Thatcher Party Aide Quits in Prostitute Scandal : Reality Close to Fiction, Novelist Finds

Truth may be stranger than fiction, but for English novelist and political figure Jeffrey Archer, they are uncomfortably similar.

Archer, 46, was forced to resign Sunday from his job as deputy chairman of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party, hours after a national newspaper revealed that he attempted to pay off a prostitute to prevent a scandal.

One of Archer’s most successful novels, “First Among Equals,” features a British Cabinet minister being blackmailed by a prostitute.

Photo of Transaction

The Sunday tabloid News of the World published a detailed account of a central London prostitute named Monica Coghlan, her assertions that Archer had been one of her clients and a large photo of an Archer aide handing the woman a packet with 2,000 pounds (about $3,000) in bank notes on a London railroad station platform.

In a prepared statement, Archer claimed never to have met Coghlan but said that she had telephoned him and that he had offered to pay her money to prevent her allegations of involvement becoming public.

“Foolishly, as I now realize, I allowed myself to fall into what I can only call a trap. . . . “ he said. “For that lack of judgment--and that alone--I have tendered my resignation as deputy chairman of the Conservative Party.”

The incident ends a brief, controversial year for Archer as a central figure in Thatcher’s party but is merely the latest in a series of dizzying ups and downs for the Oxford-educated writer, who was Parliament’s youngest member at age 29 but was forced to resign his seat amid heavy investment losses five years later and then made millions as a novelist before returning to politics last year.

The scandal is certain to embarrass Thatcher and her party but is unlikely to have any lasting effect because Archer had no position in the government, had held his party job for a relatively short time and was widely regarded as a political maverick.

“Because he has done the honorable thing and gone, I don’t expect any lasting damage to the party,” stated Tory member of Parliament Peter Bruinvels.

A spokesman for the prime minister said she received his resignation “with sadness.”

Thatcher, reportedly impressed by Archer’s energy and promotional talents, picked him out of the political wilderness and placed him in charge of rejuvenating the Tories’ lackluster image.

Unfortunately for his party, Archer’s energy was not matched by tact, and his faux pas came in rapid-fire succession. He suggested that the young unemployed were afraid of work and that he really wished that he was an American. And he once asked, “You wouldn’t buy a used car from this government, would you?”

Opposition Labor Party members--and even some within his own party--joked that Archer opened his mouth only to change feet.

Other Novels

In addition to “First Among Equals,” Archer’s best-selling novels include “Kane and Abel,” which was made into a U.S. television mini-series, and a sequel, “The Prodigal Daughter.” His latest novel is “A Matter of Honor.”

Disclosures of Archer’s involvement with a prostitute is the latest in a number of sex scandals involving senior Conservative Party members.

The party’s chairman, Cecil Parkinson, was forced to give up a promising political career in 1983 that some believed might have led to the prime ministership after his secretary went public about their affair and the child he had given her.

In 1963, War Minister John Profumo was forced to resign in disgrace after it became known that he was having an affair with a call girl.

Ten years later, the undersecretary for defense, Lord Lambton, and the head of the House of Lords, Earl Jellicoe, both resigned quickly after being publicly linked with prostitutes.

One of the prostitutes in that scandal, Norma Levy, was later quoted as saying she always voted Tory: “They are my best clients.”