Civic Spaces & Uncivil Councillors by Anonymous

Begging's at epicentre of a Storm of Political Controversy!

FOR a council whose entire raison d'etre and long term strategic response for the town centre regeneration appears to be to barge their way to the front of each and every available queue for cash handouts, begging bowl in hand to everyone from the European Social Fund to Westminster freebies it rankles with me they should point the finger of accusation at others less fortunate who are effectively doing exactly the same thing. Was it Goebbels who said: accuse the other side of that which you are guilty?

As for councillor expenses - let's not go there!

***********************************************************

Recent media coverage of councillors calling for a Crackdown on begging so close to an election was entirely expected as it was a sickening and predictable re-hash of their previous political posturing whenever totally bereft of new ideas they opt for the easy target each & every time.

Blame someone else lest that electorate blame us is a tried and tested local mantra the world over and homeless people are seldom registered so no votes lost there then comrades.

Their views are not only repugnant but positively Dickensian. At a time when child poverty levels have been revealed to be at over 50% in some electoral wards it's nothing short of astounding that we do not have beggars on every street corner and bread riots across the Township as we did at the time of Peterloo!

https://www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/news-features/2/news-headlines/140218/calls-for-crackdown-on-%E2%80%98criminal-element%E2%80%99-behind-increase-in-town-centre-begging-and-antisocial-behaviour

This Agenda Articles from the meeting in question are at:

http://democracy.rochdale.gov.uk/documents/s78129/Rochdale%20Town%20Centre%20Public%20Space%20Protection%20Order.pdf

The section from the RMBC Zoom Meeting can be found at :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=372kukolzdY

Perfectly legitimate working legislation already exists on the statute book to effectively challenge trafficked Begging separate to and totally independent of PSPO. The Vagrancy Act is also still being enforced locally despite Council saying it is not. One suspects they are hyper sensitive to the fact they are still having to resort to such antiquated legislation at all after their ' flagship PSPO ' was meant to be the ultimate solution to anti-social behaviour Town Centre. Clearly it is not or why else would there be a call for a 'crackdown' at all?

Local Anti Public Space Protection Order campaigners are currently liaising with Liberty ( who called Rochdale Councils PSPO 'unlawful' when it was introduced ) and The Manifesto Club (Manifesto Club) to formulate a formal legal challenge to this 'crackdown'. Vulnerable homeless people, the vast majority mentally ill, addicted, fleeing domestic violence, illegally evicted or complex variations of all have very limited support options due to Covid (though this is not limited exclusively to the pandemic and was a problem previously) face to face 1:1 support for drug ,alcohol, substance misuse virtually non-existent as is mental health support which has existed in digital form only since March 2020 - if at all! No internet connection or no phone then no support.

For example there is a local mental health charity which draws in hundreds of thousands of pounds in funding each year that has remained resolutely closed for over a year offering only digital support sessions (such levels funding should be able to afford and create Covid safe spaces for individual 1:1 mental health support pods in a few weeks never mind over a year!) No wonder people throw themselves off the tops of shopping centres in sheer anguish and despair!

The likes of Blundell should be targeting the total inability of many local support agencies to support those in need rather than those in need of support. As well as proactively advocating for the vulnerable and agitating for increased funding rather than indulging in shameless self promotion & cheap electioneering prior to May Elections. Some might recall our councillors have previous form on this bludgeoning of the publicly visible result of their abject failures to deliver a functioning welfare & Social Care system policies for the vulnerable when Blundell and Danczuk pulled this stunt some years ago - again as a diversionary Black Op when questions were being asked of the dodgy duos mismanagement of Town centre regeneration. Again Beggars were a convenient scapegoated for crass corporate failure & incompetence.

Blundell was at the time paying his landlord ( Danczuc) in gin to crash at his Westminster pad paid for by taxpayers dosh - allegedly! Whilst the former Mrs Danczuk left an unsightly and rotting empty business unit in the shape of Danczuk's Deli blighting The Walk for years with a far greater visible blight left behind by a high profile social climber than any downwardly mobile beggar waiting for a handful of small change from sympathetic shoppers cashing in their pensions or collecting their monthly Universal Credit payments.

The Majority of the Councils much publicised Covid response is being delivered by idealistic unpaid volunteers whilst paid staff remain safe 'working at home' (behind the lines via a laptop screen facility) totally disconnected from the reality on the ground totally and dangerously oblivious of the crisis levels needed on the ground.

Any visiting councillors to one of the numerous Soup kitchens across the Borough will educate all but the most stupid of our councillors that poverty, exploitation & socail exclusion are the primary driver of begging. Something they are clearly unwilling or unable to address as a council and one which is lacking entirely from any of their May 6 election promises. As a collective the council has also turned down 1,868 Covid support applications whilst having some of the highest child poverty & unemployment & low skilled /low waged local economy in GM plus consistently high levels of C19

Simultaneously our 'pro-business council' has all the largess and generosity of Croesus when it comes to business bailouts - especially just before May local elections ?

https://www.questmedianetwork.co.uk/news/tameside-reporter/thousands-across-greater-manchester-denied-500-covid-support-payments/

Instead of having another toddler stop and stamping his designer jackboots Blundell needs a 'crackdown' on his own aggressive begging from the public purse as well as independent scruiting of his political record on the failed town center regeneration leaving two empty Indoor Markets and virtually derelict Drake Street, a partially deserted Yorkshire Street and a defunct Outdoor market in his wake?

Two hundred and fifty million quid for this? We were robbed!

