The Curse of Gesture Politics

by Les May

THE decision to posthumously strip Cyril Smith of his ‘Freedom of the Borough’ is unlikely to change the impression that Rochdale is a town where some strange things are allowed to go unchecked.

What it demonstrates is that Rochdale councillors are far happier with a symbolic gesture against a dead man who, more than 50 years ago at Cambridge House hostel, took an unsavoury interest in the genitals of a number of young men, than censuring a fellow councillor who has admitted to a ‘corrupt practice’ at the local election six months ago.

I don’t make reference to Smith in regard to Knowl View because the Danczuk book so muddied the waters that I doubt we shall ever have a true picture of Smith’s involvement, if any, in the unsavoury goings on at the school.  What we do know is that both the reports submitted to RMBC in the early 1990s dealt with sexual activity between the boys, some of it coercive in nature.

What will be of interest is whether the people behind the recent move against the memory of Smith will feel that they have to call upon Richard Farnell to be thrown out of the Labour party when the bill for ‘compensation’ falls on the desk of the Chief Executive, as it surely will.  Because of course that’s what the character assassination after Child Sex Abuse inquiry of Richard Farnell, was all about, upping the compo!

I remain unconvinced about Richard Farnell’s culpability as I don’t think whether he knew or did not know about the goings on at Knowl View would have made the slightest difference to the action taken to try to sort it out.  The same goes for Paul Rowen.  Hindsight is such a wonderful thing!

******** 

John Walker challenges Les May's analysis

DEAR LES (MAY),

I defer to nobody in my admiration for your dogged and forensic analysis of Danczuk and his book. Were others more aware of it, we could have been spared the adulation that he received as he dragged his collecting tin around TV studios and newspaper offices promoting both it and himself.

However, I would disagree with your analysis in this article - and, for once, think that Danczuk called it right about the role of prominent Liberals, nationally and locally - in their silence over the matters that the Child Abuse inquiry examined.  Indeed, the inquiry itself was critical of the role of later LibDem MP Paul Rowen, when he was leader of Rochdale council.

Where I think Danczuk hit the nail on the head, in particular, is about David (now Lord) Steel.

Steel was leader of the Liberal Party at the time RAP published its allegations about Smith in May 1979.  We (I was co-editor of the paper), on legal advice, wrote to Steel for his comments on the story, prior to publication.  We published the response of his press secretary - 'nothing much to see here - move on' was a paraphrase of that response.

I have challenged Steel about this publicly, over recent years - on the airwaves (World At One) and in print (Private Eye).  His responses have wavered between: 'I didn't know', to 'nobody else took the matter up, so it couldn't have been important', to it 'it was just tittle tattle that didn't merit investigation'.

Well, clearly all three of those explanations can't be right.

At the time RAP published the story, the Liberals former leader Jeremy Thorpe was facing trial on conspiracy to murder (a docu-drama on this will be shown by the BBC soon), and another of the handful of Liberal MPs (Peter Bessel) was in severe financial and other difficulties, on both sides of the Atlantic, that eventually caused him to stand down from Parliament.  There was not a national political journalist in Westminster who was not aware of the RAP story.

It is inconceivable that the leader of a party with only a dozen or so MPs, with two of them up to their neck in serious trouble would not have taken rumours about a third very seriously and attempted to establish what was going on.  Either that, or Steel was a seriously deficient party leader - and few people have accused him of that.

Two postumous biographies of Jeremy Thorpe have made it very clear that Thorpe's solicitor was very aware of the RAP/Smith story and were fearful that it would adversely impact on their client at his trial.  They went to considerable ends to ensure that Fleet Street did not touch the story - including using the considerable weight and influence of Harold Wilson's then 'Lord - fixit' Arnold Goodman to keep the papers quiet.

So in in a calculated gamble - Steel just braved it out.  Nobody picked up the story, and his party was saved further embarrassment.

One result of no action being taken against Smith is that others with deviant interests in under age boys would have been emboldend to think that they too could get away with inappropriate behaviour. The terrible trail of abuse at Knowl View is one possible outcome.

To return to David Steel. The Child Abuse inquiry is critical of the process by which Smith was knighted in 1988, and is critical of Thatcher (the awarding Prime Minister), and the Political Honours Scrutiny Committee - PHSC - (the body responsible for vetting the appropriateness of nominees)for allowing his name to go forward to the queen, to appoint.

