“I totally disapprove of this,” said Dr Piers Brendon, keeper of the Churchill archives, saying that its policy was to make as much publicly available as possible.. Walter Monckton, later First Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, was one of the most influential figures during the abdication crisis and its aftermath. Walter Monckton, later First Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, was one of the most influential figures during the abdication crisis and its aftermath.
A highly intelligent and discreet lawyer, he had gained the trust of the man who was then the Prince of Wales – and became briefly Edward VIII and then the Duke of Windsor – after being appointed as his attorney general in 1932.It was Monckton who was Edward’s closest adviser during the few months of his reign, who drafted the Instrument of Abdication, and who went on to become the go-between from the new king, George VI, to the duke as relations between the two brothers deteriorated.It was he who was charged with telling the duke that his duchess, formally Mrs Wallis Simpson, would not receive the title of “Her Royal Highness” and would not be received by the new king. This dispute became an obsession for the duke, and led to his self-imposed exile in France before the war.It was also Monckton who was dispatched to tell the embittered Duke that he should cease frequently ringing his younger brother to advise him on matters of state. “He was an Alka Seltzer figure, who didn’t stir things up but calmed things down,” said Hugo Vickers, a royal historian. “He spent a lot of time making unpalatable things clear to those who didn’t want to hear them.”His major achievement was to maintain the trust of both sides. He remained a close friend of the duke and duchess after the war, and he and his wife used to visit the theatre with them in London in the Fifties and early Sixties.While, along with the rest of the court, he had worked hard to dissuade Edward from abdicating, Monckton’s own assessment of the relationship shows that he recognised its intensity “To him she was the perfect women,” he wrote.
“She insisted that he should be at his best at all times and he regarded her as his inspiration. It is a great mistake to assume that he was merely in love with her in the ordinary physical sense of the term. There was an intellectual companionship, and there is no doubt that his lonely nature found in her a spiritual comradeship.”Monckton became Tory MP for Bristol West in 1951, and served as ministers for labour and defence and paymaster general before being made a peer He died in 1965.. As General Pinochet prepares to fly home to Chile, Britain is left counting the cost of a 16-month tussle which occupied the finest, and most expensive, legal brains in the country. As General Pinochet prepares to fly home to Chile, Britain is left counting the cost of a 16-month tussle which occupied the finest, and most expensive, legal brains in the country.
At the end of January, Home Secretary Jack Straw told Parliament the case had cost taxpayers £1,322,326.83 in legal costs.But those close to the case believe this is a very conservative figure, and have warned that when the costs of security operations are added in, the true price could snowball to a figure closer to £15 million.More than 100 lawyers have been caught up in events which have drawn on the services of 16 top judges and a gathering of elite, high-earning lawyers.In the court arena there have been two full-length appeals before the House of Lords, the action to set aside the first ruling, the extradition hearing itself and the recent judicial review bids to secure access to Pinochet’s medical report.Each public drama required hours of meticulous work from legal teams, frequently wading into uncharted territory.Although the general has been expected to pick up his own tab, the courts have twice awarded him costs.The Lord Chancellor’s Office was ordered to pay for Pinochet’s successful challenge to the Lords’ first ruling, and the costs his legal team incurred during the first, set-aside case – a total of £420,000.The Home Secretary has also agreed to pay the costs of four-and-a-half days of legal proceedings which ended with the High Court ordering him to disclose the medical report on the general to the four states wishing to extradite him – a sum expected to run to several hundred thousand pounds.Further legal costs to the UK taxpayer flowed from Britain’s obligation to foot the bill for Spain’s legal costs.Represented by the Crown Prosecution Service, by the end of last month counsel fees were running to £353,000, other CPS costs – including the price of photocopying – £238,000, and interpreters’ fees £4,200.The Government has already made plain its displeasure at the international agreements which have left British taxpayers paying for Spain’s bid to extradite the general – who was only passing through this country when he was arrested – and may seek changes to the system.The Home Secretary has been forced to spend thousands defending challenges to his decisions – the sum stood at £144,000 by the end of January, and is now likely to be double that.Figures revealed to MPs also show that £5,501.25 was spent on the medical examination undergone by Pinochet last month which led a four-strong team of experts to declare he was unfit to stand trial.But it is not only the legal costs which have been mounting.The costs incurred by the police since General Pinochet’s detention in London in October 1998 have added hugely to the overall bill.Since December 1998, when Pinochet moved on to the exclusive Wentworth Estate in Surrey under round-the-clock guard, Surrey Police have been mounting a £50,000-a-week security operation.The Metropolitan Police also had to fund an elaborate security operation when Pinochet made his one and only court appearance to date, at the high-security Belmarsh Magistrates Court in south London, two months after his arrest.Every visit by the general to hospital for medical treatment has required meticulous planning and maximum security arrangements to guard against any possibility of either an attempt on his life, or a bid to kidnap and smuggle him out of the country.The Government has pledged to help fund the security operation in Surrey.. The husband of a missing woman was jailed yesterday for attacking her five weeks before she disappeared.
