Westminster Child Abuse Cover-up

[Sheilbh]

Thoughtful piece by Michael White:

The Westminster child abuse 'coverup': how much did MPs know?
Claims that the establishment covered up a paedophile ring at the heart of Westminster are finally being investigated, decades after rumours first surfaced. Michael White, who was a parliamentary reporter at the time, asks veteran politicians why no one wanted to believe the worst

Dolphin Square, Westminster, home to politicians and at the centre of allegations of historical sexual abuse by establishment figures. Photograph: Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters
Michael White
Tuesday 17 March 2015 18.40 GMT Last modified on Wednesday 18 March 2015 10.47 GMT

Another day, another set of shocking headlines about allegations of historical child abuse and high-level coverups, this time a dossier being handed over by the Metropolitan police themselves to the Independent Police Complaints Commission to examine 14 allegations of Scotland Yard's own complicity in the alleged coverup of a high-level paedophile ring.

Two weeks ago it emerged that former MP Harvey Proctor's grace-and-favour home in Belvoir Castle had been raided by police investigating historic allegations of child abuse. Proctor has denied any involvement in, or knowledge of, the alleged establishment abuse. Other claims fester. A raid was also made on the home of the former home secretary Leon Brittan.

All have denied charges levelled by alleged victims, some of them in files passed on by current MPs convinced of an extensive establishment coverup that lasted decades. But so did Cyril Smith, who got his knighthood in 1988 despite officials warning Margaret Thatcher of paedophile allegations against him, confirmed only after the former Liberal MP was dead. Freedom of Information (FoI) papers filled in fresh details this month. Smith is again central to today's claims.


Conservative politician Harvey Proctor in 1987: the former MP's home has been searched by police investigating historical allegations of child sex abuse. Photograph: PA/PA Archive Images

The allegations centering on Dolphin Square, a 7.5-acre, 1,250-flat complex by the Thames, include claims that boys in nearby Lambeth care homes were recruited as rent boys and ferried to the apartments for violent orgies where VIPs, defence and Whitehall officials, establishment types, as well as Tory MPs (one "cabinet minister"), were said to be participants. The Yard has spoken of "possible homicide" being committed. Historical and more recent allegations have been backed by Labour MP John Mann, who first encountered them as a Lambeth councillor in the 80s, but was told by police contacts that their inquiries had been stopped on orders from superiors.

How could it happen, politicians prominent in the 80s ask themselves? Were some of them mixed up in coverups, voters ask? So does the media, though it, too, has questions to answer. I was a Westminster political reporter at the time. I have been asking around.

This is a controversy with a long fuse. About 30 years ago, one of Margaret Thatcher's junior ministers took me aside at Westminster and told me of serious allegations against a senior colleague. Since his version of events involved the abuse of other well-placed Tories' children, it sounded pretty implausible to me. It still does, so I will not repeat it here, though both men are now dead and other versions of the same rumour have since surfaced.

With one borderline exception, it was the only such allegation that I heard as a working political journalist in the 1980s that was not also known to a wider public beyond Westminster. In the pre-Twitter era, such stories often surfaced via Private Eye, which picked up all sorts of gossip, some of which it concluded was untrue. Occasionally, a smear might be traced to security sources trying to damage someone, as may have been the case with my junior minister: a willing conduit for malice against a reforming minister who threatened vested interests?


Cyril Smith, knighted in 1988 despite officials warning of paedophile allegations against him. Photograph: Nils Jorgensen/Rex

As the Met's Operation Midland ploughs through long-neglected allegations – the IPCC is now formally involved, too – and the New Zealand high court judge Lowell Goddard takes up the onerous chairmanship of the official inquiry, how do surviving politicians of the 70s and 80s react to what they are now reading? To allegations of politically powerful coverups, even of murder linked to Dolphin Square, where MPs have lived on weekdays for decades? Mostly with alarm and surprise, tinged with regret at their own naivety or complacency. Coverups? Perhaps one or two, concede a couple of people I spoke to. Among such sentiments from old stagers – MPs, ex-MPs, some now peers – and other veterans of Whitehall and Westminster, come admissions that they did hear – or read in the Eye – of shocking sexual allegations against some colleagues at the time.

