However, in order to survive I have had to invent a liquid diet which remains a moveable feast but seems to work wonders. I might even market it for it is the perfect nutritional menu for alcoholics who may have lost their appetites. I therefore share it for the good of mankind. The following ingredients make up one gallon of jungle juice which is enough for the whole week. It works out at about two pounds a pint:
Six raw eggs; four Dunn's River liquid vitamins; two large tablespoons of Horlicks; two of glucose powder; whole diced pineapple; six bananas (for fibre); one large Marks and Sparks fresh fruit salad; pint of milk; half pint natural yoghurt; one pint ice cream; half pound strawberries; cup fresh orange juice. Teaspoon of cod liver oil (taken daily separately) and two multi-vits with anything else liquid which pops up. It might sound revolting, but actually it is delicious.
I am sure Saki probably has the same virtues, but unlike Saki (to which I could easily become addicted) Ricard makes me ultra- aggressive and unsociable. It is also a bad drink to sleep on, regurgitating itself in the stomach with the first morning cup of tea. So I have had to restrict myself to Ricard only when I am at death's door. Roll on 2000. By the way, if I don't make it, I promise my faithful readers a Scallywag from either heaven or hell, depending entirely on St. Peter.
I lament that the British business lunch is officially dead. It is just another ghastly trait we inherited from the Thatcher debacle. Living most of my time in Spain now, they are far more civilised. The siesta is sacred and everything closes between two and four in the afternoon so that the working men can repair to the bar for an aperitif and a tapa or two. In Madrid three quarters of all businessmen lunch in a restaurant every day and it is at least a two- hour repast. To have a sandwich and a can of diet coke at the desk would be a complete sacrilege. Today's British businessmen consider lunches a waste of time and prefer the telephone.
What a lot they are missing,. Apart from good food and wine, they will no longer know the special ambience of a good working lunch which, if done properly, can become an art form. How most lunches with strangers (from whom you often need a favour), start of pregnantly, and end in great bonhomie over the cognacs. How work in the afternoon (when you eventually migrate back to the office) becomes so animated.
It is, of course, the reason why our newspaper are now so dull and boring. In Fleet Street days the liquid lunch was a religion and some of the greatest pieces of journalism were scribed through a haze of alcohol. Now Rupert traps them all in the Wapping Industrial Estate and if they lunch at all they must do so in a pristine alcohol-free canteen. Consequently all we get is a diet of who's bonking who on the set of Coronation Street.
I have taken up the serious study of flamenco. Not the Sadler's Wells variety, nor come to that the Torremolinos circuses with all their pretty dresses and Sevillianas. When in Spain I live in the middle of the gitano quarter of Alora where there is legitimate street Flamenco and my neighbours regularly get together for a juerga or 'spree'. Incredibly, Malaga itself has not a single flamenco nightclub but Alora, set in the hills above a river valley leading down to the coast. has a Pena Flamenco where the aficionados meet weekly for a serious rendering - just voice and guitar. When they feel like it, the gypsy families all around me just gather for no reason at all (in the winter around a bonfire) and sing what comes into their heads. It might be the weather, or someone who has been arrested, or a youngsters pining for his girlfriend.
We recently had a month of heavy rain which was much heralded after three years of drought. One young reprobate went out into the tempest and sang: "This rain will feed many seeds and I will get work in the fields. With money, my woman will marry me and I'll give her my seeds. So bless this water for it will mean many children." Another young buck lamented: "Please, chief of police. Don't arrest me. Arrest your daughter for she steals many hearts." This kind of ultra simple poetical dialogue can get very catching if you actually listen to it, and my neighbours can make music just banging a plastic milk bottle against the wall.
All street flamenco is spontaneous and never recorded, although I plan to redress this because, as Spain charges into modernity and everyone watches football on the TV, street flamenco is steadily dying. Most of my neighbours are being ferreted into a new quarter provided by the local (communist) council. They are so comfortable they just don't sing about their woes any more.
Fishermen's Friend, the spicy, firey cough sweet invented in a family chemist shop in 1865, is being hailed by the manufacturers as a 'sexy experience'. As such it is a top seller all over the continent - but until now they did not turn us on. What the makers are not able to say is the one thing which contributes most to UK sales. The sweet is so cogent it completely screws up police breathalyser tests.
You can always trust the Yanks to go overboard on everything - as they have done on Political Correctness. Now, after outlawing smoking in every public place - and bullying smokers even in the middle of Central Park - a new phenomenon has suddenly sprung up. Would you believe that the latest fetish fad is $24 videos of elegant women inhaling deeply. There are now dozens of them and they are selling tens of thousands of copies. Apparently Fetishism across the whole of America is very big business and there are half a dozen magazines devoted to the subject. I wonder if anyone shares my fetish for gingham dresses. Or my recurring erotic dream that I am landing gently by parachute with bare feet onto a field of breasts!
Scallywag has been given a private showing, although the company is still editing down hours of tapes to an acceptable 90-minutes.
The subject of the video is of privacy and the Royals and goes into depth concerning every breach of their privacy. To cover their tracks legally, the film denounces itself by saying most of the footage is probably fake and concocted by the palace machine to try and discredit Di.
Nonetheless, the 90-second sequences of black and white shots, taken from the garden of Hewitt's home, shows the couple first canoodling, and then he on top of her making love and then she on top of him on the floor of the kitchen.
The film was obviously taken by an amateur on a hand-held home movie camera. It is grainy, but completely explicit and the identities of the two are quite plain. The identity of the photographer remains a closely guarded secret, but the film was obviously taken by someone who had access to Hewitt's house.
