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(Continued from overleaf)
January 1993: Mohamed 'Al' Fayed's brother, Ali Fayed, applies for a British passport.
Ali Fayed is married to an Englishwoman and has three British children. It certain that Ali and Mohamed Fayed's advisers had calculated that Ali had much better prospects than Mohamed of acquiring British nationality, but that once Ali had been granted citizenship then Mohamed would apply and expect to be granted citizenship too.
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[14 May 1993 the chairman of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, Alan Sugar, dismisses the club's manager, Terry Venables, for allegedly making secret cash payments to facilitate transfer deals -- known in football circles as "brown paper bagging."]
Alan Sugar sacked Venables after allegedly discovering him making illicit payments to Brian Clough, manager of Nottingham Forest football club, to facilitate Tottenham's purchase of Forest's star striker Teddy Sheringham the previous year. Later that evening Venables won a High Court injunction against his sacking.
The practice of giving tax-free under-the-counter payments had been widespread for decades in football, rugby union and amateur athletics. Since the 1970s journalists had written about amateur athletes and rugby union players being paid secretly in 'brown envelopes'. In football circles the 'brown envelopes' term was also used widely as a metaphor for illicit payments, as were the phrases 'making payments in brown paper bags'; or 'giving bungs'.
[See entry dated 10 & 14 June 1993 for an explanation of the relevance of this event]
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1 June 1993: The Guardian buys The Observer from Lonrho for £27m. In the process
The Guardian inherits files of documents amassed by The Observer in defence of three libel writs served on the paper during the 1980s by Mohamed Fayed over its articles alleging that he had purchased Harrods fraudulently with cash belonging to the Sultan of Brunei.
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[10 & 14 June 1993: Guardian journalist John Mullin attends the High Court to report Terry Venables' action against Tottenham Hotspur's chairman Alan Sugar. During the hearings Sugar accuses Venables of giving secret bribes to facilitate the transfer of football players, described as "bungs" or "money in brown envelopes".]
[This seemingly irrelevant event actually has great relevance to the Guardian's interview of lobbyist Ian Greer five weeks later on 23 July 1993 (see Part Two of "The Brainwashing of a Democratic State") ]
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22 June 1993: Timed to coincide with a Commons debate on Conservative Party funding to be held later that day, the Guardian carries a front-page article by Paul Brown alleging that the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, had bankrolled the Conservative Party's General Election victory of April 1992 with a donation of £7 million.
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Also on 22 June: The Guardian carries a seminal editorial by Hugo Young, chairman of
The Guardian's owners The Scott Trust, heralding the Commons debate on Tory Party funding. Entitled: "Adding corruption to the impotence of public life", Young discusses the spreading suspicion that "British public life is being corrupted" by a "growing army" of "power-peddling PR consultants and lobbyists", who are "impotent and corrupt" and who "the world would be better of without", and whose "stables need cleansing".
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28 June 1993: The Commons debates the recent report by the Members' Interests Committee concerning regulations for professional parliamentary lobbyists. During the debate Labour committee member Bob Cryer MP lambastes two lobbyists at length: First, Labour lobbyist Sir Trevor Lloyd-Hughes, for boasting that he could arrange for MPs to table parliamentary questions. Second, Conservative lobbyist Ian Greer, for "buying influence" by giving MPs commission payments to obtain business and then refusing to disclose to the Committee the MPs' names. Cryer also praises Mark Hollingsworth's book "MPs for Hire" for airing Ian Greer's close association with the Conservative backbench trade & industry committee.
Most significantly, the Guardian did not report the Commons debate on professional lobbyists despite Bob Cryer's outburst -- despite lobbyists' activities being one of the Guardian's consuming passions; and despite the Guardian's record over the years of reporting every Parliamentary outburst about Ian Greer's commission payments.
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Last days of June 1993: Prompted by Labour MP Bob Cryer's tirade against lobbyist Ian Greer during the Commons debate of 28 June, Guardian editor Peter Preston instructs journalists David Hencke and John Mullin to begin inquiries into Ian Greer Associates, to try and discover the two mystery MPs in addition to Michael Grylls to whom Greer had given commission payments. Preston opts to visit Mohamed Fayed himself. Accordingly Preston contacts Fayed and arranges to visit him at Harrods two weeks later on 14 July 1993.
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14 July 1993: Guardian editor Peter Preston visits Mohamed Fayed at Harrods.
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