The Power of the Paedos - another high profile case hits the 'never happened' wall?

[Magda Hassan]

Is the Met hiding sex claim files? First indication Dickens dossier on Westminster paedophile ring may have been found

• Campaigning MP Simon Danczuk called on police to reveal what information it has after MoS was given first indication bombshell file had been found
  
• Freedom of Information response about files believed to name up to eight public figures involved in child sex abuse but lost or shredded by Home Office confirmed requested information is held' by Britain's biggest force
  

By Martin Beckford and Paul Cahalan
Published: 09:09 AEST, 13 July 2014 | Updated: 09:09 AEST, 13 July 2014

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Scotland Yard was last night facing demands to say if it has a copy of a missing dossier containing explosive claims of a Westminster paedophile ring.
Campaigning MP Simon Danczuk called on the Metropolitan Police to reveal what information is in its hands after The Mail on Sunday was given the first indication that the bombshell file had been found.
A Freedom of Information response about the documents believed to name up to eight public figures involved in child sex abuse but lost or shredded by the Home Office confirmed the requested information is held' by Britain's biggest force.
But the Yard has refused to set out exactly what information it has found even though a fresh search is under way in Home Office archives for the missing files compiled by the late Tory MP Geoffrey Dickens.


Scotland Yard has refused to set out exactly what information it has found even though a fresh search is under way in Home Office archives for the missing files compiled by the late Tory MP Geoffrey Dickens (above)

Last night Scotland Yard was told to come clean about what it has or risk fresh accusations of a cover-up.
Mr Danczuk , the Labour MP for Rochdale who has helped uncover allegations of a Westminster abuse scandal including the scale of offending by the late Cyril Smith, said: The Met need to confirm or deny whether they hold what they believe to be the Dickens dossier. I think they have a duty not just to the Home Office and the inquiry but to the public.
They have a responsibility to assist in terms of confirming whether the dossier exists or not.

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• Speaker blackmailed over gay sex secrets: Westminster's most powerful official had 'interest in young men'... and was in charge when MP Dickens compiled missing paedophile dossier
  
• Home Office sex abuse dossiers DID name names reveals department¿s top civil servant
  
• Child abusers in the Home Office: Amid the growing furore over a cover-up of a paedophile ring at the heart of Westminster, an expose of the true extent of the scandal
  

It would be pretty appalling if they chose to hide the fact that they held the Dickens dossier.
It could be that they failed to act on what's in the dossier and they are trying to keep a low profile in the hope it blows over.'
He made his demands after an FOI request by this newspaper gave the first hint that the Met may have the sought-after dossier.
The MoS asked this March for access to files on the investigations the Met carried out into the notorious Paedophile Information Exchange and all the documents it received on the group and its members, including those sent by Dickens, who died in 1995.



Last night Scotland Yard was told to come clean about what it has or risk fresh accusations of a cover-up

The Yard's FOI team replied in June, refusing to release the information in case it interfered with investigations, and to avoid revealing personal information. But within the five-page letter were several hints that the Met had indeed found the documents compiled by Dickens.
It stated: The searches located records relevant to your request… I have considered your request for information within the provisions set out by the Act and can confirm that the requested information is held by the MPS.
Having located and considered the relevant information, I am afraid that I am not required by statute to release the information requested. I have applied this exemption in that the names and personal details of any living individuals identified in the reports constitute personal data which would, if released, be in breach of the rights provided by the DPA.'

But a spokesman for the force said last night the admissions in the FOI response should not be taken as confirmation that the force did have the particular dossier given by Dickens to the Home Office.
He said: The Freedom of Information response makes it clear that records relevant to the request are held. However it does not indicate what those records are and it would be wrong to use that FOI response as confirmation that specific documents are held.'
The spokesman declined to answer specific questions on what documents it did have and when it had found them, and would only add: The Metropolitan Police Service will fully co-operate with the review led by Peter Wanless and the panel chaired by Baroness Butler-Sloss and provide detail of relevant information.
Whilst these and live police investigations are ongoing, it would be inappropriate to comment on this further.'
Dickens said on one occasion he had handed over eight names of big people, really important names' including a former friend of his.
Other files were said to expose paedophilia in Buckingham Palace and the diplomatic and civil services' and a top television executive' as well as child abuse and sex assaults at a children's home'.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...found.html

[Magda Hassan]

I was asked to find underage boys for sex at drink and drug-fuelled Tory party conferences, claims former activist

• Anthony Gilberthorpe says he was given cash to fetch entertainment'
  
