by
Les May
SO
the ‘Danczuk Saga’ has finally come to an end. In
just two years he has managed to convert a
12,400
majority in
2015 into
a total vote of just 883.
Clearly people vote for the party not the man because Labour’s
Tony Lloyd has
a majority of more than 14,000. What
went wrong for Danczuk?
I
have
been chronicling Danczuk antics on the Northern Voices blog since he
published
his book about
Cyril Smith, ‘Smile
for the Camera’,
in April 2014. But
the Danczuk story goes back much further than that. In
fact I could push it back to 1992 which is when I believe
Danczuk found out about Cyril’s spanking of young men at Cambridge
House hostel after reading the story published in a copy of the May
1979 edition of the Rochdale Alternative Paper (RAP) which is
archived in Rochdale Reference Library. It
is a reasonable assumption that he would have come across copies of
RAP whilst undertaking sociological research about the town.
In
November
2006,
the Labour magazine Tribune published the results of an investigation
into what it
called ‘allegations
of irregularities, which point to a concerted effort to oust
non-Blairites from standing’
which
it said ‘raise
serious questions over whether the choice of prospective MPs is being
conducted in a free and fair manner.’ And
who was one of those prospective MPs? Surprise, surprise, it was
none other than Simon Danczuk!
This
is what Tribune went on to say about the shenanigans: The
selection for the Rochdale constituency, due end on January 22, has
been described by one NEC member as "a debacle". Before
the selection began, a regional officer was accused of assisting
Simon Danzcuk by allowing his company Vision 21 to conduct a survey
of the attitudes of Rochdale members. The shortlisting meeting was
halted when a vote of no confidence was passed in the selection
process. Several branch nomination meetings had to be re-held after
irregularities were discovered. At the reconvened shortlisting
meeting, an all-male shortlist of eight was agreed, despite this
being contrary to party rules. All members were issued with a postal
ballot, after it was discovered that the original postal votes had
been opened prematurely.
(The
www link which carried the Tribune article is now dead. If you wish
to check it out for yourself I will send you a copy I downloaded
earlier this year if you contact an NV editor.)
Then
there was the strange story ‘Would-be
MP victim of death threats’
which
appeared in
the Lancashire Telegraph in January 2007. The would be MP was Simon
Danczuk who was of course the source for the story. Caveat
emptor!
Now
at this point Simon isn’t an MP. But there’s more to come before
we get to the
election in May
2010. There’s the little matter of the Spanish Holiday which went
wrong. That’s the first one in
2006 not
the second one in
2016 which
went even more wrong.
What
all these stories amount to is that nothing to do with the public
image of Simon Danczuk is straightforward. The
RAP story about Smith from 1979 was about the abuse of power and was
based on affidavits by the young men concerned. (I know this is true,
I have copies.) The really interesting question is why the media
ignored it back then.
The
Danczuk version in
the book involves
Smith
the repeatedly offending sexual predator, the
Security Services protecting him,
a
false story about Northamptonshire police stopping him and finding a
boot load of child porn, then letting him free after a ‘phone call
to London’, tries to implicate him in the murky happenings at Knowl
View special school because he was a Governor, and has a supposed
‘whistleblower’ who saw absolutely nothing and
whose
story when published in 1995 made no mention of Smith.
What
amazes me is that so many people were taken in by this book. All you
have to do to spot the problem is to note
the absence of sources in the bibliography then ask
Danczuk how many men he interviewed who claim to have been assaulted
by Smith. I have tried on several occasions and he has never
replied. So as an editor of N.V. I
drew my own conclusions
Once
Danczuk had set his hares running, the police were duty bound to
investigate. If
you add up the cost of all the police investigations which resulted
from Danczuk’s claims it runs into the millions of pounds. And
when the police found insufficient evidence for the CPS to prosecute,
according
to Danczuk it
was their fault! But
that does not excuse Leicestershire police discussing aspects of the
investigation into Greville Janner with Danczuk. Aspects which later
appeared in a national newspaper. (See Appendix).
Since
the last day of December 2015, Danczuk has been the political
equivalent of ‘dead meat’.
The
proximate cause of his undoing was the so called ‘sexting’
incident involving
a 17 years old ‘financial dominatrix’.
From
then on it was a bad year for him.
But as I said earlier nothing is straightforward with Danczuk and
his own antics ensured that things went from bad to worse.
We
may not have heard the last of Simon. I don’t think that a
decision has yet been made on whether the overpayment of £11,000 in
accommodation expenses for the two of his children constituted fraud.
Now
that Rochdale is bidding adieu to Mr D. what sort of reputation will
he leave behind? With the best will in the world I find it difficult
to see him as anything other than a man who milked his position as an
MP for
his own ends
and who even in adversity never missed an opportunity to line his own
pockets. All perfectly legally of course. But
that does not take away the smell.
Appendix
25
August 2015
Chief
Constable
Leicestershire
Police
Force Headquarters
St Johns
Enderby
Leicester.
LE19 2BX
Dear
Sir,
I
refer to statements made by Simon Danczuk MP in the House of Commons
on 23 June 2015 and recorded in Hansard Column 214WH. I have
extracted below the portion of his statement which I believe raises
matters of concern about the actions of your force.
Quotation
starts:
'I
know the police are furious about this, and rightly so. Anyone who
has heard the accusations would be similarly outraged. I have met
Leicestershire police and discussed the allegations in some detail:
children being violated, raped and tortured, some in the very
building in which we now sit. The official charges are: 14 indecent
assaults on a male under 16 between 1969 and 1988; two indecent
assaults between ’84 and ’88; four counts of buggery of a male
under 16 between ’72 and ’87; and two counts of buggery between
1977 and 1988. My office has spoken to a number of the alleged
victims and heard their stories.'
Quotation
ends.
Taken
at its face value this suggests that Leicestershire police discussed
with a third party, who though an MP, does not represent a
constituency within the Leicestershire police area, matters of a
confidential nature relating to a police investigation. I draw
attention to the fact that Mr Danczuk specifically used the word
'discussed' suggesting that information was passed to him by the
police service rather than that he was simply questioned about
information which he might hold which was relevant to the police
investigation. The detailed information regarding the nature of the
charges in the remainder of the statement suggests that this
interpretation is correct.
Even
if it is considered appropriate to discuss these matters with Mr
Danczuk the question arises as to why he was apparently not
instructed that these matters were confidential. Mr Danczuk's choice
of words in the first two sentences of the above extract could leave
the impression that by not instructing him that the matter was
confidential the police service was attempting to use an
extra-judicial method to bring pressure to bear upon the Director of
Public Prosecutions. I stress that I am not making such an
allegation.
The
apparent failure to instruct Mr Danczuk that the discussions were
confidential extends to an article in the Sun newspaper of 24 June
2015 headed 'Lord Janner "Raped kids in Parliament" claims
Labour MP Simon Danczuk', and in which the matters discussed with
him by Leicestershire police were repeated. As Mr Danczuk had made
his claims under Parliamentary privilege he gave himself, and the
Sun, protection against being sued for libel.
On 24 July
2015 Mr Danczuk received a payment of £10,000 from the owners of the
Sun for an article he had contributed to. He declined to say which
article the cash related to.
If
this payment does relate to the Sun article I believe it raises
further questions about the wisdom of discussing material relating to
the Janner case with Mr Danczuk without instructing him that the
matter was confidential.
I
am arranging for a copy of this letter to be sent to the Home Office
because I think the concerns raised are applicable to similar
discussions between other police forces and MPs who may use
parliamentary privilege to make the discussions public.
Yours
sincerely,
Dr
Les May
Posts
