Gerry Brooke looks back on the Jeremy Thorpe affair, rock band Lynyrd Skynard, the Crossman diaries, skateboarding and speedway

This was the week that former airline pilot Andrew Newton was questioned by police after claiming that he had been offered £5,000 to kill male model Norman Scott.

The ex Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe, who had denied an improper relationship with Scott, was due to make a statement about the alleged murder plot to the press.

Newton, who had been living in South Africa, was being questioned by top detectives at Bristol’s Bridewell police station

Scott, who had first met Thorpe in 1961 while working as a stable lad, claimed that he had a homosexual relationship with the MP.

In 1975, while walking on Exmoor with Rinka, a friend's dog, Scott said that he been confronted by Newton.

After shooting and killing the dog Newton then pointed the gun at Scott, but it failed to go off.

The subsequent scandal which embroiled Thorpe led to him resigning as leader of the Liberal Party in 1976.

Although later cleared of any wrongdoing his political career could not withstand the scandal, and he lost his parliamentary seat in the general election of 1979.

This was also the week in 1977 that three members of the top American rock band Lynyrd Skynard were killed in a plane crash near Mississippi

In Bristol concern was raised over the Richard Crossman diary disclosures that powerful Westminster politicians had tried to kill off the Port of Bristol’s Portbury ambitions in the late 1960s.

Crossman had claimed that top MP’s James Callaghan, Denis Healey, Peter Shore and Roy Jenkins had, amongst others, supported a Welsh lobby against Bristol’s expansion plans.

Councillor Bob Wall, the Conservative leader on Bristol council said, “ The revelations are no surprise.”

Skateboarding being all the rage in the summer of 1977 four Los Angeles based professional world champions had set up their ramps in Ashton Park to show 2,000 of the city’s youngsters just how it should be done.

A spokesman for the group told the Post, “ It’s definitely becoming a sport over here, rather than just a fad.

“ There’s an awful lot of enthusiasm - I just can’t believe it.”

In other news the Eastville Stadium MD Ian Stevens told 8,000 fans that he was prepared to go to prison rather than see speedway disappear from Bristol.

Enforcement notices, he said, had recently been served on the stadium directors.

Someone, somewhere, he added, was determined to make sure that there would be no speedway in the city the following season.

As the conservation movement continued to grow in strength in the 1970s so the Post heard that the 1834 listed, but decaying Brunswick Chapel in St Paul’s was to be saved.

So were the railings outside the public toilets in British Road, Bedminster and the Victorian cast iron toilets in Mina Road, St Werburgh’s.

And on The Centre, the war memorial, drinking fountains and statues of Edmund Burke and Edward Colston were also be protected by government “listing.”