Will Labour Suspend Mr Danczuk?

by Les May

If the story in the 'Mail on Sunday' about Simon Danczuk's 2008 holiday in Spain with now estranged wife Karen proves anything it is that since his arrival in Rochdale he has created at lot of enemies and some of them have finally caught up with him.


To many people in Rochdale these stories are not new.  They have been circulating as e-mails and as accounts on the World Wide Web for some years.  What is new is that the witnesses to both the fallout from whatever happened between the couple and the attempted 'cover up' by the Labour Party, have been prepared to go on record and make statements to the MoS about what they saw, heard and did.


My experience of putting questions to Mr Danczuk is that he shrugs them off and refuses to answer, and I have not doubt he will do the same with the MoS story. But there are two organisations which cannot afford to ignore it. The first is the Labour Party which will lose all credibility if it tries to treat this story as just another, 'Daily Mail hatchet job on Labour'.


If there is one thing everyone knows about acting leader Harriet Harman, (she of the pink van), it is that she is forever trumpeting Labour's support for 'women's issues'. Well here is her chance to prove it. At the very least Harriet Harman has to suspend Mr Danczuk temporarily until a new investigation into what happened between the couple in Spain and subsequently, which takes into account both the statements made by Karen Danczuk's family to the MoS and the copies of texts sent by Karen to her family. If she feels reluctant to act upon what is after all as yet only an allegation, albeit a well supported one, she need look no further than Mr Danczuk's own record. 


A Huffington Post article of June 22nd this year said 'Labour MP Simon Danczuk has accused his party of failing to act “quickly and efficiently” after he urged Ed Miliband to remove Lord Janner last year after police revealed historic sex abuse allegations'.  As Leicestershire police were unable to confirm that they were investigating Janner with a view to bringing charges this did not happen. But it did not stop Mr Danczuk milking it for publicity.


Ms Harman also has to investigate, and make public, the actions of Anna Hutchinson, the North-West regional director of the Labour Party who contacted Martin Burke, Karen's father, after he made a complaint to the chairman of Rochdale constituency Labour party about the incident in Spain. If Mr Burke's claims are true, and I have no reason to doubt them, then Ms Hutchinson 'blackmailed' Mr Burke into dropping his complaint by threatening that his son Steven would be prosecuted for an offence falling under the Data Protection Act. This looks very much like an attempt at a 'cover up'.


Given that Mr Danczuk has made his name by claiming that the activities of Cyril Smith and others were 'covered up' by people in high places, there is a certain irony that the same sort of accusations are now being levelled at the Labour party. The second organisation is the Greater Manchester Police service.  The MoS article quotes Karen Danczuk's mother Sue as saying, ‘On the phone, she told me he’d attacked her.  Yet the day after she got home, she was going on about how it was lies.' As with Karen's father Martin I can see no reason to doubt these claims and this rapid change of story surely casts some doubt upon Mrs Danczuk's credibility as a witness.


Either Mr Danczuk did 'attack' her and she changed her story after she got home or she massively exaggerated to her family the nature of the 'argument' the couple had had.  Whatever happened it is difficult to explain why a woman with small children found herself at an airport that was closed for the night with little or no money and no tickets to get home.  In February Mrs Danczuk claimed she had been abused in the family home by an 'older family friend'.  By early March the claim had become that it was her older brother Michael who had 'raped her hundreds of times'.  Michael was subsequently arrested and has been bailed twice.  Two women who Michael had known in the past came forward to press further claims against him.  Whether they were prompted to do so by a third party is unknown. At some time in the not too distant future someone at GMP has the unenviable task of deciding whether charges will be brought against Michael against a background of doubt about whether Mrs Danczuk has proved to be an entirely reliable witness with regard to what really happened in Spain in 2008.


In the past I have been critical of what I call the 'Posh Women's Tendency' in the Labour party.  But on this occasion I hope they will show their mettle and press Harriet to suspend Mr Danczuk from the party. After all she showed no such inhibitions in calling for the BBC to sack Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson because she objected to a word he had used.


Les May http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3157459/Disturbing-questions-Simon-Danczuk-crusades-against-abuse
html http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/06/22/simon-danczuk-urged-ed-miliband-to-axe-janner_n_7639938.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/harriet-harman-calls-on-bbc-to-sack-jeremy-clarkson-9319032.html