Reasons for an increase in readership

BETWEEN August this year, and November 2013 our page-views increased by just over 40%.  Between October and November 2013 there was just over a 12% increase in hits reaching an all time peak.  This last significant rise in our page-viewings we put down to our advertisement 'A Decade of Northern Voices' in the London anarchist bookfair program booklet on October 19th this year. 

Between August and September this year, we saw a 30% increase in our page-viewings of the Northern Voices' Blog owing, we believe, to the coverage that appeared in Channel Four's Dispatches' program in the middle of September on the now disgraced former Rochdale MP, Cyril Smith, entitled 'The Paedophile MP:  How Cyril Smith Got Away with It' in which investigator Liz MacKean looked into allegations that the Liberal Democrat MP sexually abused children for years before his death in 2010, and claims of lack of action by the authorities. 

A year ago in November 2012, Northern Voices together with the current Rochdale MP, Simon Danzcuk, and the Paul Waugh on his politicshome website N.V. helped to reveal the serious allegations against what Oliver Kamm in The Times described as 'among the most recognisable politicians of the past half century, abused young boys in the 1960s and 1970s.'  At that time last year Mr. Kamm wrote in The Times:
'Danczuk deserves credit for attacking the reputation of his predecessor. The allegations are true. Smith was a paedophile sadist who satisfied his urgings by inflicting humiliating punishment on vulnerable boys who were nominally in his care. Francis Wheen exposed these horrors in Private Eye 30 years ago. Smith never sued.'

Unfortunately, Mr. Kamm's account fails like so many others to make in clear that it was the local journal Rochdale Alternative Paper (RAP) edited by David Bartlett and John Walker that originally exposed Cyril Smith 30 years ago, and that to its credit Private Eye was the only national publication that a month later ran the story in 1979.

Cyril Smith won Rochdale for the Liberals in a by-election in 1972 and held it for 20 years.

More recently Northern Voices has been at the forefront of these revelations and we believe that this has paid off in boosting our page-viewing on this Blog significantly in the last year.  In the current issue of our printed publication Northern Voices No.14, John Walker, the former editor of the Rochdale Alternative Paper (RAP), praises our role in finally outing Cyril Smith in November 2012. It is now believed that the Rochdale MP, Mr. Danzcuk, is at present engaged in producing a publication on the issues surrounding the conduct of Cyril Smith, his rise to power in Rochdale and national politics, and the possibilities of a cover-up by the authorities.

Our long term involvement in this story and other controversal cases like the blacklist in the British building trade, may go some way to explaining why our monthly page-views have almost doubled between September 2012 and November 2013.