Bjørn Erik Pedersen, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Jeffrey Archer affair was rather an odd one and it has been alleged that he took the rap while covering up for a colleague. He was an MP, left and wrote best selling books before becoming deputy chairman of the Conservative party from 1985 to 1986.
He resigned after a newspaper accused him of paying a prostitute; he took them to court in 1987 and won receiving heaps in the way of damages. He became a life peer in 1992 and became the first conservative candidate to stand for Mayor of London. In 1999 he stepped down as mayoral candidate after it was revealed that he had lied in his court case. In 2001 he was sentenced to four years for perjury and perverting the course of justice. He was released in 2003.
His father, who was 64 when Jeffrey was born, had an interesting life being accused of bigamy, fraud and being a conman. He was charged at the Old Bailey and when he was released on bail he skipped off to the USA.
The News of the Screws broke the prostitute story. It claimed Archer had paid Monica Coghlan, a prostitute, £2,000 via an intermediary at Victoria Station to go abroad. Not to be outdone, the Daily Star claimed he had paid for sex with the girl, something the Screws had not said. Archer then sued the Star explaining the payment to Coghlan was the action of a philanthropist rather than that of a guilty man. He won the case and was awarded £500,000 which he said he would donate to charity. Although evidence soon emerged he had lied, the press were wary of another costly case.
In 2000 Archer was charged with perjury and perverting the course of justice when it emerged he had asked another man to provide him with an alibi. His former mistress also confirmed they had been having an affair in the 1980s giving the lie to the happily married story Archer had been pushing.
There were also stories of dodgy dealing with a Kurdish charity and insider dealing when Anglia Television was subject to takeover speculation. As usual there was insufficient evidence for any charges.
In 2004 the government of Equatorial Guinea alleged that Archer was involved in financing the coup d’état attempted the same year. The leader of the coup, Simon Mann, denied Archer had anything to do with it. After Mann’s release from prison he said his forthcoming book would reveal the involvement of a member of the House of Lords, one J H Archer, who paid £135,000 into one of the offshore companies involved in the finances.
Our Jeffrey has sailed very close to the wind during his career. One of the stories I read about the prostitute thing was that the customer was Norman Tebbitt and Jeffrey did him a favour by trying to keep the flak away from Norman. This may or may not be true but is not unfeasible.
Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare is not a person I would like to be friends with but in comparison to many others he doesn’t seem like a real crook, perhaps more like a typical Tory.
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