Express & Star

Wolves president Sir Jack Hayward's part in Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe's downfall

Jeremy Thorpe's political star was in the ascendant when his life became engulfed in scandal over an alleged plot to murder a former male model with whom he was rumoured to have had an affair.

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However, it wasn't the charge that he had hired someone to kill Norman Scott that ended his career but the money that paid for it - cash that had been given to Thorpe, quite innocently, by Wolves president Sir Jack Hayward.

The millionaire and philanthropist first met the Liberal leader in 1969 and was immediately impressed by him. He went on to become a generous benefactor of the Liberal Party, donating hundreds of thousands of pounds.

It is said that Thorpe and his parliamentary colleague Peter Bessell, a prosecution witness at his trial, treated Sir Jack as a rich idiot, making a serious attempt to defraud him by claiming that they needed money to make deals with giant American companies which would be beneficial to his Bahamas project.

However the canny Wulfrunian did not fall for it and Thorpe forced Bessell to write a letter confessing and saying that it was his sole idea.

Sir Jack continued to support Thorpe through an intermediary, and it was this money that was used to pay for the silencing of Norman Scott.

A year before the shooting, Thorpe asked Sir Jack to settle election expenses through a special route, in the form of two cheques to an unwitting Jersey-based businessman.

Thorpe used one of these sums to buy intimate letters he had sent to Scott. One referred to Scott affectionately as 'Bunnies' and concluded 'I miss you.'

Liberal deputy treasurer David Holmes paid Scott £2,500 for the incriminating notes, which he burned in a friend's Aga. But the measure was not enough to silence Scott.

During the subsequent court case it was alleged that Thorpe had hired someone to kill him. It also emerged that the money to finance this plot, which only resulted in the death of Scott's dog, Rinka, also came from Sir Jack.

It was this misuse of party funds that caused David Steel, who replaced him as Liberal leader, to demand Thorpe's resignation.

In an interview with a national newspaper 10 years ago, Sir Jack recalled the political storm.

"Luckily, I'm a squirrel, I never throw anything away. So I had the letters from Thorpe asking for money which, unbeknownst to me, went to pay for the potential murderer. They were crucial evidence.

"If my wife had her way, they would have been cleared out of the drawers to make space for my underpants."

It is hard to underestimate the grip that the Thorpe affair had on the nation during the late 1970s. It became the most sensational political scandal in a generation.

For more than 10 years the charismatic MP was able to keep the rumours of a gay affair with Scott at bay with the help of political colleagues and a compliant press.

The pair had met in 1961 when gay sex was still illegal. After falling out with Thorpe, Scott tried several times to go public with his story without success. Thorpe always denied any liaison with the stable groom, admitting only that they had been friends.

But as he shot up the career ladder, the politician allegedly asked his closest friends to arrange for Scott to be killed, which led to them hiring Andrew Newton, a small-time airline pilot, to do the job.

On October 23, 1975, Newton, posing as a minder, met Scott and drove him out to Dartmoor where he shot his pet Great Dane, then allegedly tried to shoot Scott himself, only for the gun to jam.

Newton, later jailed for two years, did not mention his connection to Thorpe.

Scott's claims of a gay affair finally made it into the press in 1976 when he appeared in court on a minor fraud charge and claimed he was being hounded because of his past sexual relationship with Thorpe. Protected from libel by the legal privilege attached to court proceedings, newspapers were able to publish the claims for the first time.

At the Old Bailey trial in 1979, Thorpe did not give evidence in his own defence. He was acquitted on all charges, largely because the credibility of the main prosecution witnesses was undermined, but had by then had lost his seat and his party.

Asked why he had supported the Liberals when his politics were clearly right-wing, Sir Jack said he had been persuaded by Thorpe's policies on Europe.

"Also, I felt sorry for them," he added.

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