Mick Jagger pays a visit and a sad encounter with disgraced Richard Nixon

In 1967, William Rees-Mogg became Editor of The Times — and a confidant to the powerful. In the first extract from his memoirs, he recalls the great and not so good

Mick Jagger, 1967


A journalist never knows which, if any, articles will be remembered 30 years later. In my case it proved to be a leader on the Mick Jagger case, which I published on 1 July 1967. I criticised the judge for undue severity in a minor drugs case. I argued that the Jagger prison sentence was bad justice. Justice, I argued, ought to be the same for the rich and the poor, for the famous and the unknown. Jagger was a first offender who was caught with a French seasickness pill in his pocket. It was on open sale in France but required a prescription in England. I took a line from Alexander Pope — “who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?” — as the title for the leading article.
Jagger’s views, in a subsequent television interview, were perhaps more important than he or we then realised; he took a libertarian view of ethical and social issues which turned out to be one of the constituents, though only one, of Thatcherism. It was not the soft-left Beatles but the libertarian Rolling Stones who best predicted the Anglo-American ideology of the 1980s. Mick Jagger was a Thatcherite before Thatcherism had been invented. Specifically, I remember being struck by the fact that Jagger used the classic John Stuart Mill On Liberty argument: that you are entitled to do anything which does not affect somebody else adversely. He argued that that is the test of the permissibility of human action. When Jagger made these remarks in 1967, the young were beginning to revolt against the limits put on liberty by Victorian tradition and wartime necessities and by socialist paternalism.
Later that summer, Mick Jagger visited me at Cowley Street; my daughters Emma and Charlotte, then aged 4 and 2, followed him up the stairs and were much struck by his red socks. He thanked me for my help, and asked me how to deal with some police blackmail he was facing. I have not met him since, but our youngest daughter, Annunziata, met him in the Caribbean. He told her: “I have a lot to thank your father for. He saved my career.”

Richard Nixon, 1973
Almost the only journalist in the world to do so, I took a pro-Nixon line. Many of my colleagues thought it was my worst mistake, and they were probably right.
My attitude over Watergate was motivated by a concern for fair trials as in the Mick Jagger case. Did Mick Jagger take drugs? Of course he did. Did Richard Nixon send burglars in to steal Democrat papers? Of course he did. Did Mick Jagger get a fair trial? No, he did not. Did Nixon get fair coverage from the American press? No, he did not.
My 5 June 1973 leader strongly defended him: “It is perfectly possible for a wholly guilty man to be tried in a wholly unjust way.” I still think that Nixon was treated by the English language press in a very different way from their treatment of presidents who were Democrats. Nixon was an able though flawed President.
Ten years after Watergate, I had an interview with President Nixon. I had met him once before, in London, and had then been impressed by his strategic sense of American politics. I arrived a little early at his New York apartment, and can remember the sadness and sense of failure in his expression. I can also remember his observations about Republican canvassing. “There comes a time in every Republican campaign when someone says ‘let’s go the other side of the tracks’. The trouble is that the Democrats already are the other side of the tracks.”

[www.thetimes.co.uk]


There are the stories about Harold Wilson, Anwar Sadat, Golda Meir and Indira Ghandi. Now it's a good company for Mick!
His opinion on Jagger is very interesting, it gives a very different perspective, another dimension in addition to which all used to.

Source: Times, The (UK)
Contact: letters@thetimes.co.uk
Website: [www.the-times.co.uk]
Address: PO Box 496, London E1 9XN, United Kingdom
Fax: +44-(0)171-782 5046
Copyright: 1967 Times Newspapers Ltd
Pubdate: July 1, 1967
Author: William Rees-Mogg, Editor

WHO BREAKS A BUTTERFLY ON A WHEEL?

Mr. Jagger has been sentenced to imprisonment for three months. He is appealing against conviction and sentence, and has been granted bail until the hearing of the appeal later in the year. In the meantime, the sentence of imprisonment is bound to be widely discussed by the public. And the circumstances are sufficiently unusual to warrant such discussion in the public interest.

Mr. Jagger was charged with being in possession of four tablets containing amphetamine sulphate and methyl amphetamine hydrochloride: these tablets had been bought, perfectly legally, in Italy, and brought back to this country. They are not a highly dangerous drug, or in proper dosage a dangerous drug at all...

In Britain, it is an offence to possess these drugs without a doctor's prescription. Mr. Jagger's doctor says that he knew and had authorised their use, but he did not give a prescription for them as indeed they had already been purchased. His evidence was not challenged. This was therefore an offence of a technical character, which, before this case drew the point to public attention, any honest man might have been liable to commit...

Judge Block directed the jury that the approval of a doctor was not a defence in law to the charge of possessing drugs without a prescription and the jury convicted. Mr. Jagger was not charged with complicity in any other drug offence that occurred in the same house...

We have, therefore, a conviction against Mr. Jagger purely on the ground that he possessed four Italian pep pills, quite legally imported without a prescription. Four is not a large number. This is not the quantity which a pusher of drugs would have on him, nor even the quantity one would expect in an addict. In any case, Mr. Jagger's career is obviously one that does involve great personal strain and exhaustion; his doctor says that he approved the occasional use of these drugs, and it seems likely that similar drugs would have been prescribed if there was a need for them.

One has to ask, therefore, how it is that this technical offence, divorced as it must be from other people's offences, was thought to deserve the penalty of imprisonment.

The normal penalty is probation, and the purpose of probation is to encourage the offender to develop his career and to avoid the drug risks in the future. It is surprising therefore that Judge Block should have decided to sentence Mr. Jagger to imprisonment and particularly surprising as Mr. Jagger's is about as mild a drug case as can ever have been brought before the Courts.

It would be wrong to speculate on the judge's reasons which we do not know. It is however, possible to consider the public reaction. There are many people who take a primitive view of the matter, what one might call a pre-legal view of the matter. They consider that Mr. Jagger has "got what was coming to him". They resent the anarchic quality of the Rolling Stones' performances, dislike their songs, dislike their influence on teenagers and broadly suspect them of decadence, a word used by Miss Monica Furlong in the Daily Mail .

As a sociological concern this may be reasonable enough, and at an emotional level it is very understandable, but it has nothing at all to do with the case. One has to ask a different question: has Mr. Jagger received the same treatment as he would have received if he had not been a famous figure, with all the criticism and resentment his celebrity has aroused?

oh the 60's, great music, great minds, and what it led to? Basically the yuppies and rampant consumerism. Ian Mac Donald says it much better in "Revolution In The Head"



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2011-06-29 14:30 by Child Of Clay.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around why he thinks the Thatcher 'n Reagan era espoused a "libertarian view of ethical and social issues." Huh? Somehow I can't imagine Maggie saying "Right on" to Jagger's anything goes ethos.

Quote
proudmary
Did Nixon get fair coverage from the American press? No, he did not.

The press can be so cruel, poor guy, I'm almost in tears.

Nixon got exactly what he deserved. He abused his office and used the immense power of the US federal government to harass his political enemies. He illegally interfered in elections. Most people thought he should have served time in prison. He was very fortunate he was spared that by a Presidential pardon. Please note I am not commenting on his policies or politics here, just the legal conditions which forced his resignation.