'Pencourt' and Harold's court
George Gale
Conspiracy theories of history are all very well in their way. They make for good and sometimes sensational reading. They gratify the instinct of the ignorant to believe that the powers-that-be are forever plotting most deviously. They flatter the theorists themselves when they claim to unravel the conspiracies which determine the history of nations. Very often, too, they fool the People who are supposed to be conspirators into believing that maybe after all there was some sort of plot. And once the chief actors start suspecting that they are being manipulated, rather than doing the manipulating, or suspecting that this is so of their important colleagues and opponents, then there is no knowing what might t.ictually happen. The conspiracy theory itself could begin to take over, turning wilful men into its puppets.
I suspect that some kind of process such as this was beginning to take place when, under disputed circumstances, two rather obscure young freelance reporterresearchers went along to see Sir Harold Wilson a couple of months or so after his resignation in the spring of 1976. As a result of Barrie Penrose and Roger Courtiour. meeting Wilson, a book was eventually put together and now'we have it in front 01 us, in. hard covers, called The Pencourt File and Priced by the publishers, Seeker and Warburg, at what might appear the not unreasonable sum of f5.90. For this you get 423 pagcs together with sixteen pages of Pictures of the chief characters in their book. It would indeed be very good value, for there is no doubt at all that the book contains much that is intriguing and much that is very funny, except that some of the best bits appeared in the Observer last summer, and the rest of the best bits have just been splashed all over the Daily Mirror.
It says a great deal for the journalistic enterprise of Messrs Penrose and Courtiour that they managed to sell their story twice to the papers and once to a publisher, particularly when it is remembered that they started off the enterprise as agents of the BBC. It does not say much for the BBC that, having backed them up to the level of the Director-General and thus, to my mind
at any rate (for I prefer Sir Harold's testimony on this to their own highly colourful and implausible account of how it all began with a phone call from Sir Harold's office interrupting Penrose taking a potshot at a pigeon in his quiet English suburban garden) having opened up, blessed and furthered the enterprise, it ended up with nothing to show except 'Pencourt's' early expense accounts and fees.. A very interesting story, on which
'Pencourt' could not but be authoritative, would tell of their financial dealings after they left the BBC having refused to sign a contract giving the BBC control over the use of their material. Tom Rosenthal, their publisher, turns up once or twice in their book; and it was Seeker & Warburg, and not the two authors, who flogged the serial rights to the Mirror for a rumoured £50,000: which must be something of a record for a second bite at an old cherry. Still, it all made good dirty reading.
In the Mirror, that is. The book is altogether less satisfactory, and this is because the book is forever trying to be what it isn't and to tell what it doesn't. This is not, however, a review; and all I will say is that the book endeavours to be about an affair which 'had undermined democracy and altered the course of British politics over most of the last two decades'. It seeks to compare itself and its story with the exposure of Watergate, without justification. What the book is really about is the Norman Scott affair; and it would have been a better book if Jeremy Thorpe had been made, Scott apart, its central figure. Instead, the authors attempt, by thrusting Harold Wilson into a major role, to make the Scott affair of greater significance than it possessed and to make their book more important than it is. Most of the book is taken up with the authors' unravelling of the tangled web which caught up Thorpe and,Scott, and so many others besides, in it. Much of the murky past is made clearer; but at the end we do not feel that, despite all the patiently assembled and displayed material, we are any nearer to knowing the true story, as it was exactly, than we were at the beginning. Had the book concentrated on what was its true theme, we might have come closer to grasping the nature of the Thorpe-Scott relationship and how it led into melodrama and political tragedy, how it corrupted men into grotesque follies, deceits and crimes. But that book remains to be written.
But what the book provides, consequently and accidentally, is a picture of Sir Harold Wilson's court, or at any rate a chief part of it, after he had left office, and was, quite clearly, twiddling his thumbs and wondering what to do with himself. He had the two reporters along one evening after he had spoken to the Parliamentary Press Gallery. He was drinking and smoking a cigar. He told the journalists, who were surprised he wasn't smoking a pipe, that he
had said that democracy was in grave danger: 'Anti-democratic agencies in South Africa and elsewhere put all our democratic futures at risk' he pronounced. He talked
also, and obviously loosely and carelessly, about how, during his last eight months as Prime Minister, he was not certain that he knew what was happening in Security; that there were some 'very right-wing' people in Security; that some of them could well have spread stories of Number 10 and a communist cell. There was a good deal of such ramblings which, according to 'Pencourt' introduced 'an anxious chill into the conversation. He was clearly speaking about important matters of state.' He was also bothered that MI 5 has spread the rumour that Marcia Williams had not been positively vetted. 'In fact, she had'., said Sir Harold.
• In retrospect it is clear that what Wilson, in his tired and clumsy way, was trying to do
was to establish that South African agents (not employed by the South African government) were out to discredit. certain
British politicians. It is very likely that Wilson's chief object was to get information to this effect which he could use to assist Jeremy Thorpe. Any connection between Scott and the South Africans would be useful. Wilson believed the burglaries he had suffered were sinister, and probably thought that the removal of the Scott file was likewise most suspicious. When the two reporters came to receive a formal service contract from the BBC, it read 'Your services shall be rendered to the BBC to undertake research work for a special 'project enquiring into attempts by South African interests, public or private, to intervene in British affairs, especially insofar as they may involve the Liberal Party and the personal life of Mr Jeremy Thorpe and his associates.. and you shall take all instructions regarding the performance of your work under this Agreement from the Director-General or his nominee.: Sir Charles Curran, the Director-General, had seen Sir Harold soon after 'Pencourrs' first meeting with the ex-Premier; and it was clear enough that he realised the delicacy of the special project. But when 'Pencourt' refused to sign the contract, because it precluded the publication of a book, Curran appears to have warned Wilson against them.
Most of their subsequent dealings with the Wilson court were thus with Lady Falkender and her sister Betty Field. And it was from Lady Falkender that 'Pencourt' learned 'that the date of Sir Harold's surprise resignation had been inextricably linked to the announcement that the royal marriage between Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon was officially at an end.' She continued to talk to the two reporters; and it may be supposed that nothing she said would dispose them to question the conspiracy theories which flowed from Sir Harold's incurably gossipy mind, and which her own attitudes towards the Establishment she hated could not but fortify.
Fascinating stuff. The courts of ex-rulers do not, however, inspire reliable history, except accidentally to divulge their own true nature.
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