POLITICAL SCANDALS! (weekly poem)

POLITICAL SCANDALS! Good voters of this green and pleasant land, Today's exposé of 'The Old Boys Band'; Who's affluential stories that we tell, Exudes a nasty effluential smell! PM Lloyd George made anyone a Lord, Who in the Roaring Twenties could afford; A very liberal donation to, The Liberal Party's slush-fund, entrée nous. And Winston Churchill, for his sweat and toil, Received a large cash bung from Burmah Oil; (1) To favour their close interest in Iran, And thus maintain the 'Seven Sisters' clan. (2) The Tory MP, John Profumo knew, That Christine Keeler was no ingénue; But in the House of Commons swore that he, Had never known Miss Keeler, 'biblically'! A witty wag thus wrote a wicked verse, As cynical an ode as it was terse; “T'was OK to be lying with Christine, But lying to the House was quite obscene”! Tom Driberg, one of those depraved MP's, Who was involved in sybaritic slease; Opined that one of his life's greatest joys, Was sodomising homeless little boys. The Fourth Estate did not daily express, A word about the scandal in the Press; The Lord above got Driberg off the hook, Assisted down here by Lord Beaverbrook. (3) Lord Boothy was, due to a moral lapse, Involved with certain Krayzy East End 'Chaps'; (4) As was Tom Driberg who with the said gent, Were into things that legally were bent! The Fleet Street press latched on to Boothby's lies, And scrutinised all his Fort Vallance ties; (5) Both Ronnie Kray and brother Reg were tried, And sentenced to some thirty years inside. Both Lord and MP buggared-up the Krays, In a variety of different ways; And as this was a tad below the belt, Both Members could have had their collars felt. It should be understood that in those times, Those persons gaily bent upon 'Wilde' crimes; Could often wonder where their leisure went, When t'was at Her Majesty's leisure spent! Because each year in those pre-anum days, Activities as such, beyond the gaze; Of faux respectable society, Shocked our Victorian sobriety! And both Lord Boothby and Tom Driberg knew, The cheeky pleasures of the batty few; Were strictly then, against the Common Law, In those more backward thinking days of yore! John Stonehouse, MP, did a 'Reggie P', (6) And 'disappeared' into the deep blue sea; He dumped his clothes upon Miami's beach, Believing this ploy put him out of reach. He sometime later re-appeared in Oz, Where he admitted the sham was because, Of his liason with his secretary, And such affair had thus forced him to flee. But then conceded crimes like fraud and theft, Were 'supplementary' reasons why he'd left; In quite a hurry from Great Britain's shore, In a futile attempt to flee her law. And when deported back to the UK, He spent an all inclusive holiday; At one of London's most exclusive clubs, A cell in the reclusive Wormword Scrubs! The Tory MP, Cecil Parkinson, Who was in Thatcher's upper echelon; Had his ambitions permanently filed, When Sarah Keays was found to be with child. There's no doubt it was 'Parky' in 'the buff', Who coolly put young Sarah, 'up the duff'; (7) Such images would both cloy and annoy, If you were Maggie Thatcher's favoured boy! It's time for the electorate to see, For politicians, money is the key; Their egos and neuroses seem to feed, Their need for adulation—and their greed! (1) 1923. Burmah Oil secretly gave £5k (£250k now) to Churchill to lobby the British Government to allow them to monopolise Persian (Iranian) oil resources. (2) Oil consortium controlling 85% of world's oil output. (3) 1935. Lord Beaverbrook, Tory proprietor of the Daily Express, used his Fleet Street influence to hush-up Labour MP, Tom Driberg's homosexual activities which were then illegal. (4) Gangster slang for a fellow gangster. “One of the chaps”. (5) 1940's/60's. The Kray Brothers fortified house at 178 Vallance Road, Bethnal Green, East London. (6 1970's.'Reggie Perrin'. Eccentric TV character who faked his own drowning. (7) 1983. Cecil Parkinson, a favourite of Margaret Thatcher, resigned when mistress Sarah Keays gave birth to his daughter. © Richard Layton