Jeremy Thorpe - obituary - Telegraph Obituaries Jeremy Thorpe - obituary Jeremy Thorpe was a charismatic leader of the Liberal Party who fell from grace in one of the most spectacular political scandals of the 20th century Thorpe outside the House of Commons after being elected the new leader of the Liberal Party in 1967 Photo: GETTY/HULTONARCHIVE 6:02PM GMT 04 Dec 2014 Comments Jeremy Thorpe, the former leader of the Liberal Party who has died aged 85, suffered a fall unparalleled in British political history when a long-drawn-out chain of scandal dragged him into the dock at the Old Bailey, charged with conspiracy and incitement to murder. For once the cliché “trial of the century” did not seem misplaced. Thorpe had been a sparkling and successful politician who had come tantalisingly close to realising the Liberals’ dream of holding the balance of power.

In 1974, indeed, he was invited by the prime minister, Edward Heath — whom he had once described as “a plum pudding around whom no one knew how to light the brandy” — to lead his party into coalition with the Conservatives; he himself was offered the post of foreign secretary. It was understandable, therefore, that five years later, at Thorpe’s trial, even prosecuting counsel should have spoken of a “tragedy of truly Greek and Shakespearean proportions”. Tragedy, however, is a large word, implying the destruction, if not necessarily of virtue, at least of some outstanding merit. Only in the context of a man’s entire life can its just application be decided. John Jeremy Thorpe was born on April 29 1929 into a highly political family. He would claim descent from Sir Robert de Thorpe, who was Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas in 1356 and Chancellor in 1371. More to the point, both of Thorpe’s parents were staunch Conservatives. His father John Thorpe, born in Cork, was a KC and, for a few years after the First World War, MP for Rusholme in Manchester.

His mother was the daughter of Sir John Norton-Griffiths, 1st Bt, another Conservative MP and one who gloried in the epithet “Empire Jack” — even if he owed his baronetcy to Lloyd George. Related Articles Jeremy Thorpe scandal: New claims over plot to murder Norman Scott 07 Dec 2014 Jeremy Thorpe, however, thought of himself as “three-quarters Celt”; and in keeping with this bias, it was from his mother’s friend Lady Megan Lloyd George that, rather to Mrs Thorpe’s disapproval, he imbibed a romantic attachment to Liberalism. The boy had two sisters, both older; he was brought up as the cynosure of his parents’ eyes. “It never occurred to him,” his mother remarked of his early days in Kensington, “that anybody might not be glad to see him.” Young Jeremy adored his father, but it was his mother who exerted the most powerful influence. A formidable woman, who affected an eyeglass, Ursula Thorpe nursed the highest ambitions for her son. “That monocle!” Thorpe recalled in later life. “We were all frightened of her.

I have overcome the domination, and I am damn well not going to be dominated again.” Thorpe was only six when tubercular glands were diagnosed in his stomach. For seven months he had to lie on his back in a spinal carriage; he suffered back pains for the rest of his life. The Second World War caused a hiatus in what promised to be a conventional English education. In 1940 Thorpe and the younger of his sisters were sent to stay with an aunt in America, where he attended the Rectory School in Connecticut, by contemporary English standards a decidedly easy-going establishment. Thorpe loved it. His histrionic gifts — and in particular his talent for mimicry — began to flourish. He played Miranda in The Tempest, became an accomplished violinist, and showed precocious assurance as a public speaker. In 1943 he returned to England to go to Eton, where the more rigorous discipline proved less agreeable. He was also greatly upset by the death of his father, after a stroke, in 1944. This misfortune left the family in dire financial straits, so that an uncle had to stump up the funds to keep the boy at Eton.

It also, inevitably, increased the sway of Mrs Thorpe. After Eton, Thorpe joined the Rifle Brigade for his National Service, only to be invalided out of the Army after six weeks as “psychologically unsuitable”. It has been alleged that he became a bed-wetter to prove the point. At Trinity College, Oxford, by contrast, the military reject flourished outrageously. His flamboyant dress — frock coats, stove-pipe trousers, brocade waistcoats, buckled shoes, and even spats — received all the attention they demanded; his penchant for Chinese vases suggested aesthetic sensibility; his witty persiflage kept the mockers at a distance. Theoretically, Thorpe was reading Law; in reality he was laying the foundations of his political career. But though he became in turn president of the Liberal Club, the Law Society and the Union, he attracted criticism from contemporaries for the ruthlessness he showed in the pursuit of these offices. Thorpe scraped a Third in his Finals. Afterwards, in 1954, he was called to the Bar by the Inner Temple, and built up a modest practice on the Western Circuit.

He also, later in the 1950s, worked for commercial television, appearing regularly on current affairs programmes such as This Week, and sending back reports from Africa and the Middle East. But politics was always his master passion. In 1952, with the help of Dingle Foot, whom he had befriended when at Oxford, he was adopted as Liberal candidate at North Devon which, though it had been a Liberal seat in the early 1930s, had a 12,000 Tory majority in the 1951 General Election. Thorpe, at his very best on the stump, had no rival as a vote-gatherer. He could put any argument with skill and panache; his astonishing memory for faces persuaded voters that they were intimate friends; his brilliant gifts as a mimic kept the audience in stitches; his resourceful mind afforded quips and stunts for every occasion. At the same time he built up a formidable organisation in the constituency, and drove it with unflagging energy. In the 1955 general election the Tory majority was slashed to 5,226, and four years later he captured the seat by 362 votes.

