Cyril Smith: The Disestablishment

Doubts have been cast over the Metropolitan police service’s claims that Cyril Smith attended a house in south London which was allegedly used by a VIP paedophile ring.

Statements released by the force in 2013 and 2014 claimed that officers had “established” that the late Liberal MP, who was known to be a child abuser, had visited Elm Guest House in Barnes, south-west London.

That claim has been repeated by campaigners who believe there is evidence of a cover-up of abuse at the home dating back 30 years.

But a statement released by the Met to the Guardian on Thursday removed the claim, casting doubt on whether the late MP for Rochdale was ever there. A Met spokesman said he could not “reaffirm” that the Met still believed that Smith attended the south London home.

It is understood that the original police assertion that Smith attended the home was based on the word of a single witness. That same witness has now made allegations of misconduct against police officers, a source said...

Guardian.

The prime mover behind the foundless claim?

Zac Goldsmith, the Conservative MP and London mayoral contender whose Richmond Park constituency includes the guest house, told MPs in November that he had been “reliably told” that 12 boys gave evidence in 1982 that they had been abused at Elm Guest House.

To a hushed Commons, Goldsmith said: “The Met has since confirmed that Cyril Smith visited... It is impossible to believe there was not a cover-up.”

Oops!

Cyril Smith: Smile For The TV Camera

The BBC has secured the rights to a book dramatising the life ofCyril Smith, the Liberal MP exposed as a serial abuser of young boys.

The BBC has taken an option on Smile For The Camera: The Double Life of Cyril Smith, by Simon Danczuk, the Labour MP for Rochdale, who outed Smith in the House of Commons as a child abuser.

The book tells how the larger-than-life MP used his public profile as a celebrity to disguise his systematic grooming and sexual abuse of young boys, often in care homes he helped to establish in his Rochdale constituency.

Danczuk said: “I’m pleased the BBC are looking at bringing the story of Cyril Smith to life because I want as many people as possible to understand how a paedophile was able to enter Parliament and stay there for 20 years.”

A BBC spokesman said: “We do have an option on this book but a drama has not been commissioned and currently no plans to make it yet.” ...

The Independent.

Uh-huh.

Fagburn is currently working on a musical about Jimmy Savile at Stoke Mandeville, Kiddy Fiddler On The Roof.

I trust Aunty Beeb will pitch for this...

Cyril Smith Cover-Up: Who Knew??!

Downing Street cynically tried to prevent the release of damaging files exposing the scale of the cover-up over paedophile MP Cyril Smith.

The Cabinet Office repeatedly blocked The Mail on Sunday’s attempts to see the bombshell documents – and caved in only after being threatened with High Court action.

After the shocking year-long fight, we can reveal the content of the papers, which expose just how much the Establishment knew about the late politician’s sexual and physical abuse of young boys.

Nick Clegg and David Cameron, both Ministers in the Cabinet Office, have been accused of ‘colluding’ in the latest cover-up of evidence that could expose VIP paedophile rings.

The secrecy row will also focus attention on Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood, who has become known as ‘Sir Cover-Up’ after blocking twho has become known as ‘Sir Cover-Up’ after blocking the release of dozens of messages exchanged by Tony Blair and George W Bush ahead of the Iraq war.

Click to enlarge.

Following The Mail on Sunday’s victory, it can be revealed for the first time that:

- Margaret Thatcher was personally told that police had investigated claims that Smith indecently assaulted teenage boys in the 1960s.

- Thatcher was explicitly warned that awarding a knighthood to the 29-stone Liberal MP risked damaging the ‘integrity of the honours system’, but went ahead anyway.

- A senior Whitehall mandarin took the ‘exceptional’ step of contacting the country’s top prosecutor and police to find out why Smith was never charged with abusing boys at a hostel he helped run.

- Civil servants feared the secret Smith police file might be made public in 1982 – when a burglary at the Fleet Street offices of The Sun newspaper revealed the editor was in possession of a copy. This revelation will lead to speculation that the break-in was linked to attempts to cover up Smith’s crimes. *

One insider told The Mail on Sunday that the matter is ‘on the Deputy Prime Minister’s desk’. The fact that the Cabinet Office blocked five attempts by The Mail on Sunday to see the papers will deepen fears of a cover-up at the highest levels over the activities of VIP paedophiles...

Mail On Sunday.

Oh dear.

Think most of this is official confirmations, not revelations.

And what about this cover-up? Larger-than-life Lib Dem Sir Cyril Smith dies aged 82, Daily Mail obituary, September 2010.

* Kevin Maguire, then Sun editor, says he doesn't remember a break-in - 'nor Does Scotland Yard' - or possessing the file - no link yet.

