Sometimes there IS smoke without fire
During the recent controversy a person claiming to represent Conservative Grassroots made the statement on television that "there's no smoke without fire."
This is of course a very old saying. My experience from more than thirty years in active politics is that this particular saying is absolutely not true. Sometimes there really is smoke without fire, especially when it is in someone else's interests that there should be. Certain very widely believed stories are actually very clever propaganda planted by the enemies of the people they are about.
Evidence against the theory that "thre's no smoke without fire goes back a long time. Although the Emperor Nero was undoubtedly one of the most evil rulers in history, many historians believe that he was actually innocent of the best known crime for which he is remembered - singing an aria as he watched the city of Rome burning. (He was certainly innocent of the allegation in the form in which it was most often quoted when I was a boy, of fiddling while Rome burned - the violin had not been invented in Nero's time.)
Nero murdered his mother after committing incest with her, murdered his wives, and murdered a very large number of other people. But he wasn't in Rome when the infamous fire broke out, and hurried back to the city to personally lead the firefighting efforts. It would appear that the reason Nero was blamed for the fire is that one of his many enemies - probably a relative of someone who he had murdered - cast the accusation that he had started the fire so that he could rebuild Rome in the style that he fancied in a way which exactly played into the preconceptions many romans already had of Nero. The Italians have a saying for this, "Si non e vero, e ben trovato" or "If it's not true, it's well invented."
The trouble is that slanders often are well invented - especially if they are muttered anonymously so that the victims of lies can't go to court and crush them by providing proof that they are false.
In one instance I know of a set of lies which was very widely believed about a former cabinet minister, both in his constituency and among some of the political class and I know exactly where those lies came from. But for complicated reasons, the lies concerned never made it into print.
A very good friend of mine happened to be a Conservative branch chairman in the cabinet minister's constituency, and lived next door to a very senior activist of another political party. Who was unwise enough to discuss on his porch, not realising that he could be overheard from next door, their plans to undermine the minister concerned by spreading the lie that he was having a gay affair with another cabinet minister.
This particular lie never appeared in a political leaflet, it was spread by word of mouth. But within a few months we started picking it up, both on the doorstep and in London. Some looney who was probably acting on his own started distributing anonymous leaflets with an even worse version of the story, that the minister was supposdly dying of AIDS. The Conservative party had to spend some time during the following general election trying to keep this poisonous rubbish out of the press - fortunately the journalists who became aware of it, either because they had some integrity and realised the story was rubbish or because they were afraid of being sued, declined to use it.
I have reason to believe that during that General Election there was a kind of "Mexican stand off" between the Conservative and Labour parties and their allies in the press. One newspaper allied to the Labour party had front page ready to go with this story about the Conservative minister, while a paper allied to the Conservatives had a front page ready to go with an equally foul story about a very prominent Labour front bencher. If either story had been published the other would have come out the following day. Fortunately nobody was daft enough to start this particular exchange. If they had, the party which would have benefitted would most probably have been a third political party, which happens to be the one who invented the first story in the beginning.
Even if I hadn't known where the first story came from, I would be quite certain there was no truth in either. One former minister who was supposedly dying of aids is still alive and well, sitting in parliament, and was writing on Conservative Home very recently. And the story about the Labour frontbencher must have been a pack of lies as well, because otherwise it would have been bound to have come out this year following the Jimmy Saville scandal.
Unfortunately it is my impression that over the following twenty years, standards of accuracy, integrity and judgement in some sections of the media have fallen catastrophically below what was displayed at that time. You only need compare the good judgement shown by journalists in the nineties who refrained from a scoop which might have destroyed careers and lives at the price of printing what were probably filthy lies, with some of what came out during the Leveson inquiry and the ghastly mess the BBC got themselves into over sex abuse allegations.
When there is a story in the press about something supposedly said or done by a politician, we would be well advised to be aware of the possibility that it is the result of a misunderstanding, something misheard, or worst of all, a deliberate lie invented by someone with an agenda which would be served by discrediting the person the story is about.
We saw this with "Plebgate" where the former Chief Whip, Andrew Mitchell MP, was accused in all the media of having called a police officer a "pleb." While admitting that he had said something he shouldn't, Mitchell vehemently denied that he had used the politically toxic words which had been hung round his neck. Large number of people refused to believe him and he was forced to resign.
There is no absolute proof who was telling the truth about what was said - but CCTV footage released after his resignation did prove that Mitchell's account of the incident was much closer to the truth than accounts in the newspapers, supposedly taken from a police log. Of course, that doesn't prove the police officers directly involved in the incident were lying - although certain regional officials of the Police Federation were made to look terrible on channel four - because it is quote possible that the so-called police log was nothing of the sort.
The same applies to the allegations that "someone close to the prime minister" supposedly insulted Conservative activists last week. If anyone was stupid enough to use the words concerned, the only people who will benefit will be Ed Miliband and Nigel Farage.
Personally I believe Lord Feldman, the Conservative party co-chairman, when he denied having said anything of the sort. Not least because I was recently present when he discussed some of the issues with Conservative activists and the situation was the exact opposite of the arguments supposedly used be the "person close to the prime minister" who supposedly insulted activists. Far from pressurising MPs to rebel, the activists present were asking what could be done to get the parliamentary party singing from the same hymn sheet so that the headlines would be about the issues and the case we want to put rather than "tory splits"
Similarly I believe David Cameron who emailed Conservative activists, strongly repudiating the opinions which had allegedly been expressed and insisting that he would not want anyone working for him who thought like that. Unless the journalists who have made the allegations openly name the person who supposedly made the remarks, we're never going to know. But I repeat - sometimes there IS smoke without fire.