There is an implicit accusation that the film was taken by someone working for the palace, probably M15 and clandestinely released by them in a discrediting operation.
One of the editors told Scallywag, "we know who gave it to us but not where it came from originally. We are having to tread very carefully because the royal family are getting very litigious and we are advised that if they knew who we were and how we are going to distribute, they would quickly serve and injunction which would almost certainly be upheld by the courts.
"So we plan to distribute it 'under the counter' before alerting the media to its existence. Opinions within the company are divided but most of us think the film is quite genuine, but very amateur. If it is a fake then it is an extremely clever one, purposely designed to make it look amateur."
The company is also to market two videos made by Fred West in 1983. They apparently escaped the fate of most of the West videos which were destroyed by police. The film accuses the police of covering up important forensic evidence in order to get a conviction against Rosemary West who they claim was merely an accessory.
When Rupert Murdoch first took over the Screws in one of the city's most controversial take-overs, he was determined to be a "hands on" proprietor. At first the staff, including the editor Stafford Sommerfield, treated him as an Aussie sheep farmer. But he fired anyone who got in his way, including Sommerfield, and soon made radical changes to the paper. A little while later he included the Sun to his Bouverie Street stable.
One of the things which first appalled him about London was what he saw as a blatant abuse of the social services by Welfare Scroungers. He declared war on them and let his executives know that he wanted a full and long running exposure. Every budding, hungry, or down and out freelance quickly realised that the paper would buy almost any story which exposed dole fiddlers, of which of course there were thousands.
Ian Cutler and his then sidekick Ray Chapman, both retained freelancers at the time, spotted an immediate and lucrative money- spinner and got to work with their tame pals. They had often used two down and outs, one called Smokey and the other Michael, to manufacture stories and both were immediately recruited to hunt out the dole dodgers.
The whole campaign went on for a year but was kicked off by a two part series to which veteran reporter Ron Mount put his name. Mount was a suspect ex-policeman who had been so useful to the NoW when he'd been in the force (as an informer) that when he was found out and kicked out, the NoW gave him a job.
He was also a chronic alcoholic who had, at the time of this story, two girl friends and a wife and family at home. His favourite watering hole was the Fleet Wine Bar - a trendy place actually in Fleet Street at the top of Bouverie Street.
Chapman and Cutler ferreted out some good tales but Cutler recalls, "every last one of them was a set up. We'd go out, set up a picture, then Chapman would invent the story to go with them and we'd deliver to Mount. Throughout the whole story Mount never left the wine bar and never came on a single story."
An example: Knowing that they had a free hand Chapman and Cutler bought six bottles of wine and went to a dole office in Bishopstoke where welfare could be obtained instantly in cash because it specialised in the homeless. The faithful Smokey - always pocketing his £50 daily fee - went up to the queue (which was spilling out onto the street) and gave them the six bottles of wine. Cutler duly photographed this merry band downing the wine with glee.
Chapman then wrote a wholly inaccurate piece alleging that these same people went to a different dole queue each day and spent all their money having street parties on the taxpayer. They delivered it to Mount in the wine bar where he was incoherent and he in turn he gave it to his news editor. The story went straight up to Murdoch who was "elated".
A certain piquancy was added to the story because Cutler had bought Smokey a T shirt which said plainly on the back "Britain is Great".
The NoW duly thundered about the dole dodgers and Mount bathed for weeks in the series' success.
Ray Chapman continued to this day to be a valued contributor to the Screws and went on to even greater heights of complete hypocrisy. This man who has campaigned vigorously against people as innocent as wife swappers for being "morally corrupt", is probably the worst proponent of moral corruption ever to have graced the seedy sewers of exposure journalism.
Take the case - chronicled in his MSS - of when Cutler was called by Chapman from a hospital. Chapman was beside himself with grief and could not stop sobbing. "You've got to get up here," he told Cutler. "I'm desperate. I don't know what to do. Judy (his wife) is dying."
Cutler rushed to the hospital to find Chapmen almost demented. Still sobbing, he spluttered out his story. Michael, a tramp who Chapman had used on various stories, had been given the job of cleaning the Chapman's bath and had bought a substance called carbon tetrachloride. Michael had given Chapman a cock and bull story that if a girl sniffed the substance she would go into an immediate sexual high and Chapman couldn't wait to try it out - on his unsuspecting wife.
That night they wined and dined and he plied her with drink. Then they went to bed and Chapman admitted, "I screwed her just about every way possible." In the morning, however, Judy did not wake up and Chapman became worried. He eventually called an ambulance and she was rushed to hospital where she was declared "in a state of emergency." Unless they knew what the trouble was, the doctors told him, she might die.
Chapman knew that if he told them it was the carbon tech he would be charged, but he despatched Cutler to his home to remove it and then said his wife had been cleaning the carpet with this toxin. The doctors then quite literally clutched her from the jaws of death and she gradually recovered.
One day he called Cutler in London and said he had a airline pilot who was smuggling dope and wanted a market in London. Cutler immediately recruited Jerry Brown (see Scally 30) and they decided on a con. The NoW empowered them to follow the story and try and meet the pilot (for Uganda Airways) and offer to buy the stuff from him.
They duly met up at a hotel near Victoria station but the editor, probably suspicious of the duo's antics, also assigned a veteran staffer, Bill Rankin, to oversee the whole story. Unlike Mount, Rankin was a completely straight operator. The four duly met up at the hotel and, to their amazement, the pilot plonked a bag containing three kilos of the best cannabis in a bag on the table.