Thorpe would hold North Devon for 20 years, narrowly at first, but in February 1974 with a thumping 11,082 majority. Yet he was never tempted to appeal to wavering Tory voters by trimming his Liberal views on issues such as South Africa or capital punishment. In the House of Commons he made an immediate impression. A sketch-writer remarked of his maiden speech that “it seemed as though Mr Thorpe had been addressing the House for the past 10 years, and got rather tired of the exercise”. But the young MP knew how to draw blood, as with his jibe after Harold Macmillan sacked several of his Cabinet in 1962: “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his friends for his own life.” Thorpe appeared somewhat to the Left of the party, a mouthpiece for impeccable Liberal sentiments, especially on African affairs. He received the distinction of being banned from Franco’s Spain. In 1966 he advocated that Britain should cut off the oil supplies to Ian Smith’s Rhodesian regime by bombing that country’s railway system.

The Liberal conference enthusiastically applauded the idea, but Harold Wilson inflicted permanent damage by coining the phrase “Bomber Thorpe”. Thorpe flanked by Edward Heath and Harold Wilson at Westminster Abbey in 1970 (HULTON ARCHIVE) Meanwhile, though, the young MP had been working energetically to fill the organisational void left by Jo Grimond’s leadership. Thorpe’s charm made him especially effective as a fund-raiser, and in 1965 he captured the party treasuryship. When Grimond retired in 1967, the 12 Liberal MPs elected Thorpe in his place. The new leader immediately gave a foretaste of his style by holding a rally in the Albert Hall, at which he promised “a great crusade that will set Britain alight for the vision of a Liberal society” — a performance relayed by closed circuit television to three other city centres. Nevertheless, in his first years at the helm the showman for once misjudged his act. “He felt he had to move away from the image of the sharp and witty debater to being grave,” David Steel remembered. “It was disastrous.” Yet Thorpe did not altogether abandon frivolity.

Colleagues found, to their frustration and fury, that important policy discussions had to wait upon the leader’s gossipy anecdotes about the prime minister or royalty. Nor did Thorpe’s continuing addiction to outmoded dress and eccentric headgear — notably the brown bowler hat he wore when electioneering — do anything to allay the growing suspicion that he was all style and precious little substance. His critics acknowledged that he loved the game of politics — indeed he took a fiendish delight in its Machiavellian plots and manoeuvres — but they wondered if he knew why he was playing it. Thorpe’s Liberalism was essentially romantic and emotional. He reacted strongly against bone-headed Establishment snobbery, arrogant management or racial injustice, but showed scant interest in formulating any coherent political philosphy. On the other hand there was no doubting Thorpe’s quick mind or his keen antennae. He was to the fore in predicting the 1967 devaluation crisis and in identifying the mounting crisis in Ulster; he also showed himself a consistent supporter of Britain’s entry into the Common Market. Thorpe did not suffer fools gladly.

Erring subordinates were treated to the sharp rebuke or the snappish aside; and in the face of any challenge to his authority the mask of the jester quickly gave way to a fixed, distant and icy stare. He was at his most formidable under pressure, as the Young Liberals discovered when they attempted to mount a coup in 1968. The unsatisfactory opening years of his leadership culminated in the 1970 general election. Thorpe campaigned with his accustomed zeal, sweeping about the country in helicopters and cutting an impressive figure on television, but the results were disastrous. The Liberals polled only 2.1 million votes and retained only six seats. And then, less than a fortnight after the election, Thorpe’s wife Caroline was killed in a car crash. For a while Thorpe appeared to lose interest in politics. But in 1972 and 1973 the widespread dissatisfaction with the Heath government found expression in a remarkable series of Liberal successes in municipal and by-elections. Thorpe’s style was undoubtedly a factor in attracting discontented Tory voters.

But his animadversions against the “bloody-mindedness” of British life were undermined, at the end of 1973, by his involvement in a shoddy financial disaster. Thorpe had become a director of Gerald Caplan’s London & County Securities to boost his meagre parliamentary salary; in his delight at the sudden flush of income, however, he failed to heed numerous and reiterated warnings about the company’s viability. In 1972 the Liberals, and Thorpe himself, put on a notable display of piety over Reginald Maudling’s involvement with the Poulson affair. It was therefore more than a shade embarrassing when it transpired that the leader was involved in a company that was charging 280 per cent on second mortgages, and when, at the end of 1973, the collapse of London & County revealed a tangled skein of financial misdemeanour. British voters, far from being concerned, were apparently impressed by Liberal promises to tackle the national crisis with increased public spending and state control of incomes. At the February 1974 general election Thorpe, though largely confined in his marginal North Devon constituency, reached his political apotheosis.

