by John Pearson
Normally Goodman would have launched a strongly worded writ for libel against the International Press Corporation, its chairman Cecil Harmsworth King, its editorial director Hugh Kinsman Cudlipp, and the Sunday Mirror editor Reg Payne – then left the law to take its course. But Goodman knew quite well that this would be disastrous. There had recently been too many barely veiled press reports and suspicious incidents involving Boothby which made it clear that if things ever reached the point where he was forced to defend his reputation in a court of law against any but a brain-dead barrister he would be shot to pieces in the process. Also, as someone with a considerable appetite not just for food but also for political gossip, Arnold Goodman would certainly have known that not only were the Sunday Mirror’s accusations broadly true but that the longer the paper had to put its case together the more the truth was likely to emerge, including as the final clincher Boothby’s close involvement with Tom Driberg.
In such situations Goodman had a favourite saying – ‘The greater the truth, the greater the libel.’ And the more the truth about this case emerged, as it certainly would do if it ever went to court, the bloodier would be the carnage that would follow. To avoid this happening, speed was of the essence and Goodman was quick to pick on three potential advantages – and, like the clever lawyer that he was, proceed to make hay with them.
The first was a widespread feeling among politicians of all parties that the sleaze and scandal of the Profumo case the year before had done politics no favours, and that the last thing any politician wanted now was another catastrophic scandal, especially one involving a notorious old rake like Robert Boothby. Taken on their own, of course, such feelings would not have been enough to save him. But they would undoubtedly reinforce the second point, which could be vital. Since the scandal involved a prominent Conservative and a prominent member of the Labour Party both main parties had a strong interest in suppressing it. The prime minister, Sir Alec Douglas-Home and the leader of the opposition, Harold Wilson, both wanted it to disappear and neither was going to object, still less play party politics over the Sunday Mirror story, if the scandal could be painlessly persuaded to vanish quietly.
Thirdly, and most importantly of all, smart Arnold unerringly homed in on one last crucial fact for the plan he was devising to succeed, and which in turn permitted him to deliver his masterstroke. This was the dominant position of Hugh Cudlipp at the centre of the whole affair. If Harold Wilson and Sir Alec Douglas-Home both fervently desired to have this story killed, the one man who could wield the knife was Hugh Kinsman Cudlipp.
Goodman might well have earned his nickname ‘Mr Fixit’, by being the greatest fixer of his day but had he not been sure of Cudlipp’s absolute support not even he would ever have dared to pursue the course that he did.
The point was that no top investigative journalist as sharp and as well informed as Cudlipp would have had the faintest difficulty digging out the mass of evidence, much of it in the public domain already, which lay around to add credence to the Sunday Mirror’s allegations. It was not as if Boothby, still less Tom Driberg, had ever been particularly discreet about the company they kept or about what they did. There had already been press reports of suspicious incidents involving Boothby’s relationships with boys and it would not have taken a journalist as smart as Cudlipp long to ferret out yet further morsels such as Ron Kray’s dinner with Lord Boothby at the House of Lords or the return dinner party that Ron had arranged in Boothby’s honour at the Society restaurant. Had Cudlipp also felt inclined he could have fairly easily found out, through Norman Lucas, what had been going on at Ronnie’s flat. But did Hugh Cudlipp really wish to waste his precious time assembling evidence to support a scoop on which his greatest rival at the Sunday Mirror, Cecil King, had firmly staked his reputation?
This question, or something very like it, must have swiftly passed through Goodman’s agile brain as he pondered on how to act in the most important case of his career. Or, to put it more directly, how could he organise the perfect cover-up of what would otherwise become the most damaging political scandal of the 1960s.
One thing to remember about Arnold Goodman was his impressiveness. This was partly down to his size. Not only was he very fat but he was also very large. He had what politicians once called ‘bottom’. His pronouncements carried weight. Because of this people trusted him, and he had made himself the unofficial spokesman for what was known as ‘the Great and the Good’ throughout the country. In Private Eye, he was habitually referred to as ‘the Blessed Arnold’ and his admiring biographer Brian Brivati actually calls him Britain’s ‘most distinguished citizen outside government’. In other words, if the English Establishment had a physical presence in the 1960s, it was Arnold Goodman. Only this explains what happened next and how this most impressive but extremely devious old lawyer got Lord Boothby, Tom Driberg and a lot of other very worried politicians off the hook – and saved the Kray Twins in the process.