While the negotiations were going on between Brown and the pilot, Cutler managed to surreptitiously, under the table, take two half kilo blocks from the bag and secrete it on his person. They then argued about payment and the pilot, a novice at smuggling, agreed to leave the drugs and return the following day for payment.
Back at the office - where the drugs were put in a safe pending analysis and then handing over to the police - Rankin was highly suspicious. But by then Cutler had temporarily disposed of the goods.
That night they sold the kilo for £1,000 to a dealer called Dirty John who was also a part time blue movie model. They then went, as they often did, to the Cabaret Club in Bond Street to celebrate.
"I was terrified," she later told stunned staffers in the Printer's Pie. "His tool was as large as a baby's arm holding an orange."
They've sold County Hall to the Japs and put Greenwich on the market. Admiralty Arch is going for a song, unless the admirals start a revolution. Now I hear Marble Arch is falling to pieces. They are so busy selling off London's heritage to the wogs, and letting the rest disintegrate, that we wont have anything left to show our grandchildren. The most important real estate in London, however, has escaped the hammer: Buckingham and Kensington Palaces, along with the other hundred or so grace and favour properties owned by the state but in the hands of the monarchy. Now that the Queen has intimated that she always had a desire to retire quietly to Shropshire, it is the ideal time to take her up on it and turn Buck House into a casino.
This paper is now printed abroad and is subscriber-only, although MP's get a sponsored free copy and the mag is widely distributed among the media. We are also on the internet and there is some street selling at key points which, by necessity, have to change daily. Scallywag is, however, very much a one-man band produced on a lap top on a sofa and it has very little chance of ever making a profit again. Until, that is the law changes which the Cons have promised during the lifetime of this wretched parliament.
But another magazine also rose from the ashes. Called Spiked it set out to be in a similar vein to Scally, but a lot less controversial and above all, it would be legal. The last edition, number three, was pulped - all 50,000 copies. It was pulped because Lewis and Co. were able to move the dark forces again.
Spiked had a completely new staff and was nothing to do with Scallywag. It had substantial fresh investment, a brand new record, new distributors and printers and never once has it even mentioned Julian Lewis. Many of the contributors of the old Scallywag, none of which we could now afford, found a new outlet at Spiked. Johnny Speight, blackballed by the BBC because of political correctness; John McVicar who has a lot more to say than what it is like to murder people; and some people in the know who can't get their stories published in the establishment press.
First of all the terrible bugbear of WH Smiths who virtually control the wholesale industry in the UK. Lewis quickly got to work on them issuing veiled threats. Smiths know full well that their monopoly has become a political issue and they are trying to keep up an image of commercial impartiality. So they at first flirted with the idea, leading Spiked to actually print far more tan it could distribute.
Then they hummed and harred and came up with an offer they knew Spiked could not accept. They wanted half a million pounds to be set aside in a bank account to indemnify them against any possible legal problems. Then they not only wanted each edition read by a libel solicitor, but read again by a libel QC. Obviously at tremendous cost. If everything could be satisfied, they smugly retorted, they would give Spiked a trial three months.
Amazingly, Spiked agreed to their conditions, raised the money from rich anti-establishment businessmen; hired Geoffrey Robertson as their libel QC, and made sure the new mag was squeaky clean. It momentarily rubbed the smugness from Smiths face. But this was not an end to the matter. Twice before Smiths have done this with Scallywag. Twice before tens of thousands of the magazine rotted in warehouses when they changed their minds at the last moment - i.e. when the paper had been printed. Whether this was a conspiracy or not is difficult to say, but it certainly helped Scallywag's temporary downfall. Despite the draconian conditions, will they do the same with Spiked?
Next came Barclays Bank. It was convenient on both sides for the half million to be deposited in a rapid interest deposit account. At first they were delighted. Then, out of the blue, they announced that "the situation has gone to the very top and Barclays have decided it does not want to be involved in any way with this kind of publishing venture."
This kind of establishment gagging is completely stifling. Wherever you turn you get pushed back. It is like swimming down a long dark tunnel with no light at the end through glue in chains. At time of writing Spiked is soldiering on but if Lewis has his way the glue will just get thicker.
At the very heart of the matter - with both Scallywag and Spiked - is the subject of legal censorship. With the array of present gagging laws to play with, people like Lewis don't need a Lord Chamberlain to decide of whether something should be published or not. We publish elsewhere a full list of measures that can be taken even before one starts getting up to skulduggery under the table.
Julian Lewis is not a powerful man in any real sense. He is merely a rather obnoxious paid Conservative party lackey. But throughout the establishment, Central Office itself is seen as a pivot of power behind the government and not to be trifled with. It is exactly the same as paying the party funds; instead, these firms are either doing the government direct favours or kow-towing to their whims and fancies. Lewis knows very well indeed how to exploit this situation. And so far he has not missed a move.
May 1968: 11-year-old Mary Bell is convicted of killing two playmates in the school playground. She is remanded into psychiatric care and a special order is made that her new name and identity must never be revealed. This was a sound legal judgement designed to protect a minor from further media coverage while she was hopefully being rehabilitated. Some twelve years later she was released and is now happily married with a family of her own. This form of injunction is normally only used, infrequently, in similar cases of serious juvenile delinquency. No other child but Parkinson's was not a ward of court. It is known to the legal system as a "Mary Bell Order".
1972: Sarah Keays, an attractive girl in her twenties, begins work as a secretary-assistant to rising Tory star Cecil Parkinson. They soon have an affair which was to last for 12 years.