Perhaps if Councillor Blundell and those like him rolled up their delicate shirt sleeves or blouses and did some proper graft down at a local Soup Kitchen or Foodbank (we have a potential sixty strong workforce of councillors champing at the bit to play their part in supporting their Town during the Pandemic Response after all!) instead of angling for cheap media stunts or photo-bombing on the backs of those socially committed individuals and collectives doing the real community regeneration work people would have at least a little respect for the man?

Cllr. Blundell is not interested in Building Back Better, he is only interested in building his own councillor profile and political career and needs to be called out publicly for it.

Kicking someone when they are down is the dictionary and my own definition of bullying. Blundell is not only a bully but an ill informed braggart & clown who should be nowhere near public office or paid from the public purse for his ill informed and biggoted opinions. Replace the word beggar with jew, gypsy, traveller, black or woman and you might have a clearer insight into how repugnant and stereotyping his views are in actuality

Where Blundell a member of a charity rather than a council he would be on a suspension pending an independent investigation from the charity commission on breach of safeguarding policy - quite possibly by the police under potential Hate Crime legislation. That a councillor can seek to , and is allowed to do so by his Party colleges, aided and abetted by an entirely complicit local media commentariat, to criminalise and scapegoat an entire section of the community in such a way tells you all that you need to know about what lessons have been learnt from previous Rochdale safeguarding scandals from Smith to the Grooming Scandals. Once again we only have to scratch the thin veneer to see the ugly unvarnished truth beneath.

****************************************************

A Bit Of A Deadleg? by Les May

EARLIER today in a telephone conversation with a friend he commented that he thought his local MP was ‘a bit of a deadleg’. Now I’ve not had any dealings with this gentleman, who is the MP for Heywood and Middleton, so I cannot comment on the veracity of this statement. But it did take me back a few years to when our old friend Simon Danczuk, or as he is now more commonly called ‘the disgraced Simon Danczuk’, was MP for the neighbouring constituency of Rochdale.

MPs (and Councillors) hold their position thanks to the trust of the public so if you want to shift them because you don’t think they are up to the job or not being honest with the people who voted for them, it’s the public you have to find a way of telling.

After Danczuk published his book about Cyril Smith in 2014 the Letters page of the Rochdale Observer was for the next 18 months or so filled with correspondence challenging Danczuk account, asking that he produce some evidence for his attempts to link Smith with the unsavoury goings on at Knowl View school and pointing out that a story in the book involving the Northamptonshire Police was completely untrue.

If my friend wants to use the local media to publish his disquiet about his MP Chris Clarkson, he won’t be so lucky. The reader’s letters page of the Rochdale Observer has shrunk almost to the point of invisibility. In 2015 it occupied a full page and there was enough room for the editor to allow a three quarter page letter from Andrew Wastling, who now sends material to Northern Voices because he cannot get it published elsewhere.

Those of us who contribute to NV don’t fool ourselves into thinking that it is read by as many people as read the Rochdale Observer so it is no substitute for an inquisitive and questioning local paper with a boisterous letters page.

NV’s readership is more likely to be drawn from the subset of potential Observer readers who would identify themselves as to the left of the political spectrum, but who refuse to be be swayed by the present vogue for identity politics and the drift towards ‘cancel culture’, so in no sense does it compete with other local news outlets. Seeing it as a competitor was the mistake Rochdale Online made when it wanted to use material from Northern Voices without attribution to its author.

Local News Partnerships, which include both the Rochdale Observer and Rochdale Online, are a well intentioned attempt to support local news outlets and maintain their viability at a time when they have come under pressure from the availability of news on the World Wide Web 24/7. But the unintended consequences have been that the sense of place and local identity which local newspapers provided has vanished because essentially the same story can appear in a regional and local paper, and a diversity of voices has been replaced by what is essentially a single uninquisitive ‘foghorn’.

This lack of scrutiny has emboldened some of our local politicians to start down the track of believing that they no longer accountable for their actions. Rochdale already has one local councillor who first solicited a postal vote then voted twice in the 2018 local election, seemingly without suffering any consequences. In recent weeks we have seen that one councillor did not seem to think he had to even accept e-mails sent to his Rochdale MBC account. We have also seen that at least one councillor think it unacceptable that he should be questioned about why a council official who is supposedly doing a full time job with Rochdale MBC is being allowed to ‘moonlight’ in another well remunerated role.

In about eleven weeks time people in Rochdale are going to be asked to choose who they want to represent them on the Council. If all we are treated to are press releases from councillors because they are ‘good copy’ how can we do this in any meaningful way? It is time to shine some light on the murky political world of Rochdale.

********************************************************

Curious History of 'Ethnic' Politics in Rochdale

Editorial comment:  
Below are the contents of a post on the personal Blog
of the very notorious Rochdale Councillor Faisal Rana.
He is notorious because he managed to get a police
caution for voting twice at the local elections in 2018.
 As the Labour member for Spotland and Falinge he
insisted he ‘didn’t realise’ that casting votes in two
wards in the same council borough was an offence. 

In a tweet on July 22 Cllr Rana says:  

'Too few Black Asian Minority Ethnic [BAME]
councillors leads to bad decisions.'  

Yet some would say Rochdale has tended to be 

over-represented by Muslim councillors, and it is worth 

examining if this has been in historic terms healthy for

democracy and the moral status of the town.  

