The futility of Waugh
Bernard Shrimsley
Last year, as a result of an article by Auberon Waugh in Private Eye, an action for libel was instituted by Bernard Shrimsley. In our issue of 13 December Auberon Waugh commented on the settlement of this action in terms which have led Mr Shrimsley to make this reply, 'Come, Sir!' a judge once said to counsel whose histrionics were less likely to sway the Appeal Court than the Royal Court, 'if you look at the jury box you will see there isn't anybody there.' I suppose counsel's chagrin must have been much the same as that of Mr Auberon Waugh upon discovering last summer that the ego trip of his dreams had been torpedoed. There was to be no headline trial of Shrimsley v Waugh and Others. No chance for Auberon Mitty, conducting his own defence, to show that here was the greatest amateur advocate since Portia. And, alas, no best seller. For a judge in chambers had given my counsel leave to settle a statement in open court to end the matter: a right the law may allow libel victims whose motive is vindication rather than compensation. Denied the Queen's Bench Division, Mr Waugh was fortunate (was he not?) to have available the Spectator's jury of 36,000 good men and women and true. I don't know if his solo (`Shrimsley's end', 13 December) had 'em yelling for more. But it ought to have done, since this jury had not the usual advantage of hearing the plaintiff (leaving aside objections that Mr Waugh's preposterous version admitted no judge, no rules of evidence, no cross-examination — and even contrived to omit the words that were the essence of the libel).
It was a somewhat strabismic account: false suggestion vying with suppressed truth. Mine will be more illuminating than his, though it will have a job to be more illuminating about his nature. It begins on Boxing Day 1979. I was having a festive drink at my brother's when he -came back from the telephone . looking anything but festive. During the previous days, he had been visiting Patrick Hutber, who was in a coma after a crash. Patrick's wife was calling from hospital. She felt sure he had squeezed' her hand. But though she was desperate for hope, we knew there really was none; and from that moment the party was no party any longer. Then came the Private Eye piece Mr Waugh categorises as 'mildly tasteless'. It was the day Patrick died. I felt rage at Mr Waugh's gloating cruelty, so I wrote the following item in the News of the World (of which he chooses to recall only the first two sentences): 'If there is a 1980 Rat of toe Year contest, it has surely been won in the first week, by Private Eye magazine columnist Auberon Waugh. While Patrick Hutber, that much admired financial writer, lay at death's door after a car crash, Waugh chose the moment to make fun of him in his poisonous little piece. Waugh knew perfectly well the truth about poor Hutber's condition. "It seems touch and go whether he will live or die", he wrote in the course of putting the boot in. Hutber, in fact, did not live to read the sneers. He died in a coma on the day Waugh's column was published. He leaves a widow and four .children.'
Mr Waugh's response was to wipe the toe of his boot and aim it at me. 'Inquiries reveal', he lied in the next Private Eye, 'that Bernard Shrimsley is too idle or illiterate to write his own column and has hired a hack to write it for him.' I took counsel's opinion and issued a writ. The defendants made no attempt to justify. Instead, there followed for the whole of 1980 a vile campaign against me in Private Eye, even spilling into Mr Waugh's column in the Spectator. Truth is the first casualty of Waugh, who declares that I was 'dismissed a few days after' his April article in the Spectator. Well, it is also legend that Mr Waugh fell off a camel a few days after my January article; but that wasn't cause and effect either, and anyway I was not'dismissed', with all that is meant to imply. Had this really been so, and as the result of Mr Waugh's campaign, my damages could have made the Guinness Book of Records. He also insists that my brother and I are 'sometimes distinguished by the unkind and apparently pointless nicknames of Toady and Slimy.' It is modest of him to hint that the credit for this myth might be anyone's but his. He goes on to smirk that the statement of settlement was made 'in an almost empty court'. Of course it was, since there was to be no contest and no speech from the scaffold by Mr Waugh. The point is that newspapers throughout the land (presumatily even in Combe Florey) published the statement and thus nailed the lie.
Mr Waugh's wanton disregard for facts and the delight it gives him to fabricate them; his appetite for the vocabulary of the lavatory wall and the images of the sewer — all these make me uneasy about finding myself in any agreement with him. But he is right that the libel laws no longer work; although my view is that this is because they provide action for damages as the only civil remedy. One cannot simply seek an order for a published correction of lies in terms approved by a judge — which is all one ought to want in the average (I said the average) libel case. For my part, this was the third such action I have had to bring to protect the reputation upon which my living depends. In each case I settled for a statement in open court. In no case did I take damages. The Spectator well knows this, since (under an earlier regime) it was one of the defendants. If you sue, your jaws are dripping at the thought of a tax-free jackpot. If you don't sue, you are a flabby-faced coward. If you settle, giving to charity the cheque Waugh & Co paid into court, you 'took the money and ran'. If you don't settle, you are gambling for high stakes. Let us, by all means, pray for reform of the libel law. But, first, let us pray for reform of Mr Waugh.
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