1983: Cecil Parkinson is reaching his political apex as Tory Party Chairman and masterminds the General Election victory. As a reward he is brought into the government as Industry Secretary. His future looks rosy and he becomes an unofficial darling of Margaret Thatcher's. In fact, Maggie firmly believes that CP is in love with her and he always goes out of his way to smooth-talk her, flirt and flatter her. Many believe she is grooming him to be her successor. His political future seems both assured and buoyant. Then Sarah Keays drops the bombshell that she is pregnant. At first he insists she has an abortion and when she adamantly refuses he simply decides to cut her, and the child, out of his life completely. Sarah Keays is ejected and finds she cannot get through his staff to even talk to him. She is furious and lets him know she plans revenge if he does not recognise the baby. She is a high spirited lady who feels spurned and rejected. That and her pregnancy together form a lethal cocktail which will eventually cause Parkinson's political downfall. Despite this, showing complete arrogance and conceit and still feeling his political future is assured, CP and Maggie plan a triumphant Tory party conference that autumn. On the very eve of the conference in Blackpool Parkinson and Thatcher work late into the night finalising their conference timetable and tactics. Then the morning papers are delivered to Downing Street and at midnight Maggie's staff let her know all the papers are carrying sensational stories of Sarah Keays and her revelation that she is having Parkinson's baby. Thatcher is not only deeply shocked but feels slighted by her phantom lover. She immediately asks for and gets, Parkinson's resignation and that morning the conference opens without him. A completely distraught CP returns to London with his political career suddenly and dramatically in tatters. From then on he would only contact his former lover through solicitors. As the birth draws near Sarah remains bitter and revengeful. She sees his resignation as a triumph and the story dominates the press throughout the conference. Some of the coverage is later contested in libel actions which Keays wins.
May 1984: With Parkinson's political life still in tatters, Sarah gives birth to a female child. Although CP is informed he makes no contact about the child's welfare. By now Sarah is living with her ageing father, Hastings Keays, a retired colonel, in his country home in Avon, who died late last year.
1986: The child is very ill. A brain tumour is diagnosed and she is subjected to surgery throughout the next two years. For a while her very life is in danger and, although the tumour itself is arrested, the child remains retarded and has behavioural problems. Parkinson is kept informed throughout but makes no contact.
1987: After five years in the wilderness, Parkinson, who now has three legitimate children from his wife, manages to be forgiven by Maggie who decides to bring him back into the fold. He is made Energy Secretary. Many doubt her wisdom but he smooth talks her and plans to rebuild his political career. Sarah Keays, however, won't let the matter drop and is a constant thorn in his side. She is getting £40 a week maintenance from the child's father. Meanwhile the child's health is still extremely tenuous.
1989: The child has seemingly recovered but is still retarded and has both behavioural and learning difficulties. She starts at the local school where she is very unhappy. The school in turn finds her a difficult pupil. Meanwhile, Parkinson is moved to Transport Secretary.
l992: Parkinson never made any headway with John Major and his political career has waned almost to obscurity. Major decides to get rid of him by making him a peer. This further infuriates Sarah who is not only struggling to make ends meet but with the local education authorities who want her to take the child away from school because they claim she is unteachable and disrupts classes to the detriment of the other pupils. Sarah begins a long fight with the authority for the child to have treatment in a school for special needs. They refuse and Sarah takes the child away from school and decides she will be educated at home.
1993: Because the child now occupies all of Sarah's time, the mother is unable to work and therefore cannot provide further income. She is advised to apply to the courts for a review of the maintenance order. She successfully is awarded a larger weekly sum. However, Parkinson's solicitors, on the steps of the court, suggest that they apply for an injunction so that the proceedings cannot be reported. "For the sake of the child". Sarah agrees that it would not be beneficial for the tabloids to exploit the situation. Sarah has not heard of a Mary Bell order and at the time did not realise that she was giving her child away into the custody of the Official Solicitor who would then be her legal guardian. On top of this, Sarah had no idea that the gagging order would last until the child was 18 - then eight years away. It appears that if her solicitor did know what a Mary Bell really was, he did not explain it properly to his client. In turn Parkinson was now cock-a-hoop, knowing that for a further eight years the child could not be referred to publicly in any way at all. The order is utterly binding. Sarah may not even name her own daughter in a letter to the authorities. She cannot campaign for funds to cure the child once and for all. If the child was to win a sporting event, say, in a Sunday School fete. the local paper could not report it. If any part of the media mentions the child's name the reporter, editor, and publisher all face up to three years in jail for contempt of court, and/or a heavy fine - even if they publish in all innocence. Parkinson's solicitors send a round Robin to every news desk informing them of this. He believes he has finally silenced Keays and to all intents and purposes, he has. He begins to enjoy his life in the upper house. Before the hearing Parkinson had appeared on a TV chat show saying there was no point in talking to his former lover because their relationship had become irretrievable and she was impossible to talk to. Sometime after the hearing Sarah goes on another show to answer his claims. She is seriously rebuked by the court and is forced to apologise. Until January 1996 Keays does not mention the child in public again.