Harvey Proctor: Fly Swatting

Needless to say the media had been tipped off. The BBC bulletin that morning said: “Police investigating allegations of an establishment paedophile ring have searched the home of former Conservative MP Harvey Proctor... fined in 1987 for gross indecency.” As it happens that was Alan Turing’s crime in 1952.

Mr Proctor’s comment may not surprise you: “I do not think I’ve been oversensitive in thinking that there is an element of guilt by association in your report.” In fact the police haven’t even suggested Proctor is a suspect, but he has now been cornered into denying what nobody has alleged — triggering a new round of media headlines “Harvey Proctor denies . . .” etc. Kafkaesque is precisely the word.

I watched the BBC’s footage (some of it filmed from a helicopter) when Cliff Richard’s place was raided in his absence and without his knowledge, after an exclusivity deal had been done between the police and the BBC: footage the corporation then had the impertinence to enter for a Royal Television Society award. I’ve never met Cliff Richard — but heaven knows some astonishing unlikelihoods have turned out to be true in other cases — so I said nothing.

I followed the year’s hell the broadcaster Paul Gambaccini went through after his arrest on suspicion of historical sex offences as part of Operation Yewtree (dropping him as my guest on my Great Lives radio series) until, finally, no charges were brought. I do know Mr Gambaccini slightly and seriously doubted there’d be anything in this — but, heaven knows, etc — so I said nothing.

I was a friend of Harvey Proctor during his ordeals; and if Harvey (a very private man who never talked about his homosexuality even to me as a fellow-gay, fellow-Tory MP, but has had, so far as I know, not the remotest interest in children) was ever involved in a “ring of top people”, then I’ll eat my hat. But, heaven knows, etc . . .

Or, rather, no: this time I’ll say something. I think the story’s absolute b****cks. The comment about Mr Proctor from the MP-turned-witchfinder-general John Mann, that “the police have said they will go where the evidence takes them and that’s exactly what they should do” is disgraceful. What evidence? Does Mr Mann know of any here? I very much doubt the police do. This is nothing to do with evidence: it’s the police canteen culture talking: “He’s gay, he’s got a conviction, a loner and he was an MP, hey — let’s check him out. And tell the media. Who knows — maybe someone will ring in.”...

A rightly and righteously impassioned piece by Matthew Parris in The Times.

It was well-known while he was alive that Cyril Smith was guilty of the most heinous crimes against boys,  and he was allowed to get away with it, but the Dolphin Square story sounds like complete fantasy.

Or, as Mr Parris so eloquently puts it, 'absolute bollocks'.

Jeremy Thorpe: 1929-2014

I'm stilll gone, but couldn't miss documenting this. x

Jeremy Thorpe tribute bingo; Eton, colourful, charismatic, gifted mimic, brown derby, former male model, great dane, hired a hitman to kill his ex-boyfriend, allegedly, Minehead, bunnys can and will go to France, bit the pillow, acquitted, judge, a verdict that surprised many, pink oboe, Peter Cook, retired from public life, Parkinson's, devoted wife, Nick Clegg comments...

PS Jeremy Thorpe scandal: Where are they now?

It's Christmas Time: There's No Need To Feel Afraid...

Only available online - hurry while stocks last!

Gor blimey, makes you glad to be British, dunnit? etc etc.

NB 'If you question the Savile moral crusade, you're seen as evil', Frank Furedi, Spiked.

Independent Voices: Keep Your Shirt On

A quite ridiculous article by Howard Jacobson that could perhaps only have appeared in the hysterically prudish and puritanical and anti-sex Independent Voices.

It's so barking and tenuous an 'argument' it's hard to summarise, but essentially he manages to go from the Satanic sight of Zac Efron being briefly shirtless at last week's MTV Movie Awards, straight into - I kid you not - the Cyril Smith child abuse cover-up, and then onto sexism in the UK and - with a certain inevitability - Page 3.

An actual thing The Sun did briefly in the 80s.

To be clear: I am not using the sexualisation of Zac Efron’s body to discredit those who complain about the sexualisation of women’s. On the contrary, I consider the one to be the mirror image of the other. The Page 3 girl pinned on a workshop door degrades all parties to its being there: the inanely objectified girl and those who inanely ogle her. And we should not discount the coarsening effects of inanity itself. To trivialise is also to dishonour. Dumb also degrades. Similarly degraded and inane, anyway, are the girls who shout “phwoar” the minute a boy, a man, a Chippendale, a birthday stripper, undoes a button...

Howard surely missed a trick though by not drawing a wobbly line to the silent epidemic of sexual assault on the gay scene Patrick Strudwick warned us about in The Independent last week. 