We’ll never know exactly how he did it. But since everything depended now on Hugh Cudlipp for his plan to work, Goodman must have had a very serious discussion with him very early on. One says this for the simple reason that without a watertight guarantee from Cudlipp nothing of what followed would have been remotely possible. But from what we know of both the characters involved it can’t have been too difficult for them to have reached an understanding, particularly when someone as persuasive as Arnold Goodman set out to remind someone as ambitious as Hugh Cudlipp of the simple benefits of seeing sense.
We’ll never know precisely what was said to whom but Hugh Cudlipp can’t have needed much persuading. And, once he had been persuaded, the time had come for big fat Arnold to batten down the hatches and proceed full steam ahead.
Since it was far too dangerous to risk a full-scale libel action in a court of law Goodman was left with only one alternative. He must somehow make Cecil King retract his story in the Sunday Mirror, publicly apologise to Boothby and sign up to appropriate – i.e. extremely large – damages for libel.
As a young journalist on the Sunday Mirror, Derek Jameson witnessed what ensued from the vantage point of the paper’s newsroom during the first two crucial weeks following the breaking of the story in the paper. He is quite specific over what occurred.
‘To begin with we were all excited by what was going on. None of us doubted for a moment the truth of the story, nor did we question our ability to prove it. We already knew a lot about Boothby. So did Norman Lucas, and we were just about to start gathering together the proof we needed to back the story up when everything ground to a halt. There was no explanation but suddenly the story died. I remember feeling baffled and frustrated at the time. So were quite a lot of others but there was nothing we could do about it as the orders had come down to us from the editorial director, Hugh Cudlipp.’
And that was that. Without the necessary proof to back the story up the paper was powerless, and the moment had arrived when Arnold Goodman gave the final touch to the biggest gamble of his career.
Bearing in mind how much was now involved, it was a scheme of remarkable audacity. It was nothing less than to persuade Boothby to make a public declaration of his total innocence of all the Mirror’s accusations and get it published in the letter column of The Times. In those days, when that newspaper still used to claim that ‘Top People Read The Times’ it was still the tribal noticeboard of the Establishment and as Goodman knew quite well a letter at the head of its famous correspondence columns would carry far more weight among ‘those who mattered’ than it would do anywhere else.
Bereft of any other way of escaping from his nightmare situation, Boothby had to go along with this, and at Goodman’s personal dictation he sat down to write what his biographer, Robert Rhodes James rightly called ‘the letter of his life’.
In essence it was perfectly straightforward: a simple five-hundred-word denial of all the Sunday Mirror allegations, and it went in part as follows: ‘I have never been to all-male parties in Mayfair. I h
ave met the man alleged to be King of the Underworld (Ron Kray) only three times, on business matters, and then by appointment at my flat, at his request, and in the presence of other people. The police deny having made any report to Scotland Yard or the Home Secretary in connection with any matters that affect me. Lastly, I am not, and never have been, homosexual. In short, the Sunday Mirror allegations are a tissue of atrocious lies.’
The letter ended with a challenge. ‘If Mirror Newspapers possess any documentary or photographic evidence to the contrary, let them print it and take the consequences.’
To ensure that there was no misunderstanding Boothby personally delivered the letter to the editor of The Times, Sir William Haley, to whom he gave his absolute assurance that every word he wrote was gospel truth. Goodman also took the further precaution of involving the distinguished barrister Sir Gerald Gardiner QC in his plan to seek an instant settlement from the Sunday Mirror, by persuading Boothby to engage him as his counsel.
At first Sir Gerald seems to have been reluctant to take on this role and he finally accepted only after getting Boothby’s absolute assurance that there was not the faintest truth in any of the Mirror’s allegations.
