Rochdale's Reputation for Cover-ups

ON Wed 18 Mar 2015 a former editor of Rochdale's Alternative Paper (RAP), John Walker, wrote a piece in The Guardian entitled 'Our Cyril Smith story came out in 1979. What followed was a 36-year cover-up':

'Finally the hunt is on to nail those responsible for aborting police inquiries into the child sex abuse allegations against the late Liberal MP Cyril Smith and other – as yet unnamed – establishment figures from the 1970s and 1980s. But his abuses have been covered up and ignored for over 35 years. Why should the victims feel that anything much has changed in recent days'...

'I write as co-editor of the Rochdale Alternative Paper, which in May 1979 published a 2,000 word article, quoting in graphic detail from the testimonies of boys Smith had sexually abused a decade and a half earlier. The article was cleared legally by three prominent lawyers, on a pro-bono basis. They went through every word with a view to potential libel pitfalls. On legal advice we sought Smith’s comments prior to publication. We received none directly: only a bungled “gagging” writ, which failed to prevent publication...

'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.'

The conclusion John Walker came to in 2015 was:

'Smith had got away with it. He increased his parliamentary majority and, emboldened by his escape from justice, possibly continued his abuse of pubescent boys for two decades. Action in 1979 could have stopped him in his tracks, and prevented abuse and misery for future victims. Files on Smith’s child abuse were passed around police forces and the security services in the 1970s and 1980s – with no prosecutions. More covering up and inaction, instead of an end to his abuse.'

On that occasion following the emergence of the first Jimmy Savile revelations in 2012, Northern Voices and Paul Waugn then of the Politics Home site (now of the Huff Post) interviewed several of Smith's victims ultimately resulting in Channel 4’s Dispatches programme running an episode on Smith. Which Walker says 'did justice to the subject, but was allotted a ludicrous graveyard airing slot'.

Editorial Observation:

In recent times the case of the self-confessed electoral fraud Cllr. Faisal Rana and his surprising rise to power on Rochdale Council, has followed a pattern parelling the cover-ups involving Cyril Smith. A former CID officer told me that a report on Smith had been sent to the then Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) but had come back as 'Not in the Public Interest'. Similarly complaints have been ongoing about Cllr. Faisal Rana and it seems that the Rochdale police may have toned-down their report to the CPP and have failed to emphasis that it may have involved postal vote fraud which would require a prison sentence.

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Media Freedom in Oldham & Beyond

From journalism's Oven-Ready Corporate Cooks
to a kind of 'Cook Your Own Local Media' 
by Brian Bamford

YESTERDAY Chris Rea, the President of the Manchester Branch of the National Union of Journalists, addressed a packed Focus Day:  'Creating Our Own Media' [sponsored by The WORD] aimed at promoting a move towards grassroots media by encouraging and energising the emergence of a free and independent journalism based in the community.

Chris said that control the national press in this country was in the hands of three companies:  News UK; the Rothermere group and Trinity Mirror.  He added that the local press is owned by only about ten companies. 

This media corporatism, he argued required the 'development of of our own institutions'. 

The problem of the decline of liberal culture

In his essay 'The Prevention of Literature' [Tribune 4th, January 1946], George Orwell wrote:

'In the future it is possible that a new kind of literature will arises, but no such thing is at present is imaginable.  It seems much likelier that if the liberal culture that we have lived in since the Renaissance actually comes to an end, the literary art will perish with it.'

Is the liberal culture we once took for granted coming to an end with the shift from reading printed hard copy media?

In some of the workshops at yesterday's Focus Day, some of the participants were concerned about print journalism's rapid decline.  A workshop discussed the technicalities of production of an alternative media in both print and on-line journalism.  The problems of distribution, circulation, finance and advertising was considered.  The content, the lack of a coherent 'House Style', and the layout of The Word newspaper were examined critically.  

The Word newspaper, it was admitted, had not always had a clear 'House Style':  Slabs of column-justified print smothered in some cases a full A3 size page from side to side and in some cases from top to bottom without the relief of a picture.  It was claimed that what was needed was short snappy articles, sometimes with quirky story-lines and photos was what was needed.

It was pointed out that these problems were not unique to the present time, and that George Orwell had discussed the issues of straight forward language in the presentation of ideas.  That fanciful writing often resulted in confusing the meaning of what we are saying, even from ourselves.

One lass from Romania argued for a free press and suggested that 'identity politics' in her view was an underlying threat in this country to the liberties her people had struggled to get in Romania when it was ruled by a regime of Romanian leader Nicolae Ceaușescu.

