TUC Conference Chief Attacks Rochdale MP

Child Sex Abuse, Simon Danczuk & 'Wrong Party' Claim

 YESTERDAY at the Conference of Trade Union Councils in Crewe, following a debate on Child Sex Abuse, the Chair Steve Gillan of the Prison Officers Association commented:

'I do have sympathy for anyone who has Simon Danczuk as an MP.  Because I think that he is in the wrong party.   Taking money from the Daily Mail, and that his wife is little better...' 

This remark, which was not challenged at the conference, would have met with sympathy among many delegates who would identify themselves on the radical wing of the Labour Party, and hostile to Tony Blair.  Nor did anyone contradict a contribution to the debate in which Mr. Danczuk was strongly attacked for using the campaign against child abuse to make political capital for himself and taking payments from the Daily Mail and its right-wing editor Paul Dacre.  At least one of the delegates was from Danczuk's own constituency party.   

A contribution from a delegate from Tameside TUC addressed the problem of  moral panic in relation to child abuse saying:  'We don't want more pious proposals on the issue of child abuse, we want proper research.'   

At the Trade's Council Conference Mr Danczuk stood accused of not employing proper research methods when doing his book on Cyril Smith 'Smile for the Camera', and of failing to answer his critics when asked to explain himself. 

Mr. Danczuk is supporting the alleged right-wing Blairite candidate Liz Kendall in the Labour leadership contest for which nominations close today.   

It was pointed out that Rochdale had been the centre of three separate sex abuse scandals:

• The Satanic Abuse Scandal in 1990:  for which social workers were blamed
• The Asian Grooming Scandal in 2012:  for which social workers were also blamed.
• The claims of a covered-up by Council Officers at Knowl View residential school for boys in 2014.

It was claimed that Simon Danczuk's 'misleading book' had delayed local investigations into child abuse in Rochdale.  It was also claimed that he was using the situation to prolong the agony for the victims in order to profit politically and financially.  The former local MP Geoffrey Dickens for Littleborough and Saddleworth was  also attacked for being a cheerleader in the Satanic Abuse scandal, that led to working-class children being separated from their families and, in some cases, placed in residential homes like Knowl View. 

The motion from Suffolk TUC on child abuse calling on the TUC to, among other things, 'strengthen legal ... support for whistle-blowers' was carried.  Another motion from South Yorkshire TUC entitled 'Rise of the Far Right & their manipulation of the Child Sexual Exploitation scandal' was also carried by the Conference.