In this week’s issue of The Spectator, Peter Hitchens defends the once-famous, once-sainted Bishop Bell of Chichester from the Church of England’s claim that he was guilty of child abuse. I do not know the facts of this case, but if Hitchens is right, the Bell case is yet another example of people’s readiness to say untrue things about the dead, secure in the knowledge that the libel law cannot go after them.
Naturally, I am not arguing for the law to extend to the dead (think of the furious suits in support of the prophet Mohammed which would ensue), but all the more reason for the living to defend the reputation of the departed. This is why I am pursuing the claim by Professor Sir Geoff Palmer that in 1964, at an interview for a MSc course subsidised by the Ministry of Agriculture, Sir Keith Joseph told him to go home and grow bananas. The Centre for Policy Studies, which Joseph founded, has now complained to the BBC about the programme — The Life Scientific — on which Sir Geoff made the claim unchallenged.
Sir Geoff might reflect that his account of what Joseph said would, if Sir Keith were alive, require the legal defence of ‘justification’ (i.e. provable truth) to avoid losing a libel action. As a learned scientist with a regard for evidence, Sir Geoff surely feels a moral though not a legal duty to produce his. He might also consider the view of Sir Michael Franklin, at that time private secretary to the Minister of Agriculture and later the ministry’s permanent secretary. Sir Michael describes the story about Joseph as ‘extraordinary’, and says succinctly, ‘Palmer must have got the wrong man’.
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