The Liberals nearly trebled their vote to six million; the only fly in the ointment was that this total translated itself into but 14 seats. Rumour had it that Thorpe was responsive to Heath’s offer of a coalition, with the promise of a Speaker’s conference to consider electoral reform. His colleagues, however, have gone on record that the decision to reject these terms was “unanimous”. The ensuing months exposed the flaws in the Liberal revival. The party activists were radicals; many of its new-found supporters were dissatisfied Tories. Moreover, the exquisite Thorpe seemed far removed from the community politics advocated by Trevor Jones (“Jones the Vote”) and his chums. In the October 1974 general election, the Liberal leader left his North Devon constituency to its own devices and once more whisked about the country in helicopters and hovercraft. All to no avail: the Liberal vote fell by 700,000. Thorpe was severely disillusioned.

But the most remarkable thing about his political career was not that he ultimately failed to storm the heights, but that he managed to retain the sang-froid to lead the Liberals when, all the while, a large part of his energies was concentrated on repressing a significant element of his personality. That Thorpe, in his youth, had homosexual tendencies was admitted at his trial. Nor was it in dispute — though he always emphatically denied any physical relationship — that in 1961 he had befriended a young man named Norman Josiffe, who later changed his name to Norman Scott. Though Mr Justice Cantley’s conduct of the trial was widely criticised, no one argued about his description of Norman Scott. “He is a fraud. He is a sponger. He is a whiner. He is a parasite.” Scott claimed to have had an affair with Thorpe between 1961 and 1964, and there can be no question whatever that, as their meetings dwindled and finally ceased, he conceived a grievance that nothing but the ruin of Thorpe could assuage.

(It should be remembered that homosexual acts between consenting adults were not legalised until 1967.) In pursuit of his vendetta Scott seized every possible occasion, public and private, to advertise his sexual connection with Thorpe. As early as December 1962 he blurted out the story to the Chelsea police, and gave them two letters he had received from the MP, one of which contained the phrase — “Bunnies can (and will) go to France” — that would become notorious when, 14 years later, it finally reached the public domain. During that time Scott bore the menace of a time-bomb ticking away in the shadows of Thorpe’s career. The fuse was unpredictable, but intermittent splutters constantly portended some vast explosion. Thus in 1965 Scott took it upon himself to write to Thorpe’s mother setting out the details of his homosexual relations with her son. This missive prompted Thorpe to make the cardinal error of confiding in Peter Bessell, a fellow Liberal MP.

Thorpe in his office at the Houses of Parliament, 1970 (GETTY) One of the most striking features of the affair was that Thorpe, for all his public glamour, seemed to have no upright friend to whom he was prepared to turn for counsel. Bessell was a Methodist lay preacher; he was also, as he himself would all too willingly confirm under cross-examination, amoral, hypocritical and untruthful. Bessell tried to contain the danger to Thorpe by going to see Scott, by purloining compromising letters, and subsequently by paying Scott small weekly sums which Thorpe refunded. He also sought, and appeared to receive, assurances from the home secretary, Sir Frank Soskice, that the police were not interested in pursuing Scott’s allegations. But Thorpe’s anxiety could not be assuaged as long as the possibility remained that Scott would one day succeed in finding a newspaper to print his story. And after the Liberal leader had married Caroline Allpass in 1968, he had even more to lose — though the best man, David Holmes, wrote that Caroline Thorpe “knew about Scott” before they were married.

In May 1969 Scott himself married; and his son was born that November. The marriage soon broke up, but not before the experience of connubial penury in a Dorset cottage had lent a hysterical edge to Scott’s importuning of Bessell. Worse, there was the threat — never, in fact, realised — that Scott would use the divorce proceedings as an opportunity to blurt out his accusations about Thorpe under the protection of court privilege. Another crisis developed in 1971. Scott, now living in North Wales, became the lover of a widow, Mrs Gwen Parry-Jones, who, treated to the usual accounts of Thorpe’s iniquities, duly reported them to another Liberal MP, Emlyn Hooson. A Liberal Party inquiry into the affair ensued. Thorpe fought like a tiger, denying the allegations point blank and enlisting the help of the home secretary, Reginald Maudling, to confirm a somewhat misleading summary of police dealings with Scott. It was Thorpe’s word against that of his tormentor, and the Liberals chose to believe their leader.

Next year, 1972, Mrs Parry-Jones died, and at the inquest on her death Scott at last had the opportunity to tell his story in court. But no editor cared to print his wild ravings; nor did a South African journalist, Gordon Winter, find any takers when he gathered material from Scott. It might have seemed that Scott had done his worst, and been repelled. In 1973 Thorpe announced his engagement to Marion, Countess of Harewood, previously married to the Queen’s cousin. About the same time Scott moved to Thorpe’s North Devon constituency, where he proceeded to inflict the history of his relations with the local MP upon bemused rustics in pubs. He also told his tale to the Tory candidate, who decided not to touch it. Just before the first general election of 1974, David Holmes succeeded in purchasing some letters from Scott for £2,500. Nevertheless, Scott the persecutor now appeared in the role of victim. In February 1975 he was beaten up by two men in Barnstaple market.