1995: Spring: Sarah hears of a revolutionary cure for maladjusted children run by Prof. Reuven Feuerstein in a special clinic in Israel. She does not have the funds. Parkinson blatantly refuses to pay for it and instead, through his solicitors, suggests Sarah commit the child to an institution. Sarah is incensed and tries to lobby elsewhere to raise the funds. She has to do so privately, of course. Eventually, through an intermediary, she talks to Twenty Twenty Television who are persuaded that the child's story would make an excellent documentary for the Big Story. They take a chance and help pay for the child's visit to Israel. Here, in just three months, with the TV cameras rolling, the child is miraculously cured. From being anti-social, badly behaved, and almost illiterate, she is now calm, perky, intelligent and fun to be with. Sarah is absolutely delighted. The child feels entirely different. The TV company is very pleased with its investment. Both mother and child want the story to be told. Backed by Twenty Twenty, Sarah applies to the appeals court to have the Mary Bell lifted. After strenuous entreaties by Parkinson's solicitors and a statement by the Official Solicitor, the court turns down the application. The Official Solicitor is, after all, the child's legal guardian. Sarah has no legal say in the matter. It is pointed out by the judges that in fact the child "belongs" to the Queen. The TV company put the film on ice but plan an appeal to the House of Lords, where Parkinson is enjoying great popularity.
1995: Winter: In mid-November, Scallywag meets up with several prominent members of the lobby. They meet discretely in the Whitehall pub. Every lobby corespondent is completely conversant with all the facts and various friends of Sarah's have lobbied on her behalf. The correspondents have been told that there is absolutely no way in which they can refer to the story in any way, but all of them, and their editors, are trying to find a chink in the armour. After giving Scallywag chapter and verse on the whole situation, the journalists say that if anyone is willing to risk the wrath of the courts (and subsequent jail) by breaking the Mary Bell, they will work hard to bring the matter up under parliamentary privilege. Scallywag agrees to do so. But takes several precautions. He already has bricks and mortar in the gypsy quarter of a working class picturesque town called Alora, some 20 miles north of Malaga in Spain. The small house is like a fortress. He makes arrangements for the offending edition to be printed at a backyard operation on the coast. Nearly 4000 copies are printed and most are brought back by well-wishers by car and circulated to, among others, every MP. It causes a private furore with several of Parkinson's remaining friends baying for Scallywag's blood. The Official Solicitor is informed. But the articles are not officially recognised and no action is taken. Then, as now, Scallywag does not publish the child's name, feeling it to be completely irrelevant. Good to their word, the lobby corespondents get to work finding a sympathetic MP to either ask a question or put down an Early Day Motion. Several opposition MP's are willing to sign the motion if someone else puts it up. But it is agreed to let Christmas and the New Year pass before the posting is made. In fact, they are advised to wait until the result of an appeal to the House of Lords in mid-January. Meanwhile Scallywag is enjoying the holiday season in Spain where there is an almost constant fiesta. He is in daily contact with London, but nothing has stirred. It looks very like the story is simply going to be ignored. However, it was most certainly not being ignored, as events in the New Year would show.
January 1996: On 12th the Lords' appeal fails and this remains unreported, although every newspaper is aware of it. The lobby gears into action and on the 23rd, a Tuesday, Francis Wheen writes a page- feature in the Guardian which all buts names the parents and child. Despite the restrictions, it is a riveting expose which spurs the lobby into action. On Thursday 25th, the Guardian published a faxed letter from Scallywag which said:
"Concerning Francis Wheen's excellent article on the loathsome situation with "Child Z" and the Mary Bell order. The situation is dangerously farcical. If, for example, the child were to win a sports-day event it could not be reported in the local paper. In defiance of this odious law, the last edition of Scallywag published full details and identities. It was circulated to every MP and, of course, the matter could be raised under parliamentary privilege. If an arrest is mandatory, I'm not too worried about the "slammer" as long as Lord Longford doesn't visit me."
It carried the Spanish address. This was an open invitation to MP's and to the legal system to take redress. Unknown to Scallywag, still enjoying sixty degrees in Alora, a behind the scenes plot has been hatched. The MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch, Brian Sedgemoor with the backing of several other MP's and most of the lobby correspondents, pens the motion:
"This house calls for a change in the law to prevent a gross denial of human rights in the case of Sarah Keays and her daughter. They have been subjected to the imposition of a Mary Bell order, a blanket gag on all publicity relating to a child who has fought a magnificent battle against the adversity of a brain tumour, frequent fits, eventual surgical removal of the tumour and a lengthy recuperation. The mother has every right now to fight for proper educational provision for her daughter, using publicity to pursue her cause."
This effectively pulled the finger out of the dam and the deluge began. The countdown was as follows:
All in all, until this time, it had been a triumph in that the exercise achieved everything it set out to do. We had intended to force a scoundrel into the open and allow Sarah Keays to be able to provide a proper education for her daughter. The only way to do that was to force a parliamentary question or motion. Naturally, we got no credit for this, from anyone, but every MP and every news desk knew where it had come from. So did Parkinson. It is no longer necessary for Sarah's able lawyer Geoffrey Robertson to wait two years before he takes it to the European Court of Appeal, although he will be disappointed at that. He loves Strasbourg. If Scallywag does get arrested on his eventual return, he pledges there will be a Pentonville edition. He'd rather be there than in Cecil's murky shoes.
- 24th, Wednesday: Wheen's article published.
- 26th, Friday: Scallywag's letter published.
- 27th, Saturday: Early Day Motion posted and journalists alerted.
- 28th Sunday: The Observer publishes a full front page lead on the story, using the motion merely as a peg to tell a far wider story which condemns Parkinson. A lessor story is published in the Sunday Express. The proprietor, Lord Stevens is incensed. It is too late to ban the Sunday but in the middle of the night he calls the Daily Express editor to make sure the story is not followed up during the week. Stevens is one of Parkinson's bosom pals and they often dine together.
