John Jeremy Thorpe (born April 29, 1929) is a British politician, who was leader of the Liberal Party from 1967 to 1976. He is best remembered for losing his post and his seat in Parliament as a result of charges brought against him of incitement and conspiracy to murder an alleged former gay lover, of which he was subsequently acquitted. April 29 is the 119th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (120th in leap years). ... 1929 (MCMXXIX) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... This article is about the historic Liberal Party. ... 1967 (MCMLXVII) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar (the link is to a full 1967 calendar). ... 1976 (MCMLXXVI) was a leap year starting on Thursday. ... The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. ...

Politics

The son of John Henry Thorpe and a maternal grandson of Sir John Norton-Griffiths (both Conservative Members of Parliament), he was educated at Eton College and then at Trinity College, Oxford, where he studied Law. He was very politically and socially active at Oxford, becoming Chairman of the Liberal Club and the Law Society and finally becoming President of the Oxford Union in 1951. He was called to the bar in 1954, working back-to-back as a TV interviewer. John Henry Thorpe OBE (7 August 1887–31 October 1944) was a British, Conservative politician. ... Colonel John Norton-Griffiths, known as Empire Jack or sometimes Hell-fire Jack, was a British soldier in World War I. Using the experience from a successful engineering career, Norton-Griffiths built many fortifications for the Entente on the Western Front. ... The Conservative Party (officially the Conservative & Unionist Party) is currently the second largest political party in the United Kingdom in terms of sitting Members of Parliament (MPs), and the largest in terms of public membership. ... A Member of Parliament, or MP, is a representative elected by the voters of an electoral district to a parliament; in the Westminster system, specifically to the lower house. ... The Kings College of Our Lady of Eton, commonly known as Eton College or just Eton, is an internationally renowned Public School (privately-funded and independent) for male students, founded in 1440 by Henry VI. It is located in Eton, Berkshire (traditionally part of Buckinghamshire), near Windsor in England... College name Trinity College Named after The Holy Trinity Established 1555 Sister College Churchill College President Sir Ivor Roberts KCMG MA JCR President Kushal Banerjee Undergraduates 298 MCR President Andrew Ng Graduates 105 Homepage Boatclub Trinity College (in full: The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity in the University... Oxford Union The Oxford Union Society, commonly referred to simply as the Oxford Union, is a private debating society in the city of Oxford, whose membership is drawn primarily but not exclusively from the University of Oxford. ... 1951 (MCMLI) was a common year starting on Monday; see its calendar. ... 1954 (MCMLIV) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Thorpe was adopted as Liberal candidate for the Conservative-held North Devon constituency in 1952. In the 1955 General Election he managed to halve the Conservative majority, paving the way towards his narrow victory in the subsequent 1959 General Election. He remained MP for North Devon for the next 20 years. Creation 1832 MP Nicholas Harvey Party Liberal Democrat Type House of Commons County Devon EP constituency South West England North Devon (or sometimes Devon North) is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. ... The 1955 United Kingdom general election was held on May 26, 1955, four years after the previous general election. ... This United Kingdom general election was held on October 8, 1959, and marked a third successive victory for the ruling Conservative party, led by Harold MacMillan. ...

In 1965, he became Liberal Party Treasurer and, following Jo Grimond's resignation in 1967, was elected party leader with the support of 6 of the 12 Liberal MPs. Thorpe's style, in contrast to Grimond's intellectualism, was youthful and dynamic, and was sometimes ridiculed as too gimmicky. He was, however, a staunch defender of human rights, as examplified by his prominent role in the Anti-Apartheid Movement. He was also a key figure in the campaign for Britain to join the Common Market. 1965 (MCMLXV) was a common year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1965 calendar). ... Joseph Jo Grimond, Baron Grimond (July 29, 1913 - October 24, 1993) was a British politician, leader of the Liberal Party from 1956 to 1967 and again briefly in 1976. ... 1967 (MCMLXVII) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar (the link is to a full 1967 calendar). ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... The European Community (EC), most important of two European Communities, was originally founded on March 25, 1957 by the signing of the Treaty of Rome under the name of European Economic Community. ...