• Names Keith Joseph, Rhodes Boyson and Michael Havers, who are all dead
  
• Claims he sent a 40-page dossier to Thatcher in 1989 on the sex parties
  
• Ex-Tory minister David Mellor dismisses claims as 'a lot of tittle-tattle'
  

By Matt Chorley, Mailonline Political Editor
Published: 19:22 AEST, 13 July 2014 | Updated: 23:43 AEST, 13 July 2014



Senior Tory politicians took part in drink and drug-fuelled sex parties with underage boys during seaside conferences, it was claimed today.
Former activist Anthony Gilberthorpe says he was handed cash and told to fetch entertainment' - code for young boys by members of Margaret Thatcher's government.
But the claims were today rejected as tittle-tattle' by former Conservative minister David Mellor, who insisted those named were dead and unable to defend themselves.






Former activist Anthony Gilberthorpe, left, claims he was asked to find underage boys for sex during Tory party conferences when Margaret Thatcher was leader in the early 1980s

Westminster has been gripped by claims of an Establishment cover-up of allegations of child sex abuse over several decades.
The government has appointed former High Court judge Baroness Butler-Sloss to lead a wide-ranging panel inquiry into abuse at every level of society.
Mr Gilberthorpe says he will give the inquiry the names of former Tory ministers, some of whom are still alive, who he claims he saw with young men at party conferences.
He claims he sent a 40-page dossier to Mrs Thatcher in 1989 detailing Cabinet ministers who took part in the sex parties, bur says he was warned off by a senior civil servant.
He told the Sunday Mirror how boys as young as 15 were plied with alcohol and cocaine at Conservative gatherings in Blackpool and Brighton in the 1980s.

More...

• 'My fears were ignored': Former social services chief voiced concerns about paedophile ring in the 1990s
  
• Is the Met hiding sex claim files? First indication Dickens dossier on Westminster paedophile ring may have been found
  
• Fry stuns Labour gala as he hits out at sex abuse investigation: Miliband rebukes TV star after he attacks former DPP
  
• Butler-Sloss 'kept claims of bishop¿s abuse quiet because she did not want the allegations to surface as she "cared about the Church"'
  
• The Speaker who was blackmailed over gay sex secrets: Westminster's most powerful official had 'interest in young men'... and was in charge when MP Dickens compiled missing paedophile dossier
  

He named former former-Education Secretary Keith Joseph, ex-local government minister Rhodes Boyson, and Michael Havers, the former attorney general who is the brother of Baroness Butler-Sloss. All of those Mr Gilberthorpe names are now dead.
Mr Gilberthorpe alleges that during the 1983 party conference in Blackpool he was asked by Dr Alistair Smith, the Conservative party chairman in Scotland, to find young boys for two Cabinet ministers to have sex with.
The ministers are not named, but he does claim that Mr Boyson and Mr Joseph were there.
Mr Gilberthorpe told the Sunday Mirror: 'Dr Smith, who I looked up to at the time and was the most important Tory in Scotland, told me to go and fetch some 'entertainment', which was code for young boys and handed me a handful of bank notes. There was about £120.
I was expected to find the youngest and prettiest boys. It was what those men wanted. In fact, it was all they wanted

Anthony Gilberthorpe


He added: 'It was a norm and an open secret that these older members of the Tory party, like Dr Smith, paid for young men to join them at sex parties.
'I was expected to find the youngest and prettiest boys. It was what those men wanted. In fact, it was all they wanted.'
He also claimed that selected people had an Oscar award symbol on their conference pass to give them access to secret sex parties.
Mr Gilberthorpe alleges that in 1981 he went to a party in Blackpool where several boys who were clearly aged between 15 and 16' were performing sex acts on MPs.
He claims he saw Sir Michael Havers there. Baroness Butler-Sloss has faced calls to stand down from her role leading the panel inquiry because her brother was in the Cabinet at the time many of these allegations date from.
He also claims that during the 1984 party conference in Brighton there was a sex party at the Grand Hotel on the night before an IRA bomb killed five people.
Mr Gilberthorpe says he was manipulated and groomed' by the senior politicians. It is time this came to light before anyone else is abused,' he added.
But the allegations were dismissed by Mr Mellor, a former Tory Cabinet minister who served in the Thatcher and Major governments.


