An Unwieldy Public Inquiry

Theresa May Bounced Into Folly of Overarching Probe

by Brian Bamford

IN April 2014, I received a message on my mobile phone from the journalist Peter Hinchcliffe from ROCHDALE ONLINE tipping me of about a press conference at Rochdale Town Hall called by Colin Lambert the then Labour leader of Rochdale Council.  At that conference Councillor Lambert changed the terms of reference of an inquiry he had previously set-up to investigate historic child abuse in Rochdale at Knowl View residential school up in Bamford village.  Following the publication in March that year, of a book by the local Labour MP Simon Danczuk, entitled 'Smile For The Camera: The Double Life of Cyril Smith', claiming to expose child abuse in Rochdale and beyond, Councillor Lambert then felt he had to respond and at that press conference he was supported by the then Greater Manchester Chief Constable Sir Peter Fahy.

But if Colin Lambert felt under pressure at that time to act on child abuse in Rochdale, the then Home Secretary Theresa May similarly responded by setting-up a national public inquiry on historic child abuse which ultimately swallowed-up the new Rochdale investigation led by Neil Garnham QC .  So began the creation of a monstrous over-arching national inquiry with 'eyes bigger than its belly' fanned to fever-pitch by ambitious politicians like the MP, Simon Danczuk, and  an assortment of hungry journalists.

The ultimate result of this all consuming national investigation has been institutional indigestion and administrative flatulence. This is obvious to most observers, though writers on this Northern Voices' Blog have been giving warnings about this for months on end.

Last Saturday, an editorial in the Financial Times (FT) announced:

'Confidence in the inquiry is so low that some alleged victims claim it it was set up to fail.'

We on Northern Voices, together with John Walker the former editor of the 'Rochdale Alternative Paper' (which had outed Cyril Smith in May 1979), in the Autumn of 2011 supplied much of the evidence of child abuse at Cambridge House that triggered this whole issue, and was used by Simon Danczuk and his aide Matthew Baker in the production of their book*. 

The FT editor last Saturday wrote:

'For a public inquiry to merit the time and money required, it must have something concrete about which to inquire.  It must be able to obtain evidence on which it can reasonably get at the facts.  And it must have a remit that it can plausibly complete within a reasonable period of time.'

The 'Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse', set up by Theresa May, did not meet these requirements.  It is too unwieldy and extensive,  It will have to depend on remembered testimony from people with ageing memories. 

The now Prime Minister, Theresa May as Home Secretary, probably acted with the best of intentions when under pressure of the Jimmy Savile and Cyril Smith revelations, she set up the inquiry two years ago.  In the end the inquiry now involves probes into 13 public bodies, and is expected to accomplish in a few years what the police couldn't do over decades.  It also aims to do a forensic study into how children can best be protected in future.

Perhaps, in the light of all this, we should not be surprised given all this that its development has been painfully slow or that the casualties and fall-out of chairs and other legal representatives have left the child abuse inquiry looking like a farce.

The first chair of the child abuse inquiry, Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, resigned amid questions about the role of her brother who had served as attorney-general during the 1980s.  The second chair was driven out following a barrage of criticism about her “establishment links”.  The third resigned, and the forth, an experienced social worker, is already under attack.

Last weekend the editor of the FT points to what might be the root of the problem:

'This shows the folly of allowing those who are party to an inquiry to drive the process.  There is a difference between heeding their views and surrendering to the loudest voices...'

It seems that it is vital to get the right terms of reference for these kind of inquiries.  While the inquiry into the Bloody Sunday massacre in Northern Ireland took 12 years it only had to cover the events of one day, and it took 12 years to complete.  This current Historic Child Abuse Inquiry is so open-ended it is likely to surpass that, and in two-years it has already cost £20 million and it hasn't heard one hour of testimony yet. 
* Smile for the Camera: The Double Life of Cyril Smith Hardcover – 16 Apr 2014 by Simon Danczuk  (Author) and Matthew Baker (author)› 
Neil Garnham QC

Harvey Proctor: Goddard Inquiry & 'Long Grass'

by Les May

LAST August, Harvey Proctor courageously sacrificed his anonymity in order to expose what he evidently considered an abuse of process in the way that accusations of child abuse and being a party to murder had been investigated.  Yesterday he took the fight literally to Scotland Yard's door by holding a second press conference about the affair just a few metres away at St Ermin’s Hotel, Westminster.  

But the most interesting thing he had to say was not about the accusations or the police investigation, but about the public inquiry into historical child abuse and a separate judge-led probe into how Scotland Yard dealt with claims against public figures.

