Another Tale of Sex, Lies and British Politics

The British political scene was buzzing Tuesday with its latest scandal and its bewildering batch of elements.

Alan Clark, the 66-year-old patrician who once was a favored member of Margaret Thatcher’s government, was accused of having overlapping affairs with the wife of a British judge and her two daughters.

Clark--the son of the late Lord Clark, who was well-known in his role as the art historian who created the television series “Civilization”--saw his own hopes of resuming his political career in the House of Lords dashed Tuesday because of the revelations.

In his best-selling “Diaries” last year, the younger Clark, who was a junior defense minister, produced fascinating insights into the workings of ministers in a Conservative government, while at the same time admitting to a career of pursuing women outside his marriage. His book included allusions to a “coven,” an assembly of witches, among his women friends. He gave the first names or nicknames of three: the mother, Valerie, and her two daughters, Alison and Josephine.

It has now been revealed that Valerie is the wife of an English judge, James Harkess. After his retirement, the couple moved to South Africa. One of her daughters, Josephine, now 34, remains close to them in South Africa.

The other daughter, Alison, 36, is estranged and lives in homes with former KGB agent Sergei Kausov.

On Sunday, the top-selling tabloid, News of the World, owned by Rupert Murdoch, published a story by the women admitting to the affairs with Clark; the judge said he supported the allegations. The reason they spoke out, they said, was to “tell the truth, to set the record straight.”

“I feel that certain people in the present government and the recent government are rotten to the core,” Harkess said, “and I think this should be brought out.” Harkess was reported to be politically opposed to Prime Minister John Major, a moderate Conservative by Harkess’ standards.

Valerie Harkess said she realized after her 14-year affair with Clark, including a period when she knew her lover had had sex with her daughters, that he was a “pathetic, lecherous, dirty old man.”

After the Harkess family landed in London on Tuesday, bankrolled by the News of the World, Clark admitted, “I deserved to be horsewhipped.” But he denied allegations by the Harkesses that he had offered the family $150,000 to keep them from taking their story to the newspapers.

Meanwhile, Jane Clark, the millionaire’s wife, whom he married when she was 17, told reporters she knew of her husband’s infidelities, declaring, “Quite frankly, if you bed people I call ‘below-stairs class,’ they go to the papers, don’t they?”

Jane Clark, 52, has admitted in the past to throwing an ax at her husband after being informed of his latest escapade. Of her husband’s girlfriends, she said: “I think they are dreadful. They all have their ‘sell-by’ date on them. They all get put away on the shelf in the end.”