And in October, when an AA patrolman discovered him weeping beside the corpse of his great dane, Rinka, he claimed that only a jammed pistol had prevented the assailant from shooting him as well as the dog. In January 1976 Scott, charged with defrauding the DHSS, declared under the privilege of court that he was being “hounded by people” because of his affair with Jeremy Thorpe. This time, at last, the press did take notice. Thereafter rumour blew so loud that by March Thorpe felt compelled to defend himself in The Sunday Times, specifically denying both that he had hired a gunman to kill Scott, and that he had had any knowledge of Holmes’s purchase of the letters in 1974. Despite support from the prime minister, Harold Wilson, who appeared to believe that the accusations had been fabricated by the South African secret service, Thorpe was unable to hold the line. After the “Bunnies” letter was published in The Sunday Times in May 1976, he resigned the Liberal leadership.

Thorpe leaving the Liberal Club in 1977 (REX FEATURES) There could scarcely have been any criminal charges against him, however, if Bessell, who had long been exiled in California, had not decided to turn Queen’s evidence. He believed, with good reason, that Thorpe would not hesitate to throw him to the wolves in order to save his own skin. Bessell alleged that in 1968 and 1969 Thorpe had incited Holmes and himself to murder Scott, helpfully suggesting that the body might be chucked down a Cornish mine shaft, or cemented into a motorway bridge. “It’s no worse than killing a sick dog,” Thorpe is supposed to have remarked, before recommending research into slow-acting poisons. The second charge associated Thorpe with Holmes and two others on a charge of conspiracy to murder in the years 1974 and 1975; this also depended partly on Bessell’s evidence, though in this case the diversion of Liberal funds through Holmes’s hands to the hitman, Andrew Newton, was also germane.

Thorpe behaved with marked courage in the face of the cataclysm, observing with his accustomed brio that a man who had the prime minister, Lord Goodman and MI5 on his side could hardly lose. Even after his committal to trial at the Old Bailey Thorpe insisted on contesting North Devon at the 1979 election, where his opponents included Auberon Waugh, standing for the Dog Lovers’ Party. Though Thorpe lost the seat (he remarked laconically to a television interviewer that Scott’s allegations had “hardly helped” his campaign), his vote fell by less than 5,000 compared with October 1974. Norman Scott in 1979 (PA) At the Old Bailey the charges failed after the defence, with the help of Mr Justice Cantley, had annihilated Bessell’s character. Thorpe opted not to give evidence in his own defence, thus avoiding cross-examination. Even so, his reputation was badly damaged by the exhibition of the financial sleight of hand which he had shown in directing funds given to the Liberal Party by the millionaire “Union Jack” Hayward towards David Holmes.

He was also revealed as a blustering bully in his attempt to dissuade his friend Nadir Dinshaw, the Pakistani financier, from telling the truth. Dinshaw, acting on Thorpe’s command, had innocently passed on money to Holmes. Before the trial Thorpe told him that if he reported the fact, “It will be curtains for me, and you will be asked to move on.” In short, the trial bore out the impression created by Thorpe’s political career, that he was essentially a fixer and an operator. Far from being a tragic hero — a noble nature ruined by a single mole of nature — he appeared, whether innocent or guilty, amply provisioned with common human flaws, cast by his gifts and ambition into most uncommon relief. Yet this man, who spent so many years trying to avoid imputations of homosexuality, won devoted loyalty from both his wives. “I saw an emotional cripple take up his bed and walk,” someone remarked of his first marriage. For a while after the trial Thorpe seemed to nurse the dream of rebuilding his career.

In 1981 he applied unsuccessfully for the job of race relations adviser to the BBC, and the next year he was actually appointed director of Amnesty, only to resign the post after complaints from within the organisation. Thorpe with his wife, Marion, in 1999 (REX) Thorpe remained chairman of the political committee of the United Nations Association until 1985, but in the world of the haut monde that he loved to adorn there would be no redemption. By the middle of the 1980s, moreover, he was afflicted with Parkinson’s disease. The North Devon Liberals, however, remained faithful to the last, electing him as their president in 1987. Jeremy Thorpe’s second wife died in March of this year; he is survived by his son, Rupert, from his first marriage. Jeremy Thorpe, born April 29 1929, died December 4 2014 Jeremy Thorpe | The Times Welcome to your preview of The Times Subscribe now Jeremy Thorpe Thorpe leaving Westminster on January 19, 1967 after his election as leader of the Liberal Party.

He succeeded Jo Grimond Google+ 1 of 1 Thorpe leaving Westminster on January 19, 1967 after his election as leader of the Liberal Party. He succeeded Jo Grimond Last updated at 12:01AM, December 5 2014 Colourful politician whose career was engulfed in scandal after he revived the electoral fortunes of the Liberal party in the 1970s By the time of his death, Jeremy Thorpe had become the great non-person of British politics. If his rise to fame as the Liberal party leader had been colourful and dynamic, his fall from grace was grubby and squalid. His 20-year career in politics was explosively terminated while he was only in his 40s. Out of the blue, in 1976, there came an allegation in a Devon courtroom of a homosexual relationship with Thorpe by Norman Scott, a former groom and male model until then totally unknown to the public.