I say this because since the early 1970s I have had a close 

personal and political relationship with the Kashmir community 
in this town, and even accompanied a party of supporters of 
Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front supporters when in 1992 
they went to the House of Commons to appeal to get the support 
of Paddy  Ashdown, the then Lib Dem leader, in their conflict on

the Indian sub-continent between the Jammu and Kashmir 
Liberation Front (JKLF), and the India government.  
Worries have been voiced in Rochdale about the problems 
of the Indian sub-continent becoming too much of an issue 
in the town's politics.

Cllr Faisal Rana@FaisalRana48·Jul 22
Cllr Rana tweets: 'Too few BAME councillors leads to bad decisions.'

Cllr Rana continues as follows:
'BAME councillors are hugely under-represented on councils'

A REPORT just out that BAME councillors are hugely under-represented on councils across the UK was depressing, if not predictable.
'Sky News reported that only seven percent of all UK councillors are from a minority ethnic background, which is half the percentage BAME people make up of the country's overall population (14 per cent). The report, by Professor Maria Sobolewska and Dr Neema Begum from the University of Manchester, highlighted for the first time the scale of under-representation in councils.
'They said under-representation on councils - where decisions are made on where money is spent - "creates a potential for perpetuating and reinforcing racial inequality and disadvantage."
'To those like me working in local government, it does not come as a surprise. All too often, an ingrained if unspoken prejudice exists in many Labour Party branches that BAME candidates cannot win in predominantly white seats. The selection process and selection meetings are poorly run and often loaded against minority ethnic minority candidates. How many branches, even today, meet on licenced premises discouraging many mumslim [sic] members from taking part? Even when a BAME member is selected as a candidate, it is likely to be in a seat that the party has little or no chance in winning.'

********************************

ROCHDALE'S HISTORY OF ETHNIC POLITICS

by Brian Bamford

RACIAL participation in the politics of Rochdale stems from the 1970s, when the then Rochdale MP Cyril Smith established a close relationship with the Muslim community.  This was later well documented in the book 'Cyril Smith: Smile for the Camera' by the now disgraced former Rochdale MP, Simon Danzcuk.*  For more than 20 years 1972 during the period Smith was in office as the local MP, the Asian community there continually supported the Liberals and the Liberal Democrats.  Only later after Liz Lynne, who succeeded Smith as the Rochdale MP, lost the seat to Labour in 1997 did the Muslims in the town begin to transfer their affections to the Labour Party.  After the now disgraced MP Simon Danzcuk, became the Rochdale MP in 2010 the links between the the local Asians and the party accelerated, and the Labour Councillor Faisal Rana has now been able to boast in a post on his Blog entitled:  'How Labour In Rochdale Is Becoming A More Inclusive Party.'
 

Councillor Rana writes:  'To those like me working in local government, it does not come as a surprise. All too often, an ingrained if unspoken prejudice exists in many Labour Party branches that BAME candidates cannot win in predominantly white seats. The selection process and selection meetings are poorly run and often loaded against minority ethnic minority candidates. How many branches, even today, meet on licenced premises discouraging many mumslim [sic] members from taking part? Even when a BAME member is selected as a candidate, it is likely to be in a seat that the party has little or no chance in winning.'

At present according to Carl Faulkner 'Rochdale Council has 12 ‘Asian’ councillors – that equates to 20% and is way over the Rochdale Asian population %.'

After he was elected Councillor Rana was cautioned for electoral fraud by the police for voting twice in the local elections.  Yet, he still retained his seat and has since been promoted.  When I spoke to another Rochdale Muslim councillor about the shame that Rana was bringing upon the Labour Party by his conduct I was told that he (Rana) has too much influence over the leader of the Rochdale Labour Party Alan Brett.

Despite what Cllr Rana and the community of scholars might say  'Ethnic identity politics' doesn't have a very noble tradition in Rochdale.

****************

*  In his book about Cyril Smith, Smile for the Camera, co-written with a fellow Labour activist, Matthew Baker, Simon Danczuk details Smith's close relationship with the Muslim community in Rochdale, including the encouragement of electoral fraud amongst them, apparently. According to Danczuk, Cyril Smith "transformed politics in the Asian community and became a powerful voice," as they switched from Labour to Liberal en bloc, and Smith prevented people being deported as illegal immigrants and supported the building of the first mosque in the Lancashire town. Danczuk continues: "It was in this community that Cyril unquestionably had the biggest influence."

Rochdale Cllr Faisal Rana's Ethnic Politics

Editorial comment:

In a tweet on July 22 Rochdale Cllr Rana says:

'Too few BAME councillors leads to bad decisions.'

Cllr Faisal Rana@FaisalRana48·

Yet some would say Rochdale has tended to be

over-represented by Muslim councillors, and it is worth

examining if this has been in historic terms healthy for

democracy and the moral status of the town.

Worries have been voiced in Rochdale about 
the problems of the Indian sub-continent 
becoming too much of an issue

in the town's politics.

I say this because since the early 1970s 
I have had a close personal and political 
relationship with the Kashmir community

in this town, and even accompanied a 
party of Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front 
supporters when in 1992 we went to the 
House of Commons to appeal to get the backing 
of Paddy Ashdown, the then Lib Dem leader, 
in their conflict on the Indian sub-continent 
between the Jammu & Kashmir Liberation 
Front (JKLF), and the Indian government.