They came to believe claims of a double life made against the then-Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe. But they did not against some others since named – including Tory Peter Morrison, who was implicated in an abuse scandal centred on North Wales children's homes, and even Cyril Smith. "A peculiar character, living with mum, but no one suggested anything else," admits one avowedly naive Lib Dem colleague of the period.

In contrast to the sex-abuse cases that have rocked TV and showbusiness, no one actually saw anything. Most MPs are less worldly than celebs, Mrs Thatcher among them. A child of provincial Lincolnshire, raised in an austere Methodist household, what did she know about such things? A more clued-up figure would not have said, in praise of her deputy, Lord Whitelaw: "Every prime minister needs a Willie."

Among more than a dozen old stagers I interviewed recently – most willing to speak only off the record – none recalls hearing anything about the now-notorious paedophile haunt Elm Guest House in Barnes, let alone about such crimes allegedly being committed at Dolphin Square – also part of the IPCC's new inquiry. Up to 70 MPs lived in Dolphin Square, often without knowing their neighbours, fellow MPs included. "I only realised [a Tory colleague] had been living here for five years when I met him in the lift," one recalls. "I thought it was where rich men parked ex-mistresses, old ladies with dogs," says another former resident.

A common reaction to lurid gossip at the time, among political journalists as well as politicians, was that "It can't be true – or someone would have been arrested." Respectable provincial newspapers routinely protected readers from sordid tales. Tory ex-ministers with security experience also point out that "in those days the police were much more subservient to senior politicians. You did not get chief constables with minds of their own." The police were more corrupt, too, some point out.

But, as in other recently uncovered scandals, the culture was different, too. One Conservative ex-MP recalls once being with Whitelaw, the ultimate old-school insider, when yet another "Tories and prostitutes" sex scandal broke in the Sunday papers. The reaction of the future home secretary and deputy prime minister was immediate. "Why has this been allowed to come out?" Whitelaw is now accused of demanding that police drop an investigation into the Westminster paedophile ring.

But widespread political coverups, even of a murder at Dolphin Square? "I don't see how it would work," says a former Labour chief whip. Whitehall was not wholly out of the loop. Robert Armstrong, Thatcher's cabinet secretary from 1979 to 1987, tells me: "One got to know a certain amount about politicians' sex lives, but I never heard a whisper about paedophilia."


Sir Robert Armstrong: gave Thatcher a 'veiled' warning not to sanction Jimmy Savile's knighthood. Photograph: PA/Empics Sports Photo Agency

Officials such as Lord Armstrong were not wholly passive. As Edward Heath's civil service adviser during his abortive Lib-Con coalition negotiations after losing the "who governs Britain?" election in 1974, Armstrong says the then-PM knew the rumours about Jeremy Thorpe's private promiscuity. "Thorpe mentioned the possibility [of becoming home secretary in charge of security files], but that's the last thing Heath would have offered him," he now says.

Years later Armstrong gave Thatcher what he calls a "veiled" warning not to sanction Jimmy Savile's knighthood for charitable work. She ignored it, as did David Steel in proposing Smith for a knighthood in 1998 despite known allegations against him by the alternative Rochdale Free Press, repeated in Private Eye. Armstrong's successor, Robin (now Lord) Butler, flagged up concerns about Smith, we now know. So did the political honours scrutiny committee.

That Armstrong and Butler at least raised a problem may reassure the prominent Whitehall-watcher Professor Peter Hennessy. Journalist turned academic, now a peer, Hennessy remains astonished that a triple-lock defence line of security services, police special branch and the tax authorities did not tip off No 10 more effectively about dubious recipients of honours. But as a 1970s Westminster political correspondent, Hennessy too admits he shared widespread scepticism towards the Eye's allegations against Smith and others.

Each case is different. Colleagues recall John Wakeham, Margaret Thatcher's "Mr Fixit" and powerful chief whip in the mid-1980s, telling MPs who came to him with concerns about Morrison having cottaging skirmishes with the police: "If someone brings me some evidence I can do something about it, if required." Wakeham would say years later: "I got no evidence at all."

Morrison, scion of a wealthy Tory dynasty and MP for Chester, had powerful friends, including Thatcher, the defence of whose premiership he organised (disastrously) against Michael Heseltine's challenge in 1990. The suspicion persists that, somewhere along the line, he was protected. "It never got out, but people said: 'They'll never be able to do that for Peter again,'" recalls one Tory. Morrison quit the Commons in 1992 and died in 1995, aged just 51.

