's case depended heavily on the evidence of Scott, Thorpe's former parliamentary colleague Peter Bessell, and the hired gunman, Andrew Newton. None of these witnesses impressed the court. Bessell's credibility was undermined by the revelations of his financial arrangements with The Sunday Telegraph. In his summing-up the judge was scathing about the prosecution's evidence, and all four defendants were acquitted. Nevertheless, Thorpe's public reputation was damaged irreparably by the case. He had chosen not to testify at the trial, which left several matters unexplained amid public disquiet.
Thorpe's retirement into private life was followed by the onset of Parkinson's disease in the mid-1980s, and he made few public statements afterwards. He eventually achieved a reconciliation with the North Devon Liberal Democrat constituency party, of which he was honorary president from 1988 until his death in 2014. Allegations of suppression of evidence by the police before the trial were under investigation from 2015, culminating in June 2018 when the police said that there was no new evidence and the case would remain closed.
Background
Homosexuality and English law Before the passage of the Sexual Offences Act 1967, which decriminalised most homosexual acts in England and Wales (but did not apply to Scotland or Northern Ireland which had their own laws criminalising homosexuality), all sexual activity between men was illegal throughout the United Kingdom, and carried heavy criminal penalties. Antony Grey, a secretary of the Homosexual Law Reform Society, wrote of "a hideous aura of criminality and degeneracy and abnormality surrounding the matter".
Political figures were particularly vulnerable to exposure; William Field, the Labour MP for Paddington North, was forced to resign his seat in 1953 after a conviction for soliciting in a public lavatory. In the following year Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, the youngest peer in the House of Lords, was imprisoned for a year after being convicted of "gross indecency", victim of a virulent "drive against male vice" led by the Home Secretary, Sir David Maxwell Fyfe.
Four years later public attitudes had changed little. When Ian Harvey, a junior Foreign Office minister in Harold Macmillan's government, was found guilty of indecent behaviour with a Coldstream Guardsman in November 1958, he lost both his ministerial job and his parliamentary seat at Harrow East. He was ostracised by the Conservative Party and by most of his former friends, and never again held a position in public life.Parris, pp. 136–40 Thus, anyone entering politics at that time knew that revelations of homosexual activity would likely bring such a career to a swift end.Chester et al., pp. 31–33
Thorpe
John Jeremy Thorpe was born in 1929, the son and grandson of Conservative MPs. He attended Eton, then studied law at Trinity College, Oxford, where, having decided on a political career, he devoted his main energies to making a personal impact rather than to his studies.Freeman and Penrose, pp. 13–19 Rejecting his Conservative background, he joined the small, centrist Liberal Party—which by the late 1940s was a declining force in British politics, but still offered a national platform and a challenge to an ambitious young politician.Chester et al., pp. 14–15 He became secretary and eventually President of the Oxford Liberal Club, and met many of the party's leading figures. In the Hilary term (January–March) of 1950–51 Thorpe served as President of the Oxford Union.
In 1952, while studying at the Inner Temple prior to his call to the bar, Thorpe was adopted as prospective Liberal parliamentary candidate for the North Devon constituency, a Conservative-held seat where, at the 1951 general election, the Liberals had finished in third place behind Labour.Chester et al., pp. 22–23 Thorpe worked in the constituency tirelessly, using the slogan "A Vote for the Liberals is a Vote for Freedom", and at the 1955 general election, had halved the sitting Conservative MP James Lindsay's majority. Four years later, in October 1959, he captured the seat with a majority of 362, one of six successful Liberals in what was generally an electoral triumph for the Conservative Macmillan government.Chester et al., p. 29
The writer and former MP Matthew Parris described Thorpe as one of the more dashing among the new MPs elected in 1959.Parris, p. 208 Thorpe's chief political interest lay in the field of human rights, and his speeches criticising apartheid in South Africa attracted the attention of the South African Bureau of State Security (BOSS), who took note of this rising star in the Liberal Party. Thorpe was briefly considered as best man at the 1960 wedding of his Eton contemporary Antony Armstrong-Jones to Princess Margaret, but was rejected when vetting checks indicated that he might have homosexual tendencies.Snowdon: The Biography by Anne de Courcy (2008); Weidenfeld & Nicolson. .Chester et al., p. 31 The security agency MI5, which routinely keeps records on all Members of Parliament, added this information to Thorpe's file.Freeman and Penrose, p. 36