***********************

ROCHDALE'S TRAGIC HISTORY OF ETHNIC POLITICS

by Brian Bamford

RACIAL participation in the politics of Rochdale stems from the 1970s, when the then Rochdale MP Cyril Smith established a close relationship with the Muslim community. This was later well documented in the book 'Cyril Smith: Smile for the Camera' by the now disgraced former Rochdale MP, Simon Danzcuk.* For more than 20 years 1972 during the period Smith was in office as the local MP, the Asian community there continually supported the Liberals and the Liberal Democrats. Only later after Liz Lynne, who succeeded Smith as the Rochdale MP, lost the seat to Labour in 1997 did the Muslims in the town begin to transfer their affections to the Labour Party.  After the now disgraced MP Simon Danzcuk, became the Rochdale MP in 2010 the links between the the local Asians and the party accelerated, and the Labour Councillor Faisal Rana has now been able to boast in a post on his Blog entitled: 'How Labour In Rochdale Is Becoming A More Inclusive Party.'

Councillor Rana writes: 'All too often, an ingrained if unspoken prejudice exists in many Labour Party branches that BAME candidates cannot win in predominantly white seats. The selection process and selection meetings are poorly run and often loaded against minority ethnic minority candidates. How many branches, even today, meet on licenced premises discouraging many mumslim [sic] members from taking part? Even when a BAME member is selected as a candidate, it is likely to be in a seat that the party has little or no chance in winning.'

At present according to Carl Faulkner 'Rochdale Council has 12 ‘Asian’ councillors – that equates to about 20% of councillors. The 2011 census showed that the total ‘minority’ population was about 21%. Not all of these are ‘Asian’ of course.

After he was elected Councillor Rana was cautioned for electoral fraud by the police for voting twice in the local elections. Yet, he still retained his seat and has since been promoted. When I spoke to another Rochdale Muslim councillor about the shame that Rana was bringing upon the Labour Party by his conduct I was told that he (Rana) has too much influence over the leader of the Rochdale Labour Party Alan Brett.

Despite what Cllr Rana and the community of scholars might say 'Ethnic identity politics' doesn't have a very noble tradition in Rochdale. 
 

* In his book about Cyril Smith, Smile for the Camera, co-written with a fellow Labour activist, Matthew Baker, Simon Danczuk details Smith's close relationship with the Muslim community in Rochdale, including the encouragement of electoral fraud amongst them, apparently. According to Danczuk, Cyril Smith "transformed politics in the Asian community and became a powerful voice," as they switched from Labour to Liberal en bloc, and Smith prevented people being deported as illegal immigrants and supported the building of the first mosque in the Lancashire town. Danczuk continues: "It was in this community that Cyril unquestionably had the biggest influence."

Former Labour Councillor Eileen Kershaw dies

by Brian Bamford
Political activist & teacher first elected as a Labour councillor in Rochdale in 1964

WHEN I first met Eileen Kershaw at her home in Whitworth,  in 2014 she hesitated before letting me in saying, with a cheeky smile and a twinkle, that she shouldn't really be letting strangers into the house. 

I was there to get an interview about the then recently published book by Simon Danzcuk and Matthew Baker 'Smile for the Camera' a post-hoc consideration of Cyril Smith's life in politics in Rochdale and beyond. 

She had served for 33 years on Whitworth town council, Rossendale council and Lancashire county council.  But she had long been associated with Labour politicians in Rochdale and had been close to Cyril Smith throughout much of his political life, even after he converted to the Liberal Party and stood as a candidate for that party in the late 1960s and became the Rochdale Liberal MP in 1972, and he kept the job until 1992 when he stood down.

I met with Eileen on several occasions after that and we discussed the difficulties relating to the contents of the Danzcuk book.  Eileen had long known David Bartlett and John Walker who in May 1979, had first published in Rochdale's Alternative Paper [RAP], the revelations about Cyril Smith's role in the management of the hostel for teenage boys at Cambridge House in Rochdale.  According to the RAP account their was strong evidence that Cyril Smith had abused his powers as secretary of the hostel.  All this was well covered at the time in Private Eye, but the Eye was significantly the only main stream publication to run the story in 1979.  Even the local press; the Rochdale Observer and the Manchester Evening News managed to look the other way.

At the time Eileen Kershaw accepted that Cyril may have behaved inappropriately at Cambridge House, but she didn't accept that the more serious claims against Cyril, who had been a governor at Knowl View, had been established.

Eileen Kershaw, was the mother of radio DJs and broadcasters Liz and Andy Kershaw, was aged 85.  The former teacher who was first elected as a Labour councillor in 1964 to represent Balderstone on the old Rochdale county borough council.

Eileen also became a governor at Knowl View*, a residential school for boys, where Cyril Smith had for a time served as a governor.  She told me that she was unaware of any untoward behavour by Cyril at the school while she was serving there as a governor.

In 2014, following the surfacing of historic reports going back to the 1990s, beginning with the events covered in the 1991 report by Phil Shepherd entitled the 'Shepherd Report' about the risk of AIDS owing the alleged sexual activity between the lads and the claim of them 'cottaging' with outsiders.   

Eileen told me that she had never cared for the then Rochdale Labour MP, Simon Danczuk, and though she considered Mr Danczuk's book 'Smile for the Camera' on Cyril Smith was 'well written in a literary sense'.  She did suggest to me, correctly as it turned out, that she didn't believe Mr. Danczuk had actually written the book himself, and she did, even then, express some doubts about some details in the contents of the book.  But later she went on to write that 'much of the content is questionable'.   And she concluded in a letter to the Rochdale Observer that 'the real aim of [Danzcuk] writing such a tome seems to be financial',

In the 1950s, I had been taught science at Brimrod Secondary Modern School by Eileen's first husband, Jack Kershaw, a fan of Rugby League, and I knew something about the family second-hand through the former editor of RAP John Walker.   We could relate to each other through those experiences and she was very keen to talk about local politics, but she described herself as having Irish blood in her veins which perhaps made her more passionate than the your average English politician. 