Former Tory minister David Mellor, pictured today, dismissed Mr Gilberthorpe's claims as a 'lot of tittle-tattle' about people who were dead and cannot defend themselves

He told BBC One's Andrew Marr show: The only people who are named are dead. There is an opportunity to name live people.
What we are dealing with is a lot of tittle-tattle. Here is a chap who was annoyed that he wasn't chosen as a Tory candidate.'
He added: It names a lot of dead people. Where is the bravery in that?'
Mr Mellor said Mr Gilberthorpe had made public implausible names' in connection with the sex parties.
This is now open season because of a pretty shoddy dossier presented to Leon Brittan by a Tory backbencher.'
Geoffrey Dickens handed the file to the then-Home Secretary in 1983, but the Home Office says it can now not be found.
Mr Mellor, a Home Office minister from 1983-87, added: The interesting thing about that dossier is nobody who has commented on it has ever seen it.'
[B]HOW THE STORY UNFOLDED: CHILLING CLAIMS THAT SEX ABUSE RING MAY HAVE OPERATED IN BRITISH ESTABLISHMENT DATE BACK TO 1983 [/B]

The chilling claims that a paedophile ring may have been operating within the British establishment first emerged in an investigation by campaigning Conservative politician Geoffrey Dickens.
In November 1983, the MP for Littleborough and Saddleworth in Greater Manchester sent a 40-page document to then Home Secretary Leon Brittan detailing alleged VIP child abusers, apparently including former Liberal party chief whip Cyril Smith and other senior politicians.
In a newspaper interview at the time, Mr Dickens claimed his dossier contained the names of eight 'really important public figures' that he planned to expose, and whose crimes are believed to have stretched back to the 1960s.
November 1983:
Geoffrey Dickens produces a huge dossier detailing allegations of sexual abuse against prominent figures in the British establishment. He tells his family the claims will 'blow apart' the VIP paedophile ring.
March 1984:
Home Secretary Leon Brittan tells Mr Dickens that his dossier has been assessed by prosecutors and passed on to the police, but no further action is taken. The dossier is now either lost or missing.
May 1995
Geoffrey Dickens dies. A short time later his wife destroys his copy of the paedophile dossier. The only other copies - one received by Mr Brittan and another allegedly sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions - are believed to have been lost or destroyed.
September 2010
The 29-stone Rochdale MP Sir Cyril Smith dies aged 82 without ever being charged with sex offences.
2011/2012:
Following the death of Sir Jimmy Savile, dozens of claims of historic child abuse emerge - including a number of alleged victims of Smith, who is said to have spanked and sexually abused teenage boys at a hostel he co-founded in the early 1960s.
October 2012
During Prime Minister's Questions, Labour MP Tom Watson claims there is 'clear intelligence suggesting a powerful paedophile network linked to Parliament and No10'.
November 2012
Lancashire Police announced they will be investigating claims of sexual abuse by Smith relating to incidents before 1974, while Greater Manchester Police will investigate claims after 1974.
November 2012
The Crown Prosecution Service admits Smith should have been charged with crimes of abuse more than 40 years earlier. The CPS also admitted Smith had been investigated in 1970, 1974, 1998, and 1999 but rejected every opportunity to prosecute him.
November 2012
A former special branch officer, Tony Robinson, says a historic dossier 'packed' with information about Smith's sex crimes was actually in the hands of Mi5 - despite officially having been 'lost' decades earlier.
December 2012
Scotland Yard sets up Operation Fairbank to investigate claims a paedophile ring operated at the Elm Guest House in Barnes, southwest London, in the 1970s and 80s. Among those abusing children are said to have been a number of prominent politicians.
February 2013
Operation Fernbridge is established to investigate the Elm Guest House alleged paedophile ring.
February 2013
It is claimed a 'paedophile ring of VIPs' also operated at the Grafton Close Children's Home in Richmond, Surrey.
February 2013
Two men, a Catholic priest from Norwich, and a man understood to be connected to Grafton Close, arrested on suspicion of sexual offences and questioned by Operation Fernbridge officers.
June 2013
Scotland Yard claims that seven police officers are working full time on Operation Fernbridge and are following more than 300 leads.
June 2013
Charles Napier, the half-brother of senior Conservative politician John Whittingdale, is arrested by Operation Fairbank officers.
December 2013
Some senior Labour party politicians linked to pro-paedophile campaign group the Paedophile Information Exchange, which was affiliated with the National Council for Civil Liberties pressure group, now known as Liberty, in the 1970s and early 1980s.
December 2013
Police search the home of Lord Janner as part of a historical sex abuse investigation. He is not arrested.
February 2014
Current deputy leader of the Labour Party Harriet Harman, who was NCCL's in-house lawyer at the time of its affiliation with PIE and even met her husband Jack Dromey while working there, is forced to deny she supported the activities of the pro-paedophile collective.
February 2014
Patricia Hewitt, Labour's former Secretary of State for Health who was NCCL's general secretary for nine years, later apologised and said she had been 'naive and wrong' to consider PIE a legitimate campaign group.
June 2014
Lord Janner's Westminster office is searched by police. Again the peer is not arrested.
July 3, 2014
Labour MP Simon Danczuk called on Leon Brittan to say what he knew about the Dickens dossier. It emerges the dossier has now been either lost or destroyed and the Home Office admits it can find no evidence of any criminal inquiry relating to it.
July 5, 2014
More than 10 current and former politicians are said to be on a list of alleged child abusers held by police investigating claims of an alleged paedophile ring.
July 6, 2014
Home Office permanent secretary Mark Sedwill reveals that 114 files relating to historic allegations of child sex abuse, from between 1979 and 1999, have disappeared from the Home Office.
It is also revealed that former Home Secretary Lord Brittan was accused of raping a student in 1967. The 2012 allegation was not investigated until Director of Public Prosecutions Alison Saunders ordered the Met Police to re-open the case in June this year.


