There is a huge amount of dancing on eggshells going on today in the media about the dossier on paedophile activity with which Leon Brittan came in contact in the 1980s. It is pretty plain there is a subtext here.
A number of people have contacted me for some years over the Elm Guest House paedophile ring. Frankly I did not particularly believe it, or thought it was exaggerated. But I confess my eyes have been opened by the Jimmy Savile, Cyril Smith and Rolf Harris affairs and the extent of complicity and even protection which they received from the establishment.
I have blogged before that, in the Savile case, as his behaviour was apparently compulsive and constant, I found it hard to believe it was not known in the very senior societal circles in which he spent so much of his time. I am convinced that perception was right.
Savile is not linked in to the Elm House paedophile ring, as far as I know, but Cyril Smith is. So were the then head of the Royal Protection Unit and of Special Branch. That to me raises all sorts of queries about whether they were not just participating themselves but protecting someone very senior indeed. I have been convinced that it is true that social workers interviewing child victims were indeed threatened with guns by Special Branch to drop it, and that paperwork has been confiscated and destroyed.
On Cyril Smith, Channel 4 Dispatches on 12 September 2013 reported that:
‘Speaking for the first time, former CID officer Jack Tasker tells the programme that Special Branch officers arrived at his office, told him to halt his investigations and demanded that the file be handed over to them,.“They made it quite clear that anything that was kept by us would bring repercussions if we didn’t hand it over; that as far as we are concerned, the inquiry is finished … you will take no more inquiries into Cyril Smith
Compare that to what happened to child protection officer Chris Fay in his Elm House investigation, as reported in the Express:
Mr Fay, 67, of south London, said: “It became very dangerous. People seem to forget that Special Branch could do what they liked, they were a law unto themselves.
“At one point they had me up against a wall by my throat with a gun at my head telling me in no uncertain terms that I was to back away if I knew what was good for me.
“A colleague of mine had the same treatment, as did a number of the volunteers. Victims who were actually abused at Elm House were also physically stopped from coming to speak to us at the NAYPIC office in north London.
“I witnessed Special Branch officers manhandling them and turning them away with a warning to keep their mouths shut. It was blatant, it was open, they were acting like gangsters.
In both Rochdale and in North London, Special Branch intervened to block the appropriate authorities on the ground from investigating what was a genuine paedophile scandal. I can see no other possible explanation than that the scandal involved figures a great deal more senior than Cyril Smith. From the Elm Guest House we have a pointer who some of those people were.
I really don’t want to blog any more about this, and I recommend you to have a search online. That involves trawling around some of the less pleasant parts of the internet, and I have seen material that is horribly anti-Semitic and anti-gay. But after years of dismissing the stories, on the grounds that they are promulgated by unpleasant people, in unpleasant newspapers, or cannot be true, I realise I was wrong.
George Galloway seemed to receive him warmly, and proceeded to tell the young things about how great JS was with all his charity work, etc.
GG was pretty struck with Saddam Hussein, too*. Who was not a nice man. Savile, prior to the shit hitting the fan, was a very positive addition – by association – to any politician’s brand. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
But it’s interesting perhaps to note that while the management strata of the institutions Savile polluted were happy to facilitate his activities, the workers at the face seem to have been aware of his unpleasant tendencies, and even to have said so occasionally. They were ignored. Charidee cash and the reflected glow of celebrity trumped any other consideration. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
*Looking at the ensuing shambles, it’s arguable he was right. But that’s another argument.
Worms game (@Phil)
Flippant aside: the latest alleged threat is from terrorists implanting bombs in themselves. This led me to think that our security services had misspent their youths playing Worms – in which the worms can be made to explode to clear a passage through an obstacle, and blow themselves up anyway if the player is careless. And that maybe the next evil jihadist ploy may also be found in the game. I admit this was obscure, and maybe still is…
“What “facts” ?”
You clearly have a lot of catching up to do.
In the case of Savile there is the fact that he was a serial abuser of thousands of children over the course of at least four decades, crimes that he carried out with impunity. There is also the fact that his activities were, we are now led to believe, an open secret among his BBC colleagues yet nevertheless he was closely associated with the Royal family, prime ministers and other members of the ruling elite and had free access to patients in several of our hospitals.
Then there is the case of all those care homes – Jersey, Wrexham, Belfast and Rochdale among others – where substantial evidence of systematic sexual abuse came to light yet investigations were thwarted before they could be concluded and reports always “lost”.