*   Knowl View School was a residential school for boys with emotional and behavioural difficulties that opened in 1969 and, after a period of temporary closure, closed permanently in 1996. It was built and run by Rochdale Borough Council and had a Board of Governors. The school catered for boys across an age range of 7 to 16 years old. Cyril Smith was said to have been part of a local campaign to see it established and was present at its opening.
Early research identified that a report (only publicly available in redacted form) was written in 1991 by Phil Shepherd, an employee of the Rochdale AIDS Unit, who identified the fact that boys at the school were at risk of AIDS. The report (which became known to the Inquiry as the ‘Shepherd report’ {1}) detailed concerns about sexual activity at the school, including ‘cottaging’ in and around public toilets as well as boys being forced into sex with others. The report was sent to Rochdale’s Director of Education, Mrs Diana Cavanagh. These events attracted press reporting in 1995.^[1]
In 1995, the press reported that Mrs Cavanagh had asked Mr Shepherd not to circulate his report further. Press reporting also suggested that concerns about the children living at Knowl View had first been raised by a Dr Alison Fraser, a child psychiatrist at Rochdale’s Birch Hill Hospital.  There was also speculation in the press about a report (which did not appear to have been publicly available) by Valerie Mellor, a consultant clinical psychologist, which dated back to February 1992.  It was reported that Mrs Mellor had said there was no doubt that up to a quarter of the pupils at the 48-place school had been involved in serious sexual incidents, the activity had continued over a very long period of time and it was difficult to believe that this behaviour had not come to the attention of at least some members of staff.

{1}  The Shepherd report was also sent to the acting Director of Social Services and to the then Rochdale conservative councillor, Pamela Hawton in her capacity on a relevant committee.  The Mellor report was written as a result of her being sent into the school at the instigation of Diana Cavanagh in response to the Shepherd Report.

Anonymity before charge in sexual offences

by Les May

ONE of the reasons I write for the Northern Voices blog is that it does not have ‘a party line’.  For people who think that viewpoints they object to should not be published, this is a difficult concept to understand.

But anyone who has been a reader for some time or has looked at historical articles will recognise that certain themes are revisited regularly. One of these is the treatment of people who are accused of ‘sex crimes’ but who are never charged.

Much of the problem is encapsulated in:

http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2016/11/a-great-injustice-rules-of-evidence.html

The following articles give much of the background to this story.

http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2015/08/justice-parliamentary-privilege-fair.html

http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2016/03/danczuk-fairy-stories-operation-midland.html

http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2016/03/harvey-proctor-goddard-inquiry-long.html

http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2016/03/harvey-proctor-says-some-should-resign.html

http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2016/11/harvey-proctors-reply-to-hogan-howe.html

http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2016/11/police-apology-to-harvey-proctor.html

If after reading some or all of these pieces you feel that the present law which allows the name of persons accused of sex crimes to be released by the police BEFORE they are arrested or charged and hence become subject to what amounts to ‘trial by media’, then please go to the website below;

https://www.falselyaccusedindividuals.org/

Or go direct to;

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/247912

Briefly this is what supporters of the petition are trying to bring about

Anonymity before charge in relation to sexual offences.

Changing the language in criminal proceedings from “victims” to “complainants.”

Support for families of those accused matching to the assistance given to complainants.

Examination of the problems associated with solicitors recruiting complainants (working with the police) to bring class actions.

Note that in 2016 the Slater and Gordon website was still trawling for ‘victims’ seemingly based upon an acceptance that Simon Danczuk’s book about Cyril Smith was factually correct. By this time it was known that some parts of it were wholly untrue and that Danczuk had never been able to produce any evidence to substantiate his other accusations. The link is no longer active.

***********

Cllr. Rana commited the crime, did he do the time?

 

by Brian Bamford & Les May

with help from Carl Faulkner

Last year Allen Brett Rochdale's council leader said Cllr. Rana had ‘stepped away’ from his cabinet responsibilities.

ON the 16th, August 2018 businessman and big time Rochdale landlord, Cllr. Rana, was said to have 'stepped away' from his responsibilities as assistant to the finance portfolio holder Labour leader Allen Brett. It must be a cosy relationship.   In August last year Cllr. Rana was outed as a vote swindler by Carl Faulkner for falsely claiming two postal votes, Council leader Brett was quick to defend Cllr. Rana.   

After expressing initial regret Brett said:  'Naturally I am disappointed in Cllr. Rana's error [but] he is a very talented individual who shares our collective passion to improve our borough.’

Now the landlord Rana, who duped the electorate in 2018, is now comfortably back in the saddle next to the boss-man Brett. 
 
Who says crime doesn't pay?

Cllr. Rana must be very talented to purloin two postal votes for himself out of the British electoral system and to now land a top job helping the Council leader Cllr. Brett to run the town's financial affairs. There are not many of us that could do that and get away with it.

Farooq Ahmed, who was in charge of finance in 2014, was not so lucky as Cllr. Rana; when a fellow Labour Councillorr Neil Emmott claimed he had been the victim of a homophobic remark from Cllr. Ahmed.  Cllr. Ahmed was alleged to have warned him to 'mind his back' in an altercation on Cheetham Street in Rochdale.  Cllr. Emmott was at the time working for the now disgraced Rochdale MP, Simon Danczuk, who ultimately left the Labour Party under a cloud.   Cllr, Ahmed ended up leaving the Labour Party after he was convicted of a public order offence.