Read more:

• Tory child abuse whistleblower: 'I supplied underage rent boys for Margaret Thatcher's cabinet ministers' - Mirror Online
  

[Magda Hassan]

EXCLUSIVE: Secret service infiltrated paedophile group to 'blackmail establishment'

BRITISH security services infiltrated and funded the notorious Paedophile Information Exchange in a covert operation to identify and possibly blackmail establishment figures, a Home Office whistleblower alleges.

By: Tim Tate and Ted Jeory
Published: Sun, June 29, 2014
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A number of allegations of child sex abuse emerged after MP Cyril Smith's death [REX]
The former civil servant has told detectives investigating the activities of paedophiles in national politics that the Metropolitan Police's Special Branch was orchestrating the child-sex lobbying group in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The whistleblower, who has spoken exclusively to the Sunday Express, says he was also warned off asking why such a notorious group was being handed government money.
It emerged late last year that PIE was twice gave amounts of £35,000 in Home Office funding between 1977 and 1980, the £70,000 total equivalent to over £400,000 in today's money.
Those details surfaced only after the whistleblower highlighted his concerns to campaigning Labour MP Tom Watson and his revelations have triggered an ongoing Home Office inquiry into why the cash was given to PIE which was abolished in 1985 after a number of prosecutions.
Until now, speculation about the grant has centred on Clifford Hindley, the late Home Office manager who approved the payments. However, the whistleblower told the Sunday Express he thought higher and more sinister powers were at play.
He has given a formal statement to that effect to detectives from Operation Fernbridge, which is looking into allegations of historic sex abuse at the Elm Guest House in south-west London.

At that time, questioning anything to do with Special Branch, especially within the Home Office, was a no-no'.
Mr X, whistleblower

PIE, now considered one of the most notorious groups of the era, had gained respectability in political circles. Its members are said to have included establishment figures, and disgraced Liberal MP Cyril Smith was a friend of founder member Peter Righton.
In 1981, Tory MP Geoffrey Dickens used Parliamentary privilege to name Sir Peter Hayman, the deputy director of MI6, as a member of PIE and an active paedophile. In 1983 Mr Dickens gave the Home Office a dossier of what he claimed was evidence of a paedophile network of "big, big names, people in positions of power, influence and responsibility". The Home Office says the dossier no longer exists.
Whistleblower Mr X, whose identity we have agreed to protect, became a very senior figure in local government before retiring a few years ago. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he was a full-time consultant in the Home Office's Voluntary Services Unit run by Clifford Hindley.
In 1979 Mr X was asked to examine a funding renewal application for PIE, but he became concerned because the organisation's goal of seeking to abolish the age of consent "conflicted" with the child protection policies of the Department of Health and Social Security and asked for a meeting with Mr Hindley, his immediate boss.
Elm House in London where it is alleged child abuse incidents took place [MARK KEHOE]
Mr X recalled: "I raised my concerns, but he told me that I was to drop them. Hindley gave three reasons for this. He said PIE was an organisation with cachet and that its work in this field was respected.
"He said this was a renewal of an existing grant and that under normal Home Office practice a consultant such as myself would not be involved in the decision-making process.
"And he said PIE was being funded at the request of Special Branch which found it politically useful to identify people who were paedophiles. This led me not to pursue my objections. At that time, questioning anything to do with Special Branch, especially within the Home Office, was a no-no'.
"I was under the clear belief that I was being instructed to back off and that his reference to Special Branch was expected to make me to do so.
"Hindley didn't give me an explicit explanation of what Special Branch would do with information it gleaned from funding PIE, but I formed the belief that it was part of an undercover operation or activity. I was aware a lot of people in the civil service or political arena had an interest in obtaining information like that which could be used as a sort of blackmail."
He said he asked for a file the Home Office kept on PIE, but his request was refused. However, he was certain then Tory Home Office Minister Tim Raison, who died in 2011, must have signed the 1980 funding application.
Mr X has given a formal written statement to the inquiry set up last year into former Home Office links with PIE but has refused to meet the inquiry in person because he fears "repercussions" under the Official Secrets Act.
Yesterday Tom Watson said: "The whole sorry business makes it absolutely imperative the Home Secretary bows to the will of the 114 MPs demanding a full, fearless public investigation into child sexual abuse."
Special Branch was an integral part of the intelligence service gathering intelligence on spies and political threats to the state. In 2005 it merged with the anti-terrorism branch to form a Counter Terrorism Command.