- 29th Monday: A major follow-up is published on the front page of the Daily Mail, with a full two pages inside. The story goes well beyond the scope of the motion and extensively quotes Sarah Keays. The Telegraph publishes a very guarded piece without naming names. The Times, on page three, gives prominence to Lord Donaldson, former Master of the Rolls, who claims the whole thing is an abuse of Parliamentary privilege. It does, however, quote the motion in full, complete with names. The Indie front-pages it. Only the Guardian and Express ignore the story.
- 30th Tuesday: The Telegraph, establishment as ever, pompously denounces the other newspapers for helping Sedgemore "misuse parliamentary privilege". That night a member of the Scallywag team meets, completely by chance, the husband of Parkinson's personal assistant at Gerry's club in Soho. He is very insulting and says he has just left Parkinson who is "absolutely seething". He intimates that wide legal action will be taken, starting with Scallywag, who, he acknowledges, started the ball rolling. "The whole lot of you are going to end up in prison and may you rot in hell," he says to an intrigued audience, all of whom are on Scallywag's side. He then accuses Scallywag of "bribing" Sedgemoor, a ridiculous charge as we have never met him or talked to him.
- 31st, Wednesday: Various lobby correspondents let Scallywag know that Parkinson has been in contact with the Official Solicitor and arrests are imminent. Scallywag goes fishing with a girlfriend, on the lakes above Alora and enjoys a perfect picnic with an excellent bottle of Rioja, but doesn't catch a thing.
Perplexed and amused Norman then began an almost daily section devoted to asking about Julian's health and whereabouts, even, in the end, offering a small reward for a 'sighting'. After this, Lewis was seen everywhere, at one stage accompanying a would-by MP to various hustings by helicopter. But he still would not answer his 'phone, nor would he return the call. At time of writing he has not yet done so.
However, the conspirational Julian was hard at work, both on his laptop and on the telephone (to others) and the whole thing became a farce when Matthew Norman began inventing a sinister conspiracy which had "disappeared" Lewis and replaced him with a 'clone'. The clone had called a fellow journalist, a female diarist on the Evening Standard, and said that in retribution for something which had been said about him in an article, he would not speak to the woman for six months.
Then the wholly insidious and vile Smith Square plotter tried to do a deal. If the woman would write to the Guardian decrying Norman, he suggested generously, he would commute the sentence to only three month. Despite the fact that he is a "source" for most of the right- wing gossip columns and regularly places tit bits of juicy information with them, the lady found the whole offer bizarre and hilarious, and she told Norman all about it.
His next day's column led with the whole sorry saga and, according to our own moles at the CCO, poor Julian went into the farthest horizons of dementia. His 'phone got red hot as he tried to defuse the damage After all, the good spin doctor (MA) is desperate to get a constituency before the next election and has sent out an unprecedented number of applications. Amazingly, he has been adopted as a Conservative candidate in the New Forest which is not known for its wide readership of Scallywag or even the Guardian, and he was able to sweet talk his way in.
The urgency for such an adoption had become pressing because the new powers that be in Smith Square have let Julian know his days are numbered as the number two in "information", (which, in old fashioned spin doctor terms, means "disinformation". Something of which Julian has a double first with honours). He has pleaded to stay "until I get a seat".
If he had failed, of course, he would have gone back to being a right-wing "researcher" (read shit-slinger) for the Freedom Association, a demented quasi-fascist group paid for by Norris McWhirter, co-founder of the Guinness Book of Records. The association is in turn sponsored by the Heritage Trust of Washington which is a covert CIA operation backing any old demented right-wing group anywhere in the world. But for now he still has some scores to settle, so his seat of jumped-up power at the CCO is of vital use to him.
During most of the time Norman was trying to get hold of him, he was constructing a most extraordinary document - his defence to the Price libel action, which he is apparently conducting in person. Never have I known a man who so needs a serious legal brain behind him.
Anyone even vaguely conversant with libel knows very well that, in the early stages, one only has to acknowledge the writ and state he will be defending it. It is then up to the Plaintiff to state his case specifically and for the defendant to put in a defence, at which time there can be some serious nit-picking, disclosures of documents, etc..
Julian, however, decided to put in his entire defence all in one go right at the beginning, and, as legal documents go, it is a classic. A full 100-pages long, some 25 of them go into great lengths about how and why he is not gay. As this is not an issue of the action, this line of argument is at the very least strange, and at the most verging on lunacy. [...]
Who gives a tinker's cuss as to whether he might be gay or not? Certainly not us. We have far larger sins to bestow on him [...] He is the Jekyll and Hyde of modern politics - more Hyde than Jekyll.
The following is a thumbnail guide to the full curbs facing the British press on a daily basis and was gleaned from Geoffrey Robertson's standard and brilliant work on the subject, 'Freedom, the Individual and the Law' (Penguin, £12).
While there is little chance of a hanging, the law is used from time to time as a gagging order. Or, at least, the threat of one. Scallywag himself was threatened with Treason in the late seventies - by the very same Matthew Farrar on behalf of the Queen and Prince Charles. It concerned a conversation between the two which was purportedly taped by Australian Telecom officials. As the conversation touched on matters of state and the Prince's possible forthcoming governorship of Australia it was deemed to be a state secret. The Deputy High Commissioner from Scotland Yard assigned to the case told Scallywag at Farrar's office that unless he denounced his own story and admitted it was a pack of lies, he would be charged with treason forthwith. The tapes must have contained something which Scallywag missed, but he refused to comply and his solicitor said the threat was 'very real'. Farrar decided on a last-minute compromise. If Scallywag would sign an injunction for life pledging never to reveal the contents of any private conversation between either party they would drop the matter. Faced with the real threat of treason, Scallywag acquiesced. It was a blatant example of an archaic law being used for gagging.