He said, 'The outcome of these two fake inquiries will be a whitewash and a cover-up and a deliberate exercise in kicking the issue into the long grass until the architects of the scandal have moved on to collect their pensions.'
The 'overarching' Goddard inquiry will probably be taking evidence for the next five years according to the most optimistic predictions and up to ten years if we believe the most pessimistic.   It has been suggested that to digest the material collected and to write the final report will take a further three years.  
If these predictions are reasonably accurate the results of an inquiry announced in 2014 will become available in 2023 or even as late as 2028.  That is very 'long grass' indeed.
The Garnham inquiry was established by Rochdale council in 2014 to look at the allegations against Cyril Smith relating to Cambridge House which date from the 1960s, and were exclusively revealed in the Rochdale Alternative Paper in 1979 (RAP), and the allegations of abuse at Knowl View special school which were first publicly aired in 1995.  Both were 'rediscovered' by Simon Danczuk sometime after 2012 and presented in a garbled form in his book 'Smile for the Camera'.  The report of the inquiry was due to be available by the end of July 2014.
But recently the Garnham inquiry was abandoned and seemingly subsumed into the Goodard inquiry which on the most optimistic assumptions will nor report until 2023.  Which will be some sixty years after Cyril Smith's activities at Cambridge House and by which time the men on the receiving end of his attentions will be approaching eighty.
It won't be quite so long in the case of Knowl View; just about thirty five years.  But there is a 'sting in the tail' in the story of Knowl View.  When this story was aired in 1995 there were claims of a 'cover up' by Rochdale council.  Such a 'cover up' could only have taken place between 1991 when Aids worker Phil Shepherd reported on the high levels of sexual activity between the boys, and 1994 when the school closed.  The two council leaders during this time were Richard Farnell and Paul Rowan.
'Smile for the Camera' has ten pages devoted to Knowl View.  And Cyril Smith's name is very prominent on seven of them.  There is certainly little emphasis on the claims of a 'cover up'.  Are we being carefully steered away from the very idea of a 'cover up'?
As I am more inclined to think in terms of 'cock up' not 'cover up' such thoughts had never occurred to me until idly flicking through the acknowledgements in Danczuk's book a couple of days ago I came across the name of the same Richard Farnell who was being thanked for allowing himself to be interviewed.  Presumably the question of a 'cover up' about the goings on at Knowl View was never raised.

Coun. Farnell: 'No interference from politicians'

ON ROCHDALE online on the 8th, June 2014, it was reported that an 'independent inquiry (under Neil Garnham QC) into the role of Rochdale Council is due to report at the end of July.'

That was the inquiry that last week Rochdale Council has just binned or otherwise disposed of by merging into the overarching Goddard inquiry, that Lord Justice Wolf in yesterday's Sunday Mail said has become so unwieldy that he feared it may  undermine the British justice system:  the Goddard inquiry is expected to take five years in its perambulations and then more time before it is published.

When the local independent inquiry of Neil Garnham QC  was set up in 2014, the Rochdale Council leader, Richard Farnell, stoutly declared:   

'Until such time as the Review is finalised I am legally advised that, as Leader of the Council, it would be inappropriate for me to comment further [and that] the review is very important to the Council and Rochdale and the Inquiry should be allowed to get on with its job without interference from politicians'

It was noticeable that Council Farnell last week left it to his deputy to announce that this local review by Neil Garnham had been now sidelined and swallowed up by the seemingly eternal Goddard inquiry.

Rochdale Council Scrap Sex Abuse Inquiry

The letter below was published in today's Rochdale Observer.

It outlines the history of the setting up of the inquiry into the

abuse of young lads at Cambridge House by Cyril Smith in the 1960s,

and into the quite separate allegations of abuse at the residential school

Knowl View.  The Garnham inquiry was set up by the then leader

of Rochdale Council Colin Lambert in April 2014, it has now been

closed down by a Labour Council led by Richard Farnell.

Dear Sir,
Now that the Garnham inquiry has been axed perhaps we should remind
ourselves of why it was thought necessary to establish a local inquiry
in the first place.

Claims of a so called 'cover up' about events at Knowl View special
school can be traced back to an article which appeared in the
Independent on Sunday in September 1995.

What does not seem to be disputed is that the 1991 report by Aids worker
Philip Shepherd which detailed claims of homosexual activity between the
boys at the school, some of it coercive in nature, and of boys
importuning at the then Smith Street toilets, was sent to both the
Education and Social Services departments of RMBC and that a further
report by a consultant clinical psychologist was commissioned.  This
confirmed Mr Shepherd's findings.

Mr Shepherd's report was the basis for the 1995 article, though not for
the interpretation that was put upon it.  Cyril Smith was not referred
to in either the report or the article derived from it.

Following Mr Danczuk's rediscovery of the story of Cyril Smith's
activities at Cambridge House which had been published in Rochale
Alternative Paper (RAP) in May 1979 these two quite separate stories
became conflated.  Mr Danczuk used his book to try to persuade readers
that Smith had been involved in abusing boys at Knowl View though the
'evidence' he produced will not stand up to even slight scrutiny.

I don't believe there was a deliberate 'cover up' because I fail to see
how anyone could have found an instant solution to all the very serious
problems which were uncovered.  Immediate closure of the school was
clearly not an option.

So the question which needs to be answered is, 'did the people who knew
about what was going on at the school, whether they were officers or
councillors, make a serious attempt to sort out the problems that had
come to light?'

If Mr Justice Garnham has produced an interim report I think we can
assume that this contains details of which council officers saw the 1991
Shepherd report and the February 1992 report by consultant psychologist
Valerie Mellor, what action they took themselves, what further action
they recommended to councillors and which councillors they reported to.

The leaders of the council in the relevant time span, the early 1990s,
were Richard Farnell and Paul Rowan.

If suspicions of a 'cover up' are to be dispelled it seems to me most
unfortunate that one of these two men is leader of the council at a time
when axing the Garnham inquiry is up for discussion.  The answer would
seem to be to publish the interim report.

Les May