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/485529/...stleblower

[David Guyatt]

Baroness Butler-Sloss was behind controversial paedophile ruling

Retired judge who has been appointed the head of a major review of child sex abuse allegations said warnings could not be issued about dangerous paedophiles


One child protection expert said Baroness Butler-Sloss' involvement in the ruling had the unintended consequence of allowing paedophiles to get away with their crimes. Photo: PA


By David Barrett, Home Affairs Correspondent

8:00PM BST 13 Jul 2014

Baroness Butler-Sloss, the retired judge appointed to investigate claims of an establishment child sex abuse cover-up, was responsible for a controversial ruling which prevented warnings being issued about dangerous paedophiles.

Senior social workers attacked her decision - made when she was an Appeal Court judge - and warned that it would have "major ramifications".

As the Government faced growing pressure to review its decision to appoint Lady Butler-Sloss to the major new inquiry, one child protection expert said the peer's involvement in the ruling had the unintended consequence of allowing paedophiles to get away with their crimes.

Lady Butler-Sloss was appointed by Theresa May, the Home Secretary, last Tuesday to lead an overarching review of allegations of child sex abuse by prominent politicians and other figures in institutions such as the Church and the BBC.

But critics have claimed the judge cannot be impartial because her late brother, a former Attorney General, played a key role in the affair in the early 1980s, and it has also been claimed she kept allegations about an Anglican bishop out of a report she wrote three years ago into a paedophile scandalin the Diocese of Chichester.

