Note what the press clipping says…...’There have been four Home Secretaries since the People reported on the “The Vilest Men in Britain” on May 25, 1975.

Not one of Mr. Brittan’s predecessors took effective steps to deal with this festering evil.’

 

But only Brittan is in the frame today.

 

The BBC looks to be concentrating on the 1980’s as its starting point for reporting on historic child abuse in the corridors of power and elsewhere and has happily reported Leon Brittan was interviewed by police after a rape allegation was made against him, the police taking no action, and the Today programme dragging in Peter Bottomley…seemingly only on the basis that a false allegation was made against him by the Mail 30 years ago for which he received a large amount of damages…are they hoping a bit of mud sticks to all these Tories?  The BBC seems to be ignoring Labour people.

Timeline: 1980s child abuse allegations

1980s child abuse claims explained

 

Geoffrey Dicken’s allegations centred around PIE and most of the abuse would have been pre-1980’s.

It is not clear from the reporting that there were at least three ‘dossiers’ from Dickens relating his concerns…..in none of the press reports are there particular mentions of MPs being involved…..Tom Watson is getting his information from Peter McKelvie, a retired child protection team manager, who has spent more than 20 years compiling evidence of alleged child abuse….not sure where McKelvie gets his information….but he seems to have enough to make accusations such as this:  I first contacted Tom Watson MP, about in October 2012, ie the link between a powerful paedophile ring and No. 10 which very much remains a live and ever increasing Police investigation.

 

Watson uses the same language:

‘….clear intelligence suggesting a powerful paedophile network linked to Parliament and No 10.’

 

But you have to ask what is that ‘clear intelligence’?  If they have this ‘clear intelligence’ why is it that they do not know what was actually in Geoffrey Dicken’s dossier?  The evidence seems slight with only one politician possibly in the frame with others merely worthy of further investigation……

McKelvie said that:

‘…..he believed there was enough evidence to arrest at least one senior politician.

“I believe there are sufficient grounds to carry out a formal investigation into allegations of up to 20 MPs and Lords over the last three to four decades, some still alive and some dead. The list is there.”

In a letter to his local MP Sir Tony Baldry last month, Mr McKelvie suggested that a further 20 MPs and Lords were implicated in the “cover-up” of abuse of children.

Mr McKelvie, who has compiled a dossier of evidence by speaking to alleged victims and care workers with whom they are in contact, does not suggest that any of the MPs and Lords colluded with each other.’

 

 

As we know that eye-witness evidence isn’t necessarily accurate, as the BBC found out to its cost, relying solely on the alleged vicitms to identify the abusers seems somewhat risky….here one witness is under 10:

At least one witness is understood to have told police in the 1980s that he was abused by a Tory MP at the guest house when he was aged under 10

Would any 10 year old be able to identify an MP?  Could you identify your own MP now?

 

 

Here the BBC admits not much is really known about the contents of the dossier:

What did the Dickens files allege?

Press reports from the era claimed one file concerned a civil servant and that another one related to an employee of Buckingham Palace. The papers also contained allegations concerning the Paedophile Information Exchange, a group that campaigned to make sex between adults and children legal.

In an interview with the Daily Express in 1983, Mr Dickens said he had eight names of “really important, public figures” he was going to expose.

 

 

So where is that ‘clear intelligence‘ Watson talks of?

 

And I note that whilst the BBC mentions a civil servant and Buckingham Palace it doesn’t mention anything about a senior TV executive:

 

 

 

It seems I am not the only one confused about these dossiers.  Peter Mckelvie himself looks to have got one dossier wrong claiming here…..

‘a newly discovered press cutting (see below) shows that Geoffrey Dickens personally delivered a separate file to the Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Thomas Hetherington, in August 1983.’

 

Unfortunately reading the clipping tells a different story…the file came from the police.

 

Curiously elsewhere McKelvie gets that right:

SCOTLAND YARD FILE #2,  25th August 1983 (delivered to DPP same week as Dickens Dossier #1)

The Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Thomas Hetherington, – today takes delivery of a file on paedophilia – the distasteful fruit of two years’ work by Scotland Yard’s Obscene Publications Squad. The squad’s thick file, containing the names of the famous, the wealthy, and hundreds of anonymous citizens, was sent from the Yard yesterday.

“Because it has technically left our hands, we can say nothing about the file’s contents as the matter is effectively sub judice”, a Scotland Yard spokesman said last night. “It is now up to the Director to decide what action should be taken. It is purely coincidental that the report has been concluded at the time investigations are under way.”

Source: Daily Express, 25th August 1983, Daily Mail, 25th August 1983

 

The Independent, and the Telegraph, both seemed to have taken the mistake and run with it:

Westminster child abuse exclusive: Geoffrey Dickens also gave copy of file to top prosecutor Sir Thomas Hetherington

 

As you can see Dickens didn’t give the dossier to the DPP, the police gave the DPP a file containing the ‘fruits of two years work’.

 

Also there must have been a lot of people who knew much of what was in Dicken’s dossiers as they were involved in the research…never mind the police:

He [Dickens] used House of Commons researchers and enlisted local reporters, librarians and friends to help go through records, check files, even empty dustbins of some of the suspects. In the end there were just those eight men on the list of shame. Discussions with Scotland Yard followed.

 

This might be of interest:

The morning after the broadcast of ‘Secret Life of a Paedophile’ (BBC) in 1994, Richard Johnson, the author of the book A Kind of Hush, rang in to the Inside Story team to say that at 1.30 am he had received a phone call from ‘Mick’ (who the central character in A Kind of Hush is based on) to say that the documentary had vindicated him and everything he had told Richard about many years before. According to Richard Johnson the book was loosely based on a paedophile network that included Peter Righton, a Labour MP, a well known Labour politician, and a central figure allegedly named as a major paedophile in Islington children’s homes.

 

 

 

Strangely no mention by the BBC of Harman or Hodges in relation to any of this.

Minced PIE?

Manufacturing The Age Of Consent

Margaret Hodge’s Double Standards on Abuse

 

From the Sunday People 1983: