Return to letter

TIMES LEADER

Return to index

Friday, 20 July 2001

Archer's end A cautionary tale of our time

Jeffrey Archer's tide of lies has for years, perhaps for all his years, been sweeping up behind him like a running grave. On so many past occasions he might have drowned. Even as the verdicts were awaited yesterday it seemed possible that the master of balancing fact and fiction might make one last extraordinary escape, until, just after midday, the waters over which he has so long and so skilfully surfed closed finally over his head.

There are those who will pity him, including many who enjoyed his hospitality and friendship even while they could see the fatal folly at his heart. Pity is understandable. But what must also be understood is the appropriateness of the sentence for an individual prepared to pervert justice for the basest of ends. The connections between Lord Archer's deceits, his showmanship, his money and

his acceptability in public life have lessons which go well beyond the man in the cell at Belmarsh gaol this morning.

Lord Archer used all the wealth, power and influence at his disposal to mock justice for personal gain. Wealth came to Lord Archer from his fiction. Power and influence accrued to Lord Archer because many who should have known better shielded, fêted and promoted a man of fiction against whom they were given fair warning. Lord Archer's four-year sentence may appear, to many tolerant individuals, a humiliation too far for a man who has already seen his dearest ambitions, cherished reputation and closest relationships quite broken. But, as Mr Justice Potts told the court yesterday, Lord Archer's offence of perjury was as serious as one may find. Perjury is more than just a contempt for the due

process of law, but the very solvent of justice itself.

The law is entitled to exact a heavy price from those who seek to twist it so flagrantly in pursuit of fraudulent gain. Lord Archer's bogus libel victory, with its £500,000 award, was the purest theft. That his chosen weapon in this armed robbery was political influence and not a brandished cosh should not detract from the audacious gravity of what he did, nor from the failures of those who let him do it.

The Tory party has become so hardened to shock that one more proof of amoral chutzpah may hardly bring a shudder. But it should not be forgotten how closely Lord Archer lurked behind the padded shoulders of power. Cosseted by Margaret Thatcher and promoted by her to deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, he was further indulged in his ambitions by John Major, who raised him to the peerage and gave him a vote in legislature, and finally he was promoted by William Hague to the Tory candidacy for London's first Mayor. None of these three wanted for warnings; all were told privately, and could read publicly, that their man was a reckless, incorrigible, abuser of the truth. But they still used him as conduit amongst each other and with the press; they graced his parties with their presence just as he disgraced their party by his.

The manner in which Lord Archer gained political authority and trust says something of the ease with which the corrupt can live in British public life. In a country which has relatively little corruption a small investment in time, money and hospitality goes a long way. In a country where decision makers are confident of their probity, it was all too tempting to indulge a man who, it was thought, would bring some welcome entertainment without being able to do much

harm.

Those in power too long, or fixed there too firmly behind their huge majorities, need to ensure that the champagne and charity-giving, the bubbles and the baubles, never addle the better instincts that brought them to power in the first place. It is not fastidiousness, but a proper sense of what public service involves, which should make politicians always alert to the confusions of

bonhomie with bribery. The lesson to be drawn from Lord Archer's political life is not from his dramatic fall into the drowning waves yesterday but from his survival for so long on the surface, with the grave running, all so clearly, behind him.