Danczuk, Baker and 'Inaccurate Journalism'

by Les May

YESTERDAY one of the editors of Northern Voices received the following e-mail from Matthew Baker, who co-authored the book 'Smile for the Camera' (April 2014) with Simon Danczuk:
'In the article below your publication says Simon Danczuk was happy to share a platform with Chris Fay. 

 http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/tom-watson-simon-danczuks-nifty-footwork.html

‘This is not true.  He told the organisers he would only speak at the event if Chris Fay was removed from the list of speakers, which he subsequently was. In the interests of accuracy, can you change this please.'  
I wrote the article, and if this is indeed true, then I accept that the information I gave was incorrect.  But this prompts the question of just when Danczuk concluded that Mr. Fay was a fantasist and that the stories he peddled were unlikely to be true.
As the recent Panorama programme showed much of what Mr. Fay had to say about paedophile activity centred on the Elm Street guest house.  But the interview with a man who had first worked and then provided 'services' at the guest house, showed that the only reasonable conclusion was that it had been operating as a homosexual brothel, which is why it was raided by the police in 1982, and later closed down. 
But in their book Danczuk and Baker wrote (p227-228): 
'Secret parties, underground grooming activities and vile associations all developed out of these thriving networks and the Elm Street Guest House in south-west London soon became the centre of a VIP paedophile ring. 
'Paedophiles from all over the country would attend parties there and the boys were sexually abused.'
As in much of the book they produce not the slightest evidence that what they have to say is true and on the evidence of the Panorama programme it is not.   So Mr Danczuk and Mr Baker:  'In the interests of accuracy, can you change this please?'
Further on we read:  'There has been much speculation as to who was part of this sordid club, but the Metropolitan Police has confirmed that Cyril Smith visited the premises.'
The intention seems clear; the authors want us to believe that Cyril Smith visited Elm Street Guest House in order to attend parties during which boys were sexually abused. Interestingly this is just about the level of 'evidence' of Smith being a paedophile that the authors are able to produce in most of the the book.  The fact that Smith was dead meant of course that it was safe to mention his name without fear of libel. 
The weak link in this story is that the guest house wasn't the centre of a paedophile ring, it was a homosexual brothel.  As Smith was a homosexual one prosaic explanation is that he visited it for 'services'.  When you strip the 'flowery flannel' from their prose it is clear that this is just what the authors were told by a man who provided those 'services'.   So why the embellishments which make it read like another exercise in 'queer bashing'?
In an article published on 24 September, I drew attention to a story about Cyril Smith which  
appeared on pages 221 and 222 of the book, and which is totally untrue.

http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/the-humbug-of-simon-danczuk.html

Mr Danczuk's answer to it all was that the Northamptonshire police had not 'disproved' the allegation about Smith, something which is of course logically impossible. 
So Mr Baker and Mr Danczuk:  'In the interests of accuracy, can you change this please?'
It is a matter of record that I have on a number of occasions challenged Mr Danczuk in the Rochdale Observer, and by letter to say how many men were interviewed by the authors who claimed to have been abused by Cyril Smith after the closure of Cambridge House.  It is also a matter of record that one of the editors of Northern Voices asked the same question to both authors in Danczuk's Deli in October 2014, before being ushered out of the door by Mrs Danczuk.  Neither of us has ever received an answer. 
As a child I received a Good Sunday School education, and I seem to remember a story about 'moats' and 'beams' which seems to be appropriate in this context. 

Danczuk, Littlejohn & 'Waiting for Goddard'!

 The cost of endless public inquires

IT has been estimated that the coming overarching inquiry into historic child sexual abuse presided over by Judge Lowell Goddard from New Zealand, will last for between five and eight years having cost perhaps £120 million.  By the time it reports many of the victims may well be dead. 

Yet, none of this discourages campaigning and ambitious politicians like Tom Watson or Simon Danczuk.  In some ways their behaviour delayed the start of the inquiries, by forcing first Baroness Butler-Sloss and later Fiona Woolf to stand down as presiding judges.

One victim from Lancashire who suffered at the hands of Cyril Smith told me that he had been approached by a local media outlet to try to get him to complain about the appointment of Baroness Butler-Sloss, but that when he had failed to play the role of 'Mr. Angry' the journalist lost interest.

Today, the journalist Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail writes:

'More than a month has past since it was revealed that detectives had failed to find a shred of evidence to suggest that there was a VIP paedophile and murder ring operating in the Seventies and Eighties....  Nothing credible has been unearthed to support any of these allegations.  So why on earth is this public inquiry continuing – especially as several of its potential “star” witnesses have been exposed as fantasists?'

Simon Danczuk and Matthew Baker are now claiming that they were sceptical about one of the recently exposed romancers Mr. Fay claims about Elm Guest House. 

Meanwhile, Richard Littlejohn claims 'the lurid allegations [paedo rings and murder] have been at the centre of an outrageous attempt by Nonce Finder General Tom Watson to smear leading Conservatives, notably Leon Brittan, as child molesters and worse.' 

But now we know that there has been a major Scotland Yard VIP murder investigation without any proof that anyone has been murdered. 

And yet, as Littlejohn says the 'Labour M.P., Simon Danczuk, accused Brittan, during his time as Home Secretary, of covering up a secret dossier that would have proved the existence of a child abuse conspiracy at Westminster.'

Littlejohn continues:

'Danczuk's claims, added to the hysteria which surrounded Jimmy Savile, prompted the Government to set up a full-scale public inquiry into historical sex abuse in high places.  (Yet) [s]ince then, the case against Brittan has collapsed in spectacular style.'

Clearly Richard Littlejohn believes the Home Secretary Theresa May was bounced into setting up the current costly Goddard Inquiry by the tub-thumping of Simon Danczuk and Tom Watson, when he writes:

'This is the public inquiry into “historic” child sex abuse in high places, which the Home Secretary ordered when the Paedos In High Places panic was in full Corporal Jones mode.'

That was after Simon Danczuk MP and his aide Matthew Baker had published their piece of flowery flannel documented in a book entitled 'Smile for the Camera'.  In a review in Northern Voices No.15, Les May describes the book as 'a series of assertions and opinions by the authors'.  Mr. May writes: 

'There's gossip, second and third hand stories originating in bars; supposedly verbatim accounts of conversations which took place thirty years ago; accounts which we are led to believe are the authentic voices of men who had unpleasant encounters with Cyril yet which have a strange sameness about them; few definite dates; a garbled chronology; the same story apparently told more than once; misquotation of documents; a seeming absence of proper methodology; and no indication of how many abused men they interviewed.'

Despite this lonely criticism from people in Rochdale who have for years closely followed the case of Cyril Smith and Simon Danczuk, and published comments in the small regional publication Northern Voices, Danczuk has gone on to win the Contrarian award and plaudits nationally for his impact on public debate mostly owing to the book that was mainly written by Baker.