Thorpe Case and Parliamentary Democracy

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The Thorpe case at Minehead is far from being just another scandal.

Evidence at the hearingwhich will determine whether Thorpe goes for trial for incitement to murder and three other others join him in the dock jointly charged with conspiracy to murder-has already gone far beyond the confines of those charges.

Names being drawn into the case take in leading bourgeois politicians in all parties, and leading establishment figures at the very centre of state power.

And whatever the innocence or guilt of defendants (which will be decided by a jury if the case goes to trial) even the uncontested evidence already presented producing a shattering blow at the concept of 'parliamentary democracy'.

Whatever the outcome of this hearing and any subsequent trial, the implications of the evidence being presented is of near-Watergate proportions. The case could present the ruling class with major problems of how to sustain illusions in democratic laws and institutions.

Annihilation

If a trial of the defendants should coincide with a general election, that could spell annihilation for the Liberal Party-the junior party of capitalism, and a party for which the capitalist class has a particular use.

But the implications go well beyond the confines of the Liberals. Already the names of Henry Kissinger, Reginald Maudling, Frank Soskice (now Lord Stow Hill), David Steel and David Ennals, Minister of Social Services have come up at the trial.

Lady Falkender, private political secretary to Harold Wilson, has been named as receiving a letter from former Liberal MP Bessell describing his interviews with two journalists writing a book.

Lord Goodman-a figure at the very heart of the capitalist political establishment-has been brought in on hearsay evidence. The prosecution "Accordingly it will be immensely helpful if you could send me two cheques, one for £40,000 for the Liberal Party General Election fund and 410000 for Nadir Dinshaw. Payable Tory backers were aise approached:

"Eight of us are going to see those companies who have been life Tory Party's chief backers financially and suggest that they pressurise the Tories to come round in favour of electoral reform by the next general elections, a) since it would mean that there would never again be a socialist majority in its own right and b) it gives Liberals next time a powerful incentive to return a Tory MP where no Liberal is standing or where his chances are remote. Marks and Spencer are the first converts.

In other words the capitalists most firmly behind the Tories were nevertheless prepared in 1974 to finance a coalition designed to ensure that any