Another Sex Scandal Hits British Politician -- Ex-Official Admits To A Family Affair

LONDON - The British political scene is buzzing with its latest scandal and its bewildering batch of elements.

Alan Clark, the 66-year-old patrician who once was a favored member of Margaret Thatcher's government, was accused of having overlapping affairs with the wife of a British judge and her two daughters.

Clark - the son of Lord Kenneth Clark, who created the television series "Civilization" - saw his hopes of resuming his political career in the House of Lords dashed yesterday because of the disclosures.

In his best-selling "Diaries" last year, Alan Clark produced fascinating insights into the workings of ministers in a Conservative government, while at the same time admitting to a career of pursuing women outside his marriage. His book included allusions to a "coven," an assembly of witches, among his women friends. He gave the first names or nicknames of three: the mother Valerie, and her two daughters, Alison and Josephine.

It now has been disclosed that Valerie was married for a second time to an English judge, James Harkess. After retirement, he moved to South Africa. One of her daughters, Josephine, now 34, remains close to them in South Africa.

The other daughter, Alison, 36, is estranged and lives with former KGB agent Sergei Kausov. He is the former husband of Greek shipping heiress Christina Onassis, who died in 1988.

On Sunday, the top-selling tabloid, News of the World, owned by Rupert Murdoch, published a story by the women admitting to the affairs with Clark; the judge said he supported the allegations.

Valerie Harkess said she realized after her 14-year-affair with Clark, including a period when she knew her lover had had sex with her daughters, that he was a "pathetic, lecherous, dirty old man."

After the Harkess family landed in London yesterday, bankrolled by the News of the World, Clark admitted: "I deserved to be horsewhipped." But he denied allegations by the Harkesses that he had offered the family $150,000 to keep them from airing their story.

Meanwhile, Clark's wife, Jane, whom he married when she was 17, told reporters she knew of her husband's peccadilloes, declaring: "Quite frankly, if you bed people I call `below-stairs class,' they go to the papers, don't they?"

Jane Clark, 52, has admitted in the past to throwing an ax at her husband after being informed of his latest escapade. Of her husband's girlfriends, she said: "I think they are dreadful. They all have their `sell-by' date on them. They all get put away on the shelf in the end."