A colourful character, Thorpe was renowned for his assortment of Edwardian suits, silk waistcoats and trilby hats, as well as being a noted raconteur and impressionist. He famously commented on the subject of Harold Macmillan's Night of the Long Knives: "Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his friends for his life". Critics argued that he was little more than a political lightweight, but Thorpe was undoubtedly a popular figure. The Edwardian period or Edwardian era in the United Kingdom is the period 1901 to 1910, the reign of King Edward VII. It is sometimes extended to include the period to the start of World War I in 1914 or even the end of the war in 1918. ... Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, OM, PC (10 February 1894 – 29 December 1986), was a British Conservative politician and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1963. ... The epithet Night of the Long Knives is given to July 13, 1962, when the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan sacked the following members of his Cabinet: Lord Kilmuir — Lord Chancellor Selwyn Lloyd — Chancellor of the Exchequer David Eccles — Minister of Education Harold Arthur Watkinson — Minister of Defence John Scott...

The 1970 general election was a disaster for Thorpe's Liberals, as their number of MPs more than halved from 13 to 6 (with 3, Thorpe included, only surviving on tiny majorities), which led to opponents' jibes that the entire parliamentary party could fit in one taxi -- a joke which was expanded to two taxis after the election of the extremely corpulent Cyril Smith as MP for Rochdale. But between 1972 and 1974, Thorpe led the Liberals to an impressive string of byelection victories, at Rochdale, Sutton and Cheam, Ripon, the Isle of Ely, and Berwick. In the General Election of February 1974, the Liberals ended up with 14 seats, and 19.3% of the vote, with some opinion polls at times even placing the party as high as 30%. This is in contrast to the 8.5% of the vote which the Liberals got in the 1966 General Election, prior to Thorpe's election as leader. The Liberals won 14 seats in the hung parliament which arose from the election, but with a large separate Ulster Unionist party, did not quite hold the balance of power. The United Kingdom general election of 1970 was held on June 18, 1970, and resulted in a surprise loss of power for Labour under Harold Wilson, who was replaced as Prime Minister by the Conservative leader, Edward Heath. ... You might also be seeking the metallurgist Cyril Stanley Smith Sir Cyril Smith (born 28th June 1928) was a British Liberal Party politician. ... 1972 (MCMLXXII) was a leap year starting on Saturday. ... 1974 (MCMLXXIV) was a common year starting on Tuesday. ... Rochdale is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. ... Sutton and Cheam is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. ... Ripon was a constituency which returned two Members of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom until 1868, and one member thereafter. ... Isle of Ely is a former constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, centred on the Isle of Ely in Cambridgeshire. ... Berwick-upon-Tweed is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. ... The UK general election of February 1974 was held on February 28, 1974. ... In Parliamentary systems, a hung parliament is one in which no one political party has an outright majority. ... The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP, sometimes referred to as the Official Unionist Party or OUP) is a political party in Northern Ireland representing the unionist community, and was the party of government in Northern Ireland between 1921 and 1972. ...

In the subsequent negotiations with the Conservatives, Thorpe was offered a seat in the Cabinet as Home Secretary by Prime Minister Edward Heath as part of a coalition deal, but declined when it was clear the Liberal Party and many who had voted for it were not enthusiastic about keeping Heath in power. Thorpe pushed for significant commitments toward electoral reform, which Heath would not accede to. Equally damningly, any Conservative-Liberal coalition would still be a few seats short of a majority, meaning the government would be unlikely to survive for long. The prospective coalition therefore collapsed before it started. The Secretary of State for the Home Department, commonly known as the Home Secretary, is the minister in charge of the United Kingdom Home Office and is responsible for internal affairs in England and Wales, and for immigration and citizenship for the whole United Kingdom (including Scotland and Northern Ireland). ... A prime minister is the most senior minister of a cabinet in the executive branch of government in a parliamentary system. ... Sir Edward Richard George Heath, KG, MBE (9 July 1916 – 17 July 2005), soldier and politician, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1970 to 1974 and leader of the Conservative Party from 1965 to 1975. ... A coalition is an alliance among entities, during which they cooperate in joint action, each in their own self-interest. ...

