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Robert Allen Fenwick Thorp (12 February 1900 – 5 May 1966) was an army officer and British Conservative Party politician. Thorp was the son of Thomas Alder Thorp, solicitor, of Bondgate Hall, Alnwick, Northumberland, and Elizabeth Jane Thorp (née Peak).
- Robert Thorp
Robert Thorp may refer to: Robert Thorp (MP) (1900–1966),...
- Robert Thorp
The Thorpe affair of the 1970s was a British political and sex scandal that ended the career of Jeremy Thorpe, the leader of the Liberal Party and Member of Parliament (MP) for North Devon.
Ropner died 26 February 1924, aged 85, and was succeeded in the baronetcy by his eldest son John. His third son William Ropner was the father of the Conservative politician Sir Leonard Ropner, 1st Baronet of Thorp Perrow. Robert Ropner is buried in the family vault at All Saints churchyard, Hutton Rudby, North Yorkshire. Upon three mascles ...
- Family Background and Early Childhood
- Education
- Early Career
- Member of Parliament
- Party Leader
- Post-Resignation
- Trial and Acquittal
- Later Life
- Final Years and Death
- Appraisal
Thorpe was born in South Kensington, London, on 29 April 1929. His father was John Henry Thorpe, a lawyer and politician who was the Conservative MP for Manchester Rusholme between 1919 and 1923. His mother, Ursula Norton-Griffiths (1903–1992), was the daughter of another Conservative MP, Sir John Norton-Griffiths, widely known as "Empire Jack" bec...
Schooling
In January 1938 Jeremy went to Cothill House, a school in Oxfordshire that prepared boys for entry to Eton. By summer 1939 war looked likely, and the Thorpe family moved from London to the Surrey village of Limpsfield where Jeremy attended Hazelwood School. War began in September 1939; in June 1940, with invasion threatening, the Thorpe children were sent to live with their American aunt, Kay Norton-Griffiths, in Boston. In September that year Jeremy began at the Rectory School in Pomfret, Co...
Oxford
Having secured a place at Trinity College, Oxford, Thorpe left Eton in March 1947. In September he began 18 months' National Service, but within six weeks was discharged on medical grounds after collapsing while attempting an assault course.[n 2]As his place at Oxford was unavailable until the following year, Thorpe worked as a temporary preparatory school teacher before his admission to Trinity on 8 October 1948. Thorpe was reading Law, but his primary interests at Oxford were political and...
Parliamentary candidate
Having been accepted as a potential Liberal parliamentary candidate, Thorpe looked for a constituency. The general elections of 1950 and 1951 had seen the party's MPs fall, first to nine, then six; some commentators saw little future except "further attrition and further losses to the two major parties".[n 3] The journalist Julian Gloverwrites that Thorpe's determination to stay with the party, despite its woes, showed a more principled commitment to Liberalism than many critics have acknowle...
Barrister-at-law and television journalist
In need of a paid occupation Thorpe opted for the law, and in February 1954 was called to the bar in the Inner Temple. Initially he found it difficult to earn a living from his fees; he needed another source of income, and found it in television journalism. Thorpe was employed by Associated-Rediffusion, at first as chairman of a science discussion programme, The Scientist Replies, and later as an interviewer on the station's major current affairs vehicle This Week. Among various assignments f...
Thorpe's efforts in North Devon came to fruition in the October 1959 general election, when he won the seat with a majority of 362 over his Conservative opponent—the Liberal Party's solitary gain in what was generally an electoral triumph for Harold Macmillan's Conservative government.[n 5] On 10 November 1959, he made his maiden speech, during a d...
1967–1970
Following the 1966 election, Grimond confided to senior party officials that he wished soon to step down from the leadership. Thorpe was now the senior Liberal MP after Grimond, and the party's highest-profile member, although Tim Beaumont, chairman of the party's organising committee, noted in his diary: "I am pretty certain that he has little popularity within the Parliamentary Party".[n 7] When Grimond finally resigned, on 17 January 1967, an election to replace him was arranged to take pl...
1970–1974
Following the Liberals' poor election performance Thorpe came under fire, but such criticisms were stifled when, ten days after the election, Caroline Thorpe was killed in a car crash. For the rest of 1970 and for much of 1971, Thorpe was preoccupied with his loss and his plan for a permanent memorial to Caroline. Meanwhile, the party began to recover, chiefly through its adoption of "community politics"—engagement with local rather than national issues—and achieved modest gains in the 1971 l...
Coalition negotiations
The February 1974 general election produced a hung parliament; neither Labour, with 301 seats, nor the Conservatives, with 297 seats, achieved an overall majority. As was his right as the sitting Prime Minister, Heath did not resign, hoping to persuade the Liberals into a Conservative-led coalition. He met Thorpe on 2 March to discuss possible bases for co-operation, Heath's preferred option being a formal coalition in which Thorpe would be given a cabinet post,[n 9]and junior ministries woul...
Interlude
Thorpe's resignation brought him a period of temporary calm. The new Liberal leader, David Steel, made him party spokesman on foreign affairs, with responsibility for European issues. Wilson had by this time retired as prime minister, and been replaced by James Callaghan. Thorpe lobbied the government hard for legislation to introduce direct elections to the European Parliament; at that time MEPswere appointed by member nations' parliaments. By-election losses eroded and finally removed Labou...
Committal, electoral defeat
In November 1978, Thorpe, Holmes and two of the latter's business acquaintances, John le Mesurier (a carpet salesman, not to be confused with the actor of that name) and George Deakin, appeared before magistrates at Minehead, Somerset, in a committal hearing to determine whether they should stand trial. The court heard evidence of a conspiracy from Scott, Newton and Bessell; it also learned that Bessell was being paid £50,000 by The Sunday Telegraph for his story. At the conclusion, the four...
The trial, which lasted for six weeks, began on 8 May 1979, before Mr Justice Cantley. Thorpe was defended by George Carman. Carman quickly undermined Bessell's credibility by revealing that he had a significant interest in Thorpe's conviction; in the event of an acquittal, Bessell would receive only half of his newspaper fee. During his cross-exam...
Following his acquittal, Thorpe announced that he proposed to attend the 1979 Liberal assembly and the forthcoming Liberal International Congress in Canada. His failure to explain himself under oath was widely criticised in the press, and the public perception was that he had been fortunate to have "got off". Reluctantly, Thorpe accepted that there...
Thorpe's last public appearance was in 2009, at the unveiling of a bust of himself in the Grimond Room at the House of Commons. Thereafter he was confined to his home, nursed by Marion until she became too infirm. She died on 6 March 2014; Thorpe survived for nine more months, dying from complications of Parkinson's disease on 4 December, aged 85. ...
Most assessments of Thorpe's career emphasise his downfall rather than his political achievements, "a fall unparalleled in British political history", according to the Daily Telegraph obituarist. While Thorpe hoped that acquittal would ensure he would be remembered primarily for his revival of Liberal fortunes in the 1960s and 1970s, the trial shat...
Robert Thorp (1736 – 20 April 1812) was a British clergyman. He attended Durham School and Peterhouse, Cambridge University, obtaining a B.A. in 1758 as senior wrangler and an M.A. in 1761. [1] In 1768 he succeeded his father Thomas Thorp (1699–1767) as rector of Chillingham; in 1782 he became rector of Gateshead; in 1792 he became ...
Lidia Alma Thorpe (born 1973) is an Aboriginal Australian independent politician. She has been a senator for Victoria since 2020 and is the first Aboriginal senator from that state. She was a member of the Australian Greens until February 2023 when she quit the party over disagreements concerning the proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament. [1]
