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(Continued from overleaf)
July 3: Sir Gordon's damning report is finally published, finding "compelling evidence" that Hamilton took cash for questions and recommending that, if he had not lost his seat, Hamilton should have been suspended from the Commons.
Analysis:
This statement is pejorative by virtue of its phraseology and many omissions. Firstly, Downey did not find "compelling evidence", but rather said that he found the evidence "compelling" without listing what that evidence was.
The
Guardian's original 'cash for questions' story of 20 October 1994 focused on allegations that the lobbyist Ian Greer had paid Neil Hamilton and Tim Smith; and that Hamilton had 'free shopping' at Harrods, yet there is no mention that Sir Gordon had dismissed all these allegations. There is also no mention that Sir Gordon dismissed the allegation that Fayed had given Hamilton Harrods gift vouchers.
Most crucially, there is no mention that Sir Gordon also rejected the three Fayed employees' belated claim that they paid Ian Greer 'cash in envelopes'. This would have put Sir Gordon's "compelling evidence" judgement of Neil Hamilton in proper context, for Downey's 'verdict' that the evidence against Hamilton was "compelling" consisted entirely of the same belated testimony of the same Fayed employees whose belated testimony against Ian Greer Downey nevertheless rejected.
There is also no acknowledgement that Downey had discounted other of Fayed's employees as reliable witnesses once before during his earlier dismissal of Fayed's bribery allegations against Michael Howard MP.
[OMISSION OF SIGNIFICANT EVENT: On 14 October 1997 Neil Hamilton gave a televised address to the Select Committee on Standards and Privileges, to whom Downey reported. During his address Hamilton defended himself passionately against Downey's "looking glass" verdict, quoting widely from a report compiled by two freelance journalists, Jonathan Boyd Hunt & Malcolm Keith-Hill, who had investigated the 'cash for questions' affair for six months and whose research supported his claims of innocence. However, despite Hamilton's announcement on live TV of the two freelances' investigation & report, the Press Association did not mention Hunt & Keith-Hill's investigation or report in any of its bulletins.]
[OMISSION OF SIGNIFICANT EVENT: On 29 October 1997 Freelance journalists Jonathan Boyd Hunt & Malcolm Keith-Hill released their report into
The Guardian's & Fayed's allegations against Neil Hamilton. They claimed to have found no reliable evidence to support the charges against Hamilton, but instead claimed to have unearthed hard evidence of a criminal conspiracy involving senior Guardian journalists, Mohamed Fayed, and three of Fayed's staff, as part of a major cover-up.
(The Press Association refused to disseminate news about the release of Hunt & Keith-Hill's report, citing the fact that it is part-owned by
The Guardian. No news organisation ran the story apart from BBC NW) ]
[OMISSION OF SIGNIFICANT EVENT: On 6 November 1997 the Standards Committee released its report on Downey's verdict. Two Conservative members, Anne Widdecombe and Quentin Davies, both of whom had savaged Conservative ministers on matters of principle previously, refused to endorse Downey's findings after being swayed, reportedly, by Hunt & Keith-Hill's report. It was an unprecedented split of the Standards Committee.]
1998
January: Against the advice of a number of friends Hamilton launches his doomed libel action against Al Fayed and proceedings get under way.
Analysis:
The qualifier 'Against the advice of a number of friends' is unwarranted pejorative spin and factually wrong. It implies, wrongly, that in the main Hamilton's friends had advised him not to take out his action against Fayed, and that Hamilton was foolish to ignore this advice. In fact the vast majority of Hamilton's friends supported his fight to clear his name.
It should also have been clarified that Hamilton's action this time was against Fayed, as distinct from his earlier action which was against
The Guardian, and that it concerned Fayed's repetition of his allegations on the Dispatches TV programme.
It should also have been pointed out that Fayed responded to Hamilton's action by immediately taking out legal action to prevent it from ever reaching court.
[OMISSION OF SIGNIFICANT EVENT: On 31 July 1998 Neil Hamilton defeats Mohamed Fayed's attempt to strike out his libel action. Fayed had argued that Parliament had already decided the matter. Justice Popplewell rules that, although the Standards Committee had found that Hamilton had failed to declare certain interests, it was doubtful whether the committee had found him guilty of taking payments from Fayed. Fayed immediately states an intention to petition the House of Lords for the right to appeal.]
[OMISSION OF SIGNIFICANT EVENT: On 19 October 1998 freelance journalist Jonathan Boyd Hunt releases his book "Trial by Conspiracy: the lies, cover-ups and injustices behind the Neil Hamilton affair". In his book, Hunt names senior Guardian editors & journalists, and Fayed & his staff, as having lied in their witness statements for the previous libel trial and in their evidence to the Downey Inquiry; and names Guardian journalists as having withheld, misrepresented, and forged documents for the Downey inquiry, all as part of a major cover-up. (The Press Association refused to disseminate news of Hunt's press conference and book launch).]
[OMISSION OF SIGNIFICANT EVENT: On 26 October 1998 Lord Justice Simon Brown refuses Fayed his petition, stating that Justice Popplewell was clearly right.]
[OMISSION OF SIGNIFICANT EVENT: On 24 November 1998 Fayed petitions the full Court of Appeal against Lord Justice Simon Brown's refusal to grant leave to appeal against Popplewell's judgement.]
1999
[OMISSION OF SIGNIFICANT EVENT: On 26 March 1999 three Court of Appeal judges -- Lord Woolf, sitting with Lords Justices Hirst and Laws -- uphold the ruling by Mr Justice Popplewell in the High Court the previous July, thus allowing Hamilton to sue Fayed for libel over the top of Parliament's supposed final word on the matter. Fayed immediately applies to the Lords to block Hamilton's action coming to court.]
[OMISSION OF SIGNIFICANT EVENT: On 15 July 1999 three Law Lords uphold Mohamed Fayed's application to appeal to the House of Lords in an attempt to have overturned the ruling by the Appeal Court.]
[OMISSION OF SIGNIFICANT EVENT: On 7 October 1999 five Law Lords dismiss Mohamed Fayed's appeal to overturn the Court of Appeal ruling, thus allowing Neil Hamilton at last to sue Fayed for libel.]
November 15: The High Court trial begins.
December 21: Hamilton loses the case and faces financial ruin.
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