Sometimes there IS smoke without fire.
This is an updated version of a post first made four years ago.
Frequently when a nasty story is circulating about someone, or when the police have decided to investigate an allegation - as it is their duty to do if there is anything resembling evidence that it might be true - someone makes the comment 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 not true.
This is of course a very old saying. My experience from more than thirty years in active politics is that this particular saying is 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 clever propaganda planted by the enemies of the people they are about.
Evidence against the theory that "there'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, attempted to stamp out the Christian faith my torturing Christians to death in the area, and was responsible for the deaths of a very large number of innocent 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.
Evidence against the theory that "there'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, attempted to stamp out the Christian faith my torturing Christians to death in the area, and was responsible for the deaths of a very large number of innocent 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 friend or relative of one of the many people he had put to death - cast the accusation that Nero had started the fire so that he could rebuild Rome in the style that he fancied.
This was a masterly allegation because it exactly played into the preconceptions many Romans already had of Nero, which based on his past behaviour was highly plausible. 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 the most effective 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 widely believed about a former cabinet minister, 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 who was a Conservative branch chairman in the cabinet minister's constituency, happened to live next door to a senior activist of another political party. And that activist 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 supposedly 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, funnily enough, happens to be the very party whose activists invented the first story in the beginning.
Even if I hadn't known where the first story came from, I would be convinced there was no truth in either. The former minister who was supposedly dying of aids is still alive and well, was active in parliament until this year's general election, and still writes on Conservative Home and in the press. And the story about the Labour frontbencher must have been a pack of lies as well, because if there had been any genuine victims or a scrap of evidence someone would surely have taken it to Operation Midland or one of the other inquiries which have taken place 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 the media of having called a police officer a "pleb." He was forced to resign.
There is no absolute proof who was telling the truth about what was said, and making sense of the different and apparently contradictory outcomes of the criminal trial of a police officer who pleaded guilty to lying about the incident, disciplinary hearings involving several other officers, and the legal action which Mitchell brought against News Group Newspapers (e.g. the Sun) is next to impossible.
What is not in dispute, however, is that there was an attempt to discredit him.
CCTV footage released after his resignation did prove that Mitchell's account of the incident was closer to the truth than accounts in the newspapers, supposedly taken from a police log. I stress that this does not prove that the police officers directly involved in the incident told any lies and am not making any criticism of those officers.
Although Andrew Mitchell ultimately lost the libel case which he brought against News Group Newspapers because of a decision made on what the judge described as "the balance of probabilities," he was not the only person to lose his job over the affair: several police officers not directly involved in the original incident were found to have acted unprofessionally, been sacked or even in one case jailed, for making misleading comments or lying about the "plebgate" incident.
One officer was convicted of criminal misconduct and sentenced to twelve months in prison after he pleaded guilty to lying about the incident. Another officer, who was at the time a regional official of the Police Federation, was found guilty of misconduct and breaching professional standards by giving "misleading" accounts to the press of a meeting with Mr Mitchell. And including the officer who was jailed, four police officers were sacked for misconduct for offences such as giving "inaccurate and misleading statements" in connection with the affair.
In other words, whatever the truth of "Plebgate," no fewer than five people from whom society was entitled to expect a high standard of integrity were jailed, sacked or censured for attempting untruthfully to discredit Andrew Mitchell in the press or cover up the actions of others who did.
I have more than a few friends who are serving or former police officers. All of them are people of integrity as I believe that the vast majority of police officers are. But the events of the past few years has proven the existence of a toxic relationship between a minority of police officers and certain newspapers which has been highly damaging both to the cause of justice and to the reputation of both the press and the police.
Which brings me to the present and various allegations of child abuse being investigated by the police.
There have been too many cases in the past where true allegations of rape and child sexual abuse were not taken seriously enough. In what is probably the worst case, in Rochdale, this allowed more than 1,400 children, mostly girls aged between 11 and 15, to be raped or abused.
We must not make that kind of mistake again, therefore any such allegations must be taken seriously and properly and conscientiously investigated if there is any material chance that they are true.