Or claimed internet porn has turned us into a nation of bum-sniffing feral dogs.

Or said all sex workers are slaves in service to patriarchy.

Regular sententious Indy Voices clichés both.

What a load of utter erotophobic cock.

And as with so much of the bourgeois lemon-sucking joyless journalism on Independent Voices, next time why not save everyone's time and write just two words; 'Sex? Boo!'

BAN THIS FILTH!!! DOWN WITH FUGLYISM!

Daily Mail: Sickening Folly Of The Left Liberal Elite!

Daily Mail.

You may recall the Mail did nothing on this when Cyril Smith was alive.
Now he's dead, of course, you can publish pretty much whatever you like him.
The  Mail are serialising a new biography all next week...

Paul Flowers: The Moral High Ground

THERE is one question that still hasn’t been answered about drug-snorting, boy-renting, drink-driving, expenses-fiddling, porn-obsessed “Rev” Paul Flowers.

How on earth could such a squalid character climb so high up the greasy pole without someone in the ever-watchful Labour family blowing the whistle?

There are corrupt politicians in all parties. But Labour like to claim the moral high ground — a bit like the “ethical” Co-op Bank — while denouncing Tories as the “Nasty Party”.

So when one of their very own is exposed as a drug-addled pervert posturing as a Methodist cleric and chairman of that same ethical Co-op Bank, it deserves a closer look...

Trevor Kavanagh, The Sun.

Kavanagh then suggests - without a shred of evidence - Flowers may have been part of some sinister cabal; "Party leaders should be worried that evidence will now emerge that Flowers was not alone in the sort of misconduct which brings into question the culture, practices and ethics of the Labour Party."

He even manages to bring in Cyril Smith and Jimmy Savile!
It's not hard to see what Trevor Kavanagh wants to infer by this.

The accompanying cartoon, above, is disappointingly restrained - where are the lost-looking naked rent boys?

The Sun also manage to rewrite and spin a simple statement from Paul Flowers' lawyer, Andy Hollas; "He feels he has been the victim of a rather nasty sting operation.
“He’s been emotionally vulnerable for some 18 months — since the death of his mother, Muriel. He’s a very moral man and he feels let down by the people he trusted.”*
These three statements of fact become;

SEX and drugs Rev Paul Flowers refuses to shoulder the blame for his sensational fall from grace — insisting: “I’m the VICTIM.”

The pathetic ex-bank boss, 63, told pals he turned to cocaine and rent boys after his mum died from cancer.

He reeled off a list of shameless excuses to his Labour-supporting lawyer Andy Hollas after cops nicked him last week. Flowers — who was quizzed for allegedly buying crystal meth, cocaine and ketamine — even branded his plight a WITCH-HUNT.

He didn't say that, but it is.

Morland cartoon in The Times.

* The unedited statement reads; “He feels he has been the victim of a rather nasty sting operation which has left him emotionally recuperating.
“He’s feeling very hurt and upset. He’s been emotionally vulnerable for some 18 months or so – certainly since the death of his mother.”
“The man is very moral. He has been bruised emotionally. He feels let down by the people he trusted.”

Cyril Smith: Getting Away With It

Cyril Smith, the former Liberal MP for Rochdale, was one of the best-known and best-loved politicians of the 70s.
Far better known for his numerous TV appearances than for any cause he may have championed.
Colourful, larger-than-life, a real character, professional northerner and jolly fat man etc.
The police had a two-inch thick file on him of allegations of serial sexual abuse of boys at two care homes in Rochdale dating back to the early 60s.
Local councillors and police, the Liberal party leadership, then Special Branch and MI5 all chose not to seriously investigate, and colluded in a massive cover-up.
Only two publications - Rochdale Alternative Paper and Private Eye - covered the story during his lifetime.
He was never charged.

Watch The Paedophile MP: How Cyril Smith Got Away With It on 4OD.

Cyril Smith: He never married

In a week of silly ponces on the internet saying certain politicians are gay, Fagburn would like to mourn the death of Cyril Smith.
Goodbye fatty.
Funny how you never married.
Though you did once make your beloved mother your Lady Mayoress in Rochdale.
By 'eck etc etc.
You were a bit mad and I would never have voted for you - but you were Britain in the 1970s in a supersized nutshell.
I'm still not back, though.

EDIT: See Private Eye, No 1271 17-30 September 2010, page 9 for the allegations about Cyril Smith and sexual and physical abuse at Rochdale's Cambridge House boys' hostel in the 60s - and despite an investigation by Lancashire Constabulary in 1974 there being "some kind of institutional cover-up" with press silence maintained.
See also this story on Rochdale's Alternative Website.