A bizarre tale ensued of bribery, sexual debauchery and the Subscribe now Jeremy Thorpe : definition of Jeremy Thorpe and synonyms of Jeremy Thorpe (English) 12 External links Early life Thorpe is the son of John Henry Thorpe , a maternal grandson of Sir John Norton-Griffiths (both Conservative MPs), and a descendant of Thomas Thorpe , Speaker of the House of Commons from 1452 to 1453. Education Thorpe was educated at two independent schools : at Hazelwood School in Limpsfield in Surrey and Eton College in Eton in Berkshire , followed by Trinity College at the University of Oxford in Oxford , where he studied Law. He was very politically and socially active at Oxford, becoming President of the Liberal Club and the Law Society and finally becoming President of the Oxford Union in 1951. His period of national service lasted just two weeks. [1] He was called to the bar in 1954, whilst working as a TV interviewer. Member of Parliament Thorpe was adopted as Liberal candidate for North Devon (then Conservative-held) in 1952. In the 1955 general election he halved the Conservative majority.

In the 1959 election , he won narrowly. He remained MP for North Devon for the next 20 years, until defeated by a Conservative in the 1979 election . Liberal Party leader In 1965, he became Liberal Party Treasurer and, following Jo Grimond 's resignation as leader in 1967, he won the resulting party leadership election 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 exemplified 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 . 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. Thorpe's unconventional lifestyle was reflected in his 1968 marriage a month after his son was born. His party leadership was not immediately successful.

The 1970 general election was a disaster for the Liberals; they fell from 13 seats to 6 (winning three, including Thorpe's, by tiny majorities). But between 1972 and 1974, Thorpe led the Liberals to an impressive string of by-election victories, at Rochdale , Sutton and Cheam , Ripon , the Isle of Ely , and Berwick . In the February 1974 general election , the Liberals gained 19.3% of the vote. During the campaign, some opinion polls at times even placed the party as high as 30%. This was a great improvement over the 8.5% the Liberals got in the 1966 General Election, before Thorpe's election as leader. The February 1974 election resulted in a " hung parliament " with no party having a majority. The Conservatives won 297 seats, Labour 301 (despite having fewer votes than the Conservatives), the Liberals 14, and the remaining 22 went to minor parties. Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath proposed a coalition government with the Liberals, with Thorpe being offered the post of Home Secretary .

Thorpe asked for significant commitments toward electoral reform, but Heath could not give them. Also, the Conservative-Liberal coalition would still be seven seats short of a majority, and the government would probably not have long survived. The Liberal Party, and many who had voted for it, were not enthusiastic about keeping Heath in office, and Thorpe declined the offer, fearing a coalition with the Conservatives would split his party. [2] On 4 March the talks to form a coalition collapsed, paving the way for Harold Wilson and Labour to return to power as a minority government, after four years in opposition. Homosexuality scandal Persistent rumours about Thorpe's sexuality dogged his political career. Norman Scott, a former male model, met Thorpe in 1961 while working as a stable lad. He later claimed that he and Thorpe had had a homosexual relationship between 1961 and 1963, when homosexual acts were illegal in Britain. Scott's airing of these claims led to an inquiry within the Liberal Party in 1971, which exonerated Thorpe. Scott, however, continued to make the allegations.

In October 1975, Andrew 'Gino' Newton, a former airline pilot, collected Norman Scott from where he was living in Combe Martin, North Devon, and drove him to Exmoor; Newton drove Scott onto Porlock Hill, where they stopped and got out of the car. Newton then shot Scott's dog Rinka, a Great Dane , before turning the gun on Scott. When the case came before Exeter Crown court, in March 1976, Scott said that the gun jammed and that Newton then drove off, leaving him alone beside the dead dog. Newton always maintained that his intention was only to frighten Scott, who, he alleged, possessed incriminating photographs of Newton. Newton was convicted for the illegal possession of a firearm and an intent to endanger life. During his court appearance, Scott repeated his claims of a relationship with Thorpe, and alleged that Thorpe had threatened to kill him if he spoke about their affair. Scott also sold letters to the press which he claimed to be love letters from Thorpe.

One of these included the memorable line "Bunnies can and will go to France", which supposedly showed Thorpe using his 'pet-name' for Scott in connection with a promise to find Scott a well-paid job in France. The scandal forced Thorpe to resign as Liberal Party leader on 9 May 1976. He was replaced temporarily by his predecessor Jo Grimond and then permanently by David Steel . Andrew Newton was released from prison in April 1977, and then revived the scandal by claiming that he had been hired to kill Norman Scott. On 4 August 1978, Thorpe was accused along with David Holmes (deputy Treasurer of the Liberal Party), George Deakin (a night club owner) and businessman John Le Mesurier (neither the actor nor the athletics coach ) of conspiracy to murder. Thorpe was also separately accused of inciting Holmes to murder Scott. The trial was scheduled to take place a week before the general election of 1979 , but Thorpe obtained a fortnight's delay to fight the election. However, Thorpe was defeated.