Orwell himself had predicted in 1946 [The Prevention of Literature] that:
'Newspapers will presumably continue until television techniques reaches a higher level, but apart from newspapers it is doubtful even now whether the great mass of people in industrialised countries feel the need for any kind of literature.'

He added:  'Probably novels and stories will be completely superseded by film and radio productions.  Or perhaps some kind of low-grade sensational fiction will survive, produced by a sort of conveyor belt process that reduces human initiative to a minimum.'

The Shape of Modern Media 

Well, newspapers are not surviving very well even in the main stream.  Any idea of truth being presented fearlessly in the press often seems to be an illusion.  Yet, even when Orwell was around he was then able to write:  'Radio features are commonly written by tired hacks to whom the subject and manner of treatment are dictated beforehand: even so, what they write is merely a kind of raw material to be chopped into shape by producers and censors.'

So need the participants at the Oldham's Focus Day worry about this historic development down hill?  It may explain why in 1979, when the conduct of Cyril Smith abusing lads at Cambridge House was first exposed, it was the alternative newspaper RAP [Rochdale's Alternative Paper] that then ran the story and not the mainstream press.  Indeed, the national press and local papers backed off when threatened by possible court action.  Nationally, at that time only Private Eye published the RAP revelations about Cyril Smith, and in consequence the man who became the Rochdale MP went on to serve for 20-years until 1992; only to be denounced in 2012 on this NV Blog discredited.

What we have now got is as Orwell argued, is a kind of self censorship rooted in 'stupidity' and 'economic self interest' or as he puts it more precisely: 

'The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. …  The British press is extremely centralized, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics.  But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio.' 

If anything with the coming of corporate media this situation has deteriorated since the time Orwell was writing in 1946.

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When Do the Facts Matter?

by Les May

‘Comment is free but facts are sacred’ or so wrote the Manchester Guardian editor CP Scott in 1921.  But there’s another view attributed to the radical journalist Claud Cockburn who believed ‘facts were not like pieces of gold ore in the Yukon waiting for the prospector to dig them up and give them to the world’. His Independent journalist son Patrick recently paraphrased his father’s view by writing, ‘Unlike gold nuggets waiting to be excavated, there are an infinite number of facts in the universe, but these only gain significance and have a meaning because somebody – a journalist, a policeman – decides that they matter’.

The younger Cockburn’s comments coincided with the publication of a rather pointless article in the Rochdale Observer which reminded us that when in 1979, Rochdale Alternative Paper (RAP) published an account of Cyril Smith’s antics at Cambridge House and the editors contacted the then David Steel his spokesman is reported to have said ‘All he seems to have done is spanked a few bare bottoms.’

This is a classic example of what Cockburn was getting at.  Although all the national press knew about the story because editors had been sending taxis to the RAP offices to pick up copies, like the Rochdale Observer, they chose to ignore the story.

As a result the ‘facts’ about Smith’s behaviour, however well documented by the RAP editors, had no significance or meaning.   So Steel could brush aside criticism of Smith and the voters of Rochdale could safely ignore the RAP story and return Smith to parliament with an increased majority.  If the RAP story had been taken up by the national press it would have been an indication that Smith’s behaviour at Cambridge House mattered and Steel would have had to take action.

The lesson from all this is, as the younger Cockburn put it, ‘every fact in the media is the result of the point of view of the person who chose to report them and related them to other facts’.

******

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)

Same Old Danczuk!

by Les May

A week ago in an article for Northern Voices, I wrote:

‘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.’

http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/the-benefits-of-20-20-hindsight.html

A recently ‘leaked’ letter from Danczuk to the Chairwoman of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) tends to confirm my view.  Danczuk wrote:

‘Finally, I would like to point out that both local and national Liberal Democrat activists/representatives would have been even more aware of many of the issues regarding Cyril Smith though your inquiry appears, so far, to have been quite limited in regard to investigating such matters.  I was wholly convinced that key Liberal figures were well aware of Cyril Smith’s abuse but chose to do nothing. Perhaps this is something that deserves more attention.’

This is typical Danczuk.  As with his assertions in the same letter regarding whether Richard Farnell knew about the unsavoury goings on at Knowl View it represents only Danczuk’s opinion.  Just when did his conversations with Farnell about abuse at Knowl View take place?  Were they after November 2012?   If they were then should we not ask whether Danczuk only found out about Knowl View after he was contacted by someone who had been hawking around his story about a ‘cover up’ for years and had suddenly discovered someone to believe him?   As always he offers us no facts only vague generalisations implying that Farnell knew about Knowl View when what was actually commonly spoken of was Cyril Smith’s antics at Cambridge House.