‘You have my word of honour on it as a gentleman,’ said Lord Boothby.
So much for honour as far as Lord Boothby was concerned, and so much for his assurances to the Labour Party’s future Lord Chancellor. For, as we now know, every one of the letter’s positive denials was false. Boothby had been meeting Ron Kray on numerous occasions since the end of 1963. He had been to all-male parties (admittedly not in Mayfair but elsewhere in London). He had been the subject of an ongoing investigation by Scotland Yard’s intelligence section, and he unquestionably had been and still was homosexual. In short it was his letter, not the Sunday Mirror’s article, that was the ‘tissue of atrocious lies’.
Once the letter had been published in The Times on the second of August it was time for action. ‘He who hesitates is lost.’ But Arnold Goodman didn’t hesitate and it was Cecil Harmsworth King who lost. For the time had come for the Blessed Arnold to make that all-important telephone call to Cecil Harmsworth King that would leave him no alternative but to repudiate his story.
Against the voice of the Establishment the wretched Cecil didn’t really stand a chance.
As Derek Jameson recalls, ‘everybody in the press was terrified of Goodie’ – especially when he habitually introduced bad news on the telephone with the remark, “I think that you should know.” ’
When Goodman rang up Cecil King and started off with ‘Mr King, there is something that I think you should know …’ Jehovah could have been announcing Judgement Day to him. And when Cecil King attempted to reply, it must have been like arguing with God Almighty – in spite of which he did his best.
‘Where is your evidence for these damaging allegations, Mr King?’ the Almighty asked him.
Reply came there none, and the voice of the Establishment continued: ‘I can’t imagine that your shareholders would appreciate the costs. For if you leave my client no alternative but to pursue this matter through the courts the cost to your shareholders will be fearsome. The course that I’m suggesting would mean letting your shareholders off cheaply by comparison with the sort of figures they’ll be facing if, heaven forfend, this sorry business ever comes to court.’
By the time the conversation ended it must have felt as if the Blessed Arnold was offering Cecil King salvation on the cheap.
‘How much would you suggest?’ asked Cecil King.
‘Fifty thousand pounds,’ said the voice of the Establishment.
‘I was thinking more in terms of thirty thousand,’ ventured Cecil King.
‘Mr King, we mustn’t be ridiculous. Bear in mind the suffering these outrageous falsehoods must have caused Lord Boothby and all you come up with is thirty thousand pounds. I must urge you, think again. In the meantime I’m prepared to compromise. Forty thousand plus a full apology on the front page of the next edition of the Sunday Mirror. And that’s my final offer.’
‘Done!’ said Cecil Harmsworth King, or words to that effect.
And done he truly was.
At this point there is one thing that one must understand – the sheer power behind the blow that Goodman had struck in defence of Boothby. It wasn’t only Cecil King who had to suffer. This was the mail-clad fist of the Establishment at its most formidable, and the blow was intended to intimidate anyone who dared to challenge it. Goodman knew exactly what he was up to and how much was at stake, and he took no chances. Back in 1964, £40,000 – nearly a million pounds in today’s inflated currency – were unprecedented damages in a libel case, as Goodman intended them to be – less to compensate Lord Boothby than to stand there as a fearsome warning against anyone ever reopening the case.
There was one final grace note that, lawyer-like, Goodman insisted on, revealing the perfectionism which made him such a master of his trade. Partly in order to cover his own tracks, along with those of many others, he insisted that none of those involved in the agreement was ever to discuss or comment on it afterwards. The Establishment had spoken. The greatest coup of Cecil King’s career was rubbished, and Arnold Goodman’s stitch-up was complete, leaving Harold Wilson free to go ahead and win the general election. Thanks in no small part to Arnold Goodman, Labour was elected that October. And Arnold Goodman soon received a peerage from a grateful Labour government. As his fellow lawyers put it, he could rest his case.
Or as the Mirror’s lawyer Philip Levy (lover of its top columnist, Marjorie Proops) told me: ‘once the deal was signed, the shutters came down on the case and no one was ever going to raise them in a hurry.’