It's a strange world in which someone guilty of a public order offence loses his position as head of Finance, while a self-confessed election fraudster keeps his job.  Perhaps poor Cllr. Ahmed, who is of Bangldeshi origin didn't put his nose in the right place, or maybe he simply didn't own enough real estate in Rochdale.

***********

Just a Thought

by Les May

UNLIKE many Labour supporters in Rochdale, I found it difficult to get too excited about whether Richard Farnell did or did not know of the unsavoury goings on at Knowl View School in the early 1990s.

Having spent a good deal of time in unpicking the facts from the fantasy in Simon Danczuk’s book ‘Smile for the Camera’, I concluded that whether he knew or not would have made not the slightest difference to the outcome.   I saw no evidence of a ‘cover up’ by officers of Rochdale Council and felt that they had acted appropriately in a very difficult situation.  This is what I told the Police when I was interviewed as part of Operation Clifton.

I had a second reason for my lack of excitement.  Much of the public discourse failed to distinguish carefully between what the solicitors had to say both in, and especially outside the Inquiry and its official findings.   Just because a solicitor says something does not make it true however often it is repeated.

Had Farnell not stepped down as Leader of the Council in December 2017 the way that Councillor ‘Two Votes’ Rana was dealt with might have been different.   Although this councillor admitted committing two electoral offences the present Leader did not seem to think it was necessary to ask for his resignation from the council, though it should be said that an honourable man would have realised that this was the correct course of action without being asked.

After all Farnell ‘has form’ on dealing with councillors who do not come up to scratch.  Although Danczuk praised his help in the book and he loyally stuck with Danczuk long after the latter had passed his ‘sell by’ date.  it is reported that he had a quiet word with Danczuk’s wife when she proved to be less assiduous in her role as a Councillor than she should have been.

**********

 

Knowl View School: A mother complains

ON Tuesday the 12th, March, the mother of a lad who was resident at Knowl View School, commented on a post entitled 'Midsummer Murders & Knowl View School'.

She wrote: 
'I AM that mother and I can guarantee that story is TRUE.the names of the 2 staff members are available on request. I have minutes of a meeting on 8/5/1992 which clearly states "ASHWORTH JUNIOR UNIT INVOLVED IN SMITH STREET TOILETS " and at the side of this sentence is the comment "KEEP QUIET" the IICSA report found no cover up in Rochdale.
'Of that's not a cover up I'll eat my hat..or yours' 

**********

 On the 13th, March, she followed up by drawing Les May's attention to an error in his account and today Mr May's original report was ammended:

'Plus an incorrect part of the comment by Les May ( who I have never met) is where he states the second member of staff backed up the perpetrator..  I never said this, and the man was never involved in any discussion I had with the school about the incident.
'So any information Les May has about me or my son is relayed to him through another person..chinese whispers.  He has never contacted me directly to hear the story or look at my documental evidence...  I guess it's easy to come to the wrong conclusion when you're hell bent on putting forward your own agenda.  Has he ever thought why I would continue my fight for justice for the knowl view boys for 25 years if what I say isn't true?  If he thinks it's about financial compensation that path could have been trodden 25 years ago, that has never been a consideration in my fight.'

Les May gives his reply to the mother concerned below:

MANY of the claims about what happened at Knowl View school are based upon assertions by individuals with no good evidence to back them up. The 2014 book by Danczuk and Baker is a prime example of this.   As I had no intention of falling into the same trap I made clear in my article that the account I gave had been relayed to me by third parties.  I also made it clear that I was not asserting that it was incontrovertibly true.

It would appear that my caution in doing this was justified as the accuracy of the account I gave of what I understood had been said has now been disputed. Nothing in what I wrote could possibly lead anyone to believe that I was suggesting that there was any financial motivation behind this story.

Had I not believed that the story recounted to me was essentially true I would not have gone to the trouble of writing a piece pointing out that when the word abuse is mentioned there is an immediate assumption that it should always have the word ‘sexual’ in front of it, and that this assumption is not always correct. There are other things which constitute abuse.

I will repeat what I said in my piece:  ‘If this story is true and if it is typical of what was going on at the school, then this is the real scandal of what happened at Knowl View, not some vague innuendo about Cyril Smith being involved in sexual abuse at the school.   We will never know whether events like this were commonplace, or even if they happened, unless men now in their later thirties are willing to break their silence.  If they feel they want justice it will be too late when the perpetrators are dead.’ (my emphasis)

**********

Midsummer Murders & Knowl View School

by Les May

THE TV land of Midsummer is a fictional place of pretty villages and dark deeds. People who always like to grab the moral high ground may complain there aren’t enough non-white faces, but no-one can complain that the stories are not intricate with a wealth of suspects.

Blood Will Out, which was episode 4 of season 2, involved an ex-military landowner, a bunch of Travellers led by another ex-military man who obviously had a grudge against the landowner who in turn was determined to drive the Travellers from the village and a man, who had in the past exchanged wives with the landowner.   His daughter had followed her mother.  When the landowner is found dead from the blast of a shotgun Barnaby and Troy have the task of sorting through the list of suspects.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0214950/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_i74

We finally discover that it was landowner’s step daughter who had pulled the trigger. Her motive, she was being abused. But there was a twist in the tail. Barnaby assumed, as you probably did, that it was sexual abuse.  It wasn’t.  The victim got his way in the family by beating her with a leather belt.   He tried to do it once too often and got shot.