There was a later act, s5. As far as journalists are concerned this was directed firmly at them and was brought in to make sure newspaper did not ever publish sensitive material. There is an unwritten rule that if an editor is not sure, he submits copy to the Attorney General who may veto it. This often means the AG can censor articles, merely if he doesn't like them. The whole official secrets legislation encompasses gagging far beyond actual espionage and can be a formidable government tool.
The Murdoch empire started in a wooden hut in the dusty outback mining town of Broken Hill when a secret alcoholic called Jack Davidson won the Barrier Miner newspaper during a game of two-up cards. Davidson went on to take over a small country newspaper called the Port Pirrie Recorder in 1923. He used these two titles to float a company to launch the Adelaide News which was acquired by Rupert's father Keith in 1949.
Keith was the doyen of the Australian press corps. As editor of the prestigious Melbourne Age he had foreseen the Second World War and piled up stocks of newsprint which would become scarce during the forties. He originated the Australian Associated Press and was made a knight just after the war.
Keith had other acquisitions, but a limited business brain and when he died in 1953 Rupert, then aged only 22, rushed back from Oxford to find he had inherited only a half share in small and obscure evening newspaper in Australia's sleepiest city. The board of directors thought "Rupee Baby" as he was known, was far too fresh-faced and brazen to run a newspaper and told him to "get some experience".
Keith Murdoch had been a friend of Lord Beaverbrook and Rupert was able to 'squeeze in' at the bottom of the subs table at the Daily Express where he stayed for less than a month before persuading his mother, the venerable Dame Elisabeth, to persuade the board to let him take over the helm of the Adelaide News. Showing his tenacity at an early age, the first thing he did was fire the board and set himself up as Chairman and editor.
He was a 'hands on' editor and his new editorial policy began making waves. No sooner had he gained control than he looked around frantically for another acquisition. He told me: "I was on the market for any newspaper going. It was a matter of being stronger editorially. One small evening newspaper could not compete with the big boys in Sydney and Melbourne, but if you had a broad base you could afford your own man in London, and to bid for the best stories."
He soon bought a majority shareholding in the Perth Sunday Times and created News Corps which is still the basis of his empire. Rupert would wind up the last edition of the News on a Friday afternoon and fly out to Perth to edit the Sunday. When he first took over the picture desk was an old mahogany job which was supported by dusty old picture blocks.
News ownership is in the hands of Rupert, his sister Helen and his mother. It has always had a pyramid financial structure. News Corps always retains at least 50% of anything it acquires, so in effect Rupert always has full control.
Never content, however, in those early days he soon took a serious glance at Sydney. He did not have a hope of buying any of the main papers in the cosmopolitan city and certainly not the lucrative TV stations. So he started a string of suburban give-aways in the Parramatta area and eventually ringed the city. He then launched a TV station in the Blue Mountains - outside the city but beaming down on it.
Using the Adelaide News, his give-aways, and the TV station as collateral, he heard that a defunct church newspaper had gone broke and he put in a rescue bid. "I didn't want the paper," he said later. "I wanted bricks and mortar in the heart of the city."
When his arch rival Frank Packer heard about the impending deal he sent a bunch of henchmen down to surround the building. Murdoch got his sport's editor to round up every burly rugby player they could find and he sent his own bully boys down there. Murdoch sat in his suburban HQ listening to the ensuing street battle as his sport's editor gave him a running commentary on the car radio. Eventually, the building was raised to the ground in the melee - but Murdoch then had a printing press right in the town centre.
He used his fledgling empire to put pressure on the Daily Mirror, one of Sydney's two big daily tabloids and eventually became such a nuisance that they old out. He was still under 30-years-old.
But Rupert was never content. He heard that the London News of the World had received a bid from Robert Maxwell and he and an associate called Ron Bolan flew to London to stay at the Savoy. The Maxwell take-over appeared to be a fait a complete for Maxwell had already acquired nearly a third of the shares in the ageing company from a single member of the Car family who wanted to get out. The NoW, however, launched a shameful tirade against Maxwell, pointing out he was a "foreigner" and that the paper was as British as Roast beef.
Meanwhile, Bolan recalls, as he was breakfasting Murdoch was in the bath scribbling on the back of an envelope. He was nobbling together an offer which was utterly cheeky, impertinent, audacious, adventurous and reckless. He would swap a half share of his give- aways for a half share in the then biggest selling newspaper in the world. (It had topped eight million circulation in the late forties). To the chairman of the board, Sir William Carr, who lent on the right side of Hitler, and to whom Maxwell was a "European Jew, an alien upstart and not to be trusted", Murdoch appeared on paper to be a much better choice. The son of Sir Keith and grandson of a Scottish Presbyterian minister, Rube Babe was infinitely preferable.
To Murdoch's delight and surprise Carr welcomed him in with open arms. The then editor, Stafford Sommerfield, was an old-school journalistic tyrant, a real character who wore jazzy braces and on edition day invited his senior staff to have a breakfast of bacon and eggs and pints of Pimms at the Savoy. Sommerfield knew that if Maxwell got in he would be the first to be fired. This "other chap, the fresh-faced sheep farmer", as he called Murdoch, would soon be tamed and they would all go back to their gentle and comfortable expense accounts. It was the last serious misjudgement concerning the man who would soon put fire to Fleet Street.