Just on the basis of these basic facts it’s difficult not to conclude that Savile received protection from the very top and you have to wonder why. Having said that, I imagine that if your mind fills with ufos, aliens and lizards every time the subject comes up it’s probably quite easy for the seriousness of it all to pass you by.
PM Orders Probe Into Paedophile Dossier
David Cameron steps into the row over the files containing allegations of paedophile activity at Westminster in the 1980s.
http://news.sky.com/story/1295317/pm-orders-probe-into-paedophile-dossier
The civil servant appointed to carry out the inquiry is Mark Sedwill who was Ambassador to Afghanistan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Sedwill
MJ:
“…it’s difficult not to conclude that Savile received protection from the very top”
Only if you are determined stubbornly to believe every last wild, outlandlandish, unproven allegation against him.
This is what I mean about stepping back and remembering Occam’s Razor.
In order to sustain your cherished conclusion about the unnatural and evil nature of those who hold power over us, you are having to work backwards and dream up ever more extravagant and unlikely theories about widespread conspiracies.
A dramatically more parsimonious explanation is that there is no such thing as evil, that people, even famous and powerful people, are only human, and that the overwhelming majority of recent lurid rumours and allegations are the product of over-active imaginations and, yes, mass hysteria. Such a thing does exist.
And, by the way, that logic applies equally to the recent mania for clerical child abuse.
What are you talking about, Lone shill voice? Occam’s Razor points straight to Savile. It was the BBC and mass media creating all that smoke and mirrors that stopped people believing the most likely explanation…
Thank you, “Fool” (anything but…) It is common sense that actions have unforeseen consequences. I think they know that anyway, and just use the mantra as a justification.
You asked for the known facts and I gave you some. You did not address them. If you were making a substantive point I’m afraid it got lost amongst all the adjectives. What is your view, stated soberly? That Savile was not a paedophile, had no victims, was not protected by the state and that we’ve all been brain-washed by David Icke into thinking otherwise?
MJ:
My soberly stated view is that most people are unduly credulous of unsubstantiated claims of industrial scale child abuse, whether by priests, ageing celebrities or politicians; that very few of the “facts” you list amount to anything, even though you seem desperately to want them to; and that there is no high level conspiracy or cover up.
Peacewisher:
“Shill” is not a word to throw around lightly.
You accuse me of being in the pay of dark forces, simply because I express scepticism.
Hmm.
It had struck me before I read your comment, that when commenter Pete mildly suggested above that Jimmy Savile was slightly less supernaturally wicked than commenter Phil wanted to believe, commenter Phil’s outrage was comparable to a that of a fervent religious adherent whose faith had been challenged.
Child abuse seems to be the new religion, with nonbelievers regarded as evil heretics not to be tolerated.
Get a grip, people, or you’ll find yourselves hanging your neighbours from lamp posts.
“My soberly stated view is that most people are unduly credulous of unsubstantiated claims of industrial scale child abuse, whether by priests, ageing celebrities or politicians”
How fascinating. I was wondering however whether you had any actual views of your own on the matter in hand. What for instance would comprise a substantiated claim of child abuse, such that you would accept its veracity?
People suddenly remembering something that happened to them decades ago, never having mentioned it to anybody before, when the person they are accusing is dead so can’t sue them, and when there’s the prospect of compensation in the air. That sounds good enough substantiation for anybody, I’m sure you agree.
If you aren’t a shill, what is the purpose of your presence on this blog, trying to defend the indefensible?
Chris Fay was never a ‘child protection officer”. He was clerk in the council.
How can we believe the rest of the article if you cannot get simple facts like this right and print info from a convicted conman like Fay who ripped off dozens of pensioners in the infamous London Olyimpic’s boiler-room scam.
“People suddenly remembering something that happened to them decades ago, never having mentioned it to anybody before, when the person they are accusing is dead”
There were several attempts to bring prosecutions during Savile’s lifetime. These all floundered.
In 2013 DPP Keir Starmer said: “I would like to take the opportunity to apologise for the shortcomings in the part played by the CPS in these cases”
http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/savile-could-been-prosecuted-before-4807499
Sedwill the civil servant chosen by Cameron to investigate the disappearance of THAT dossier, is now employing a ‘legal figure’ to assist him.
The ball is being kicked into even longer grass.
Cameron taking advice from Tony Blair again?
Question of priority
After an inquiry involving 195 officers at its height, four journalists and a private investigator are sentenced for eavesdropping on voicemail messages.
Meanwhile, the Home Office reveals how many police are examining allegations of a cover-up of ‘stomach-churning’ allegations of child abuse at the heart of the political establishment.
