The two men whose faces appear in the photo above are separated in time by more than half a century. The man on the left is Noel Pemberton-Billing (1881-1948); the other is 51-year old Carl Beech (aka "Nick"), who has recently been sentenced to 18 years in prison for making false and malicious allegations against a number of high-profile figures.
Separated by time, background, class and a number of other factors, they have one thing in common: both these men are fantasists who made false but damaging allegations against prominent people. One has been punished and the other got away with his crime, but we will come to that.
Pemberton-Billing was an upwardly-mobile adventurer who became an MP in 1916. After WW1 began in 1914, he became known for his obsession with "enemies within" - Germans, initially, despite being married to a part-German woman, but he attacked Jews as well. He founded a virulently anti-German, anti-Semitic news paper called "The Imperialist", later renamed "The Vigilante". On February 16, 1918, he published a story attacking the Canadian dancer and actress, Maud Allan, who was about to stage a private performance of the Oscar Wilde play, Salome. Billing saw an opportunity."Headstuff" comments here:
" He had been targeting Margot Asquith, wife of the former Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, for some time and he now claimed that Margot and Maud were conducting a lesbian affair orchestrated by German puppetmasters. Furthermore he claimed that they were at the centre of a great conspiracy to enlist the wives of powerful men into what he called, with a typical lack of constraint, the “Cult of the Clitoris”.
He also claimed to know of the existence of a "Black Book" in which were listed the names of 47,000 prominent Britons who were at risk of being blackmailed by the Germans for homosexuality and general depravity.
To cut a long story short (and it's well worth reading about in full), Maud Allan felt compelled to sue, despite the fact that she actually was gay, which Billing and his legal team could have exploited. With the help of mendacious witnesses, who claimed to have seen the non-existent book, and despite the absurd nature of his claims, Billing won his case and was acquitted, to loud applause from the public. Basil Thompson, head of Special Branch, commented:
“Everyone concerned appeared to have been either insane or to have behaved as if he were.”
After the war, Billing's witnesses were discredited and he bowed out of politics, but this did not repair the harm done to the reputation and life of his main victim: Maud Allan.
Maud Allan's career did not survive the acquittal of the man who libelled her. She went into professional decline, eking out a living as a dance teacher and sinking into genteel poverty. She left Britain for the USA, dying in Los Angeles in 1956 at the age of 83. There are several videos about her, and her dancing heyday, on YouTube.
History does not record the effect of Billing's calumny upon Margot Asquith.
Pemberton-Billing died in obscurity in 1948. The newspapers did not report his death, and only WW1 buffs like me remember him at all - and then with the utmost contempt.
The case of Carl Beech is well known.
As we are aware, this man, using the pseudonym of "Nick", made a number of accusations against public figures, leading to police raids upon their homes and placing these men under intolerable pressure. Unlike Pemberton-Billing, Beech was exposed as a liar when his claims were shown to have no basis in fact. The police, however, have a number of questions to answer, first among which is: why were his lies listened to so readily? Was it because of the criticism levelled at them because of the refusal to listen to the victims of Jimmy Saville? As the BBC says:
"The Met publicly described Beech's allegations at the time as "credible and true", and they were given further publicity by Labour's deputy leader, Tom Watson, and media organisations, including the BBC".
Two years of investigations, and several million pounds, produced no evidence of wrongdoing.
One common factor with the Pemberton-Billing affair, though, is the damage done to the lives of the victims.
Harvey Proctor lost out severely because of Beech's allegations. He lost his job, his home and was target of a good deal of public abuse, so bad that he fled abroad. It is difficult to refute his claim that a thorough investigation would have torpedoed "Nick's" allegations.
Lord Janner's son, Daniel, told "Jewish News":
“It’s hard to underestimate just how appalling these allegations of the most serious kind have been in terms of their effect. Carl Beech manipulated for money and lied about my late father and others, lies of the most horrendous kind."
Lord Janner died in 2015.
Lord Janner died in 2015.
Beech, when making his allegations, described Lord Leon Brittan, who also died in 2015, as " a brutal, sadistic and evil man". As Brittan was terminally ill when these allegations surfaced, it is difficult to imagine his feelings, as it is for his family in the light of the verdict against Beech. There are many other victims, and, says "The Spectator", four people have some serious questions to answer. They are Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, Tom Watson, retired detective Kenny MacDonald and Exaro reporter, Mark Conrad ("Beech's most trusted confidant"). Just these four? That's probably an underestimate; perhaps we should ask ourselves why we are so ready to believe that celebrities are engaged in nefarious activities.
So, then, we have two cases with a century between them, both brought about by pathological liars with axes to grind. Both generated an enormous amount of publicity; both led to damaged lives and reputations.
While I have every sympathy for all victims and their families in these two cases, I can't help but think of the many ordinary people who are wrongly accused of crimes (and I've known some!) whose stories are never told.
The fake news operator himself - described by Noel Halifax as "the Nigel Farage of his day".
I was a union rep for 24 years. About 16 years ago, I was subjected to a nasty on-line campaign of harassment on our employer's internal e-mail system by another union rep from a different branch. She did all she could to discredit me as a rep (I was taking the lead in a very difficult internal reorganisation of four branches into two), and when I asked her to give me a break because I'd just lost my mother, she just accused me of using her death to deflect her criticisms.
ReplyDeleteShe copied all of her e-mails to management, who must have loved being informed of all these splits among union reps. Her own branch did nothing about it - had it been the other way round, I would have dragged the rep in my branch concerned into line, or demanded they resign - but they did nothing. I eventually complained to our employer, who initially refused to deal with it, until I threatened them with legal action. They then reluctantly investigated, found in my favour and she ended up with a disciplinary penalty.
These things don't go away: it still angers me to think about it, so I try not to.