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Lady Butler-Sloss led a panel of three judges who overturned a previous ruling which said councils could warn other local authorities about two men who had been found to have had inappropriate relationships with children.
Neither man had been convicted in a criminal court but in civil proceedings judges had ruled they had been involved in improper sexual relationships with children.
One man, who can only be identified by the initial L', then 36, was acquitted of attempting to rape his step-daughter and of indecently assaulting his five children but care proceedings in the family courts later found he had been responsible for sexual abusing three children in his care.
He posed a "significant risk" to the three youngest children, the court held.
Croydon council, in south London, where L had lived, sought to secure L's new address from the court to alert the local authority about his sexual behaviour.
A judge ruled in 1997 that Croydon could go ahead but Lady Butler-Sloss overturned that decision the following year.
Hannah Miller, Croydon's then director of social services, said at the time: "This is a bleak day for social services departments across the country in their crackdown on child sex abuse."
In the second case, a man only known as W' was found by Bournemouth county court in 1997 to pose a risk to children he coached at a junior football league.
A judge found "overwhelming evidence of an unusual and unhealthy relationship" between W and his partner's youngest son.
W was a "risk of significant harm" to his partner's sons and Bournemouth social services put restrictions on his access to the children and asked the courts permission to write warning letters to the football club and the football league.
A judge approved Bournemouth's application but this, too, was overturned by Lady Butler-Sloss.
With Lord Justice Hutchinson and Lord Justice Chadwick she ruled it was inappropriate to disclose information which had emerged as part of family court proceedings under the Children Act. Appeals by L and W were allowed.
Robert Hutchinson, of the Association of Directors of Social Services, said at the time: "This decision has major ramifications for all of us [with] public protection responsibilities. The commonsense approach would be to share information about people considered a danger to children."
The NSPCC also voiced its concern about the ruling, as a spokesman for the children's charity said: "information such as this should be passed on to parties who need to know in orderto give children protection."
[SUB]Jimmy Savile, the BBC entertainer exposed as a serial paedophile[/SUB]
Lady Butler-Sloss went on to become the most senior judge in England and Wales dealing with child abuse and other family issues, as president of the family division of the High Court from 1999 to 2005.
The way local authorities and police shared intelligence about suspected sex offenders was later the focus of an inquiry into the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, both 11, in Soham, Cambs, by school caretaker Ian Huntley in 2002.
Mark Williams-Thomas, a former detective who presented a television documentary in 2012which led to Jimmy Savile being exposed as Britain's worst-ever paedophile, said: "This ruling led to a significant change in attitudes on the exchange of information and it caused real problems.
"In a way, it assisted offenders in the 1990s to get away with their offending behaviour.
"I'm sure [Lady Butler-Sloss] made that finding in the best of spirit, but it would not be something that would be acceptable today. Around that time there was confusion about what could and could not be shared between agencies - but things are clearer now.
"It heaps more pressure on the Government, which must take a very clear stance on this to say that, for the sake of clarity and for the victims, they need to take another look at this appointment."
Mrs May is understood to have invited to a meeting at the Home Office this week seven MPs who have led the campaign for an investigation into the child abuse allegations.
They are believed to include Simon Danczuk and Tom Watson, the Labour MPs who exposed a series of revelations about alleged paedophilia in Westminster, and Tessa Munt, the Liberal Democrat who last week disclosed she had been abused as a child.
Several of the members attending the meeting will ask Mrs May to reconsider Lady Butler-Sloss' appointment, sources said.
A Home Office minister has refused to rule out appointing a co-chairman to lead the child sex abuse inquiry alongside Baroness Butler-Sloss, as new detail emerged of her role in a controversial paedophile ruling.
James Brokenshire, the security and immigration minister, insisted the Government was still working out the "precise detail" of the inquiry which will examine allegations of a wide-ranging cover-up of paedophilia in Westminster and other British institutions.
Asked by Dermot Murnaghan on the Sky News channel if the panel members would have "equal powers" or be "co-chairs", Mr Brokenshire said: "Well I think it's this precise detail that we are working on at this stage because it is important that we do draw on the right experts."
If ministers appoint another senior figure to sit alongside Lady Butler-Sloss it would be seen as recognition of concerns over the peer's impartiality.

And from The herald of Scotland:

Why the truth can never emerge

Ian Bell
Columnist



Sunday 13 July 2014

WHEN Peter Cook opened a Soho comedy club in 1961 he called it The Establishment.