"He was a very unhappy man and drank himself to death," explains the former Tory cabinet minister and friend, who remembers being equally dismissive of unsavoury rumours about Cyril Smith. "I looked at Smith and thought, what an unlikely figure, that huge bulk and he could hardly walk properly."

Evidence suppressed about Cyril Smith? Wakeham's assumption today remains that the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) must have decided the evidence wasn't good enough. This month's FoI revelations confirmed that in 1970 the then-DPP did examine a Lancashire police file and concluded a conviction would be unlikely. Others say the problem was wider. This week's claims on BBC Newsnight that officers were told to suppress their video evidence against Smith and forget it – on the orders of a senior colleague – suggests the critics are right.


The former Elm guest house near Barnes, south-west London. Photograph: Ray Tang/Rex

Quite apart from the instinct to cover up rumours of abuse, another attitude was widely shared at the time by the press and public, too. "There was a universal desire to ignore it,'' says another of the retired MPs interviewed. "We just didn't understand it. It wasn't deliberate neglect, more a lack of experience," explains a Labour woman of cabinet rank. "Forty years ago attitudes were more relaxed," explains Labour veteran and Old Etonian Tam Dalyell.

There were other significant features of the period. Though divorce was no longer a bar to elected office and homosexual behaviour between adults had been legal since 1967, it didn't always feel that way: voters were less tolerant of MPs following them into the permissive society. Besides, people did not talk openly about private sexual behaviour, as they do now. Some MPs had affairs (women, including Barbara Castle, as well as men) and a few (Labour's Tom Driberg, later Lord Bradwell) chased male members of the Commons staff. Driberg was protected by his old press patron, Lord Beaverbrook (much as Edward VIII's love life had been) and by the security services. Most of it remained mere gossip.

Another factor different from today was solidarity. "There was a feeling at the time that you didn't make trouble for other MPs," recalls Dalyell, one of parliament's great troublemakers for 40 years, but on political, not personal, matters. Dalyell shared the general distaste for Geoffrey Dickens, when the Tory populist made paedophile allegations – now being re-examined by police – in the 80s.

Suspecting Dickens of mere publicity-seeking, perhaps in collusion with a tabloid, he refused his appeal for help. "I'm much more concerned about our economic problems than this mire," he recalls his admired ex-cabinet colleague Joel Barnett, a parliamentary neighbour of both Dickens and Cyril Smith, confiding at the time. Dickens, whose habit of mis-saying "fido-pilia" did not help his cause, was dismissed as a joke, though not all contemporary MPs discount claims that a senior home office official might have destroyed files. "That civil servant is a very bad man with nasty sexual habits," one recalls being warned about one such.

Dickens was proved right in naming diplomat Sir Peter Hayman, later jailed. But suspicion of such boat-rocking MP colleagues lingers on, with eyebrows raised against the likes of Tom Watson, Simon Danczuk or John Mann, who have all campaigned for the investigation of abuse allegations. So does the hunch that some of the claims today by former victims may prove to be fantasy, exaggeration or revenge – "someone getting their own back".

If the Westminster majority understood little about the gay world inhabited by some of their colleagues, paedophilia was a closed one. As the Daily Mail demonstrated in its campaign against Harriet Harman and Patricia Hewitt, two future cabinet ministers who worked at the National Council for Civil Liberties (now Liberty), the "anything goes" 70s tolerated a campaign that openly advocated consenting sexual relationships with children – the Paedophile Information Exchange – to affiliate to the NCCL before being discredited.

"We just didn't understand," ex-MPs now say. Just as women in all walks of life experienced bottom pinching (they knew which male colleagues were "not safe in taxis" ), unwelcome advances, and worse, so both sexes were what they call "more relaxed" about male acquaintances with an unhealthy interest in boys, girls or Commons secretaries. Society's default position was to disbelieve complainants to the police. A northern Labour MP, now a peer ("I was so ugly the perverts didn't fancy me"), recalls being spanked on his bare bottom by a teacher. But when his father offered to go to the police, his mother said: "We can't do that, the man's a priest." Denials by those in authority were usually believed – the opposite of today.