I have written elsewhere ('The Queen Has Been Pleased - 500 years of corruption in the British Honours System' - Secker and Warburg 1986) of the supine, establishment white-washing nature of the Committee.  So their turning a blind eye to the Smith knighthood was simply par for the course for them at the time.

The Child Abuse Inquiry rather missed the point about Smith's knighthood.  The nomination for a political honour - for that is what it was - would have had to have come from the recipient's party leader. In this case - David Steel. Despite what was known in the Liberal Party about Smith and Cambridge House - Steel was still prepared to nominate Smith.  The inquiry's opprobrium about Smith's knighthood should have been directed at Steel and not Thatcher or the PHSC.

Why should Steel have nominated Smith at that time, for that award? Well, his party was in a delicate stage of negotiations with the SDP about a merger - Smith was always a loud mouthed maverick.  The offer and award of a knighthood could be used to shut him up and get one potential obstacle our of the way for Steel, as he sought to cement the merger.  And as we know: Smith got his knighthood, his silence was achieved and the Liberal Democratic Party was born.

David Steel was the teflon man as far as the Child Abuse Inquiry was concerned - not a witness, nor a feature of its report.

I think the report had many deficiencies - and the void around Steel was one of them.

For once - I agree with Danczuk on the Liberals escaping blame. But I won't be taking up his offer of a drink, to celebrate!

John Walker:  former joint editor of Rochdale's Alternative Paper (RAP)

Child abuse inquiry finds former Rochdale Council leader "lied under oath."

 "SHAMEFUL" - Ex-Rochdale Council leader - Richard Farnell

THE Labour Party have suspended former Rochdale Labour council leader, Richard Farnell, after he was found by the Independent Inquiry on Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), to have lied under oath. 

In the investigations first published report, Farnell was branded as "shameful" by the inquiry for refusing to take personal responsibility for the abuse - carried out by others, which occurred when he was first Rochdale Labour council leader between 1986-1992. The report describes Cllr Farnell as a person who "bullied and browbeat people" (which he denied) who was "bullish, self-opinionated, and unyielding."  It concluded that he was a person who was "prepared to blame others without acknowledging his own failures of leadership."

The report describes how for over 30-years, children were being sexually abused at Knowl View school, Rochdale town centre, the bus station, and the "notorious" Smith Street public toilets that were situated directly across the road from the Rochdale council offices.

The report says that the former Liberal leader of the council, ex-MP, Paul Rowen, who led the council in the mid-1990s, "bore considerable responsibility" for the school too, at best being "insufficiently inquisitive" about it and at worst having "turned a blind eye" by choosing to give its problems a "low priority."

In evidence given to the inquiry, Farnell claimed that he had only become aware of these concerns in the last "two or three years". Yet, fellow Rochdale Labour councillor, Peter Joinson, told the inquiry that Cllr Farnell had admitted in 2014 to having seen a copy of a report about the issue at the time, and by Mrs Cavanagh (head of Rochdale Social Services), who said she had "no doubt" he would have seen a copy of the report in 1992. The inquiry was also told that the then chair of education, Mary Moffatt, had also been aware of the allegations. The report therefore concluded:

"It defies belief that Mr Farnell was unaware of the events involving knowl View School..."

Councillor Farnell was once employed as a press and publicity officer (spin doctor) for Tameside Council where he was nicknamed Doctor Goebbels and sometimes, Mahatma propa-gandhi, for his abilities to spin a tale. Last March (2017), The Sun newspaper reported that as Rochdale council leader, Farnell, had "treated" himself to a 51% pay rise  - up to £47,304 from 31,224, while many Rochdalians saw their living standards fall and their council tax soar.  His nemesis, Cllr Joinson, was an elected Labour member of Tameside Council for seventeen years between 1987-2004. 

As a press and publicity officer, Farnell appears particularly accident prone.  If he has any future left in politics, he will have to do some explaining  to pull himself out of this mess which he has created for himself. At the time of writing, we understand Greater Manchester Police (GMP), are investigating 'possible offences' relating to the findings of the inquiry.

The Benefits of 20-20 Hindsight

by Les May

OSTENSIBLY Simon Danczuk’s 2014 book ‘Smile for the Camera’ is about the sexual peccadillos of his predecessor Cyril Smith.  But a careful reading shows that the intent was to so closely associate Smith’s antics with the Liberal-Democrats that the party became permanently unelectable in Rochdale so securing a safe Labour seat for Danczuk for as long as he wanted it.

