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Oh, Jeremy ... Thorpe
Book Review: Jeremy Thorpe, by Michael Bloch
I am too young to remember Jeremy Thorpe. Over the years his story would rear up on occasion, with attendant whiff of scandal, but never really enough to get a good understanding of what may or may not have happened, so when I saw this biography in the work book sale, I picked it up. Admittedly, that was a couple of years ago, so perhaps I was not quite as interested as I'd thought, though also the political landscape in general has become much more unappealing over that time too.
Apparently, Bloch first met Thorpe in the 1990s, and more or less completed the manuscript for this book in 2001, but Thorpe requested that it remain unpublished during his lifetime. It's not difficult to see why. The book itself isn't sensational; frankly, the opinion I reached is that it's the book's subject that is. From the outset Thorpe comes over as something of a fantasist, playing up faintly ludicrous (but also just about stretchingly plausible) untraceable aristocratic ancestry and desparate to hob-nob with the upper classes and royalty whenever the opportunity arose. Becoming President of the Oxford Union to the dismay of most of his closer peers at that time, he scraped a degree and went indifferently into law before becoming the Liberal MP for North Devon in 1959. At a time when male homosexuality was illegal, he seems to have managed to get around, avoiding any direct brushes with the law but hardly being discreet about who he was to his irregular partners, including of course Norman Josiffe (later Scott). This part reads like a sordid and stereotypical tale of the times, with Scott periodically appearing, apparently being paid off by Thorpe or his associates, disappearing, and the whole process repeating itself a year or two later. It's difficult to have much sympathy with any of the parties involved. In 1975 there was the curious incident of the dog at Porlock Hill, in which Scott's dog was shot and killed; this ultimately led to Thorpe and others being prosecuted and acquitted of a charge of conspiracy to murder Scott. Reading Bloch's telling of the story, it seems hard to understand how that verdict was reached; but reading Bloch's telling of the court case itself, it seems that none of the witnesses would have proved reliable or convincing.
Beyond the scandal which is his legacy, however, Thorpe seems to have been a popular constituency MP and party figure with genuine knowledge and influence on some matters, particularly human rights, European and foreign affairs, though not really handling wider issues in the way one might expect of a party leader. He deserves credit for launching the process that would over time bring the Liberals (and later the Lib Dems) back from the dead, though it would take 40 years or more (then to be somewhat squandered, as it turned out, in the 2010-2015 coalition); no-one quite felt able to commit to a coalition government in 1974 when the Liberals genuinely held the balance of power, as Thorpe was much closer to Wilson than Heath, but Heath wouldn't carry his party and Wilson wasn't all that interested in a deal. Against this, though, his methods were frequently divisive in the parliamentary party. Overall it's an interesting book about an interesting but flawed figure; though frankly the lot of politicians we have right now are hardly flawless, either.
I am too young to remember Jeremy Thorpe. Over the years his story would rear up on occasion, with attendant whiff of scandal, but never really enough to get a good understanding of what may or may not have happened, so when I saw this biography in the work book sale, I picked it up. Admittedly, that was a couple of years ago, so perhaps I was not quite as interested as I'd thought, though also the political landscape in general has become much more unappealing over that time too.
Apparently, Bloch first met Thorpe in the 1990s, and more or less completed the manuscript for this book in 2001, but Thorpe requested that it remain unpublished during his lifetime. It's not difficult to see why. The book itself isn't sensational; frankly, the opinion I reached is that it's the book's subject that is. From the outset Thorpe comes over as something of a fantasist, playing up faintly ludicrous (but also just about stretchingly plausible) untraceable aristocratic ancestry and desparate to hob-nob with the upper classes and royalty whenever the opportunity arose. Becoming President of the Oxford Union to the dismay of most of his closer peers at that time, he scraped a degree and went indifferently into law before becoming the Liberal MP for North Devon in 1959. At a time when male homosexuality was illegal, he seems to have managed to get around, avoiding any direct brushes with the law but hardly being discreet about who he was to his irregular partners, including of course Norman Josiffe (later Scott). This part reads like a sordid and stereotypical tale of the times, with Scott periodically appearing, apparently being paid off by Thorpe or his associates, disappearing, and the whole process repeating itself a year or two later. It's difficult to have much sympathy with any of the parties involved. In 1975 there was the curious incident of the dog at Porlock Hill, in which Scott's dog was shot and killed; this ultimately led to Thorpe and others being prosecuted and acquitted of a charge of conspiracy to murder Scott. Reading Bloch's telling of the story, it seems hard to understand how that verdict was reached; but reading Bloch's telling of the court case itself, it seems that none of the witnesses would have proved reliable or convincing.
Beyond the scandal which is his legacy, however, Thorpe seems to have been a popular constituency MP and party figure with genuine knowledge and influence on some matters, particularly human rights, European and foreign affairs, though not really handling wider issues in the way one might expect of a party leader. He deserves credit for launching the process that would over time bring the Liberals (and later the Lib Dems) back from the dead, though it would take 40 years or more (then to be somewhat squandered, as it turned out, in the 2010-2015 coalition); no-one quite felt able to commit to a coalition government in 1974 when the Liberals genuinely held the balance of power, as Thorpe was much closer to Wilson than Heath, but Heath wouldn't carry his party and Wilson wasn't all that interested in a deal. Against this, though, his methods were frequently divisive in the parliamentary party. Overall it's an interesting book about an interesting but flawed figure; though frankly the lot of politicians we have right now are hardly flawless, either.