Josiffe, later named Scott Norman Josiffe was born in Sidcup, Kent, on 12 February 1940Freeman and Penrose, p. 37.—he did not assume the name Scott until 1967. His mother was Ena Josiffe, née Lynch; Albert Josiffe, her second husband, abandoned the family home soon after Norman's birth. Norman's early childhood was relatively happy and stable. After leaving school at 15 with no qualifications, he acquired a pony by means of an animal charity, and became a competent rider.Chester et al., pp. 34–35Freeman and Penrose, pp. 37–38 When he was 16 he was prosecuted for the theft of a saddle and some pony feed, and was put on probation. With the encouragement of his probation officer he took lessons at Westerham Riding School at Oxted in Surrey, and eventually found work at a stable in Altrincham in Cheshire. After moving there he chose to cut all links with his family, and began to call himself "Lianche-Josiffe" ("Lianche" being a stylised version of "Lynch"). He also hinted at an aristocratic background, and of family tragedies that had left him orphaned and alone.Chester et al., pp. 36–37
In 1959 Josiffe moved to the Kingham Stables in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, where he learned dressage while working as a groom. The stables were owned by Norman Vater, the self-made son of a coalminer who, like Josiffe, had inflated his name and was known as "Brecht Van de Vater". In the course of his rise, Vater had made numerous friends in higher social circles, among them Thorpe. Initially, Josiffe was settled and happy at the stables, but his relationship with Vater deteriorated in the face of the latter's assertive and demanding manner, and he was unable to form good relationships with his fellow-workers.Freeman and Penrose, pp. 39–40 He began to evidence the kind of behaviour which a journalist would later summarise as his "extraordinary talent for wheedling his way into people's sympathy before turning their lives to misery with his hysterical temper-tantrums."
Bessell Peter Bessell, eight years older than Thorpe, had a successful business career before entering Liberal politics in the 1950s. He came to the party leadership's attention in 1955 when, as the Liberal candidate in the Torquay by-election, he substantially increased his party's vote in the first of a series of impressive Liberal results during the 1955–1959 parliament.Cook and Ramsden, pp. 153–54 He was subsequently selected as candidate for the more winnable constituency of Bodmin, and became both an admirer and personal friend of Thorpe, who in turn was impressed by Bessell's apparent business acumen.Freeman and Penrose, p. 90 At Bodmin in the 1959 general election, Bessell reduced the Conservative majority, and he followed this in the October 1964 election with victory by over 3,000 votes. With the prestige of the letters "MP" after his name, Bessell set out in pursuit of serious money-making, while staying close to Thorpe whom he considered the likely next leader of the Liberal Party.Freeman and Penrose, pp. 93–94
Bessell noted that Thorpe, for all his gregariousness and warmth, appeared to have no female friends and lacked any interest in women. The former Liberal MP Frank Owen confided to Bessell his suspicions that Thorpe was homosexual; other West Country Liberals had formed the same opinion.Freeman and Penrose, pp. 91–92 Aware that exposure as a gay man would end Thorpe's career, Bessell became his self-appointed protector, even to the extent, he later said, of falsely claiming to be bisexual, as a means of acquiring his friend's confidence.Freeman and Penrose, pp. 94–96
Holmes David Holmes, one of four assistant treasurers of the Liberal Party appointed by Thorpe in 1965, had been best man at Thorpe's wedding and was completely loyal to him.Freeman and Penrose, pp. 143–46 He was godfather to Thorpe's son Rupert, born in 1969."Liberal leader, Mr Jeremy Thorpe, accused with three other men of conspiracy", The Times, 5 August 1978, p. 1 Holmes took over the role of Thorpe's protector after Bessell moved to the United States in January 1974.Freeman and Penrose, pp. 200–01 When charged in 1978, he was described as David Malcolm Holmes (48), merchant banker, of Eaton Place, Belgravia."Thorpe 'Incited a Friend to Kill'", Belfast Telegraph, 20 November 1978, p. 1Chippindale and Leigh, p. 17 He died in 1990, leaving a substantial fortune."HOLMES David Malcolm died 12 July 1990" in England & Wales: Index of Wills and Administrations, 1990 (1991), p. 4153
Origins Thorpe–Scott friendship