I find Danczuk claim that he ‘thoroughly examined what went on at Knowl View as part of my research for the book’ difficult to take seriously, because the book is full of assertions made without evidence and when asked in October 2016 to provide real evidence he could not do so.

http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/

As for his attempts to smear Jim Dobbin with, ‘Relatively new to this town, I found these attempts to cover-up abuse very strange.  I was puzzled as to why local politicians like Jim [Dobbin], but also others, had not raised concerns when they had the power to do so.   At an appropriate time, I did put on record the abuse that Cyril and others committed.’  I find them beneath contempt because Danczuk’s idea of ‘an appropriate time’ was two years after Cyril Smith died, 33 years after his behaviour had been reported in Rochdale’s Alternative Paper (RAP) and a year after Danczuk had applauded enthusiastically at the unveiling of a Blue Plaque to him in 2011.  As for ‘the others’ we are still waiting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5iL2dDSyl0

If asked to choose between believing Richard Farnell’s version of what he knew about Knowl View and believing what Simon Danczuk’s says he knew, I’d believe Farnell every time.

If you want to know why follow the links below.

http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/operation-clifton-further-discredits.html

http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/nv-review-of-smile-for-camera.html

http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/our-long-running-crique-of-smile-for.html

Resetting the Clock to 1979

by Les May

CONSIDERING the amount that Simon Danczuk had to say not only about a ‘cover up’ by Rochdale MBC about events at Knowl View, but also about how Cyril Smith was in some way ‘protected’ by the Security Services or other agencies, you might have expected that Mr. Danczuk would have figured prominently among the witnesses at the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.   

He didn’t.  In fact he did not figure at all, which of course means the claims in his book remain untested.  Perhaps he did not think he could back them up?

What is clear is that the Inquiry found nothing to give any credence to these claims.  Not only did Danczuk’s book not tell us anything about Cyril’s antics at Cambridge House which we did not know from the 1979 Rochdale's Alternative Paper (RAP) articles, nor did the Inquiry. 

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Germaine Greer on 'Bad Faith' & 'career rapees'

An anthropological approach to rape in society

by Brian Bamford

YESTERDAY Germaine Greer argued on Radio Four's 'TODAY' program that we need to look at how the rape narrative is tackled and defined in society, and what this tells us about the treatment of women today.  She said, among other things, when asked to define her stance on #MeToo, Ms Greer declared: ‘I don’t actually think it’s gone too far, I don’t think its got anywhere at all.'

She then added:  ‘What we need is to sort out the law regarding rape and to sort out our concept of what it is.
‘It’s pointless now bringing up this stuff when [for] most of it no action can be taken.
‘Why wait 20 years?’

She of course neglected to concern herself here with the treatment of men or boys in society.

 Cambridge House & the abuse of boys

And yet, I live in Rochdale where it was at Cambridge House in November 2012, that the issue of the exploitation and abuse of boys by Cyril Smith in the 1960s was initially reported on this NV Blog and simultaneously on the Westminster Politics Home website.  A few hours later Simon Danczuk made his speech in the House of Commons (an earlier story about this in 1979 in Rochdale's Alternative Paper [RAP] had been squashed by a threat of legal action by Cyril Smith's solicitor).

Rape & Jean-Paul Sartre on  'Bad Faith'

Ms. Greer told listeners to Radio Four that #MeToo doesn’t work:  ‘I don’t actually think it’s gone too far, I don’t think its got anywhere at all.
‘What we need is to sort out the law regarding rape and to sort out our concept of what it is.’

To understand this better perhaps we should consider the nature of bad faith and exploitative behaviour in human relationships generally.  Ms. Greer talks about women who 'open their legs' to gain career advantages from Harvey Weinstein

In the North it was in the 1970s and 80s, and may still be, a common practice for women to hang around in  pubs using their charms in order to get men to buy them free drinks, and one (perhaps I should say second generation feminist) use to complain to me about these working-class women who boasted about it as she thought it was 'disgusting' and anti-feminist.  When I went working in London I worked with men in the sugar refinery in Hammersmith who used to chat-up women in clubs and when the women went to the toilet they would tell me how they would empty their handbags. 

Dealing with bad faith in a way which seems to relate to what Ms. Greer has said, the French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre. gave an example of a young girl on a first date:
'The young woman’s date compliments her on her physical appearance, but she ignores the obvious sexual connotations of his compliment and chooses instead to direct the compliment at herself as a conscious human being. He then takes her hand, but she neither takes it nor rejects it. Instead, she lets her hand rest indifferently in his so as to buy time and delay having to make a choice about accepting or rejecting his advances. Whereas she chooses to treat his compliment as being unrelated to her body, she chooses to treat her hand (which is a part of her body) as an object, thereby acknowledging her freedom to make choices.'