It is something of an irony that the major casualty from the fall out from all the hares that Danczuk set running in the book is Richard Farnell, until recently Leader of Rochdale Council and a supporter of Danczuk long after the latter had reached his ‘sell by date’ as an MP.

Perhaps fearing that it will suffer in the May elections from the bad publicity the Labour party has suspended Farnell after the report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse said he had lied to the Inquiry.

It should however be pointed out that the report is quite liberal in its criticism of quite a number of the people trying to make decisions about how to deal with what was happening at Knowl View in the years around 1990.  Paul Rowen, who followed Farnell as Leader of the Council after May 1992, Ian Davey, Director of Social Services and Diana Cavanagh, Director of Education, are all criticised to varying degrees, which makes it all the more surprising that at one point the report refers to ‘some of Rochdale Council’s beleaguered officers’.

Twenty-twenty hindsight is wonderful thing especially when viewing events from a distance of a quarter of a century or more.  The sheer volume of detail presented in the Report of the Investigation makes it appear unlikely that any one person could have grasped the complexity of the issues at the time.

No doubt we shall be told ‘lessons will be learned’ and we shall hear even more of the new mantra of ‘safeguarding’, which seems to be a codeword for taking even more children into care when the money might be better spent on supporting their parents in their own home. Some of the children taken into care after the Middleton Satanic Abuse panic ended up at Knowl View for a time.

******

Rochdale Chief Executive & the Abuse Scandal

LAST week, Steve Rumbelow the Chief Executive of Rochdale Council apologised for 'the events that took place at Cambridge House and Knowl View and other establishments in Rochdale' decades ago from the early 1960s.  
Mr Rumbelow said:
'The council acknowledges that there were significant failings, both in the way that Knowl View School was managed, and in the council’s response to concerns about sexual abuse within and outside the school.'
Rumbelow declares:
'That was, frankly, unforgivable. On behalf of Rochdale Borough Council, I would like to apologise sincerely to anyone who was failed by the council during those years.'
He then concludes:
'We cannot turn the clock back. But as the current chief executive of the council, working with the director of children’s services and partner agencies such as the police, and through the Rochdale Safeguarding Children’s Board, I can make sure that we continue do our level best to safeguard our children and young people now and in the future.
'The council is doing everything it can to support and work with the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) in its task and I hope that it can help us fully understand what happened in Rochdale all those years ago.'

This tearful, contrite apology by the Rochdale Chief Exec. Rumbelow comes on the eve of the IICSA hearing into evidence about Rochdale for three weeks, beginning on the 9 October.  Yet one can't help but think of it as an attempt at damage limitation, in order to draw the poison that may be expose on the body politic of Rochdale, when and if, all the evidence comes out in the near future.

Since 2012, and all the revelations about Cyril Smith promoted by the former Rochdale MP, Simon Danczuk, it has been the fashion owing to the Danczuk book, to blame the old Liberal Party for what happened at Cambridge House and what is alleged to have happened at Knowl View.  Sources inside the Labour are now suggesting that the findings of the current inquiry will be uncomfortable for the Rochdale Labour Party.

Afterall, Cyril Smith was a leading Labour Party councillor at the time he is said to have abused the lads at Cambridge House.

Over a year ago, a participant in the Operation Clifton told N.V. that the current leader of the Rochdale Council, Richard Farnell, had reason to be concerned if the evidence came out about his awareness of what was happening at Knowl View in the early 1990s.  Souces close to the Rochdale Labour Party are now confirming that he could well have had access to a report expressing concern about conditions at Knowl View during his term in office as leader of the Labour Party in the 1990s.

Knowl View residential school was what is called a total institution by sociologists:  prisons, hospitals, asylums, holiday camps and private schools are all forms of total institution.  Yet, Paul Rowen, another former leader of Rochdale MBC, has admitted to seeing a report on conditions at Cambridge House, and has told N.V. that it was really only a part-time total institution in so far as the lads went home at weekends.  We need to understand the context of the institution in which the abuse is alleged to have occurred.

