Jeremy Thorpe - Possible Involvement of Jack Straw

Possible Involvement of Jack Straw

In 2002, a tape-recording surfaced of Harold Wilson discussing the scandal and saying: "Look, I saw Jack Straw, he's very worried if he were mentioned in this context, he thinks he'll be finished." This resulted in an inquiry by the BBC programme Newsnight into Jack Straw's involvement in the Scott affair. According to the diary of Barbara Castle, Secretary of State for Social Security, Wilson had asked her to examine Norman Scott's security file to see if it contained any indications that he was working as part of a conspiracy against Thorpe. Straw informed Castle that when he went to examine Scott's file, it was missing. The journalist Barrie Penrose has alleged that Straw subsequently leaked information from the file to the media. Straw remained silent on that matter, but denied the accusation by Joe Haines that Wilson asked him to read the files for information that could be used to smear Thorpe. At the time, the general view, promoted in particular by Private Eye, was that Wilson was using his position and influence to help and protect Thorpe and certainly not to smear him. In a BBC2 documentary on 16 March 2006, Penrose revealed that he pursued or stumbled on the murder allegations in the course of following leads from Harold Wilson, who wanted to prompt an investigation into the role of security services in destabilizing his government. The documentary suggested that Wilson's original perception and intention were to help rather than undermine Thorpe, believing that he was also an intended victim of a right-wing plot by a rogue element in MI5.