Rochdale's Futile Politics & Grandstanding!

by Brian Bamford

DURING a meeting of Rochdale Council four years ago on Wednesday the 15th, October 2014, the Tory leader Ashley Dearnley moved an amendment to a Labour motion on Gaza calling for Israel and Hamas to negotiate a permanent ceasefire and as expected the his amendment failed.  Councillor Dearnley described such motions on foreign policy as 'futile' and 'merely grandstanding'.

Last Wednesday, Councillor Dearnley had no trouble supporting an equally futile Labour motion to strip the former councillor Cyril Smith of the Freedom of the Borough of Rochdale.  Last week, it was grandstanding galore as almost every tin-pot politician in town dived-in to join the virtue signaling demonisation of Smith..  

 

Tony Lloyd MP for Rochdale commented on Revolution News that ‘Hopefully this does send out a strong signal, even though very, very late on, that they were wronged, they were and have become survivors of what made them victims and I hope it does give them some recognition that society is on their side and not on the side of those who committed crime.'

Meanwhile, Allen Brett the Labour leader of Rochdale Council moving the motion to strip Cyril Smith of his honour, and other Labour councillors, happily sat alongside a now notorious vote-rigger, Faisal Rana, who has failed to stand down following a police caution for his crimes.

When Cyril Smith was first named by the community newspaper Rochdale Alternative Paper (RAP) in May 1979, Private Eye (11th May 1979) was later to report:

'There is not an important newspaper or TV station on the land that has not received a copy of the May issue of the Rochdale Alternative Paper (RAP), one of the few community newspapers to have flourished in recent years.  The centre page article, entitled ‘Strange Case’, describes some unusual behaviour on the part of Cyril Smith, Rochdale’s newly-returned Liberal MP.  The allegations are substantiated by a number of sworn statements and carefully recorded interviews, but they have so far not been published anywhere else.'

Then on the 18th, March 2015 in The Guardian, the former co-editor of RAP, John Walker, wrote:

'The political honours scrutiny committee drew Margaret Thatcher’s attention to the Smith files in 1988, prior to her agreeing to a knighthood for him.  She could have intervened, but chose to honour him – a further insult to his victims.

'Rochdale council made Smith a freeman of the borough, named a room in the town hall after him and, in a ceremony attended by the current MP Simon Danczuk, put up a blue plaque in his honour – now taken down, apparently to prevent vandalism.  More rubbing the noses of many victims in their misery, on their home patch.'

It's funny how so many politicians like Brett, Lloyd and the rest of their hangers-on have change their tune after so many decades.

And the same week that members of the Huddersfield grooming gang were sentenced, the experience of endured as a consequence of Agenda Item 14 in the Rochdale Council document relating to 'Freedom of the Borough-the late Cyril Smith', must have felt to the supporters of Parents Against Grooming (PAG) present in Rochdale Town Hall like once bitten twice shy.

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FOR MORE ON ROCHDALE FULL COUNCIL MEETING SEE VIDEO BY

redpill phil

Streamed live on 17 Oct 2018

https://www.youtube.com/attribution_link?a=CPOKwjhnh5k&u...