Trial Thorpe was put on trial at Number One Court at the Old Bailey on 8 May 1979, a week after losing his seat. He was charged with attempted murder and conspiracy to murder. One of the chief prosecution witnesses was former Liberal MP and failed businessman Peter Bessell , who claimed to have been present while the murder plot was discussed within the Liberal Party. According to Bessell, poison had been rejected as a method of killing 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 tin mine. [3] Bessell agreed to appear as a witness in exchange for immunity from prosecution. His credibility was damaged, however, because he had sold his story to The Sunday Telegraph for a fee that would double from £25,000 to £50,000 if the prosecution was successful. Thorpe did not testify in the case, but his counsel, led by George Carman QC , argued that although he and Scott had been friends, there had been no sexual relationship.

Carman claimed that Scott had sought to blackmail Thorpe, and that although Thorpe and his friends had discussed "frightening" Scott into silence, they had never conspired to kill him. Summing up the case, Mr Justice Cantley was widely criticised for showing a nakedly pro-establishment bias, [4] in which he described Scott as "a crook, an accomplished liar... a fraud." In spite of the judge's direction, the jury were at first split 6–6, but, after 15 hours of deliberation, they finally reached a verdict of Not Guilty. The four defendants were all acquitted on 22 June 1979. Later life Not long after the end of the trial, Thorpe was found to have Parkinson's Disease and retired from public life. For the past twenty years, his disease has been at an advanced stage. However in 1997, he visited the Liberal Democrat party conference and was given a standing ovation by party members, and he attended the funeral of Roy Jenkins in 2003. In 1999, Thorpe published his 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 Norman Scott affair. Thorpe has never made any public statements regarding his sexual orientation. Possible involvement of Jack Straw In 2002, 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." This resulted in an inquiry by the BBC programme Newsnight into Jack Straw 's involvement in the Scott affair. [5] According to the diary of Barbara Castle , Secretary of State for Social Security , Wilson had asked her to examine Norman Scott's 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, it was missing. The journalist Barrie Penrose has alleged that Straw subsequently leaked information from the file to the media. Straw remained silent on that matter, but denied the accusation by Joe Haines that Wilson asked him to read the files for 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 were 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. [6] Personal life Thorpe was married to interior decorator Caroline Allpass (1938-–1970), the daughter of Warwick Allpass and Marcell William, in May 1968. Their son Rupert was born in 1969. Caroline Thorpe was killed in a car crash in June 1970. [7] Thorpe married Marion Stein in 1973. She is a distinguished former concert pianist , and the former wife of the 7th Earl of Harewood , a first cousin of Queen Elizabeth II .

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, ISBN 90230 121 8) Auberon Waugh , The Last Word: An Eye-witness Account of the Thorpe Trial (Michael Joseph, 1980) Julian Glover, entry in The Dictionary of Liberal Biography (Politico's, 19

98) Dominic Carman , No Ordinary Man: A Life of George Carman (Hodder & Stoughton, 2002) - includes analysis of trial and aftermath.

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. [8] Notes Leader of the Liberal Party (UK) - iSnare Free Encyclopedia Leader of the Liberal Party (UK) The Liberal Party was formally established in 1859 and existed until merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to create the Liberal Democrats . Contents 6 External links Leadership selection 1859–1969 Before the adoption of the 1969 constitution of the party, the party was led by the prime minister or the most recent politically active prime minister from the party. In the absence of one of these, the leaders in the House of Lords and House of Commons were of equal status and jointly led the party.

When a new leader was required, with the party in government, the monarch selected him by appointing someone as Prime Minister. However, in 1916 David Lloyd George , with the support of a minority of the Liberal MPs, formed a coalition government. H. H. Asquith , the former Prime Minister, remained as Liberal Party leader. Asquith retained the leadership until his health failed in 1926, including periods when he was not in Parliament or was a peer. He was the last leader of the whole party under the original arrangements for leadership. When no overall party leader was a member of a House and a new leader was required in opposition, a leader emerged and was approved by party members in that House. From 1919 the Chairman of the Liberal Parliamentary Party, elected by MPs, functioned as the leader in the House of Commons. This required all the leaders after Asquith to retain their seat, to continue as leader. After 1926 the leader in the House of Commons was clearly pre-eminent over the leader in the House of Lords.

In 1931 Lloyd George was leader in the House of Commons, but he was ill when negotiations led to the formation of the National Government . Sir Herbert Samuel , who had been the deputy leader, was effectively the leader of the mainstream party from the time when he entered the government. This was made formal after the 1931 election. Leadership selection 1969–1988 Under the original provisions of the 1969 party constitution, the MPs elected one of their number to be Leader of the Liberal Party. This was the same system as that used for the last MP only contested leadership election in 1967 , when Jeremy Thorpe became leader after a vote split between three candidates of 6-3-3. As the number of Liberal MPs was very small (between 6 and 14 in the period the MPs retained the sole power of election) party members argued for a wider franchise. Before the leadership election of 1976 , all members were given a vote in an electoral college based on allocating electoral votes to constituency associations (which were then divided proportionately to the votes of the members of the association).