Goodman – not to mention Boothby and Tom Driberg – were all extremely lucky with the timing when the scandal broke and the way the settlement coincided with the official dissolution of parliament in preparation for that autumn’s general election. It meant that every active politician in the land now had that one single thought in his or her mind, in comparison with which the lies and antics of Lord Boothby could be conveniently forgotten.
What nobody appeared to notice was that Arnold Goodman’s actions had not only given the law’s protection to this elderly ennobled catamite, but also to a psychotic and potentially homicidal gangster: Ronnie Kray. The possibilities for blackmail were enormous and, as we shall see, would soon be made the most of by the Twins. At the same time, during the next four years the megalomania and madness of the Twins would grow apace until fear of them spread far beyond Scotland Yard and started to infect the nation.
In 1969, when the Krays and their followers were finally brought to trial, there was much talk about what was called ‘the conspiracy of silence’ around them. What nobody remembered was the behaviour of friends and politicians round the undeserving form of Robert Boothby, who for reasons of their own had stayed silent as an increasingly dangerous and outrageous actual conspiracy of silence rolled smoothly into operation.
The point was that by the standards of the day a libel settlement which would approach one million pounds in today’s inflated currency was enormous – and a truly fearsome demonstration of the power of the Establishment when threatened, as Arnold Goodman had intended it should be. Not only had the Establishment spoken – it had put its victim’s money where its mouth was by demanding these formidable damages, along with grovelling apologies from the offending newspaper. Rarely was closure bought at such cost. With retribution such as this, the argument was over. The Establishment, in the bulky form of Arnold Goodman, had given notice to the media that no further mention of the Boothby scandal would be tolerated.
But in spite of this impressive legal edifice which Arnold Goodman had created to protect Lord Boothby’s reputation at such a vast expenditure of other people’s money there remained one simple fact which left at risk the whole performance. Henceforth, everyone involved in it would be haunted by a secret that could not be spoken. Lord Boothby was actually a liar and it was his case not the Sun
day Mirror’s, which had been a tissue of atrocious falsehoods.
I am still amazed that at the time nobody, but nobody, spoke out against this. Instead, a mood of smug congratulation followed from a group of Boothby’s friends and admirers. Michael Foot, for instance, wrote to him, ‘adding my congratulations to the multitudes you must have received and richly deserved. You showed great nerve and courage. But who would have expected otherwise.’
In an editorial, the left-wing New Statesman congratulated him still more fulsomely. ‘Boothby has demonstrated, for all the world to see, that the right way to tackle a newspaper smear is to hit back hard and openly. Not all have his courage. Perhaps more will do so in future as a result of his actions.’
For those who like dwelling on the hollowness of power, the absurdity of the great, and the inflated claptrap of earthly honours, let us end by listing the winners and the losers in this whole affair.
First in the list of winners come the politicians, who were left free to fight that autumn’s general election undistracted by a sordid scandal at the heart of the body politic. Since he became prime minister as a result, Harold Wilson proved to be the greatest beneficiary of all – which in the circumstances was fair since it was he who had ordered the cover-up in the first place.
The former prime minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home also benefited since the cover-up allowed him to forget the cares of his unwanted premiership along with the dirt and debris of a scandal which would certainly have upset his reputation and his last few weeks in office.
But it was Arnold Goodman who outdid everyone in the honours following this case, including, of course, the almost instant peerage, the chairmanship of the the Arts Council and the Observer Trust, and – perhaps the most enviable gift of all – the Mastership of University College, Oxford.
Goodman was closely followed in the honours stakes by Hugh Cudlipp. Some months later when the unfortunate Cecil King lost the chairmanship of IPC in the fallout from the Boothby business Cudlipp inevitably replaced him. His peerage followed two years later, along with the emoluments that make life in the Establishment so profitable and so enjoyable. In 1976 someone with, one hopes, a sense of humour made him a member of the Royal Commission on Standards of Conduct in Public Life. For Cudlipp was not entirely devoid of humour about himself. Not long before he died he published a sequel to his early biography which was called Publish and be Damned. He called his final book, The Prerogative of the Harlot.