This is of course a very old saying. My experience from more than thirty years in active politics is that this particular saying is absolutely not true. Sometimes there really is smoke without fire, especially when it is in someone else's interests that there should be. Certain very widely believed stories are actually very clever propaganda planted by the enemies of the people they are about.
Evidence against the theory that "thre's no smoke without fire goes back a long time. Although the Emperor Nero was undoubtedly one of the most evil rulers in history, many historians believe that he was actually innocent of the best known crime for which he is remembered - singing an aria as he watched the city of Rome burning. (He was certainly innocent of the allegation in the form in which it was most often quoted when I was a boy, of fiddling while Rome burned - the violin had not been invented in Nero's time.)
Nero murdered his mother after committing incest with her, murdered his wives, and murdered a very large number of other people. But he wasn't in Rome when the infamous fire broke out, and hurried back to the city to personally lead the firefighting efforts. It would appear that the reason Nero was blamed for the fire is that one of his many enemies - probably a relative of someone who he had murdered - cast the accusation that he had started the fire so that he could rebuild Rome in the style that he fancied in a way which exactly played into the preconceptions many romans already had of Nero. The Italians have a saying for this, "Si non e vero, e ben trovato" or "If it's not true, it's well invented."
The trouble is that slanders often are well invented - especially if they are muttered anonymously so that the victims of lies can't go to court and crush them by providing proof that they are false.
In one instance I know of a set of lies which was very widely believed about a former cabinet minister, both in his constituency and among some of the political class and I know exactly where those lies came from. But for complicated reasons, the lies concerned never made it into print.
A very good friend of mine happened to be a Conservative branch chairman in the cabinet minister's constituency, and lived next door to a very senior activist of another political party. Who was unwise enough to discuss on his porch, not realising that he could be overheard from next door, their plans to undermine the minister concerned by spreading the lie that he was having a gay affair with another cabinet minister.
This particular lie never appeared in a political leaflet, it was spread by word of mouth. But within a few months we started picking it up, both on the doorstep and in London. Some looney who was probably acting on his own started distributing anonymous leaflets with an even worse version of the story, that the minister was supposdly dying of AIDS. The Conservative party had to spend some time during the following general election trying to keep this poisonous rubbish out of the press - fortunately the journalists who became aware of it, either because they had some integrity and realised the story was rubbish or because they were afraid of being sued, declined to use it.
I have reason to believe that during that General Election there was a kind of "Mexican stand off" between the Conservative and Labour parties and their allies in the press. One newspaper allied to the Labour party had front page ready to go with this story about the Conservative minister, while a paper allied to the Conservatives had a front page ready to go with an equally foul story about a very prominent Labour front bencher. If either story had been published the other would have come out the following day. Fortunately nobody was daft enough to start this particular exchange. If they had, the party which would have benefitted would most probably have been a third political party, which happens to be the one who invented the first story in the beginning.
Even if I hadn't known where the first story came from, I would be quite certain there was no truth in either. One former minister who was supposedly dying of aids is still alive and well, sitting in parliament, and was writing on Conservative Home very recently. And the story about the Labour frontbencher must have been a pack of lies as well, because otherwise it would have been bound to have come out this year following the Jimmy Saville scandal.
Unfortunately it is my impression that over the following twenty years, standards of accuracy, integrity and judgement in some sections of the media have fallen catastrophically below what was displayed at that time. You only need compare the good judgement shown by journalists in the nineties who refrained from a scoop which might have destroyed careers and lives at the price of printing what were probably filthy lies, with some of what came out during the Leveson inquiry and the ghastly mess the BBC got themselves into over sex abuse allegations.
When there is a story in the press about something supposedly said or done by a politician, we would be well advised to be aware of the possibility that it is the result of a misunderstanding, something misheard, or worst of all, a deliberate lie invented by someone with an agenda which would be served by discrediting the person the story is about.
We saw this with "Plebgate" where the former Chief Whip, Andrew Mitchell MP, was accused in all the media of having called a police officer a "pleb." While admitting that he had said something he shouldn't, Mitchell vehemently denied that he had used the politically toxic words which had been hung round his neck. Large number of people refused to believe him and he was forced to resign.
There is no absolute proof who was telling the truth about what was said - but CCTV footage released after his resignation did prove that Mitchell's account of the incident was much closer to the truth than accounts in the newspapers, supposedly taken from a police log. Of course, that doesn't prove the police officers directly involved in the incident were lying - although certain regional officials of the Police Federation were made to look terrible on channel four - because it is quote possible that the so-called police log was nothing of the sort.
The same applies to the allegations that "someone close to the prime minister" supposedly insulted Conservative activists last week. If anyone was stupid enough to use the words concerned, the only people who will benefit will be Ed Miliband and Nigel Farage.
Personally I believe Lord Feldman, the Conservative party co-chairman, when he denied having said anything of the sort. Not least because I was recently present when he discussed some of the issues with Conservative activists and the situation was the exact opposite of the arguments supposedly used be the "person close to the prime minister" who supposedly insulted activists. Far from pressurising MPs to rebel, the activists present were asking what could be done to get the parliamentary party singing from the same hymn sheet so that the headlines would be about the issues and the case we want to put rather than "tory splits"
Similarly I believe David Cameron who emailed Conservative activists, strongly repudiating the opinions which had allegedly been expressed and insisting that he would not want anyone working for him who thought like that. Unless the journalists who have made the allegations openly name the person who supposedly made the remarks, we're never going to know. But I repeat - sometimes there IS smoke without fire.
Comments