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The Little Book of Bell

Bell was soon faced with another problem - a growing suspicion, especially among ordinary people, that Neil Hamilton might, just might, be innocent.
    This new obstacle came about on 14 October 1997, when Hamilton gave a stirring televised address before the Standards Committee.  In one of the most passionate performances ever seen by an MP giving evidence to a Select Committee, Hamilton aired the cacophony of bizarre anomalies in Fayed's and The Guardian's evidence against him, and the perverse iniquities in Downey's judgements.  For the first time newspaper columnists expressed inklings of doubt as to whether the evidence was as 'compelling' as Downey had opined.
    A few weeks later on November 6 1997, the Committee released its report on Downey's conclusions.  For the first time ever the Committee failed to reach agreement, and a split occurred on the central 'cash for questions' issue, causing more commentators to express doubts.
    Then, in the evening of 17 November 1997, the Commons 'debated' the Downey Report.  In reality it was a worthless charade, as the Speaker, Betty Boothroyd, declined to call Committee members Ann Widdecombe & Quentin Davies, who were the two who had rejected Downey's conclusions.  And so press opinion swung another millimetre Hamilton's way.  Some commentators even went as far as voicing hostility to the kangaroo-court process and the show-trial debate that together did the man down.
    Capturing the changing mood perfectly, Martin Bell stated on television later that day:

"But I think there has to an appeal procedure which works, and in this circumstance I don't think the appeal procedure worked.. I'm going to do whatever I can do and is appropriate to do to help my constituent. As I understand the rules, a line has now been drawn and he has no further appeal within the system…I think that this is regrettable.  I think that it is a bit of a fudge in the end."

Martin Bell also wrote a piece for the Daily Mail, which appeared two days later on 19 November 1997, in which he again challenged the lack of appeals procedure open to Hamilton.  Entitled: 'Neil has been shabbily treated', it won Martin Bell acclaim for his magnanimity towards his adversary.  Interestingly, Bell made sure to state within the text:

'It is worth pointing out that I never campaigned on cash for questions.'

It would take a contortionist to reconcile Bell's utterances that the 'People of Tatton' were right to vote for him on the 'cash for questions' issue, but that he didn't stand on that issue himself.
    Then, on 3 December 1997 Martin Bell was voted onto the Standards Committee, thus giving him a perfect platform to press the Committee into granting an appeal to Neil Hamilton.  That same day, another item by Bell appeared in local newspaper the Northwich Guardian. It was titled:

'Justice? Neil deserved better'

Bell's piece started by actually endorsing Downey's findings:

'We are privileged to be living in the most extraordinary times.  It is possible to arrive at the right destination and yet have doubts about the road that got you there.'

He then finished his piece thus:

'But it seemed that Mr Hamilton was abandoned, in his own eloquent words, to a 'lifetime of opprobrium and unemployment'  That is a harsh sentence.  There has to be more than justice.  There has to be manifest justice.'

Bell used the technique of, on one hand, condemning Hamilton as guilty, and, on the other, representing himself as Hamilton's champion for justice.  When he appeared on Face to Face on 9 February 1998, hosted by Jeremy Isaacs, he did the same thing again.  Isaacs asked Bell whether Hamilton had asked him for his help:

"Yes he has and he deserves it. And I really feel sorry for him, I think he's gone through hell.  To be savaged by your enemies, to be abandoned by your friends, to be blamed by your party for losing the election, and to have set in motion against you a process which, was not manifestly fair - it really wasn't - and I felt for him.  I felt there was something wrong with what was going on there..."

But then Bell condemned Neil Hamilton once again:

"look, you can arrive at the right destination and you can still have doubts about the road that got you there. I think it's a bit like that."

These barbed words of 'support' should be assessed in context with Bell's subsequent efforts on Neil Hamilton's behalf.
    Shortly after he was elected to the (Labour-dominated) Standards Committee, as mentioned earlier the committee considered the question of whether an appeals procedure should be put in place. But, though there was nothing whatsoever to prevent the committee from granting Neil Hamilton a right of appeal, in its report on the matter, dated 17 November 1998, the committee concluded:

'The recommendations in this report are addressed to complaints which may arise in the future. They are not retrospective.  There is no question of re-opening any case on which we have reported to the House, still less any case on which the House itself has come to a resolution.  Roma locuta est; causa finita est (Rome has spoken; the case is concluded).'

Despite his many utterances, Bell did not vote against the communiqué nor did he even abstain.  To the contrary, Bell endorsed the committee's decision to deny Hamilton the chance of the very appeal that he had 'championed' so publicly a year earlier.  But this reluctance to do anything to help his predecessor is, in fact, in keeping with Bell's true character.
    For example, six months earlier on 3 July 1997 when Downey's report was published and the hue and cry against Hamilton was at its loudest, Bell said on BBC NW television:

"The people of Tatton having spoken on the first of May, and now, the Downey report having come out, I really think that's the, that's the end of it - and I would hope that we can put it behind us now…I think it's a time for Mr Hamilton to return to private life and for me to get on with being a member of Parliament for Tatton"

Two weeks later on 16 July 1997, by which time the media hue and cry had driven the Hamiltons to absolute despair, Bell stated in his column in Guardian Group newspaper The Manchester Evening News:

'As far as I am concerned, the Downey Report is the end of the matter, leaving little more to be said.'

Chapter Three, Part Two

Chapter Four, Part Two