Monday 7 July 2014

Investigating Paedophile Politicians

As Parliament prepares to disband for the summer, a vast supercell hangs poised to send tornado after tornado ripping through the political establishment. Rumours have long-circulated about paedophile MPs, and the absence of several dossiers submitted to the Home Office by the late Tory MP Geoffrey Dickens have forced Theresa May to establish a wide-ranging enquiry. Good. Let there be no doubt. If the olds boys' networks have child abusers in their midst, and have conspired to protect them from the consequences of their crimes I hope these vile creatures are dragged from the shadows and sent down for a very. very long time. However, there are two quick points I want to make.

Firstly, on the face of it the "misplacing" of Dickens' dossier is, at best, a catastrophic error. It is inexcusable that it should have gone missing. Yet that does not automatically mean its contents were of substantive value. As Reuben rightly notes, Dickens was
... a campaigner against witchcraft, and satanism, and against the decision by a previous government to repeal the 1735 Witchcraft Act – which he believed had made it a little too easy for evil to flourish. Of course these things were not unrelated, since like many people in the 1980s, Dickens was hooked on the idea that up and down the country children were being subjected to Satanic Ritual Abuse - a phenomenon now universally regarded as a moral panic with little-to-no basis in fact.

In 1988 he told She Magazine that “up and down the country” hundreds of Children were being “sacrificed” to the devil. Interestingly, he said he was building up a dossier which he hoped would provide concrete proof of the evils of satanism, which he would be handing on to the police ...

In 1983 Dickens called on Brittan to investigate pedophilia at the royal court, buckhingham palace and in the diplomatic and civil services. It is impossible, right now, to know what was in that dossier – was it packed full of credible evidence, or was it dross about witches and satanists. Yet it is worth noting, that Dickens retained his own copy of the dossier, and remained alive for another decade, and was hardly shy about getting in touch with the media, if he felt (often wrongly) that had something credible to offer them.
This leads me to my second point. At the risk of sounding like Brendan O'Neill, the rising clamour around alleged paedophile politicians has created a constituency who almost want there to be a scandal. Matters are made worse by the crimes of Cyril Smith coming to light. So we have a media wanting something to fill their schedules and pages. And as for the wider anti-politics malaise, it's confirmation of the ultimate corruption of politics - despite mainstream politicians taking the brewing crisis by the bit and acting decisively. The febrile atmosphere leads to another issue. When a list of unsubstantiated allegations are a Twitter search away, when child abuse combines with a culture of lost trust and antipathy, there will be real problems ensuring any future defendants receive a fair trial.

If the rumours are substantiated, silence has, so far, allowed a bunch of paedophiles get away with it. It would be an awful irony if splashing allegations across the internet and media let them continue to do so.

16 comments:

Chris said...

I don't think anything's really been proved against Cyril Smith to be fair. Whatever Danczuk the Paedofinder General says.

Really, I don't see the need for an enquiry. I've yet to see anything that indicates a cover-up or any child abuse by any politicians.

Also, I think it's naive to think this will somehow restore faith in the political system. Whatever the outcome it will only make things worse, at least in part due to conspiraloons spreading misinformation.

Speedy said...

Of more interest are the 114 missing HO files, which were presumably lifted by MI5 for its own nefarious purposes.

Intelligence agencies would be far more interested in the exercise of power than right or wrong, and not only them - it was the policy of the Tory whips to use paedo offences, duly covered up, as a lever of compliance through the 80s and 90s, and presumably before.

Given the nature of the offence, it does lend itself to conspiracy - the outsider status of the perp, the need for access to children, the motivation for silence, etc, so although it is sensible to usually dismiss conspiracy, in this case maybe not.

It can be difficult for good people to conceive the depths and scale of real evil (as it can be for nice middle class leftists to understand the mentailty of the working class) and bad people will use this to get away with it.

Anonymous said...

Whatever the truths I suspect the 'overarching' review will miss out something quite important. Namely, that the abused were mainly children in care homes, and by extension people at the margins. The current austerity drive, the current desire to punish the poor and the victims of this system by the overwhelming majority of people will drive more and more to seek refuge in a world of abuse. The majority who want to attack those on benefits will create a new generation of vulnerable people.

So the people who take delight in pushing more victims to the margins are the ones to ride on their white horses to rescue them from their abusers. Pass me the sick bucket please.

Gary Elsby said...

I'm very surprised that you are dismissive of all this Phil as the names and crimes have been well documented for many years.

Top politicians have been implicated for years including at least four top left MPs.
All allegedly named in 'operation ore' led by the FBI.
'D' notices put out to stop all names being publicised (that's the scare theory) and much of it linked to access to care homes with links to one dead DJ and one dead mass child killer (both linked to each other).
Gun licences granted to the killer by 2(?) prominent MPs.
Top positions given to 'named' MPs and two former Home secretaries also named as serial child abusers. One of whom is fighting a legal battle by the day and not the one in our newspapers today.
The link of children's home access by this same crowd has been well documented and published and printed in a National newspaper by a well known journalist of which the entire story was pulled.