The joke didn't need to be explained. Satire began because there was a lot about Britain that demanded satire. Something in the country was rotten and the rot, said the smart young cynics, started at the top.
The word "Establishment" is handy. It can serve to describe an elite. It can explain - as in "established procedures" - the elite's customs and practices. It can also convey the sense that the Establishment, like an established Church, is in with the bricks, embedded in the fabric of society. Cook's choice of comedy targets - politicians, judges, clergy, tycoons, public school buffoons and military types - told that story.
In Britain, we are accustomed, dangerously so, to all of this. We take the existence of the Establishment hierarchy for granted. We watch them emerge from their handful of schools. We see their stately ascent up the ladders of politics, media, the law or the civil service until honours and peerages arrive. We do not flinch, or not too often, when each denies membership of the Establishment, or denies that such a thing even exists.
There's a small fuss every few years when coincidences become too obvious, when it can no longer be denied that a minority sharing a narrow social and educational background seem to monopolise power and influence. A quick, pointless discussion of the "whatever happened to meritocracy" variety soon extinguishes unease. The Establishment protects itself. That's its reason to exist.
Norman Tebbit, of all people, explained as much to Andrew Marr in a TV interview last weekend. The issue was deeply serious, but the peer of the realm gave an analysis that was only too plausible.
So, why might there have been an alleged cover-up of alleged organised child abuse at Westminster in the 1980s?
Tebbit said: "At that time I think most people would have thought that the Establishment, the system, was to be protected and if a few things had gone wrong here and there that it was more important to protect the system than to delve too far into it."
Tebbit was not attempting to justify such behaviour. He sounded, nevertheless, as though he was explaining the obvious: even evidence of truly heinous crimes would be swept away if exposure put "the system" at risk. He believed "there may well have been" a "big political cover-up" to protect the well-connected, but - in so many words - that's just the way things were. His attempts to say that things have changed, a claim recited by eminent types when historic wrongdoing emerges, were less convincing.
The Establishment has been exposed repeatedly in recent years. Politicians on the fiddle, press grandees in the gutter, bankers rigging rates, governments lying their way into wars, sleazy celebs shielded from justice: at every turn, it has been a story of deceit, denial and defensiveness. Now we are told two things: that the abuse of trust, with children at stake, has been of the worst kind imaginable, and that the Establishment has covered things up for decades to protect itself and its members.
Timescales provide a clue to the nature of the standing conspiracy. The Establishment, as every student of 1960s satire knows, endures no matter what. The chief case in point would be the civil service, the service that now owns up, without much of an apology, to disposing of 114 files relating to child abuse. Governments come and go, but the civil service, guarantor of continuity, is as near eternal as makes no difference. The Establishment depends on the fact.
There's a small problem with that. The rest of us go through the palaver of democracy periodically in the naïve hope that sometimes, just occasionally, our votes will bring change. The very existence of the Establishment, that elite freemasonry, says we are conned - and con ourselves - utterly.
One of the claims made about child abuse is that each of the main Westminster parties is implicated. Another turns on the cover-ups allegedly sanctioned by institutions such as the civil service and the BBC. A third element is less a claim than a fact: time and again, police and prosecutors did nothing. Not once down the decades has a party leader swept to power and upset the elite apple cart. In the end, all shall have ermine. For no-one can point the finger.
They can have inquiries, though. There is always time enough and money enough for another of those. These affairs are ideal for demonstrating that "something is being done" even when, as in the case of the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war, it is obvious, first, that nothing useful is being done and, second, that the Government and the civil service are engineering a highly satisfactory state of affairs.
When the game is easy to rig, the Establishment can grow a little slapdash, even by its standards. Plainly, no-one at the Home Office - where the 114 files met their mysterious fate - imagined that anyone would dare object to the appointment of Baroness Elizabeth Butler-Sloss to head the Home Secretary's "wide-ranging" inquiry into historical sex abuse. Who could be better than a retired appeal court judge, formerly of the family division, who distinguished herself in the late 1980s by leading the inquiry into the Cleveland abuse scandal?
Some would call judges typical Establishment figures, but it's hard to inquire judiciously without them. Butler-Sloss is a revered peer, however. By some accounts, certain individuals still picking up their attendance allowances in the Upper House could figure in her work for Theresa May, the Home Secretary. That doesn't sound clever.
Then there is the fact that the former judge had a brother, the late Michael Havers, a Tory politician. He was Attorney General during the 1980s when, it is alleged, paedophilia committed by political figures was covered up. It is a matter of record that as a government legal officer, Havers chose not to proceed against a diplomat involved, and more, with the Paedophile Information Exchange.
Butler-Sloss sees this as no barrier to her inquiry work. She refuses, in fact, to stand down, despite knowing full well that she would never have sat as a judge in a case involving one of her family. But that's another Establishment trait: it does not see itself as others see it. For this elite, their interests and the public interest are one and the same. And how dare anyone - in this case, even the victims of abuse - suggest otherwise?
Cyril Smith, the late Liberal MP, was investigated on three occasions over three decades for abusing children. On each occasion, no action was taken. Only now, too late, have the Crown Prosecution Service and Greater Manchester Police conceded that Smith should have been prosecuted on the grounds of "overwhelming evidence".
One Liberal non-entity was protected for all those years while he wrought God knows what damage. So what about others? Does anyone believe, amid a torrent of claims from victims, that Smith was one of those "isolated cases" that so comfort the Establishment? And does the Establishment still insist that Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, brilliant and blameless as she may be, will do?

[Magda Hassan]

I need to confirm but I think she has stepped down. It would be the only thing she could do under the circumstance.

[Magda Hassan]

Yes confirmed. Might be because of this that made it untenable but there were many reasons really.
http://www.exaronews.com/articles/5328/b...sa-inquiry

Wonder who the next safe pair of hands they choose will be?

[David Guyatt]

Yes she stepped down citing conflict of interest. It took a week to reach that decision that she should have taken 7 days ago. Everyone else knew instantly her name was announced that she should recuse herself.

Well, at least she's gone. The inquiry now will have to have a decent name to run it. But the Establishment will simply use another strategy to tie his/her hands using the terms of reference and/or not allowing access to classified material or not being able to use classified material. I will amount to the usual Whitehall whitewash --- as always.

