The press
Unanswered questions
Patrick Marnham
Due to an omission made by both the Sunday Express and the Daily Telegraph, Sir Harold Wilson may have acquired an unjustified reputation for histrionic fits and bad temper. The story concerns Mrs Marjorie Halls, widow of Wilson's former Principal Private Secretary, and it was the Sunday Express which discovered that she had left her job at the Lord Chancellor's department, and dropped her £50,000 damages action against the Civil Service. The grounds for that action were that her husband's fatal heart attack in 1970 had been caused by overwork, and by the 'scenes, demands, rantings, ravings and tantrums' at Number Ten. But whose rantings and ravings are here referred to? Since the only other person mentioned by both papers as working at Downing Street at that time was Mr Wilson, readers must have assumed that they were his. This is most unjust. It was Wilson's personal secretary, Mrs Marcia Williams, now Lady Falkender, whose tantrums made life misery for Michael Halls. Anyone who has read any of the background books or serialisations about life at Number Ten in those days will know that, and the omission of her name by both Telegraph and Express was therefore a superfluous act of gallantry or perhaps of caution.
Apart from mentioning that Mrs Halls had dropped her action, neither paper advanced matters much further or explained why they were giving her incredible claim such prominence. Their failure to do so was somehow reminiscent of the great Milhench saga which blazed like a comet across the Fleet Street sky for a few brief weeks only to disappear into an unsatisfactory court case which left behind so many unanswered questions. The Milhench affair also took place just before a general election, and even inspired Wilson to set up a royal commission on the press which will still be toiling faithfully away years after its only begetter has left the stage. So although from one point of view general elections are a good thing in that they jolt Fleet Street out of its cosy relationship with Westminster, from another they are a disappointment. The motive for these revelations is not to inform but to win an election, and once the election is over the information suddenly dries up.
The news story most likely to fit into this category during the coming election is of course the Thorpe affair. Political manoeuvering over this continues at a brisk pace and Mr Peter Hain, the former Young Liberal leader, who was once acquitted of a bank robbery charge, has demanded that a special parliamentary committee should examine the role played by the security services in the matter of Thorpe. Why this should be a good idea Mr Hain did not say, but the papers could report his scheme without fear of contempt and by doing so suggest that there was more to this than would ever appear in court. Meanwhile, Mr Thorpe himself, when asked a few direct questions by (naturally) an American reporter, suddenly rolled over to reveal his dark underbelly. I will have you charged with contempt at the local magistrate by sundown', he said. The Bideford magis
Spectator 19 August 1978 trates must have been rather put out at the suggestion, sundown being a notion theY must generally associate with either Boot Hill or a large gin. Apart from which, as Mr Thorpe should know, magistrates have n° power to commit for a contempt. But blus: ter won the day, as usual. am a lawyer, said Mr Thorpe, 'and I know the law.' The Sun echoed him in this and ran an editorial under the headline 'This Foolish Fellow': attacking 'this brash American Michael Wallace. . . who clearly doesn't understand English law'. Mr Wallace appears to share that lack of knowledge with the Sun. Another trial, the Leyland forgery trial, ended after several weeks. But onlY the Observer succeeded in the sort of final summing up which is essential after a long and complicated trial and which the SundaY papers are ideally placed to provide. The Observer's excellent article pointed out the similarities between the Leyland trial and the earlier slush-fund case involving Racal the military equipment firm. The need for such background coverage was illustrated during the Leyland case by simultaneous headlines in The Times and the Daily Telegraph: the first saying 'Corrupt Payments of £127 disclosed, Lord Ryder says', and the second reading 'Nobody cheating anYb°dY; says Lord Ryder'. Both statements were made by Lord Ryder but until the trial was over the press could not comment on wbieu one appeared to be more important or more convincing. Unfortunately the SundaY Times, which used to excel in such summaries, now devotes vastly more space to unconvincing series about the social habits of chimpanzees. Its own post mortent 011 Leyland suffered in consequence. Both Sunday Times and Observer also ran pictures of undernourished cattle !! West Africa and warned of a return of the disastrous drought in that region. These Pict, tures were both supplied by a single FrencL. photographer, and it will be interesting to see how quickly Fleet Street suggests that such illustrations are evidence of houlaaun famine. The last time this story was giveti,sss outing, in 1973, the international pr informed the world that six million PcePes. were starving to death. Subsequent luvnnv tigation showed that the crisis acte'rj, threatened less than one tenth of that PThe lation. But five years is an eternity in world of communications. Finally on a more cheerful u—totise Daily Express battles on with its Simon °that tic Fund which readers of the PaPet Cares will be pleased to learn has been raised £50,000. Part of this money hal onJe subscribed for 'the boy in need' bY rdby attending a Showbiz Spectacular hoste Danny la Rue, and the Express had t dr es ture of a rather dazed child on Mr la
shoulders. Danny had apparently ,s,ley
Simon his routines as Mae West, not Temple and Marlene Dietrich. aslann clear that, if I were seven-year-1:dd blicitY Bostic, I would regard this Pu.tinns display as one of the comPens"
of my plight.
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