Prior to the take-over Sommerfield and Carr had hatched a plan whereby Sommerfield would go upstairs to the board and his heir- apparent Michael Gabbert would take over the editor's chair. Gabbert, a brilliant journalist, but also a first class dubious schemer was recruited to use his department - all of us in the investigative team, to do everything it could to thwart Maxwell.
Our headquarters became the attic room of the Cheshire Cheese, an old Dickensian pub just off Fleet Street and here Gabbert and co., including myself, planned and plotted tactics with City bankers, PR's, lawyers and 'business advisors' which was a euphemism for crooks. It was realised that Maxwell could probably muster enough support to win, but the final decision would be made at an all- important shareholders meeting where everything would be decided on a show of hands.
Quite simply Carr and co. quickly gave every single employee a share - down to the last janitor and we all dutifully turned up at the meeting and voted for Murdoch. We then relinquished our shares. Murdoch's take-over had been only just on this side of the law.
A few weeks after he took over, he called Sir William Carr - his co- chairman - and said, Sorry, Sir William, but you've just got to go." He gave him two hours t leave the building and next went for Sommerfield's blood. Sommerfield and Carr had protected the editor with a foolproof contract. By chance I was in the lift with Sommerfield when Murdoch got in. He seemed jubilant. "I have just," he told Sommerfield, "found someone who can break that contract of yours. Lord Goodman." Sommerfield, who always had great timing, waited for the lift to get to the appropriate floor an swept out of the lift saying, "I doubt it Rupert. He made it."
Nevertheless, even though he got for the time a record golden handout, Sommerfield soon had his marching orders.
Murdoch, however, was itching and he took over the ailing Sun. Even as he did so, however, America beckoned and the rest of the world would soon be at his finger tips. By 2003, a mere half century since his father died, Rupert will almost certainly be the most powerful media baron the world has ever known.
In an active journalistic life I have supported, for what it was worth, most of the groups of populations who, because they were being oppressed, turned to terrorism to try and lift this oppression. One does not need to support the terrorism itself, merely appreciate why it became necessary in the various fights for freedom which have engaged hundreds of parts of the world throughout its history.
It was extremely logical to me to be on the 'side' of the ANC in South Africa and you did not have to be anti-Semitic to support the Palestinian cause where a nation woke up one day to find itself displaced because of a dubious declaration worked out between the French and the British on the back of an envelope.
These activities, and support of the movements against them, transcended mere politics and became a matter of pure moral outrage. It was simple to believe that all imperialist nationalism was wrong and that no nation or race should be allowed to force their wishes and style of government onto an alien peoples. In this way communist Russia and China were as immoral in their suppression of half of Europe and Asia as the West has ever been.
The Tamils in Sri Lanka are a minority with a history of abuse from the majority. So are the Kurds and many Jewish communities outside Europe. After Guernica the Basques were eminently logical and morally right to try and rule themselves and break away from the 'yoke' of Madrid. After 700 years of monstrous British rule and atrocity, the Irish also had every justification for rebellion. But that was seventy years ago
But in the case of the Basques and the Irish, we are now coming up to a millennium and both are facing a new century in which the old bitternesses could and should be shelved. While the Basques may still feel Madrid holds too much of a stranglehold on government, they are in fact living in a far more tolerant, safe, prosperous than they have ever been, and in local government almost have autonomy. The Spanish Basque has as much right as any other Spaniard when it comes to the franchise, to education, to opportunity within the EEC, to unemployment benefits and so on. So has the Northern Irishman, whatever his religion. While some political and certainly religious bias may still exist, no one is actually oppressed any more.
If one's morality is based on minority groups having the freedom to live their lives as they wish, then in the case of Ireland, the Protestants fit the bill perfectly and the IRA are the oppressors.
Personally, I don't understand why the Irish want to include in their political midst such ghastly people as Ian Paisley and his ugly Orangemen. If they lived on the mainland I would positively campaign to banish them to their own corner of the island to live in complete isolation. Let them all march together on some lonely Scottish island.
The fact is that the ETA and the IRA are perpetuating some sort of wretched idealism which in real terms is quite pointless and needless at the end of the twentieth century. Franco's dreaded National Guardia and the Black and Tans are long gone, if not completely forgotten.
The trouble is, in both situations, that because old rivalries wont die down naturally, terrorism springs in and then both national armies have to try and suppress it. Thereby creating new martyrs and fresh causes. Unless one can try and properly bury the hatchet, as in South Africa and Palestine, the situation will remain self- perpetuating.
It is quite ridicules to state that we will not bow to terrorism when the IRA can make London cease to function for the price of a 'phone call. However unpalatable it may be, they have won. It was Mao who once said, "leave me with one man in a tree with one bullet, and the revolution will continue".
The only way to beat the IRA is to isolate them in their own communities. Every sane Irishman of any religious or political belief is desperate for peace. If the present British government, faltering over post Thatcher impotency, had to foresight and courage to say, "Okay, what do you want? Let's thrash this out". and genuinely go to the table in a mood of realistic conciliation and to stop keep trying to cross the 't's' and dot the 'i's', then support for the IRA if it tries to force hands with bombs, will fall away like autumn leaves.
The first step is to withdraw all but a token force of British soldiers in Northern Ireland. They don't want to be there and no one but Paisley and co. do. Sooner or later it will happen. A genuine and realistic effort from our side will force the issue and make it sooner rather than later.