******

Right Honourable Member, Simon Danczuk MP

THE ROCHDALE website of the Rochdale MP, Simon Danczuk, still proclaims the following:
'Simon has keen interests, which are shaped both by his own life experience and by the social research he has done over many years. These include alleviating poverty, getting more young people into gainful employment, tackling antisocial behaviour and supporting the development of small businesses. In addition Simon sits on the Communities and Local Government Select Committee and has a strong interest in local government and the devolution of power to local communities.
Simon has won recognition for his campaigning on the issue of child sexual abuse. He has been instrumental in changing attitudes towards child abuse by making it a mainstream topic of political debate. Simon’s has called for more Government action in the wake of the Rochdale and Rotherham grooming scandals and his campaign on the Westminster scandal has led to a major Government enquiry. Simon was named the Political Campaigner of the Year in 2014 for his work on this issue.'
LAST NIGHT, The Sun's website reported:
'SEX-mad Labour MP Simon Danczuk was urged to quit yesterday after The Sun revealed he had sex with a 22-year-old woman on his office desk.

Paul Rowen, Danczuk’s predecessor as Rochdale MP, said: “What can he do next that will bring the town into disrepute?
“The sooner he goes the better.
“Over the last two years he’s dragged Rochdale’s name through the mud.
“People are sick and tired of his escapades.”
Ex-Lib Dem councillor Liz Thirsk said Danczuk should step down.
She said: “Sometimes it is hard to imagine we are talking about an MP.
“It’s the behaviour of a sex-obsessed teenage idiot".'
The Sun told yesterday how Danczuk, 49, sent 6,000 messages, many sleazy, to the 22-year-old, who we are calling Alice.
He also spanked her and they had sex on the desk in his constituency office, paid for by taxpayers.
We had previously exposed dad-of-four Danczuk for sexting a girl of 17.
His texts to his latest conquest bizarrely interspersed details of his favourite fantasies with advice on local locksmiths and skip hire firms.
During one X-rated exchange, Alice asked: “Do you know any locksmiths in the Rochdale area?”
Danczuk replied: “Yes, Lancashire Locks on Oldham Rd.
“Use them all the time.”
She also asked the MP to recommend a skip hire company.
He replied: “Try Dicksons.
“But don’t over fill it like I did, and got charged more.”
When Alice asked him to tweet more skip information, he replied: “I’m not doing some random f****** tweet.
“About a skip.
“Supposing I tweeted it, then someone offers me one for free.
“It’ll end up in some skip ­scandal.
“Skipgate or something.
“So I get a free skip and lend it someone else?
“The Sun would be all over like a rash.”

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.

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

Rochdale Council couldn't protect kids at school!

Paul Rowen knew about problems at Knowl View

 

PAUL Rowen, who took over from Richard Farnell as the leader of Rochdale Council after Richard Farnell left the office in 1992, says he was made aware of a report about the Bamford special school 'the week after taking over', but has told the Rochdale Observer he failed to read it because he 'foolishly thought the issue had been dealt with'.

 

Mr. Rowen is now blaming the police and the Crown Prosecution Service for failing to secure prosecutions after the allegations of continuing abuse at Knowl View came to light.  He said:

'There were still ongoing concerns and the police were still saying that while they suspected people at the school were involved they hadn't got grounds to prosecute.  On that basis, we took the decision to ask the governors to close the school.'

 

It seems, in Mr. Rowen's view, that either the police or the Crown Prosecution Service 'didn't feel the boys were credible witnesses and they didn't feel there was a chance they could secure a conviction.'

 

At present Greater Manchester Police say that they are reviewing their files to assess if there is enough evidence to support opening a criminal investigation into the previous allegations which were not followed up.

 

Despite all this activity over Knowl View in the 1990s in which Paul Rowen found out soon after taking over Richard Farnell's job, Mr. Farnell who has just seized power on the Rochdale Council as its leader is still insisting that he didn't know anything about the allegations at Knowl View in 1992 when he was last leader.  Chris Jones in this Wednesday's Rochdale Observer writes:

'Coun Farnell told the Observer allegations surrounding Knowl View "were not brought to his attention" when he was in charge and "any suggestion that he knew about the allegations" was "nonsense".'

 

Two months ago a former chief executive of Rochdale Council, John Piece, claimed he had seen 'no evidence' of a cover up. 

 

Northern Voices wonders if sleepwalking is part of the job description at Rochdale Council.