Cyril Smith: CPS sites Bribery & Obscenity

TODAY, new allegations emerge regarding historic documents and files relating to Cyril Smith, the former Rochdale Liberal Democrat MP.  The Crown Prosecution Service has now said that it has found that a file was received in the early 1970s, when Smith was then aged 42, regarding an allegation or allegations involving indecent and obscene publications.  Then in the early 1980s another file was submitted in which there was a claim involving the Public Bodies Corrupt Practices Act of 1889:  this 19th Century law forbid the bribery of a member, officer or a servant of a public body.

These files would be left-over allegations held by the then Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) before it was subsequently forwarded to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), after it was set-up in 1986.  Some of these separate files, according the a report in tomorrow's Rochdale Observer, reached the DPP's office in March 1970, only to be forwarded to the CPS in the late 1990s.  The CPS has now revealed that there are three separate files on Cyril Smith.

Smith at present stands accused of abusing eight young lads at Cambridge House hostel on Castle Mere Street, Rochdale, in the early 1960s.  Northern Voices' first revealed this on the 13th, November, shortly before the Rochdale MP, Simon Danczuk, gave details in his speech to the House of Commons at around 4.30pm on the same day.  On that day Simon Danczuk told the House of Commons of 'young boys who were humiliated, terrified and reduced to quivering wrecks by 29 stone bully imposing himself on them' . 

Now, the CPS has dug these new/ old files up from out of what the police call the CPS's 'Salt Mines' believed to reside somewhere in Cheshire. Surprise, surprise, the CPS has said it cannot judge the degree of seriousness of the allegations or what, if any, action was taken.  The CPS just say that they are making this public now 'in the interests of openness and transparency', and to cover their own backsides, of course.