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(Continued from overleaf)
In the next edition of The Observer, three days later, in a bullish editorial entitled 'Publish or be damned', Donald Trelford justified his decision to answer Conservative-led charges that he was merely acting in his proprietor's interest. In the paper's financial pages Lorana Sullivan laid out the chronology of her and her colleagues' milestone stories over the previous four years, which had elicited a shower of libel writs from Fayed. Her piece was entitled, 'Four years of journalistic investigation.'
The next day, Monday 3 April, in the House of Lords, Trade & Industry minister Lord Young defended his decision not to publish the report, using the agreed line that this would prejudice the SFO and OFT investigations. Meanwhile, over in the Commons, the Speaker granted Young's opposite number Bryan Gould permission to debate the matter in the Commons the following day.
The next morning, Tuesday 4 April, firebrand back-bench Labour MP Brian Sedgemore tabled a parliamentary motion condemning the Government and Fayed's merchant bankers, Kleinwort Benson. Later that afternoon, the Commons debated Gould's Private Notice Question. Conservative DTI minister Tony Newton was fielded to parry the brick-bats.
Once Newton had completed his opening statement, Brian Gould launched into the Government with a series of questions focusing on the delay in publishing the report. Other Labour MPs joined in the chorus. The most succinct of these came from Sedgemore:
"How does the Minister respond to the statement of Lord Justice Dillon that there is a public interest in knowing that the principal shareholders of the House of Fraser are fraudulent rogues, and a public interest in knowing how Ministers came to be deceived in 1985? Does the Minister intend to invite the Governor of the Bank of England to censure Kleinwort Benson [Fayed's merchant bankers who prepared the bid] for negligence, to invite the Law Society to censure Herbert Smith [Fayed's solicitors who saw the deal through] for incompetence, to invite Ministers to censure civil servants for naiveté and to invite the Prime Minister to censure Ministers for negligence, incompetence and naiveté?"
The next question from Conservative MP Ian Gow provided no respite:
"Since this exceptionally well-researched and detailed report has been in the possession of the police and the Attorney-General for more than seven months, when may we expect a decision to be taken on whether or not there is to be a prosecution?"
It was a question that was already beginning to occupy the mind of Tiny Rowland.
Young came under increased pressure from all sides to publish the report officially. He never did. On 24 July 1989 Nicholas Ridley took his place as the
Secretary of State for Trade & Industry. Like his predecessors, Ridley came under immediate fire from Lonrho to publish the report. After enduring over seven months' duress he eventually capitulated.
1990
On 7 March 1990, Trade Secretary Nicholas Ridley announced the publication of the DTI Inspectors' report to a stunned House of Commons. Just half an hour was allowed to debate the matter.
The next morning's newspapers were filled with page after page of extracts.
No newspaper acknowledged that they had printed Fayed's lies uncritically five years earlier. None gave
The Observer's heroic City journalists credit for their painstaking work (nor have they since).
Trelford and his team had pulled off one of the biggest press coups of all time. They might have expected that their actions would have had repercussions for Margaret Thatcher's administration. But they could not have imagined the cataclysmic effect that their investigations would have on Mohamed 'Al' Fayed's lifelong aspirations of British citizenship, or the chain of events that would follow as a consequence....
With hindsight, it can be seen that, without Trelford's audacious nerve, the Conservative
government would have buried Fayed's lies forever, consigning to the dust
forever the painstaking (albeit unrecognised) journalism of Melvyn Marckus, Lorana Sullivan, Michael Gillard, and Peter Wickman.
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