Politicians of the day, beset with familiar problems such as economic growth, were fearful of delving into claims often made by those on the margins of society. They were wary of the twin Whitehall elephant traps known as "the can of worms" and "the slippery slope" that leads to who knows where. "Whatever you do, don't go near the Kincora boy's home scandal [in Belfast], it's a can of worms from which you won't escape," one probing MP was warned only last year. He took the advice. But Kincora, too, is back in the headlines.

Ignorance, naivety, complacency and discretion, loyalty too, all are contributory explanations for decades of neglect. As the famous opening sentence of The Go-Between, LP Hartley's novel of sexual intrigue, put it as long ago as 1953: "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."

[mongers]

I found what Home Secretary Theresa May had to say about systemic abuse both chilling and foreboding, like she was readying it as a political and/or social weapon.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11471282/Theresa-May-Child-abuse-in-the-UK-runs-far-deeper-than-you-know.html

We already know the trail will lead into our schools and hospitals, our churches, our youth clubs and many other institutions that should have been places of safety but instead became the setting for the most appalling abuse. However, what the country doesn't yet appreciate is the true scale of that abuse

......

In my discussions with older victims and survivors and their representatives, I began to realise how abuse is woven, covertly, into the fabric of our society.

[Norgy]

Well, what you had society-wise was anally penetrated and abused by 20 years of Tory and Blairite New Labour. Congrats.
The UK has become a shining example of how not to become. While Greece is the spendthrift, cleptomaniac cousin people shake their head at, the UK is along with France Europe's sad uncles who should've been in jail because they diddle kids and have sex with prostitutes. Italy's even stopped calling to invite you to orgies because you're just too far out.
Even Sweden thinks you're kind of gross.
And when Sweden thinks something's gross, it is. Sweden fucks animals. Legally.

[Martinus]

This is penny-dreadful-level gross and nasty.

[Martinus]

Well, what you had society-wise was anally penetrated and abused by 20 years of Tory and Blairite New Labour. Congrats.
The UK has become a shining example of how not to become. While Greece is the spendthrift, cleptomaniac cousin people shake their head at, the UK is along with France Europe's sad uncles who should've been in jail because they diddle kids and have sex with prostitutes. Italy's even stopped calling to invite you to orgies because you're just too far out.
Even Sweden thinks you're kind of gross.
And when Sweden thinks something's gross, it is. Sweden fucks animals. Legally.

I gotta say I agree. There is this certain tendency among British upper classes to display a certain type of patronising snobbery that really induces a visceral gag reflex in me - the way they talk about their "chaps", with a mix of mild aversion and pity, looking down on them in the same way whether they beat their wives, abuse kids, are closeted gay or went to the wrong school (and all of these "offences" are, broadly speaking, equal) - just shows the depths of their depravity to me.

It is not easy to convey that certain odious "je-ne-sais-quai" but I hope I managed somewhat.

[Martinus]

I think it comes from the Victorian morality (and it is also very similar to conservative Catholic morality - hence the same approach displayed until very recently by the Catholic church when dealing with child abuse scandals) - if you make so many things wrong and sinful, you end up equivocating and relativising real wrongs and sins.

If being divorced or gay is just as bad as being a pedophile - then being a pedophile is not really worse than being divorced or gay. Everyone ends up having a skeleton in their closet, so the fear of scandal trumps any shreds of decency.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I found what Home Secretary Theresa May had to say about systemic abuse both chilling and foreboding, like she was readying it as a political and/or social weapon.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11471282/Theresa-May-Child-abuse-in-the-UK-runs-far-deeper-than-you-know.html

We already know the trail will lead into our schools and hospitals, our churches, our youth clubs and many other institutions that should have been places of safety but instead became the setting for the most appalling abuse. However, what the country doesn't yet appreciate is the true scale of that abuse

......

In my discussions with older victims and survivors and their representatives, I began to realise how abuse is woven, covertly, into the fabric of our society.

It is very important for our "leaders" that the paedophilia is widespread throughout our society rather than concentrated in certain groups and circumstances. Of course they are one of the groups under the spotlight.

[Martinus]

Yeah this is the last go-to argument for pedophile defenders in the Catholic Church, too. Of course it ignores the systemic and organised cover up mechanism among the "elite".