Rinkagate: Private life & public scandal

In 1968, Thorpe married his first wife, Caroline Allpass, with whom he had a son, Rupert. Tragically, Caroline died in a car crash in 1970. He married his second wife, Marion, a former concert pianist and the former wife of the 7th Earl of Harewood in 1973. Marion Donata Stein (born 18 October 1926) was an Austrian concert pianist and operatic singer. ... George Lascelles, 7th Earl of Harewood (born 7 February 1923) is the elder son of Henry Lascelles, 6th Earl of Harewood (1882-1947), and Mary, Princess Royal, the only daughter of King George V of the United Kingdom and Queen Mary. ...

Persistent rumours about Thorpe's sexuality dogged his political career, particularly in relation to an alleged homosexual affair with Norman Scott, a former male model. Scott claimed that he had met Thorpe in 1961 while working as a stable lad, and had a homosexual relationship with him between 1961 and 1963, at a time when homosexual acts were still illegal in Britain. Scott's airing of these claims led to an enquiry within the Liberal Party in 1971, which exonerated Thorpe. Scott, however, continued to make the allegations. Since its coinage, the word homosexuality has acquired multiple meanings. ... Norman Scott was a male model whom accused the then Liberal Party Leader Jeremy Thorpe, his former lover, and three others of his attempted murder. ...

In October 1975, while walking a friend's female Great Dane (called "Rinka") on Exmoor, Scott was confronted by Andrew "Gino" Newton, a former airline pilot, who was armed with a gun. Newton shot and killed the dog, which had been loaned to Scott for protection, then pointed the gun at Scott, but it apparently failed to go off. The subsequent scandal embroiled Thorpe and became known as "Rinkagate". The Great Dane is a breed of dog known for its large size and gentle personality. ... Dunster Yarn Market (a covered market for the sale of local cloth, built in 1609) and Dunster Castle, Exmoor Exmoor National Park is a national park situated on the Bristol Channel coast of Devon and Somerset in South West England. ...

Newton was convicted of the offence in March 1976. Scott used his Court appearance to once again air his claims of a relationship with Thorpe, alleging that Thorpe had threatened to kill him if he spoke about the affair. Scott also sold letters to the press which he claimed to be love letters from Thorpe, including the memorable line "Bunnies can and will go to France". The scandal led to Thorpe resigning as leader of the Liberal Party on May 9, 1976. He was replaced temporarily by Jo Grimond and then on a permanent basis by David Steel. May 9 is the 129th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (130th in leap years). ... 1976 (MCMLXXVI) was a leap year starting on Thursday. ... Joseph Jo Grimond, Baron Grimond (July 29, 1913 - October 24, 1993) was a British politician, leader of the Liberal Party from 1956 to 1967 and again briefly in 1976. ... David Martin Scott Steel, Baron Steel of Aikwood KT PC KBE (born March 31, 1938) is a British and Scottish politician and a Liberal Democrat member of the UK House of Lords. ...

Upon his release from prison in April 1977, Andrew Newton revived the scandal by claiming that he had been hired as a hit-man to kill Norman Scott. On August 4, 1978, Thorpe was accused along with David Holmes (deputy Treasurer of the Liberal Party), George Deakin (a night club owner) and John Le Mesurier (a carpet tycoon, not the Dad's Army star) of conspiracy to murder. Thorpe was also separately accused of inciting Holmes to murder Scott. August 4 is the 216th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (217th in leap years), with 149 days remaining. ... 1978 (MCMLXXVIII) was a common year starting on Sunday. ... John Le Mesurier (Bedford, 5th April 1912 – 15th November, 1983), born John Charles Elton Le Mesurier De Somerys Halliley, was a British actor. ...

Thorpe's political career could not withstand the scandal, and he lost his parliamentary seat in the general election of 1979, which came just a week before his trial. The election is remembered for the unsuccessful candidacy of Auberon Waugh, representing the "Dog Lovers' Party". Margaret Thatcher James Callaghan David Steel The UK general election, 1979 was held on May 3, 1979 and is regarded as a pivotal point in 20th century British politics. ... Auberon Alexander Waugh (November 17, 1939 – January 16, 2001) was a British author and journalist. ...