The candidates were required to be members of the House of Commons, nominated by a quarter of the MPs. The electoral college system was only used once, when David Steel was elected leader. Lists of Liberal Party Leaders Leaders of the Liberal Party Name 1988 Notes ^ a b Palmerston was appointed Prime Minister a few days after the meeting at Willis's Rooms on 6 June 1859, which formally created the Liberal Party. He was an Irish peer and a member of the House of Commons. He died in office. ^ Gladstone retired from the leadership in 1875, when the party was in opposition. The overall leadership of the party then became vacant until Gladstone was again appointed Prime Minister. ^ Rosebery resigned the leadership when the party was in opposition. The overall leadership of the party became vacant until the formation of the next Liberal government in 1905. ^ a b Maclean was elected Chairman of the Liberal Parliamentary Party. In the absence from Parliament of Asquith, who had lost his seat in the 1918 general election , he acted as leader of the Liberal MPs opposed to the Lloyd George coalition.

Although this was a smaller group than the Parliamentary Labour Party, Maclean also performed the functions of Leader of the Opposition. ^ Asquith resigned the leadership when the party was in opposition. The overall leadership of the party became vacant until the adoption of the 1969 party constitution. ^ a b Lloyd George was elected Chairman of the Liberal Parliamentary Party. In the absence from Parliament of Asquith he acted as leader of the Liberal MPs. When Asquith became a peer in 1925, Lloyd George became leader in the House of Commons. When Asquith retired then from 14 October 1926, Lloyd George became the leading figure in the party. ^ a b Samuel deputised for the ill Lloyd George during the summer of 1931 and took office in the National Government on 24 August 1931. Following Lloyd George's move to complete opposition to the National Government in October, Samuel effectively acted as party leader. However he did not receive the formal title until after the 1931 general election . He lost his seat in the 1935 general election . ^ a b Sinclair lost his seat in the 1945 general election .

^ Thorpe was the first Leader of the Liberal Party under the 1969 constitution. ^ a b Grimond was appointed interim leader by the parliamentary party, between the resignation of Thorpe and the election of Steel. ^ a b Steel was the last party leader. He became one of the joint interim leaders of the Liberal Democrats on the merger in 1988. ^ Asquith became Prime Minister on 5 April although British Political Facts considers him to be leader from 30 April 1908. He lost his seat in the United Kingdom general election, 1918 . ^ Asquith was elected in a by-election and sat until he lost his seat in the United Kingdom general election, 1924 . See also A brief history of Liberal leaders - BBC News BBC News A brief history of Liberal leaders 16 July 2015 Read more about sharing. Close share panel The Liberal Democrats name their new leader on Thursday. Either Tim Farron or Norman Lamb will follow in the footsteps of some distinguished and colourful figures, who have led the party and its Liberal Party forerunner through the peaks and troughs of their post-war history.

Prime Ministers and political legends The great Liberal prime ministers of the late 19th Century and early 20th Century - most notably William Gladstone, Herbert Asquith and David Lloyd George - achieved a status that perhaps none of their recent successors could have hoped to emulate, although Nick Clegg came closest as deputy prime minister. While their eccentricities and peccadilloes would not stand up to contemporary scrutiny, Gladstone led the country on a record four separate occasions and was prime minister when Britain's writ ran across much of the globe while Asquith and Lloyd George saw the country through the trauma of the First World War and its aftermath. The Earl of Rosebery and Henry Campbell-Bannerman are less celebrated, the former noteworthy for owning a Derby winner while in power and the latter for winning the 1906 election - the last time the party gained an overall majority. Clement Davies (1945-56) The Welsh barrister and politician became Liberal Party leader in the aftermath of Labour's landslide victory in the 1945 election. The result marked the end of an era for the party, which had been part of the wartime coalition government for five years.

Its leader Archibald Sinclair, who had been Secretary of State for Air under Winston Churchill and had previously been a Cabinet minister in Ramsay MacDonald's national government, had lost his own seat and the party saw its parliamentary representation almost halved from 21 to 12 - its worst performance for more than 100 years. However, things were to get progressively worse under Mr Davies' leadership, with its share of the vote falling from 9.1% in the 1950 election to 2.5% a year later and 2.7% in 1955. By that point, the party had been reduced to just six seats. Originally viewed as a caretaker leader until the more charismatic Sinclair returned to Parliament - which he never did - Davies held the party together for more than a decade at perhaps its lowest point. Jo Grimond (1956-1967) Jo Grimond succeeded Clement Davies in 1956 after a coup by senior party figures.

The Orkney and Shetland MP - whom leadership contender Tim Farron has named as one of his three heroes - put a spring back in the party's step and gradually rebuilt its standing in the country and its presence in Parliament. Although the party effectively stood still in the 1959 election, it fared much better in the two subsequent polls, winning nine seats in 1964 and 12 seats two years later, largely at the expense of the Conservatives. Its performance in 1964, when it won 11.2% of the vote, was its best for more than 30 years. It was during Grimond's reign that the party won the first and, by no means the last, of a series of sensational by-election victories, taking the seats of Torrington in 1958 and Orpington in 1962. Jeremy Thorpe (1967-1976) After leading the party into three general elections, Mr Grimond made way for a younger leader although, ironically, he was to step in on a temporary basis almost a decade later after Jeremy Thorpe's own resignation.

