Gregory and the inquest
Sir: We read once again an attack on Mohamed Al Fayed by Martyn Gregory over the inquest into the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales and Dodi Al Fayed (‘No “flash before the crash”’, 27 October). As it happens, Mr Gregory has rarely appeared at the inquest, which goes a little way to explaining his skewed views. But he was present on Monday, and collared me to ask about the evidence relating to a white Fiat Uno. ‘It will be front-page stuff,’ he volunteered.
Mr Gregory would barely notice if it was ‘front page’ or not. His article demonstrated that he has ignored the entire output of the British press in the past four weeks. Because of his fanatical obsession with criticising Mohamed Al Fayed, he cannot bring himself to take on board evidence that goes against his erroneous and increasingly marginal view that the crash was an accident.
The reporting from the courtroom has rightly taken witnesses seriously, as they have provided valuable new evidence. Witnesses have spoken of a second large dark car in the Alma tunnel, of motorcycles following the Mercedes closely, and at least one witness has described a blocking vehicle forcing the Mercedes to slow down. We have heard clearly of a white Fiat Uno zigzagging slowly on the slip-road to the tunnel, the driver adjusting his rear-view mirror as if ‘waiting for someone’.
Those in court have seen CCTV footage which shows a touching portrait of a couple in love moments before their fatal journey; of the allegedly drunk chauffeur Henri Paul bounding up and down stairs, two at a time; and the testimony of three witnesses referring to a blinding flash, conveniently ignored by Mr Gregory.
We are only a few weeks in, and already those who said there would be nothing new at these inquests have been silenced. Except for Martyn Gregory, who relies on rubbishing three barristers representing Mr Al Fayed, Henri Paul’s parents and the Ritz by stealing a very old joke from the magazine Private Eye (‘Hugefee QCs’).
Katharine Witty
Director of Press and Public Affairs,
Chairman’s Office, Harrods SW1
Appeals for a ref
Sir: Sir Malcolm Rifkind (‘A trap for Eurosceptic Tories’, 27 October) declares that the Conservatives must not offer a referendum on the Constitutional Treaty if it has already been ratified before they come into office. He glosses over the fact that Mr Cameron has already done so and he should no more go back on his promise (made in the Sun newspaper) than Mr Brown should go back on his.
Sir Malcolm seems to believe Britain should stay in the European Union at any price. There are others — myself among them — who believe that there is a price which is too high to pay.
Sir Malcolm thinks those who would stay at any price should be free to say so, but those who take my view are silly and wrong and should shut up. But what is the point of opposing the Treaty if we have no intention of renegotiating it when we return to office?
Rt Hon. Lord Tebbit CH
House of Lords, SW1
Sir: According to Sir Malcolm Rifkind, it would be ‘silly and wrong’ for David Cameron to promise a referendum, if the Tories win the next election, after this Parliament has endorsed the European Treaty. Sir Malcolm writes, ‘If the Treaty is ratified by all 27 member states, it will come into force. That cannot be reversed by a subsequent referendum in Britain.’ But our part in it certainly can be. Mr Cameron need only pledge that any government he leads would call such a referendum, accept the result and — if the vote were negative — then take the necessary steps in Parliament to enforce the popular will. Once Parliament had done its duty, either the Treaty would be re-negotiated or, perhaps more likely, there would be a genuine re-negotiation of our whole relationship with the EU Treaty states. This may not be to Sir Malcolm’s taste, but it is nevertheless the case.
John Torode
London W1
The propaganda problem
Sir: What Philip Stevens calls in his letter last week ‘a vast amount of unimpeachable evidence’ [about the alleged Armenian genocides] was actually produced as part of the British government’s propaganda campaign during the first world war. And in being convinced ‘beyond a shadow of a doubt’ by the 2005 republication of Bryce and Toynbee’s 1916 Blue Book, The Treatment of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 1915–1916, he seems totally unaware of the less than unimpeachable forces at play in it, just as they were in other products from the same Wellington House source, such as The German Terror in Belgium or the film Once a Hun, Always a Hun.
Mr Stevens might now consider reading British Propaganda During the First World War 1914–1918 by M.L. Sanders and P.M. Taylor. May I commend their general conclusion to all your readers: ‘The effect of British atrocity propaganda during the first world war and the failure to substantiate the stories in the years that followed led to a general disinclination in the 1930s and 1940s to believe atrocity stories about the Nazi treatment of the Jews. The distortions of the first world war therefore served to obscure the realities of the second.’
Osman Streater
London NW3
Sex scandals overlooked
Sir: Paul Bew’s generous and perceptive review of my Luck and the Irish (Books, 20 October) gently chides me for inaccurately stating that Vincent Twomey’s book The End of Irish Catholicism? never mentions sexual scandals. But the single passage Professor Bew quotes from page 33 refers specifically and solely to the abusive conditions in industrial schools run by religious orders. Rapist priests and the secret families fathered by leading Catholic churchmen go unmentioned in the book, despite its title and its recent date of publication (2003).
Roy Foster
Hertford College, Oxford
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