One of those who claimed an inside knowledge of the conspiracy was former Liberal MP and failed businessman Peter Bessell, who claimed to have been involved in some discussions regarding the conspiracy within the Liberal Party. According to Bessell, who later sold his story to the press, poison had been rejected as a method of assassinating Scott because 'it would raise too many questions if he fell dead off a barstool'. One alleged plan had been to shoot Scott in Cornwall and dispose of the body down a disused tinmine.^[1] A Member of Parliament, or MP, is a representative elected by the voters of an electoral district to a parliament; in the Westminster system, specifically to the lower house. ... Cornwall (Cornish: Kernow) is a county in South West England on the peninsula that lies to the west of the River Tamar. ...

Bessell agreed to appear as a witness in exchange for immunity from prosecution. His testimony was somewhat undermined, however, when it was found that he had sold his story to The Sunday Telegraph for a fee which would increase if the prosecution was successful. Thorpe did not testify in the case, but his legal team argued that although he and Scott had been friends, there had been no sexual element to their relationship. The defence claimed that Scott had nevertheless undertaken a campaign of blackmail against Thorpe, and that although Thorpe and his friends had discussed 'frightening' Scott into silence, they had never conspired to kill him. This article deals with The Daily Telegraph in Britain, see The Daily Telegraph (Australia) for the Australian publication The Daily Telegraph is a British broadsheet newspaper founded in 1855. ...

Summing up the case, Mr Justice Cantley was widely criticised for showing a nakedly pro-establishment bias, in which he described Scott as "a crook, an accomplished liar ...a fraud". The summing up was at once mercilessly and famously satirised by Peter Cook during his performance at The Secret Policeman's Ball in a piece which has become known as Entirely a Matter for You. In spite of the Judge's direction, the jury were at first split 6-6, but, following 15 hours of deliberation, they finally reached a verdict of not guilty. The four defendants were all acquitted on June 22, 1979. Peter Edward Cook (17 November 1937–9 January 1995) was an English satirist, writer and comedian who is widely regarded as the leading figure in the British satire boom of the 1960s. ... The Secret Policemans Ball is the collective name for a series of fund raising performances featuring big-name comedians and musicians and other celebrities, held at various London venues, and once at a Nottingham television studio, to raise money for (and awareness of) Amnesty International. ... June 22 is the 173rd day of the year (174th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 192 days remaining. ... This page refers to the year 1979. ...

Not long after the end of the trial, Thorpe was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease and retired from public life. For the past twenty years, his disease has been at an advanced stage. He did, however, manage to make an appearance at the funeral of Roy Jenkins in 2003. Roy Harris Jenkins, Baron Jenkins of Hillhead, OM, PC (November 11, 1920 – January 5, 2003) was a British politician and a prominent Labour Member of Parliament in the 1960s and 1970s, and founding member of the Social Democratic Party (SDP). ...

In 1999, Thorpe published a set of memoirs entitled "In My Own Time", in which he described key episodes in his political life. He did not, however, shed any further light on the "Rinkagate" affair. Thorpe has never made any public statements regarding his sexual orientation.

