In 2018, director Stephen Frears titled A Very English Scandal the mini-series, broadcast on BBC One, which he devoted to the Jeremy Thorpe affair. We can not say it better. This story of a politician broke in full glory after an attempted murder against a background of homosexuality has marked the United Kingdom, the chosen land of political-sexual scandals.
In the England of the 1960s and 1970s, loving men is not recommended for those who harbor the ambition to shine in politics, even though homosexuality was decriminalized in 1967. This evidence did not escape Jeremy Thorpe. , Liberal MP for North Devon. Until then, he has managed to pretend. The intelligence services are aware of and, tipped to be the best man (“Witness”) of Anthony Armstrong-Jones during his marriage to Princess Margaret, he was dismissed due to rumors about his account. This is of no consequence. Also, elected president of the Liberal Party at only 38 years old, he is annoyed at the insistence with which Norman Scott, a former lover, requests him.
Psychologically fragile, this somewhat lost young man tries without much success to embark on a modeling career. For ten years, he will regularly come forward to claim small services from Thorpe, a job but also money, threatening to reveal their past affair. In the 1974 election, the Liberals approached 20% of the vote and came close to forming a government with the Conservatives. As the newspapers begin to talk about the “Thorpe era”, the rising MP wants above all to avoid what we would now call an “outing”.
True-false killer
The idea of getting rid of Norman Scott would then have germinated. Andrew Newton is appointed as the executor of low works, against about 20,000 pounds. With his garish yellow Mazda, striped suits and colorful ties, the guy is not very discreet. And then, he’s not a born killer either: he panics and kills Rinka, Scott’s Great Dane, but his gun jams as he executes his designated victim.
Panicked, he fled. It will take four years for the facts to be established and the member to be charged with incitement to murder. In 1979, what the tabloids greedily present as “The trial of the century”. Jeremy Thorpe stubbornly remains silent, and the defense argues that it was only to scare the intruder. The reversals of witness statements, in a context of leaks in the tabloid press, have a bad effect on the judges. After six days of debates, the defendants are acquitted, but for Jeremy Thorpe, 50, politics is over.
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