THE PRESS MONDAY, APRIL 17, 1978. Last chapter in "Moyle Affair”?

Press, 17 April 1978, Page 14

THE PRESS MONDAY, APRIL 17, 1978. Last chapter in "Moyle Affair”?

Sir Alfred North’s displeasure at an apparent challenge to his competence in handling the “Moyle inquiry’” may have produced the last, though unexpected. chapter in this unhappy political episode. Somewhat reluctantly today we print extracts from the report made by Sir Alfred and our abridgement has been calculated to sene a predominant purpose. It is to permit readers to judge for themselves the adequacy of the inquiry that led to Sir Alfred’s conclusions, which were first made public early last year. These conclusions are not reprinted today, yet we believe that any fair-minded reader of the full report would readily see that the conclusions relate closely to the questions put to Sir Alfred and that the evidence he gathered fully supports his findings.

Room is left for debate as to whether the right questions were asked in the terms of reference given to Sir Alfred when he was appointed a commission of inquiry. Essentially this inquiry was directed at the confidentiality of a police file on an encounter between Mr Colin Moyle, then Minister of Agriculture, and a police constable. The questions concerned the police handling of this file, the access, or supposed access, of politicians and others to this file, and the extent of any conflict between statements by Mr Moyle and what was on the police file. Gossip about the incident, spreading almost immediately after it occurred, seems to have been well informed, presumably, as Sir Alfred has noted, from police sources in the first instance. But he found no evidence that this was because any but senior officers had seen what was on file or because members of a special squad of police had themselves disclosed information. The fact that police gossip and information on a file broadly coincide is not in itself surprising. Should Sir Alfred have followed to its beginning a chain of information that ended in the office of Mr Muldoon, then Leader of the Opposition? Other evidence in the report makes it clear that Sir Alfred did not expect this chain of gossip to lead back to a file. Nor, on the evidence he accepts, would numerous other chains of rumours, then thick in Parliament’s corridors, have begun at a police file.

Many may yet ask why Sir Alfred did not further exploit one term of reference, namely, any associated matters thought relevant to the general objects of the inquiry. Some will conclude that, 18 months after the incident, the tracing of such widespread rumours would have been an unprofitable and unreliable exercise. Certainly it would have done nothing to illuminate further or set to rest the flurry of statements in Parliament in Novembei, 1976. One or two indiscreet policemen, probably among many, may have been identified. Some public satisfaction might be had

from that, but it seems wiser to conclude that Sir Alfred stuck to the central business of his brief.

Had evidence been found that a campaign by policemen had been devised to discredit Mr Moyle or that, before Mr Muldoon breached the genera) silence on the incident, political capital had been made of the rumours in the 1975 electioneering, a different view would have to be taken of the origin of the gossip.

Mr Moyle’s provocation of the release of this report seems to have been most ill-conceived. Having rehabilitated himself within his party to the extent of winning a candidacy for another seat in the House, his silence, or more discreet response to an article in a newspaper would have been wise. Mr Moyle knows the possible effects of provocation himself, and though we hold no brief for the remarks made by Mr Muldoon in Parliament on the evening of November 4, 1976, the Opposition’s personal attacks, and Mr Moyle’s own charges (subsequently withdrawn) against the Prime Minister, brought no credit to the Labour Party in the House.

Only after Mr Moyle learned that Sir Alfred recommended publication can Mr Moyle’s reactions be easily understood. At that stage a hasty effort to stop publication would have commonly been interpreted as a sign that the report must contain something that Mr Moyle was eager to keep concealed.

Nevertheless, the publication of the full report adds or detracts nothing of importance to the information about Mr Moyle’s encounter with the police or about his handling of the affair in Parliament. Nothing in the police evidence in the report suggests that they had any information that Mr Moyle was engaged in homosexual activity, though the implications of the incident, and Mr Moyle’s own explanation of it, leave little doubt about what was in the minds of all concerned. No charge was brought against Mr Moyle then; he remains cleared.

It is to be hoped that the report’s disclosure will, indeed, end the affair. Among the reasons given for its release for publication one was not satisfactory. Mr Muldoon associated his decision with what he described as harassment of his own family. Such harassment, if substantiated, is despicable; but its connection with Mr Moyle is. surely, nonexistent and mention of it in this context is mistaken and. it seems, unfairly retaliatory. The other reasons appear valid. If publication has cleared the air oq the questions of Sir Alfred’s competence, of his view of the order of reference, and speculation about the report’s contents, some of the stench may have been taken out of politics. Politicians on both sides of the House have a duty to see that it is kept out.