Equally, the principle that an accused person is "innocent until proven guilty" has served the cause of justice well for centuries. Just as we should not assume without due investigation that allegations are false, neither should we assume that allegations are true just because the police are doing their job by investigating them. And neither the police officers leading an investigation nor anybody else should pre-judge whether an allegation is true or false before they have completed that investigation.
It ought to be possible to ensure that all such allegations are properly investigated without putting the innocent through something which feels horribly close to a Salem witch trial. Unfortunately some recent investigations and their reporting in the media have conveyed precisely that impression.
And hence I repeat - sometimes there IS smoke without fire.
The trouble is that the most effective 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 widely believed about a former cabinet minister, 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 who was a Conservative branch chairman in the cabinet minister's constituency, happened to live next door to a senior activist of another political party. And that activist 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 supposedly 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, funnily enough, happens to be the very party whose activists invented the first story in the beginning.
Even if I hadn't known where the first story came from, I would be convinced there was no truth in either. The former minister who was supposedly dying of aids is still alive and well, was active in parliament until this year's general election, and still writes on Conservative Home and in the press. And the story about the Labour frontbencher must have been a pack of lies as well, because if there had been any genuine victims or a scrap of evidence someone would surely have taken it to Operation Midland or one of the other inquiries which have taken place 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 the media of having called a police officer a "pleb." He was forced to resign.
There is no absolute proof who was telling the truth about what was said, and making sense of the different and apparently contradictory outcomes of the criminal trial of a police officer who pleaded guilty to lying about the incident, disciplinary hearings involving several other officers, and the legal action which Mitchell brought against News Group Newspapers (e.g. the Sun) is next to impossible.
What is not in dispute, however, is that there was an attempt to discredit him.
CCTV footage released after his resignation did prove that Mitchell's account of the incident was closer to the truth than accounts in the newspapers, supposedly taken from a police log. I stress that this does not prove that the police officers directly involved in the incident told any lies and am not making any criticism of those officers.
Although Andrew Mitchell ultimately lost the libel case which he brought against News Group Newspapers because of a decision made on what the judge described as "the balance of probabilities," he was not the only person to lose his job over the affair: several police officers not directly involved in the original incident were found to have acted unprofessionally, been sacked or even in one case jailed, for making misleading comments or lying about the "plebgate" incident.
One officer was convicted of criminal misconduct and sentenced to twelve months in prison after he pleaded guilty to lying about the incident. Another officer, who was at the time a regional official of the Police Federation, was found guilty of misconduct and breaching professional standards by giving "misleading" accounts to the press of a meeting with Mr Mitchell. And including the officer who was jailed, four police officers were sacked for misconduct for offences such as giving "inaccurate and misleading statements" in connection with the affair.
In other words, whatever the truth of "Plebgate," no fewer than five people from whom society was entitled to expect a high standard of integrity were jailed, sacked or censured for attempting untruthfully to discredit Andrew Mitchell in the press or cover up the actions of others who did.
I have more than a few friends who are serving or former police officers. All of them are people of integrity as I believe that the vast majority of police officers are. But the events of the past few years has proven the existence of a toxic relationship between a minority of police officers and certain newspapers which has been highly damaging both to the cause of justice and to the reputation of both the press and the police.
Which brings me to the present and various allegations of child abuse being investigated by the police.
There have been too many cases in the past where true allegations of rape and child sexual abuse were not taken seriously enough. In what is probably the worst case, in Rochdale, this allowed more than 1,400 children, mostly girls aged between 11 and 15, to be raped or abused.
We must not make that kind of mistake again, therefore any such allegations must be taken seriously and properly and conscientiously investigated if there is any material chance that they are true.
Equally, the principle that an accused person is "innocent until proven guilty" has served the cause of justice well for centuries. Just as we should not assume without due investigation that allegations are false, neither should we assume that allegations are true just because the police are doing their job by investigating them. And neither the police officers leading an investigation nor anybody else should pre-judge whether an allegation is true or false before they have completed that investigation.
It ought to be possible to ensure that all such allegations are properly investigated without putting the innocent through something which feels horribly close to a Salem witch trial. Unfortunately some recent investigations and their reporting in the media have conveyed precisely that impression.
And hence I repeat - sometimes there IS smoke without fire.
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