George Carman
The man who saved Jeremy Thorpe in the ‘trial of the century’
George Carman and Jeremy Thorpe first met at Oxford University in 1951. In the Hilary term, Thorpe was president of the union and did the unknown Carman the honour of inviting him to be one of the main speakers in a debate. Twenty-eight years later, at the Old Bailey, Carman would return the gesture by defending Thorpe, who had spent seven years as leader of the Liberal Party, of the crime of conspiracy to murder. The case reverberated far beyond Westminster – and has now been turned into a BBC series,
A Very English Scandal, starring Hugh Grant.
Thorpe and Carman had been at adjacent colleges divided only by a wall; Carman at Balliol and Thorpe at rival Trinity. But they were also separated by a wall of class. Thorpe’s father and grandfather had been Conservative MPS and he went to Eton. Carman had grown up in Blackpool, where his mother owned a millinery shop. There was something darkly ruthless about Thorpe. While still at Eton, he cut a swathe with his wit, cloak and frequent proclamations that he would be prime minister one day.
Yet, at Oxford, the Bullingdon Club did not approach him. Thorpe set his sights on becoming union president, but even that was not achieved without a degree of chicanery and he was referred to as the “artful dodger”. Student newspaper Cherwell wrote: “Above all he has courage – a fearlessness that sometimes leads to recklessness”. Cherwell also praised Carman, but noted his “fine quietness”. Little did they know that, less than 30 years on, Carman would save Thorpe’s neck with that soft-spoken brilliance.
In 1952, both men graduated: Carman with a first and Thorpe with a third. Intent on becoming barristers, both went to London. Thorpe joined the Inner Temple, where he was popular – having already been selected as a Liberal candidate for North Devon – but not hard-working. Carman went to Lincoln’s Inn, where he won the Certificate of Honour. Yet he found it hard to make ends meet and was obliged to return to Manchester, where he gained a reputation for obtaining large settlements in personal injury cases.
So what brought these two men back together in 1979? A case that was to be dubbed “The Trial of the Century”.
Thorpe was elected as an MP in 1959 and then succeeded Jo Grimond as party leader. The public loved him as a witty panellist on Any Questions?. What they didn’t know was that he had a habit of picking up young men in bars. Despite this, he married Caroline Allpass in May 1968 and they had a son, Rupert. Caroline was killed in a car crash in 1970. Three years later, Thorpe married Marion, former wife of the Earl of Harewood.
It had long been believed that Thorpe had “homosexual tendencies”, but no newspaper had written it, fearing libel. A stable groom, Norman Scott – then known as Norman Josiffe – had claimed an affair with Thorpe starting in 1961 (even consensual homosexual acts were illegal until 1967) and that Thorpe had tried to have him murdered if he spoke about it. The alleged facts of the case are bizarre – almost beyond belief.
In October 1975, Andrew Newton, a former pilot turned hitman, collected Norman Scott and drove him to Exmoor. There, Newton stopped the car and shot Scott’s Great Dane, Rinka, before turning the gun on Scott.
When the case came before Exeter Crown Court, in March 1976, Scott said the gun had jammed and Newton drove off. Newton maintained that his intention was only to frighten Scott, who, he alleged, possessed incriminating photographs of him. The jury believed Scott and Newton was sentenced to two years.
In court, Scott had repeated his claims about Thorpe. He sold his supposed love letters to the press. His allegations forced Thorpe to resign as Liberal leader on May 9 1976. Newton was released from prison in April 1977 and revived the scandal, selling his story to the London Evening News with the headline: “Gunman tells of incredible plot – a murder contract for £5,000”.
Thorpe called a press conference: “Not a scrap of evidence has been produced to implicate me in any alleged plot to murder Norman Scott … No sexual activity of any kind took place,” the MP insisted.
The Somerset police, however, began to interview the main suspects. By the end of the month the Attorney General announced there would be proceedings against Thorpe. He stood accused – along with his associates David Holmes (Liberal deputy treasurer), George Deakin (a nightclub owner) and businessman John Le Mesurier – with conspiracy to murder. Thorpe was also accused of inciting Holmes to murder Scott.
The case was set for April 30 1979, the day after Thorpe’s 50th birthday. He arrived at the Old Bailey in the Rolls-royce of London solicitor Sir David Napley. It was Napley who had been impressed by George Carman – then not well known in the south – some years earlier when he saw him defend a case. It was time for the two men to be brought back together.
In Number One Court, Thorpe and his fellow accused sat in a glass and oak-panelled box. The jury were sworn in – nine men and three women. Mr Justice Cantley was the presiding judge.
Things looked grim. Peter Taylor (later Lord Chief Justice) presented the prosecution’s case with persuasive logic. It was not in doubt that Thorpe had “homosexual tendencies”, nor that he had had a relationship with Scott. The murder plan had nearly been carried out. If Hercule Poirot had summed up the facts, the jury would have found the accused guilty.
But on the first day of the defence, Carman went in hard. He appeared to acknowledge that Thorpe had gone to bed with Scott, but asked if Scott had perhaps consented. The witness began to shout: “I did not know what was happening until it was too late.”
Carman suggested Scott was flattered when Thorpe introduced him to a different social world and suggested he became annoyed when Thorpe didn’t want further sexual relations. He asked Scott if he had made money from newspapers – Scott agreed that the Daily Mirror had paid him £4,000 for interviews.
Taylor’s closing speech took two days. He described Thorpe’s behaviour as “a tragedy of truly Greek or Shakespearean proportions” and pointed out that there were nearly 70 facts that the defence had not disputed. Carman, however, concentrated on personalities.
“Privately, Jeremy Thorpe is a man with a life that has had more than its fair share of grief. Nature so fashioned him that we know that, at the time he had the misfortune to meet Norman Scott, he was a man with homosexual tendencies. He’s human like us all. We learn, do we not, that idols sometimes have feet of clay,” he said.
He referred to the untimely death of his first wife and to Marion, saying her constant presence in court “speaks eloquently for itself ”. He said that Thorpe’s political life was denied to him (he had lost his seat before the trial): “Mr Thorpe has spent 20 years in British politics and obtained thousands and thousands of votes in his favour. Now the most precious 12 votes of all come from you.”
In a dramatic gesture, Carman approached the jury and, moved his finger to each in turn: “Yours, and yours, and yours…” It was as though he were hypnotising them.
On Wednesday, June 20, Mr Justice Cantley dismissed the jury. We learned, later, that they immediately did a straw poll and were split 6-6. After an hour, they were 10-2 in favour of acquittal because “reasonable doubt” remained. It was to be a further 50 hours before they were unanimous.
Waiting at the Old Bailey, Clement Freud, a Liberal MP (later exposed as a paedophile), supplied Thorpe with salmon, beef and claret. But their lunch was interrupted on the Friday, when the jury filed back in.
The clerk asked the foreman, Mrs Celia Kettle-williams (incidentally, a Liberal Party member), if they had reached a verdict. The accused were all found not guilty of the charges.
Thorpe unfroze. With Marion, he stepped out into the sunshine and raised his hands in the air as if he had just won an election which, in a way, he had: the 12 most precious votes of his life.
As for Carman? After the verdict, Thorpe scribbled a note and had it passed to him. “Well rowed, Balliol,” it read.