Jack Straw examined 'extraordinary' social security files of Jeremy Thorpe's lover

Labour grandee read Norman Scott’s intimate secrets during investigation for Harold WilsonLabour grandee Jack Straw has disclosed his role in a 1970s Whitehall plot to examine private social security files belonging to the lover of the former Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe.The former foreign secretary said the “extraordinary” files, marked “secret”, went into intimate details about the relationship between Norman Scott and the Liberal leader. A memo written by Straw was forwarded to the then prime minister Harold Wilson.Straw, then a special adviser, said Wilson had demanded that he go through the files to help Thorpe find out if there had been a political plot to prosecute Scott for social security fraud.Wilson’s former aides disagree and claim that Straw was unwittingly being used by Number 10 to gather evidence of Thorpe’s homosexuality which could be used to undermine the Liberal leader.Most social security files are prosaic even by Whitehall standards, Straw said, but these were jaw-dropping.“There were all sorts of pockets marked ‘secret’. We opened these pockets and there were statements made very many years before 1976, going into all sorts of details about the contact between Scott and Thorpe which went well beyond their use of social security numbers.“They included graphic details . . . and when and where they had had sexual encounters. It was very odd to think that all of this had been written down in longhand by a social security clerk in Barnstable,” he told the Guardian.Thorpe and three others were acquitted of conspiring to murder Scott in 1979 after one of the most famous court cases in British political history.The case has been pushed back into the public sphere by the BBC’s dramatisation, starring Hugh Grant, called A Very English Scandal.Straw’s involvement dates back to 1976 when he was a special adviser to Barbara Castle, the social security minister.Thorpe was under pressure to resign from his position as Liberal leader following rumours that he was gay and about his alleged involvement in a plot to murder Scott. Continue reading…
Via: Jack Straw examined 'extraordinary' social security files of Jeremy Thorpe's lover