[Syt]

With these elites I wonder how many are into it because they're "real" paedophiles and are attracted partly or mostly to kids, and how many are into it because it's kinky and they think they can get away with it.

[Martinus]

With these elites I wonder how many are into it because they're "real" paedophiles and are attracted partly or mostly to kids, and how many are into it because it's kinky and they think they can get away with it.

Yeah, there are again parallels with the catholic church and priests who were gay - because being caught fucking an adult man or a boy would lead to the same consequences, many chose to fuck boys (post-puberty teens) because the risk of being caught was much lower.

Another proof how fucked up morality leads to fucked up results.

[Richard Hakluyt]

The police have done a pathetic job btw, whether it is 1970s Westminster or a 21st century Northern dump they seem to have had no interest in protecting or helping the victims.

Harvey Proctor, incidentally, was prosecuted for having sex with male prostitutes aged 17-21 (there was lots of spankings apparently, the case provoked much hilarity) something which is now legal. The very fact that he was prosecuted leads me to think that he has nothing to do with the child abuse scandal and is, in fact, an outsider.

[Sheilbh]

The police have done a pathetic job btw, whether it is 1970s Westminster or a 21st century Northern dump they seem to have had no interest in protecting or helping the victims.

Having said that Yorkshire seems particularly grim. The various things that have come out about the Yorkshire police make the Red Riding novels seems like could be true.

Harvey Proctor, incidentally, was prosecuted for having sex with male prostitutes aged 17-21 (there was lots of spankings apparently, the case provoked much hilarity) something which is now legal. The very fact that he was prosecuted leads me to think that he has nothing to do with the child abuse scandal and is, in fact, an outsider.

This is one of my issues and slight queasiness about the various internet rumours about figures from the past. If you spend any length of time in the sections of, say, Twitter that's talking about this you'll notice that what they're basically doing is naming politicians from the 70s who were rumoured to be gay. There seems an element of the old gay = paedo thing which worries me. Especially as, so far, there's actually been nothing proved beyond the Cyril Smith stuff.

It is very important for our "leaders" that the paedophilia is widespread throughout our society rather than concentrated in certain groups and circumstances. Of course they are one of the groups under the spotlight.

I disagree. What she says seems fair enough. We've had the light entertainment industry, Asian cabbies in a few cities, Ulster unionist leaders, Savile (which then takes in the NHS, the prison service, schools etc) and, allegedly, the Establishment. I wonder if she's right and we don't appreciate the scale yet.

I think it comes from the Victorian morality (and it is also very similar to conservative Catholic morality - hence the same approach displayed until very recently by the Catholic church when dealing with child abuse scandals) - if you make so many things wrong and sinful, you end up equivocating and relativising real wrongs and sins.

I disagree. It think it's far more to do with power and institutions protecting their own than morality. The Catholic Church, the BBC, the political establishment and the Socialist Workers' Party don't have that much morality in common - but they are closed institutions with an instinct to protect their own and, in their own ways, the power to do it.

Also on the topic see this brilliant essay (too long to post) on the Savile affair:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n21/andrew-ohagan/light-entertainment

[Richard Hakluyt]

@Sheilbh

I suppose the problem with arguing about the "scale" of the problem is that we will all have different ideas about what that scale is anyway. I would imagine that there are tens of thousands of paedophiles active in the UK, does that strike you as being optimistic, about right, or pessimistic?

[Norgy]

I guess "institutions protecting their own" is a good way to describe how and why these things happen and go on and on.

Creepy becomes the normal. You'd normally associate this kind of behaviour with closed sects, and they do exist, but it seems like kiddy diddling and mass rape can become institutionalised. When the cover-up grows and grows, it just becomes harder to come clean and with so much to lose for those involved, it becomes very important to keep the cover intact. It's basic human instinct kicking in.

I don't like that it happens, but I understand how it happens and to some extent why. That said, I am so completely grossed out by it all that I want to go bury myself under a ton of blankets and pillows.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah. That's part of what worries me about the fact that a lot of it looks like slandering of allegedly closeted old men and that niggle that this is actually just people making the connection of gays and paedophilia which I thought we'd got rid of.

But, there is Cyril Smith and the stuff about Dolphin Square and Elm House is really alarming. So maybe there is some truth in some of it.