The Sunday Times Magazine • 35Thorpe became Liberal leader in 1967 and
married the following year, but even then
Scott was visiting him at his Whitehall flat.
Scott is adamant that Thorpe’s wife,
Caroline, (who died in a car crash in 1970)
knew of his homosexuality, as did the MP’s
mother. Thorpe then arranged for Scott to
be paid a retainer via a fellow Liberal, Peter
Bessell, one of several officials who sought
to contain the dangerous liaison from
hurting their leader.
By the 1970s the relationship was more
off than on. Scott attempted suicide,
carving “INCURABLE” into his arm with
a knife. He underwent gay conversion
therapy (unsuccessfully). He was beaten up.
He slept rough in a gents loo. The brakes
on his car failed. When he went to Cannon
Row police station and claimed someone
was trying to kill him, he told them about
his relationship with Thorpe. He produced
letters from Thorpe, famously including
references to Scott as “bunny”. They
confiscated that potential evidence.
A doctor he trusted drugged him and
removed more paperwork relating to
Thorpe from his possession. “I trusted him,”
Scott recalls. “It was a huge shock. I always
felt the whole world was against me.”
“People believed I was a fantasist,” he
says. “Even Jack and Stella, my best friends,
thought I was totally barking.”
The flipside of all this is the accusation
that in seeking to get Thorpe to acknowledge
and help him Scott was attempting to
blackmail the politician. I do not even get the
chance to put this to Scott before he answers
the charge unprompted: “This thing about
the blackmail; I have never blackmailed
anyone in my life. It’s just appalling. How
could I have blackmailed anyone when
I had given all the letters to the police?”
It is easy to see how Thorpe felt hunted,Thorpe’s later trial. However, in May 1976,
Bessell, who had been paying the retainer,
spoke to the press. Thorpe resigned as
Liberal leader the next day.
When Thorpe went on trial in 1979 it was
Scott who bore the brunt of proceedings.
“It was my trial,” he says. “It really was.” The
courtroom “rocked with laughter” when he
described Thorpe raping him. “I don’t think
today that anyone would laugh.”
Mr Justice Cantley’s summing-up was,
even then, so ridiculously biased that it was
immediately satirised by the comedian
Peter Cook. The judge described Scott as
“a hysterical, warped personality ...“I HAVE NEVER
BLACKMAILED
ANYONE IN MY LIFE.
HOW COULD I HAVE
BLACKMAILED
ANYONE WHEN
I HAD GIVEN ALL
THE LETTERS TO
THE POLICE?”
From left: Scott’s Great Dane,
Rinka; Thorpe claims not to
know of a Norman Scott in a
1971 letter; Thorpe’s trial
attracted protests over the way
homosexuality was portrayedGETTY IMAGES, NEWS GROUP NEWSPAPERS LTD
➤
but the double life was one of his
construction, not Scott’s. The pressures
started coming to a head in February 1974,
when Thorpe’s Liberals secured more
than six million votes and were close to
joining a coalition government with Edward
Heath’s Conservatives, a deal that would
have secured Thorpe a cabinet seat. The
Liberals lost votes in the second election
that year, but the proximity to power seems
to have prompted Thorpe to try to put an
end to the nuisance of Scott. In Thorpe’s
committal hearing Bessell later testified that
Thorpe told him: “We’ve got to get rid of
him ... It is no worse than killing a sick dog.”A
s the scandal became public after
the bungled Exmoor execution,
Scott doubted he would get
justice. When the alleged
hitman, Newton, went on trial
in March 1976 he was only found
guilty of possessing a firearm
with intent to harm and
sentenced to two years in prison.
He served just one. “We weren’t
allowed to mention Jeremy Thorpe’s name
[in the case],” Scott says. “How can that
have been a fair trial?” The instruction
came from the judge but was reinforced by
Scott’s own counsel. Newton’s lawyer made
homophobic comments, telling the jury
that many homosexuals have a tremendous
“propensity for malice”. Yet, in October
1977, after his release from prison, Newton
finally came clean, co-operating with a
newspaper article headlined “I was hired to
kill Norman Scott”.
Another man, Dennis Meighan, told the
police he had also been offered £13,000 to
kill Scott. He was given a prepared
statement to sign, which made no reference
to Thorpe, and he did not give evidence at