Thorpe, the first Liberal leader to be elected, led the party through the most eventful period in its post-war history. While the party lost ground in 1970, when its number of MPs halved to six, it made spectacular progress in February 1974, winning almost 20% of the vote - although it only had 14 seats to show for its best performance since 1929. Edward Heath tried to strike a deal with Thorpe so he could stay in Downing Street, which could have seen the Liberal leader offered a cabinet post, but the negotiations came to nothing. Six months later, the Lib Dems repeated their feat - winning 13 seats and 18% of the vote. However, two years later Thorpe resigned the leadership to fight charges of conspiracy and incitement to murder amid allegations of an affair with a former male model, After a high-profile trial - which was interrupted so he could fight the 1979 election - he was acquitted of the charges but his political career was over.

David Steel (1976-1988) David Steel overwhelmingly defeated John Pardoe to become Liberal Party leader in 1976 and his decade in charge of the party was characterised by huge shifts and realignments in British politics. Under his leadership, the Liberals effectively kept James Callaghan's Labour government in power for nearly three years, when its majority disappeared, although under the terms of the Lib-Lab pact, Steel never joined the government. The party did respectably in the 1979 election, winning 11 seats but when it joined forces with the new Social Democratic Party to fight the 1983 election as the SDP-Liberal Alliance, it briefly threatened to break the mould of British politics. Although together they won a spectacular 25% of the vote, just 700,000 fewer votes than Labour, this only translated into 23 seats, of which the Liberal side of the alliance won 17. Four years later, it repeated the feat, winning 22 seats - of which 17 again were Liberal.

Robert Maclennan/David Steel (1988) After the Liberal Party officially agreed to merge with the SDP, David Steel and the SDP's Robert Maclennan acted as interim joint leaders of what initially was the Social and Liberal Democrats until a new leader was elected. Neither men chose to stand in the subsequent contest, in which Paddy Ashdown comfortably beat Alan Beith. Paddy Ashdown (1988-1999) Image copyright PA The former royal marine took the party to a different level altogether, in terms of organisation and electoral performance, although his leadership opened a debate about the Lib Dems position in the political spectrum which still rages today. Paddy Ashdown fought two elections as leader. In 1992, the party effectively trod water, winning 20 seats in an election which was dismayingly familiar to critics of the two-party system. But that all changed when, in 1997, the Conservative vote collapsed in large parts of the country and the Lib Dems, particularly in the west country and the London suburbs, were the main beneficiaries. They won 46 seats - ironically on a lower share than in 1992.

Despite having the largest third party presence in Parliament for over 60 years, the scale of Labour's landslide meant the Lib Dems were effectively marginalised. Pre-election talk of a realignment on the centre-left, and progressive co-operation in the shape of electoral reform largely disappeared and Paddy Ashdown stepped down two years later. Charles Kennedy (1999-2006) Charles Kennedy saw off four other candidates, the largest field in the party's history, to win the leadership in 1999. Establishing a principle of so-called equidistance between the two main parties, Mr Kennedy took the party to its post-war electoral pinnacle, winning 52 seats in 2001 and 62 seats in 2005 - when its vote share exceeded 22%. Mr Kennedy's opposition to the Iraq War gave the party a distinct identity and electoral asset it had perhaps lacked in the past and it started winning seats in places such as Solihull and Cardiff Central, which were virgin territory for the party.

But, despite this success, there was a rebellion against Mr Kennedy - who had been fighting a drink problem - by MPs who thought the party should have done better and he was forced to resign less than eight months after the election. Sir Menzies Campbell (2006-7) Sir Menzies Campbell led the party for less than two years, winning a leadership contest in 2006 but stepping down voluntarily, albeit in the face of calls to quit, eighteen months later. The former champion sprinter, who competed in the Olympic and Commonwealth Games, is the only permanent leader in the party's history not to have fought a general election. From the start, Sir Menzies was dogged by question marks over his age and whether the party needed a more youthful figure. But when he stood down, the then 66-year old was temporarily succeeded by Vince Cable, himself only two years younger. Nick Clegg (2007-2015) Image copyright PA Nick Clegg achieved a series of notable firsts in his eight years as Lib Dem leader.

The former EU official and MEP was the narrowest winner of any leadership election in the party's history, prevailing by just over 500 votes from Chris Huhne. He took part in the first ever TV general election debate and, most significantly, he took the party into government for the first time in 60 years, becoming deputy prime minister in the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition, in which the party had more than 20 ministers and influence over all its key decisions. He stood down after a series of electoral reverses, which culminated in May when the party saw its number of MPs drop from 62 to eight and its lowest vote share for 45 years. Who's going to be next? We find out on Thursday afternoon whether it will be Tim Farron, above left, or Norman Lamb, above right, who will be tasked with resurrecting liberal fortunes. Find out more about them and the leadership contest here.

Question: In British politics, who succeeded Jeremy Thorpe as acting leader of the Liberal Party in 1976?
Answer: Jo Grimond