After the publication of the book Smile for the Camera by Simon Danczuk and Matthew Baker.  in April 2014 I devoted much of the next two and a half years to untangling the truth and falsehoods in stories about Cyril Smith that this pair were telling.   My basic concern was that they were conflating two separate issues.   Smith’s antics at Cambridge House hostel in the early 1960s with the goings on at Knowl View school in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Solid evidence of Smith’s antics at Cambridge House was published in 1979 in Rochdale's Alternative Paper (RAP) when Smith was very much alive and able to sue if RAP got it wrong.  He never did.  The unsavoury events at Knowl View were sexual activity between the boys, some of it coercive.

These were detailed in a report to Education and Social Service officers, the ‘Shepherd report’ and confirmed in the ‘Mellor report’. The significant contents of the former were later published in an article which appeared in the Independent on Sunday in September 1995.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-reviews/R3A7XZP51EW0A6/ref=cm_cr_pr_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1849548757

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

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

https://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2016/10/old-news-from-knowl-view.html

https://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2016/10/dodger-danczuk-doesnt-deliver.html

https://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2016/10/tonightm-danczuk-in-lions-den.html

Danczuk and Baker muddied the waters about what really happened at Knowl View.   As a result any subsequent ‘evidence’ from individuals is tainted.  They did it by conflating two separate issues, Cyril Smith’s antics at Cambridge House and the reports about what went on at Knowl View. Long before their book was published we had TV documentaries based on Danczuk’s unsubstantiated claims about Smith’s involvement at Knowl View, claims which were not made in the Independent on Sunday in September 1995, though in both cases the source seems to have been the same.   Without throwing in the Knowl View connection they had only the stories that we already knew about Smith’s antics at Cambridge House when he was a member of the Labour party.  This story, regurgitated from the May 1979 edition of RAP, would not have filled a book and without a book there would have been no lucrative contract.

We are seeing this same conflation again. It is happening in the local press where lazy journalists, who cannot be bothered to sort the fact from the fiction simply recycle the same old stuff ad nauseum, Cambridge House, Knowl View, Cyril Smith equals a story to fill a corner of the paper.

And it is happening again with a local parents group which are managing to conflate Cambridge House, the grooming and sexual abuse of girls by a group of asian men, and the unsavoury events at Knowl View.

https://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-curse-of-gesture-politics.html

Danczuk’s book muddied the waters about Knowl View. Has this led us into making the same mistake as Barnaby made in the Midsummer Murders drama? Have we been led along the path of assuming that any abuse by adults at Knowl View was sexual in nature?

I am prompted to ask this because of a story which was passed to me by two people I have known well for many years. It was recounted to them by the mother of a boy who had been a pupil at Knowl View.

He had run away from the school and made his way home.   She telephoned the school and said she would take him back in a little while.  Before she could do this two burly men appeared at her door. When she opened it her son ran upstairs. The men said they had come to take her son back.  One man went upstairs. The boy screamed.   When she looked her son was being held by his legs and dragged down the stairs.   She complained to the school.  Nothing was done about it.

If this story is true and if it is typical of what was going on at the school, then this is the real scandal of what happened at Knowl View, not some vague innuendo about Cyril Smith being involved in sexual abuse at the school.  We will never know whether events like this were commonplace, or even if they happened, unless men now in their later thirties are willing to break their silence. If they feel they want justice it will be too late when the perpetrators are dead.

***********

Cllr. Rowbotham, Big Cyril & Single Issue Politics

by Brian Bamford

ON the 5th, December Carl Faulkner, an independent analyst and investigator concerned about the decline of common decency in local political life, published a video skillfully outlining the attitude of most Rochdale councillors to the importance of democratic procedures in local politics.  The video entitled 'Birds of a feather:  Protecting the Guilty' * and commenting on the Rochdale  full council meeting of Oct. 2018, that  describes in detail how councillors of a Labour complexion gave spirited support to one of their brethren who is a self-confessed fraudster using postal ballots to vote more than once in the last municipal elections in Rochdale.

This artfully designed video superbly captures the depth to which Rochdale politics has sunk, with the now disgraced Council leader Allen Brett calling on the Council to let the culprit fraudster, councillor Faisal Rana, be 'allowed to continue his good work'.  Councillor Brett was responding to a formal motion from the Tory leader of the opposition inviting Councillor Rana to 'just reflect on the positon that he's in and the position that he's put the Borough in'.

The Rochdale Labour councillors are by now well immune to controversy and scandal having endured pantomime politics for decades under the tutelage of such tacticians as Simon Danczuk, Richard Farnell, and now Allen Brett.  Perhaps we ought to mention that at the time the tragedy of Cambridge House was in being as a going concern in the 1960s, Cyril Smith was a big noise in the Rochdale Labour Party.

The now disgraced Council leader Allen Brett is merely the ultimate conclusion of a rather bad bunch.  Alongside him Sara Rowbotham cuts a curious figure as his deputy, it was she who rose to fame when Maxine Peak portrayed her in the 'Three Girls' dramatisation on TV.  She is interesting because she has a following among a campaign group called 'Parents Against Grooming' or PAG.**

PAG supporters were out in force at the Council meeting at which Allen Brett defended the self-confessed fraud Faisal Rana.  But they were clearly less interest on electoral swindling than on the exploits of a dead man in the last century at Cambridge House etc.  Historical memory is not to be ignored, as we know that even today that Spaniards are anxious to unearth the bones of victims of General Franco in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39.  If the supporters of PAG want to explore and campaign for what they call the 'survivors' of Cyril Smith they are entitled to do so.

