 |
 |
The Real Jonathan Aitken
 |
| Jonathan Aitken |
'If it falls to me to start a fight to cut out the cancer of bent
and twisted journalism in our country with the simple sword of truth and
the trusty shield of British fair play, so be it.'
Jonathan Aitken launching his libel action in 1997
No politician in recent times has fallen further than Jonathan Aitken.
The man who had it all – talent, riches, good looks – fell on
his 'sword of truth' when he sued The Guardian and Granada Television
over allegations of improprieties while he was Minister for Defence Procurement.
His lies over who paid his bill at the Paris Ritz Hotel in September 1993
earned him a criminal conviction for perjury and attempting to pervert
the course of justice. On 8 June 1999 he was sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment.
The judge took a particularly dim view of the fact that Aitken had involved
his daughter in the deception.
What drove Aitken to stake everything on a libel action? The Real Jonathan
Aitken tells the story of a man for whom risk-taking became a way
of life. It features the testimony of family, friends and rivals and includes
previously unseen archive material from the Aitken family.
There is an element of his character which involved poor judgement
on matters of personal morality. I don't think this describes his whole
life, but it clearly has happened on one or two occasions, and that
has very tragically led him to where he now is.
I was in cabinet for 11 years, and I was head of four government
departments, so I had a lot of very able junior ministers. I say without
qualification that of all the junior ministers I had over those 11 years,
Jonathan was the best.
Where Jonathan was very useful was that if there was a problem, he
knew most of the Saudi royals. He could pick up a telephone and speak
to someone. What he was doing was the same as other ministers do, but
he was able to do it more quickly, more effectively, more personally,
because many of the individuals already knew him.
Former Defence Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind
He told me at the time that Lolicia [Aitken's ex-wife] had paid the
bill in cash. I did, on one occasion, have dinner with both of them
and said, 'Look, I don't understand this one, but I hope to goodness
you two do, because some of the rest of us don't. But anyway, it's such
an absurd story that it may be true.' They giggled and carried straight
on. Looking back on it, I think one should have pressed quite a bit
harder.
Aitken's friend Lord Pearson
I'd said to Jonathan at that time, 'Absolutely make sure they trust
you completely. Never, never let an Arab down. They will not trust you
for ages.' And he obviously got the trust. And he's been hawking with
them in the desert, and all kind of things that businessmen don't normally
do. They really loved him. And he's been able to do things for them
– he's been very helpful to them too.
Lady Aitken
It's fairly obvious that if a child is immobilised and separated
from his mother, at such a tender age, it must affect him. And although
Jonathan would shrug that off, I think it means that perhaps you don't
always trust people fully. Certainly intimacy is something that might
be harder.
Actress Maria Aitken, Aitken's sister, on the impact of Aitken's long
illness as an infant
He started to have a bad trip, and he had a kind of vision of a war,
a really horrific, bloody war, and as far as I remember, it was sort
of whites against yellows against blacks.
Maria Aitken remembering the occasion in 1966 when Aitken took LSD as
an experiment for an article in The London Evening Standard
Jonathan was a risk-taker. I remember sitting there thinking, 'This
guy's got all over the front page because he's taken LSD.' I though
at the time it was a hell of a journalistic coup, but he always went
one step further than the rule book said was sensible.
Max Hastings, now editor of The London Evening Standard
^top
|
|
