the times | Friday March 6 2020 2GM 7
News
Bill Clinton has blamed the pressures of
being president for his affair with Moni-
ca Lewinsky, saying it was one of the
“things I did to manage my anxieties”
and take his mind off the stress of being
commander-in-chief.
The former president also talks in a
new documentary about the “awful”
moment when he had to tell his daugh-
ter Chelsea, then aged 18, that he had
been cheating on her mother. He said
he still felt “terrible” that Ms Lewinsky’s
life was defined by the affair.
The scandalous relationship
between the president and the intern,
including sexual encounters in the
Oval Office, dominated the second half
of Mr Clinton’s presidency. He was im-
peached for lying to investigators but
survived his 1999 trial in the Senate.
Mr Clinton, 73, told the documentary
Hillary, a four-part series about hiswife’s career, that he met Ms Lewinksy,
who was 22 at the time, when he felt like
a boxer who had needed respite from
several long bouts in the ring.
“Here’s someone who’s going to take
your mind off it for a while. That’s what
happened... It’s not a defence. It’s an
explanation. I feel awful. I feel terrible
about it,” Mr Clinton told the series for
the Hulu streaming service, the first
episode of which is to be released in the
US tonight. Asked why he took such arisk with his marriage, family and the
country, he said: “Nobody thinks about
that. Nobody thinks about ‘why did I
take that risk’. That’s not why people do
stupid things. That’s not what hap-
pened. Nobody sits down and thinks, ‘I
think I’ll take a really irresponsible risk
that’s bad for my family, bad for my
country, bad for the people that work
with me.’ ”
He recalls telling his wife the truth
about the affair, having first lied to herabout it. “I went and sat on the bed and
talked to her. I told her exactly what
happened, when it happened. I said, ‘I
feel terrible about it.’ We’ve been
through quite a bit in the last few years.
I said, ‘I have no defence, it’s inexcusa-
ble what I did.’ ”
Hillary Clinton, 72, says in the docu-
mentary: “I was just devastated. I could
not believe it. I was so personally just
hurt and I can’t believe this, I can’t be-
lieve you lied.”Lewinsky affair was my way of coping with anxiety, says Clinton
David Charter Washington
A serving Metropolitan Police officer
has been arrested on suspicion of being
a member of a banned neo-Nazi terror-
ist group.
Counterterrorism officers raided a
home in north London and arrested the
constable, 21, yesterday. They con-
tinued to search the property last night.
The officer, who the force said worked
in frontline policing, is in custody.
The Met said that the arrest related
to suspected membership of a pro-
scribed organisation linked to right-
wing terrorism but that there was noth-
ing to suggest any threat to the public.
The officer is thought to be the first to
be arrested on suspicion of member-
ship of any such group.
The Met said that its directorate of
professional standards had been told
and the officer’s status was under re-
view. The case has also been referred to
the Independent Office of Police Con-
duct.
Anyone convicted of being a member
of, or offering support to, banned
terrorist groups can face up to ten years
in prison.
Last week MPs backed bans on two
right-wing groups. Sonnenkrieg Divi-
sion became the second right-wing
group to be proscribed in Britain. The
law also recognised System Resistance
Network as an alias of the neo-Nazi
group National Action, which in Dec-
ember 2016 was the first to be banned.
Sonnenkrieg is a splinter group
formed from younger National Action
members, and according to the Home
Office it “has encouraged and glorified
acts of terrorism via its posts and
Rising divorce rates and the Swinging
Sixties drove up the murder rate in the
40 years before the millennium, a
Home Office report said yesterday.
The study found that during the
century from 1860 to 1960 the number
of homicides in England and Wales de-
creased. But the rate then rose until
2002 before falling over the next 12
years. Researchers suggested that
young people were given less parenting
as families collapsed and women were
unable to exert influence over their
husbands. They suggested a link
between the number of divorces in a re-
gion and the murder rate.
“High divorce rates consistently pre-
dicted higher rates of homicide even
when control variables were included,”
the report said. “In addition, there was
quite a high degree of positive correla-
tion between trends in divorce and
trends in homicide for both the US and
England and Wales.”
Studies have suggested that divorce
reduces the monitoring children re-ceive in a family as the wives lose con-
trol over their husbands.
“By reducing informal guardianship
of children by parents and of husbands
by wives, divorce might increase the
risk of other types of homicide,” the
study found.
The relationship was not yet well de-
fined, the report added, but evidence
supports the notion that “divorce may
be an important driver of homicide”.
The study warned, however, that the
link appeared to have broken down
because the murder rate has risen re-cently while the number of divorces has
not risen since 2014.