[Magda Hassan]

They need some one acceptable to the victims. Some one with an understanding of bureaucracy. Some one with a security clearance. It really needs to be a panel too. Not just one person. Terms of reference need to be open and broad. It will be illuminating to see if they try to restrict it and how. I'm sure they will try but it also just exposes them as part of a cover up. Like choosing Butler Sloss.

[David Guyatt]

Aye. I think they're bound to try to find a candidate that can be controlled somehow --- or else never publish the report (a stroke they've pulled before as I recall), because they won't let all this out, as it goes everywhere and leads to all the deeper filth. Take one brick out of this house and it will all come down. So they will be seeking a more flexible way out.

Meanwhile, the bloody awful May spills innocence. As if.

Butler-Sloss stands down: Theresa May under fire over appointment of former judge as Westminster paedophile inquiry head

The Home Secretary indicated she had been taken by surprise by allegations that Sir Michael Havers attempted to thwart an attempt to expose paedophile activity

NIGEL MORRIS , ANDREW GRICE


Monday 14 July 2014



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Theresa May came under repeated fire over her failure to look in enough detail at the family background of Baroness Butler-Sloss, who today stepped down as chairman of a wide-ranging inquiry into child abuse claims.

The former High Court judge's dramatic resignation, just six days after accepting the post, has severely embarrassed the Home Secretary.
In fiery exchanges with MPs, Mrs May insisted she stood by the appointment of a woman of "absolute integrity" to head the government-commissioned panel of inquiry.
However, the Home Secretary indicated she had been taken by surprise by allegations that the peer's brother, the late Sir Michael Havers, attempted to thwart an attempt to expose paedophile activity.
Lady Butler-Sloss's panel would have had to investigate whether Sir Michael, who was Attorney-General from 1979 to 1987, failed to act on allegations of child abuse involving senior establishment figures.
Sir Michael also reportedly tried to prevent the late Tory MP Geoffrey Dickens from using parliamentary privilege to name the diplomat Sir Peter Hayman as a paedophile.
Asked about the Hayman allegation, Mrs May told the Commons home affairs select committee: "This is an issue that has been raised in the last few days."
The Home Secretary insisted that "consideration was given to the nomination" and she stood by the short-lived appointment of the retired judge.
"It is a mark of the woman that she herself has come to this decision. I respect it. I'm disappointed, but I respect it," Mrs May said.
But the committee's chairman Keith Vaz said: "She has shown better judgment, has she not, than the Government. This is the due diligence you and your officials should have carried out."
He urged Mrs May to consult more widely over her replacement to avoid he or she being "put in the invidious position Lady Butler-Sloss appears to be in".
The Labour MP, Ian Austin, told the committee: "It is now clear the child abuse inquiry has no chair, no terms of reference and it doesn't seem to me to have any agreed purpose."
The Tory MP Zac Goldsmith MP welcomed Lady Butler-Sloss's decision, claiming that Sir Michael had ensured the terms of reference for an inquiry into paedophile activity at Kincora boy's home in Northern Ireland were narrowly drawn.
In a statement, the 80-year-old peer acknowledged a "widespread perception, particularly among victim and survivor groups, that I am not the right person to chair the inquiry".
She added: "It has also become clear to me that I did not sufficiently consider whether my background and the fact my brother had been Attorney General would cause difficulties."
Downing Street said Lady Butler-Sloss reached her decision over the weekend after discussing the issue with Mrs May.
The Prime Minister's spokesman insisted she had been chosen for the right reasons and that no one had questioned her expertise or integrity after she headed an inquiry into child abuse in Cleveland in the 1980s.
Pressure grew over the weekend amid claims the retired judge kept allegations about a bishop out of a review of how the Church of England dealt with two priests allegedly involved in paedophilia.
Baroness Butler-Sloss reportedly told a victim that she did not want to name the bishop because "the press would love a bishop". Bishop Peter Ball, the former bishop of Lewes and of Gloucester was later charged with indecent assault and misconduct in a public office.
Baroness Butler-Sloss responded that she "never put the reputation of any institution, including the Church of England, above the pursuit of justice for victims".
Alison Millar, a lawyer who is representing some alleged abuse victims, said: "This was the only sensible decision to ensure that survivors and the public could feel confident the inquiry was not going to be jeopardised by accusations of bias."

[Magda Hassan]

Exaro has been asking readers their recommendations. There have been some very good ones too. Some have already said they cannot take that role due to their other commitments but it would put the Home Secretary on the back foot if they reject any of these fine independent and qualified people.