The BBC are taking the chance to try and smear Thatcher by association…
Margaret Thatcher ‘told of Cyril Smith abuse claims’
Oddly they refrain from revealing an essential fact, should you be looking to ‘politicise’ Cyril Smith’s abuse. Here the BBC reports that….
The dossier on the decision to confer a knighthood on Smith, a former Rochdale MP for both for the Liberal Party and the Liberal Democrats who died in 2010, runs to 19 pages.
It includes one undated letter marked secret, from Lord Shackleton, a member of the Political Honours Scrutiny Committee.
This was sent to Mrs Thatcher – who died in 2013 – and included a warning of “the risk that such an award could give rise to adverse criticism”.
Lord Shackleton wrote that police had investigated Smith in 1970 for “indecent assault against teenage boys” between 1961 and 1966, but the director of public prosecutions (DPP) had decided “there was no reasonable prospect of conviction”.
He went on to say that the case was reported in the Rochdale Alternative Press and Private Eye.
“One may regret this kind of press reporting but it could be revived if an award to Mr Smith were made,” he added.
Lord Shackleton said it would be “slightly unfortunate” if this “episode” stopped Smith receiving the honour.
However, he added: “We felt it right to warn the honours system would be at some risk if the award were to be made and announced.”
‘Lord Shackleton’? That’ll be the ‘Tory’ Lord Shackleton you’d probably assume.
The BBC would be glad to let you think that.
But Lord Shackleton was a Labour peer.
Why would the BBC let you think he was a Tory? Could it be that it wants to imply that Thatcher was involved in some sort of cover up conspiracy but not the awkward fact that the man advising her was a Labour peer?
Juast another day at the biased BBC.
Typical man from the left. No comment about the labour peer’s involvement and that quite a few of the labour and lib dems must have known.
Yes, those missing words ‘The Labour peer…..’ unlike the ‘Tory’ suffix that always comes into play whenever there’s any whiff of incrimination against someone from the party the BBC despise.
BBC sophistry to advance its political agenda. Again.
Subtle as a bag of snot.
That’s an interesting comment JtF.
I am sure that a few weeks ago, following the Casey Report into the failings at Rotherham MBC, a B-BBC contributor complained to the BBC that the political affiliations of the councillors forced to resign were omitted from BBC reporting.
I cannot find that contributor’s account, sadly, but the BBC response was something along the lines that to name the party that they belonged to was not necessary in their view.
An outrage.
.. and we’re expected to believe that no-one in the BBC had heard of these allegations? What made Cyril Smith untouchable?
This article goes a little way in explaining what made Cyril Smith untouchable.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2602930/Knighted-Steel-eulogised-Clegg-Cyril-Smith-indelible-shame-Liberal-Party.html
It is quite an interesting read, made more so by the fact that there is no reference in it to anything that Thatcher may or may not have known. This is important because the BBC in their report are quoting directly from the Daily Mail.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31789827
Very sloppy reporting all round I’d say.
What, so other people did know about the fat paedo but the BBC is trying to blame Mrs Thatcher for covering it up? Imagine my surprise.
Cyril Smith ? It would have taken a bloody massive carpet to cover HIM up !
I am uncertain how these things work but if recommendations are submitted by an august committee such as the Political Honours Scrutiny Committee, what scope is there for a PM to veto the nomination? The bit that is missing in the report (it seems to me) is the scope to which any PM has to veto a particular nominee.
Also, one would imagine that there must be ramifications in the event that the PM does veto a nominee… especially if the nominee becomes aware of the fact and even more so if the underlying reason for the veto had been considered by the DPCC as unlikely to succeed in law?
This report seems to be an attempt by the media to perpetuate a storyline about sexual abuse at high levels (which if proven is the most terrible state of affairs), the opportunity to draw in and smear one of our greatest ever PMs and less about its basis in true fact and analysis.
There is an excellent George Igler video on Islam embedded at the end of the current weekend thread. Below is an exerpt from a comment by George Igler on a “grooming gangs” related column by Rod Liddle in the Spectator which is relevant, I believe, to your final paragraph. (I remember those innocent, if academically unrigorous times when CSE meant the sub-O-level Certificate of Secondary Education rather than Child Sexual Exploitation).
“And no, don’t think for a second that you’re the only person who has been thinking for some time that all these celebrity prosecutions over the last two years have been about normalizing the public perception of “CSE” as something widespread over time, because central government has a very good idea indeed about how deep the rabbit hole of white slavery is, in this country.”
His whole comment and Liddle’s article “What are we meant to say about grooming rings?” are worth reading.
Cyril was a bit right wing for my tastes, but I always admired his fit body.
Between 1952 and 1966 Cyril Smith was a Labour Party Councillor. If he was a former Conservative Party Councillor I wonder if the BBC would have mentioned this now that he is linked to child abuse allegations.
No, I don’t see any bias here whatsoever. The Daily Mail reported it the same.
The conclusion to the investigation was it would not be fair to Cyril Smith to refuse him David Steel’s nomination as he hadn’t been convicted of anything. I guess what also persuaded Maggie to give the fat old pervert the benefit of the doubt is that like most she would have thought it inconceivable such accusations could be true of such an endearing well thought of fellow.
A misleading headine from the Mail and the BBC. But then again, the Mail has papers to sell, the BBC doesn’t. This allows it to operate according to ‘higher’ standards, doesn’t it?
The Mail on Sunday always followed an editorial line more critical of, and often hostile to, the policies of the Thatcher governments of the 1980s, than the Daily Mail did.
Hi hippiepooter, I agree, in fact last night I blogged this with an anti Sky rant because they were far worse than the BBC.: “Thatcher ‘Turned Blind Eye’ To Paedophile MPs”, WTF?
So let me get this right, when fat boy Smith was put forward for a gong, the PM at the time was informed that he had been accused of kiddy fiddling but had been exonerated and so according to the left she is guilty of covering up historical child abuse and thus by association all the Tory party are thus by default child molesters .
This from a left wing news org which has given us:
Jimmy Seville, Stuart Hall ,Rolf Harris and the rest
Which for years has covered up Islamic child abuse in the UK
Which was found guilty of trying to stitch up an innocent (Tory) man it had accused of child abuse
and weeks before a general election they continue with their smear tactics.
Nice to see the bBC being impartial as usual.
Revolutionary movements have always splintered in the past. Marat and then Robespierre versus the moderates in France, and then Stalin versos Trotsky in Soviet Russia.
Monty Python lampooned this tendency with all the Judean revolutionary groups in Life of Brian !
First comment an attempt to derail the thread – quelle surprise
Also unsurprising is the attempt to paint Thatcher as somehow worse than the abusers. It was only last year that ex-Rotherham MP McShane admitted he kept quiet about the rumours he heard because he didn’t want to be seen as a racist
you can buy things for the trots,a 12 bore shotgun comes to mind