LONDON: A retired British politician sued the wife of the House of Commons Speaker for defamation yesterday, accusing her of implying in a tweet that he was a paedophile guilty of sexually abusing boys living in a care home.
Alistair McAlpine, an associate of the late former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, is seeking damages from Sally Bercow in Britain’s most high-profile Twitter defamation case to date.
Bercow tweeted “Why is Lord McAlpine trending? Innocent face” on November 4 last year, two days after a BBC report accused an unnamed “leading Conservative politician from the Thatcher years” of sexually abusing boys in the 1970s and 80s.
McAlpine was widely named on the Internet as the subject of the report, which the BBC later admitted was wrong. It paid £185,000 ($281,700) in damages to McAlpine, who also received damages from others who had reported the story.
A trial at London’s High Court to determine whether Bercow’s tweet was defamatory began yesterday morning. The judge is expected to reserve judgement to a later date. If he rules that the tweet was defamatory, there will be a separate trial in July to determine the amount of damages Bercow should pay.
McAlpine’s lawyer Edward Garnier, also a Conservative member of parliament, told the court Bercow’s tweet was defamatory because many of her nearly 60,000 Twitter followers would have been aware of the media frenzy sparked by the BBC report.
“There was a prominent and salacious story in the media, and what was missing was the name of the abuser at its centre,” Garnier said. “(Bercow’s) tweet, by asking why he was ‘trending’ on Twitter combined with the coy sign-off of innocent face, identified (McAlpine) as the unnamed leading Conservative politician from the Thatcher years,” Garnier said. Reuters