The husband of a missing woman was jailed yesterday for attacking her five weeks before she disappeared.
The woman, Arlene Fraser, 33, has not been seen since April 1998 when she left her home in Elgin, Grampian, to take her two children to school.On the day she disappeared, Mrs Fraser took no clothes, make-up or contact lenses and has not attempted to withdraw any money from her bank since. This, combined with the fact that a massive police search, numerous appeals and a reward of £20,000 have failed to yield any trace of her, has led relatives to fear that she is dead.Yesterday, her husband, Nat Fraser, 41, a partner in a fruit and vegetable supply business, was jailed for 18 months at the High Court in Edinburgh after admitting assaulting his wife during an argument only a few weeks before she vanished.Although he was initially charged with attempting to murder his wife, the prosecution accepted Fraser’s plea of guilty to a reduced charge of assault – throttling his wife when she arrived home in the early hours on Mothering Sunday in 1998.Fraser’s conviction for such an offence is unusual given the absence of the main witness. Handing down the sentence, the judge told him: “This was a nasty and wholly unprovoked and dangerous assault for which I regard a custodial sentence as inevitable.”The couple married in 1987, and the court was told that Mrs Fraser sought legal advice about her husband’s violent behaviour on four occasions up to 1997, but had decided not take legal action to ensure as much stability as she could for their two children, aged twelve and seven.Ruth Anderson QC, for the prosecution, said that when the assault took place in March 1998, Mrs Fraser was in the bathroom at home, after returning from a night drinking with friends Fraser followed her in. “He was very angry and was suspicious of why she was so late,” Ms Anderson said “He grabbed Mrs Fraser by the neck and compressed her neck. As a result of that she fell to the floor of the bathroom.”Although Fraser told police that he had his hands around his wife’s throat for only five to eight seconds, medical experts said it was likely that the attack lasted longer.
Mrs Fraser, who had bruising and burst blood vessels in her eyelids, was advised to seek an exclusion order against her husband.Since his wife’s disappearance, Fraser has co-operated with the police and made appeals for information.Mrs Fraser’s relatives do not expect her to be found alive. Yesterday, outside the court, Carol Gillies, her sister, said: “I want to know wheremy sister is buried Arlene is dead We want to get to the bottom of this.”. The Home Secretary, Jack Straw, will announce his decision on the fate of General Augusto Pinochet on Thursday, with all indications pointing to the former dictator being allowed to return to Chile. The Home Secretary, Jack Straw, will announce his decision on the fate of General Augusto Pinochet on Thursday, with all indications pointing to the former dictator being allowed to return to Chile.
Lawyers for the four countries that want to extradite General Pinochet for torture and human rights abuse were locked in meetings last night to decide what legal steps they can take to prevent his departure.Mr Straw said yesterday afternoon that he would give his decision at 8am today, along with the “full reasons” behind it. In January he stated he was “minded” to release the 84-year-old on the strength of a medical report which said he was suffering from “extensive brain damage”.The Home Secretary was forced to hand over the medical report to the four states seeking extradition – Belgium, Spain, France and Switzerland – following a High Court order. But he has not acted on their subsequent requests that the general should undergo fresh tests.Human rights groups accused Mr Straw of underhand tactics.