The report also suggested that the
spread of illegal drugs could be behind
the rise in murders. Drug gang rivalries
and terrorism had also helped to in-
crease the number of killings in
England and Wales.
Homicides had increased by almost
40 per cent between 2015 and 2018.
Half of this rise was driven by drug-
related cases with some of it linked to
the use of crack cocaine.
The report said that a majority ofhomicide victims and suspects were
white but black people had higher rates
per population. The paper recommend-
ed a “scientific” approach to tackle the
rise in killings, with “early intervention”
to identify those most at risk.
“To prevent the sudden surges in
homicide it is vital to marry up street-
level intelligence on drug markets and
gang conflicts to data analysis of seri-
ous violence trends,” it said. “We need
to know which types of shift in drug
supply, demand and gang conflict typi-
cally cause surges in homicides.”Rising divorces in Swinging Sixties ‘helped push up murder rate’
Richard Ford Home Correspondent
Police officer
suspected of
belonging to
neo-Nazi cell
images”. “This includes an image
depicting the Duke of Sussex being shot
as part of their campaign against ‘race
traitors’ following his marriage to the
Duchess of Sussex.”
Dozens of members of the two
groups have been arrested in recent
years and a series of court cases have
exposed the growth of neo-Nazism in
the UK. Last May one of National
Action’s members, Jack Renshaw, 23,
was jailed for plotting to murder Rosie
Cooper, the Labour MP for West Lan-
cashire.
Figures from the Home Office show
that arrests of white terrorism suspects
exceeded those of suspects of Asian
heritage for the second year in a row.
Last year 117 white suspects were de-
tained on suspicion of terrorism offen-
ces compared with 111 Asian suspects
and 21 black suspects.
A surge in suspected right-wing
extremists referred to the Prevent anti-
radicalisation programme has taken
the total almost to parity with referrals
for suspected Islamist radicals.
The security services took on res-
ponsibility for right-wing extremism in
2018, and the rise in arrests and refer-
rals is in part regarded as a result of that.John Simpson Crime Correspondent
SAM BARNES/SPORTSFILE; PAUL FAITH/AFP/GETTY IMAGEST
he Duke and
Duchess of Sussex
began their final lap
as working members of
the royal family when
they attended a veterans’charity event last night
(Valentine Low writes).
In the duchess’s first
public event in Britain
since she left for Canada
nearly two months ago,
the couple put on a
confident display as they
arrived in pouring rain at
the annual Endeavour
Fund Awards at Mansion
House in London.
They smiled broadly as
they stepped out of their
car amid cheers from the
crowd. However therewas one loud “boo” from
an onlooker. The couple
were earlier spotted at
Buckingham Palace —
but the Palace declined to
comment on whether
they had met the Queen.
Their appearance at
last night’s awards, which
celebrate the sporting
achievements of wounded
service personnel, was
the first of a handful of
engagements they are
due to carry out over the
next few days beforequitting official royal life
at the end of this month.
Prince Harry, who
served with the Blues and
Royals and the Army Air
Corps, told the veterans:
“Being able to serve
Queen and country is
something we all are
rightly proud of, and it
never leaves us. Once
served, always serving!”
He added later: “A lot of
you have told me you
have my back, well I’m
also here to tell you, I’ve
always got yours.”
The duke will be at
Silverstone today with
Lewis Hamilton, the
Formula One world
champion, and the couple
are due to attend the
Mountbatten Festival of
Music at the Royal Albert
Hall on Saturday.
On Monday they will
be at a service at
Westminster Abbey for
Commonwealth Day,
along with other royals
including the Duke and
Duchess of Cambridge.
While his brother was
enjoying his time in
London yesterday,
William and his wife
embraced celtic culture
on their trip to Ireland.
As well as dropping in
on a traditional music
session in a pub, the
Cambridges tried Gaelic
sports. The couple visited
a Gaelic Athletic
Association club in
Galway, where they took
part in a hurling shoot-
out with members of the
Salthill Knocknacarra
club. After a couple of
botched attempts, both
William and Catherine
managed to connect with
the sliotar — the ball
used in hurling — and
scored a goal each.A night out
for Meghan
(while Kate
gets sporty)
The Duchess of Cambridge
gets to grips with hurling
(after a few botched
attempts) during her trip to
Galway with William6 Police have warned the public not to
be complacent after terrorism arrests
fell to their lowest level in six years.
Home Office figures published yester-
day showed there were 280 arrests for
terrorism-related activity in the year to
December. However, there were 17
arrests in the last quarter, the highest
since 2017. Dean Haydon, of the Met,
said: “As we have seen in the past few
months, attacks can happen anywhere
and at any time without warning.”