All of names are known and all links allegedly proven with a determined effort by Freemasons to cover all tracks. (Freemasons include, 1 dead DJ, 1 dead mass child killer, accused left/right MPs in senior position, scout leaders, police officers and let's not forget the 'establishment' in Whitehall.

The BNP named everyone and providing all evidence to go with it.

Don't dismiss anything.

Anonymous said...

Whatever is true or not,it is a disgrace that Danczuk is pushing this as an MP: he has a book to sell. A conflict of interest.

Also Private Eye was reporting as far back as 1984 that junior MI5 officers were conducting an anti-Semetic campaign against Leon Brittan as he & Thacher to implement changes within the secret services.

I actually welcome an iquiry- a predict a lot of red faces. they won't be able to stitch up peopel the way they have with Savile.
And in his days, even his Conservative pals thought Dickens was barking mad.

Moor Larkin said...

Completely concur that the allegations against the dead Cyril Smith are less than "pinned on". Let's face it, the expose of him was done by Liz McKean who was plainly utterly taken in by Karin Ward - notwithstanding that she got Journalist awards for being completely hoodwinked. The Ward Allegations are now subject to a Defamation Suit by the innocent Freddie Starr.

We are told Savile, a silly DJ, got away with it because nobody dared speak, yet they did speak about Smith - close to government. Where lies the Fear? Both men were in fact "investigated" in their lifetimes and the evidence was lacking then.

Check out Anna Raccoon's Blog, which is exploring the Yewtree Allegations as they are now being revealed by the NHS Reports. These are utterly laughable. If journalists were doing their job properly this whole charade would be being ridiculed rather than used to drive the sale of dead trees.

Gary Elsby said...

Who saw anyone having sex with a dead body?
He's accused-and therefore guilty (which court,which country?).
It's the witness story I want to read.
Not that I have any particular hobby of such acts, it's just that I'm guessing that a dead DJ working in a hospital did a dead body joke and now we are where we are!

Anonymous said...

Oh right we should take the word of a Libertarian fuck loon like Anna Racoon at face value.

Chris said...

It always amuses me to hear people say that people were "too afraid" to make accusations against Jimmy Savile. FFS, it was Jimmy Savile, not Pablo Escobar! What was he going to do???

Phil said...

Well Chris, the facts are that Savile was a pretty powerful establishment figure. Because we didn't see his power on Jim'll Fix It doesn't mean it didn't exist. Imagine if you were a Broadmoor nurse or an office junior at the BBC. How long do you think you'd last if you complained to the relevant authorities about his abuse?

And re: Cyril Smith, according to David Steel he confessed his crimes. As he didn't act on them and has nothing to gain from saying as such, I'm happy to take what Steel says as good coin.

Anonymous said...

"Imagine if you were a Broadmoor nurse or an office junior at the BBC. How long do you think you'd last if you complained to the relevant authorities about his abuse?"

Oh yes this makes sense to any right minded person. Hey Doris, Jimmy is touching up the kids again and licking out the corpses but I ain't saying anything, I might lose my job! But even though I am weak and spineless and would rather the patients got abused that me losing my job I think I have all the personal qualities to be a top notch nurse.

Do me a f!*king favour.

I would have reported him and those that didn't should be a trial for aiding and abetting.

I want to see these junior lackeys in a televised mass trial, like Nuremberg.

jimboo said...

Savile was also a gangster, his friends were gangsters, when he did the bouncing it was usually through a brick wall. He was reported but as he said in his autobiography he had more on the Leeds Police than they had on them. Of course the real problem is that abuse is endemic at all levels of society and in the 60's and 70's vulnerable kids were considered fair game. Noticed that Butler-Sloss has stepped down.

Chris said...

Jimmy Savile had no power. He was a two bit TV personality.

At most he groped a few people. All of the stuff about satanism, necrophilia and establishment conspiracies is bare faced lies.

Phil said...

And yet the weight of evidence of victim testimony, accounts of using his celebrity to abuse vulnerable people and getting it covered up, and establishment backscratching count for nothing of course because Chris - for whatever reason - feels compelled to defend the disgusting pervert. Strange.

Chris said...

What weight of evidence? No accusations have been put to the test in any way - the cops merely declared unilaterally that he did it all. Do you really believe that?

Yewtree is an exercise in trawling for accusations. Combine that with the celebrity factor and the amount of time that's passed since the crimes supposedly took place and you're going to get a lot of false accusations.

Do you really believe it's possible for someone to commit as many crimes as Jimmy Savile has been belatedly accused of and get away with the lot?

Oh, and "disgusting pervert"? I didn't realise this was The Sun.

BCFG said...

I tend to agree with Chris up to a point.

Until evidence is tested in a court of law it remains an accusation and even then the truth may not get out.

Just because someone says they have been abused doesn't make it a fact. If you believe that then you are profoundly against due process and a robust and fit for purpose legal system.

If you think we should just believe the victims you are inviting a return to witch hunting.

A good judge is a skeptical and critical judge.

There used to be the argument that only child sex offenders should receive capital punhsment, i am minded to say they are the one group that it shouldn't apply to, as emotion overrides all rational thought.