The answer is just seven.
Doesn’t this imbalance suggest something has gone awry with the authorities’ sense of proportion?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2681297/DAILY-MAIL-COMMENT-How-restore-trust-City-shame.html
5 July 2014
They’ve gone for sure. What a stench and what a stinking rotten country we are living in.
Child abuse files lost at Home Office spark fears of cover-up
Calls for ‘overarching, Hillsborough-style’ inquiry as it emerges that a total of 114 documents are missing from official records
Daniel Boffey, policy editor
The Observer, Saturday 5 July 2014 20.30 BST
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jul/05/lost-child-abuse-files-home-office
MJ:
“There were several attempts to bring prosecutions during Savile’s lifetime. These all floundered.”
So you conclude: CONSPIRACY !
It is not possible in your universe that the cases may have floundered because they lacked merit?
Peacewisher:
“What is the purpose of your presence on this blog?”
Primarily to relieve my insomnia and boredom, since you ask. What about you?
Lord Brittan is ‘quizzed’ on rape charge. Really? So what next?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-28181045
Warning. Mask like image.
List of 1983/1984 newspaper reports of the various dossiers handed in by Geoffrey Dickens. Easily 114 amongst this lot, I’d say.
http://spotlightonabuse.wordpress.com/2014/07/04/1983-84-the-3-dickens-dossiers-and-the-2-scotland-yard-pie-files/
Also gives a flavour that journalists at the time seemed content to leave any investigation up to the authorities and Scotland Yard. There doesn’t seem to have been any real digging by the press going on.
A “Top television executive” was among the names. How intriguing, I wonder who that was?
“It is not possible in your universe that the cases may have floundered because they lacked merit?”
In my universe Keir Starmer’s apology suggests quite the opposite. By the way, DPP stands for Director of Public Prosecutions and CPS stands for Crown Prosecution Service. Hope that helps.
You need to research Savile more – he was the key ring master to the elite
http://www.exaronews.com/articles/4855/met-detectives-told-of-jimmy-savile-s-link-to-elm-guest-house
A whole lot of protesting going on by Vaz.
Keith Vaz criticises Home Office for losing sex abuse files
Vaz criticises sex abuse file loss
Files seem to have been lost “on an industrial scale” at the Home Office over historical child sex abuse claims, the chairman of the home affairs select committee says.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-28182373
“it emerges that a total of 114 documents are missing from official records”
Interesting that they know the precise number of missing documents. They must have been logged. Looks like someone missed a trick.
Have none of these Home Secretaries (who are still alive) got anything to say or tell us?
* Merlyn Rees (10 September 1976 – 4 May 1979) ~
* William Whitelaw (5 May 1979 – 11 June 1983) #
* Leon Brittan (11 June 1983 – 2 September 1985) #
* Douglas Hurd (2 September 1985 – 26 October 1989) #
* David Waddington (26 October 1989 – 28 November 1990) ~
* Kenneth Baker (28 November 1990 – 10 April 1992) #
* Kenneth Clarke (10 April 1992 – 27 May 1993) #
* Michael Howard (27 May 1993 – 2 May 1997) ~
* Jack Straw (2 May 1997 – 8 June 2001) #
* David Blunkett (8 June 2001 – 15 December 2004) †
* Charles Clarke (15 December 2004 – 5 May 2006) #
* John Reid (5 May 2006 – 27 June 2007) ~
* Jacqui Smith (28 June 2007 –
“he was the key ring master to the elite”
I wonder who has taken over the job?
Lone Dissenting Voice
“…when commenter Pete mildly suggested above that Jimmy Savile was slightly less supernaturally wicked than commenter Phil wanted to believe, commenter Phil’s outrage was comparable to a that of a fervent religious adherent whose faith had been challenged.”
My faith?! You are hilariously wrong. You haven’t read this blog much have you? I have been positively calm and polite on this article! You should see me when I am ruffled mate.
You are commenting heavily on this thread but are clearly unfamiliar with this blog. It seems this subject has a special place in your heart.
You offer nothing to substantiate your assertions. You tone troll. You misrepresent. You claim you are merely killing boredom. You are a bullshitter. Go fuck yourself.
Phil: best not be too harsh. It may just be that her carer has been on holiday this week.
Sorry MJ I just wanted to point out that anyone who did not know I can be a sweary gobshite is probably not a reader of comments on this blog. Why is she here on this thread rejecting engagement except to tone troll and be patronising?