In 2002, questions were asked on the BBC programme Newsnight about Jack Straw's involvement in "Rinkagate", after a tape-recording surfaced of Harold Wilson discussing the scandal and saying: "Look, I saw Jack Straw, he's very worried if he were mentioned in this context, he thinks he'll be finished." [1] According to the diary of Barbara Castle, Secretary of State for Social Security, Wilson had asked her to examine Norman Scott's social security file to see if it contained any indications that he was working as part of a conspiracy against Thorpe. Straw informed Castle that when he went to examine Scott's file, he found it was missing. The journalist Barrie Penrose has alleged that Straw subsequently leaked information from the file to the media. Straw remains silent on that matter but has denied accusations from Joe Haines, that Wilson asked him to read the files in order to gather information that could be used to smear Thorpe. At the time, the general view, promoted in particular by Private Eye, was that Wilson was using his position and influence to help and protect Thorpe and certainly not to smear him. In a BBC2 documentary on 16 March 2006, Penrose revealed that he pursued or stumbled on the murder allegations in the course of following leads from Harold Wilson, who wanted to prompt an investigation into the role of security services in destabilizing his government. The documentary suggested that Wilson's original perception and intention was to help rather than undermine Thorpe, believing that he was also an intended victim of a right-wing plot by a rogue element in MI5.[2] The British Broadcasting Corporation, invariably known as the BBC (and also informally known as the Beeb or Auntie) is the largest broadcasting corporation in the world, employing 26,000 staff in the UK alone and with a budget of £4 billion. ... Newsnight is a British daily news analysis, current affairs and politics programme broadcast between 22:30 and 23:20 on weekdays on BBC Two. ... John Whitaker Jack Straw M.P. (born August 3, 1946, Buckhurst Hill) is a British Labour Party politician. ... James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, KG, OBE, FRS, PC (11 March 1916 – 24 May 1995) was one of the most prominent British politicians of the 20th century. ... Barbara Castle, Baroness Castle of Blackburn (October 6, 1910 – May 3, 2002), British left-wing politician, was born Barbara Anne Betts in Bradford, Yorkshire, and adopted her familys politics, joining the Labour Party. ... Private eye may mean: Look up Private eye on Wiktionary, the free dictionary Private Eye a fortnightly British satirical magazine-newspaper, edited by Ian Hislop (as of 2005) A private investigator, a private detective for hire (see also crime fiction and detective fiction) Private Eye, a song by Alkaline Trio... March 16 is the 75th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (76th in Leap years). ... 2006 (MMVI) is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Further reading

• Peter Bessell, Cover-Up: The Jeremy Thorpe Affair (Simons Books, 1980) - privately printed and limited to 2,000 copies
• Lewis Chester, Magnus Linklater and David May, Jeremy Thorpe: A Secret Life (Fontana, 1979) - mostly written before the trial on the assumption of a guilty verdict, and hastily rewritten under the supervision of libel lawyers
• Roger Courtier and Barrie Penrose, The Pencourt Files (HarperCollins, 1978)
• Simon Freeman and Barrie Penrose, Rinkagate: The Rise and Fall of Jeremy Thorpe (Bloomsbury, 1996) - probably the most comprehensive accumulation of sources
• Matthew Parris, Great Parliamentary Scandals (Robson Books, 1995)
• Jeremy Thorpe, In My Own Time (Politico's, 1999)
• Auberon Waugh, The Last Word: An Eye-witness Account of the Thorpe Trial (Michael Joseph, 1980)

Since the early 1990s, Thorpe and his closest friends have also collaborated with historian Michael Bloch on an authorised biography, and have reputedly been more candid than before on the events surrounding the Scott allegations, on the understanding that nothing would be published until after Thorpe's death. Between 2001 and 2004 there was a lengthy legal battle as Bloch reneged on his promise and repeatedly attempted to go ahead with publication in Thorpe's lifetime. On each occasion, court orders have successfully halted publication. [3] [4] 1980 (MCMLXXX) was a leap year starting on Tuesday. ... This page refers to the year 1979. ... 1978 (MCMLXXVIII) was a common year starting on Sunday. ... 1996 (MCMXCVI) was a leap year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty. ... 1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1999 (MCMXCIX) was a common year starting on Friday, and was designated the International Year of Old Farts by the Sometimes-United Nations. ... 1980 (MCMLXXX) was a leap year starting on Tuesday. ... See also 1990s, the band Germans dancing on the Berlin Wall in late 1989, the symbol of the cold war divide falls down as the world unites in the 1990s. ... 2001: A Space Odyssey. ... 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Notes

1. ^ Bessell's allegations are contained in a book by journalists Roger Courtiour and Barrie Penrose, entitled The Pencourt File.

A full account of the trial of Jeremy Thorpe can be found in No Ordinary Man by Dominic Carman, published in 2002 by Hodder & Stoughton. Hodder & Stoughton is a British publishing house, now an imprint of Hodder Headline. ...