What is worrying is that in doing so, and pursuing a single issue, the PAG campaigners  may be overlooking what is now under their own noses:  that is that they themselves may be being used as 'useful idiots' by an ambitious politician to feather her own nest.  I can't say this for certain, but their own heroine Sara Rowbotham has gone on record of making allegations against other Rochdale councillors, yet at the meeting PAG attended Sara had no qualms about joining the 'Roll of Shame' and backing the electoral fraud, Faisal Rana.

In this respect by getting carried away with the virtue signals and grandstanding of these half-baked ambitious politicians aren't you being a bit myopic?   Before you start to 'Look Back in Anger', just consider that I was one of those folding RAP in the cellar on Spotland Road, when in May 1979 the allegations against Cyril Smith at Cambridge House were first about to be put into the public domain.  Also, this Northern Voices Blog together with John Walker former joint editor of RAP; the Westminster Blogger, Paul Waugh; and the much lamented former Rochdale MP, Simon Danczuk,   created the conditions for PAG to exist after Danczuk made his speech in Parliament in 2012 (see the excerpt from the Northern Voices Blog archive in November 2012 below).***

***********

*    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFFKrkQaKqw&feature=youtu.be

** See the video link in which Sara Rowbotham denounces Councillor Allen Brett entitled

'3 BOYS , A GIRL AND A GROOMER ROCHDALE COUNCIL PART 5': 
PART 5 OF SURVIVORS MATTERS EXPLANATION AS TO WHY ROCHDALE BOROUGH COUNCIL HAVE REPEATEDLY MADE PROMISES TO THEM ONLY TO LEAD SURVIVORS ON THE ROAD TO NOWHERE , WHILST ROCHDALE COUNCIL TRYING TO PORTRAY ACKNOWLEDGMENT AND CHANGE

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9gXUO6bK0qRQxCqmjKBenQ

***   Monday, 19 November 2012

It Was The Voices That Did It!

Cyril Smith - the Legend Falls

LAST WEEK, Northern Voices was party with others to the opening up of a story that has lied in the shadows for decades.   We cannot claim all the credit as we did not do the original research into Cyril Smith:  that was performed by the editors of the Rochdale Alternative Paper (RAP) in May 1979, when they first published the story and were threatened by Cyril Smith's solicitors at the time with a 'gagging writ'.  Private Eye and the New Statesman followed through with reports but the case against 'Smith the Man' was killed before it reached the mainstream media.  Later attempts to resurrect the story also failed because those giving evidence against Sir Cyril Smith lacked the confidence to put their names in the public domain. 

***********

The Slow Death of an Institution

by ‘Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’

A COUPLE of years ago the Rochdale Observer published a report of a march by one of those three initial right wing groups ostensibly protesting about the grooming of teenage girls by a gang of Asian men.  The then leader of Rochdale Council, Richard Farnell, castigated the paper because he objected to the prominence given to the report. He wanted powers to ban such marches in future ostensibly on the grounds that they ‘scapegoated an entire community’. In other words he did not think that the people of Rochdale had any right to know what was going on in their town if he did not approve of it.

A week later the ‘Your Views’ section of the paper devoted to letters sent in by readers carried a contribution praising the report and objecting to both Farnell’s attempt to prevent legitimate protest and his attempt to keep residents from knowing about it.

In 2014, Simon Danczuk published a book about the town’s former MP, Cyril Smith, who had died four years earlier. I will be charitable and say that the book was not very good.   It contained material taken from Smiths ghosted autobiography, material that was clearly derivative from a 1979 piece in Rochdale Alternative Paper (RAP) about Smith unsavoury antics at Cambridge House hostel, material that was later shown to be demonstrably wrong and a lot of assertions for which there was no evidence produced, but which had the effect of making any further claims about Smith’s behaviour unreliable.

Throughout the summer of 2014 the Rochdale Observer carried material, thought by some people to have been placed by an associate of Mr Danczuk, which tried to implicate the local Lib-Dems in a ‘cover up’ designed to ensure that other things about Smith did not become known.

Also throughout the summer the ‘Your Views’ section of the paper regularly carried letters pointing out the deficiencies in Danczuk’s book and why it was not a reliable record.

If Richard Farnell had been allowed to get away with his objection to the original report it might just have had the effect of making the editor a bit more cautious next time.  It wasn’t the Home Affairs Select Committee which challenged Danczuk’s fanciful stories about Smith’s supposed antics being covered up by Special Branch and of Westminster paedophile rings, it was letters in the ‘Your Views’ columns of the Rochdale Observer.

In recent years there’s been a competitor to the Observer in the shape of the web based media outlet Rochdale Online which included a vibrant ‘Letters’ section.  Whichever of these news outlets a letter writer chose one thing was certain its contents would be scrutinised by local politicians.

Sadly that is a thing of the past. The Rochdale Observer first cut down the space devoted to letters from readers, then reduced the frequency of the column to the point where some things are out of date by the time they appear. Rochdale Online went the whole hog and got rid its letters pages completely.

A liberal democracy like ours needs these self correcting mechanisms.  Politicians need close scrutiny. Ideas need to be challenged.   We are moving to a time when politicians and journalists will have a monopoly on the dissemination of ideas. Twitter and Facebook are no substitute for a vibrant ‘Letters’ page in a newspaper or its web based equivalent.   With both Twitter and Facebook it is easy to become locked into a world in which we only hear the views of people we agree with.

Contributions to ‘Letters’ pages in newspapers aren’t perfect.  They can be badly written, erudite, bigoted, idealistic, trivial, important, liberal, conservative, revolutionary or reactionary.   But in local newspapers they give people a sense of belonging because they allow them to have their voice heard.  Our society will be all the worse for their loss.