 The #MeToo Mob in Hollywood want to argue that they had no choices and had to succumb to Weinstein's wilds and that they had no power of agency. 

Another example of bad faith that Sartre gives is that of a young woman on a first date.  The young woman’s date compliments her on her physical appearance, but she ignores the obvious sexual connotations of his compliment and chooses instead to direct the compliment at herself as a conscious human being.  He then takes her hand, but she neither takes it nor rejects it.  Instead, she lets her hand rest indifferently in his so as to buy time and delay having to make a choice about accepting or rejecting his advances.  Whereas she chooses to treat his compliment as being unrelated to her body, she chooses to treat her hand (which is a part of her body) as an object, thereby acknowledging her freedom to make choices.

For Sartre, people may pretend to themselves that they do not have the freedom to make choices, but they cannot pretend to themselves that they are not themselves, that is, conscious human beings who actually have little or nothing to do with their pragmatic concerns, social roles, and value systems.

 Germaine Greer's anthropological analysis & the initiation of 'Donkey Dick'!

Germaine Greer's approach to what she calls 'career rapees' is it seems to me anthropological, while Sartre's is philosophical.

I mentioned Rochdale, and the historic case I knew about of the teenagers abused by Cyril Smith at Cambridge House, using spanking practices and 'false medicals'.  I could have dealt with the historic practices of the initiation ceremonies which took place in the factories in the North West of England in the 1950s and 60s, when I was an apprentice electrician.  Last month we had Shrove Tuesday or Pancake Tueday, and it was at that time common for young apprentices to get their balls blacked or greased, or both.  De-bagging's of lads were often indulged in on the shopfloor on the pretext that it was an ancient custom of an 'iniation ceremony', in the 1950s it was argued that this should be done when lads reached 18-years when the lads became 'improvers', perhaps owing to the advent of the Welfare State, lads were becoming too big at 21 on completion of their apprenticeship when they officially 'came out of their time'.  One lad at Tweedale & Smalley where I worked, gained the title 'Donkey Dick' and seemed to enjoy the title as well as the exploits and High Jinks.

However an outsider may view these escapades, and when I did try to protest I was made to feel like a wet blanket,

How do we consider these initiation practices?  Are they to be represented as the abuse and exploitation of young people and apprentices by tradesmen?  Or are we to see it as an ancient custom perhaps handed down to us from the times of the rural village? Perhaps even Harvey Weinstein and those who engaged with him thought they we involved in some ancient ritual or initiation ceremony.

 Jean-Paul Sartre on Bad Faith | Outre monde:

www.https://outre-monde.com/2011/03/29/jean-paul-sartre-on-bad-faith/ 
******

The Curse of Danczuk’s Book

by Les May

JUST how thorough is the ongoing Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse going to be?  Press reports, which we must assume follow what was said at the Inquiry, refer to Rochdale Alternative Press. This is a mistake lifted straight from Simon Danczuk’s book where neither he, nor his co-author, Matthew Baker, could be bothered to check that the correct title was Rochdale's Alternative Paper (RAP). If anyone at the Inquiry is relying on this book then we shall still be as much in the dark about what really happened at Cambridge House and Knowl View as we were before the inquiry started

The purpose of this Inquiry should be to determine the facts.  That does not appear to be what is happening. The lead counsel, Brian Altman QC, seems to be trying to tell a story worthy of someone acting for the prosecution in a criminal case. We are told Smith’s knighthood ‘conferred a veneer of respectability and power’ and that this afforded influence over child welfare cases at Rochdale council.

This may or may not prove to be the case. Judging by the infamous, but fictional, ‘Satanic Abuse’ cases from 1989, RMBC child welfare workers were entirely capable of making a mess of things on their own.  But could we please have the facts and save opinions until after the evidence for this statement has been produced?   However often they are repeated opinions and assertions aren’t facts.

Opinion, supposition and an urge to ‘tell a good story’ have bedevilled almost everything that has been written about Smith, Cambridge House and Knowl View special school since Danczuk was ‘handed the story on a plate’ in 2012.

The essay in which in which Manchester Guardian editor C. P. Scott wrote the words ‘Comment is free, but facts are sacred’ is still worth reading today.  Pity about that unfortunate lapse in 1979 when like the rest of the press it ignored the RAP article.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2002/nov/29/1

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