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Friday 20 June 2014

How the sexual abuse of children is used for political gain



In 1995, the BBC showed a Michael Cockerell documentary called Westminster’s Secret Service about the role of the chief whip, whose task it is to ensure MPs attend important debates and vote as the party leadership desires. It was revealed that the chief whip kept a little black ‘dirt book’ which contained information about MPs, and this was used as a method of political control.

Tim Fortescue, who was Ted Heath’s chief whip from 1970-73, said:

For anyone with any sense, who was in trouble, would come to the whips and tell them the truth, and say now, I’m in a jam, can you help? It might be debt, it might be…..erm……erm, a scandal involving small boys, or any kind of scandal in which, erm er, a member seemed likely to be mixed up in, they’d come and ask if we could help and if we could, we did. And we would do everything we can because we would store up brownie points……., and if I mean, that sounds a pretty, pretty nasty reason, but it’s one of the reasons because if we could get a chap out of trouble then, he will do as we ask forever more.

In short, the chief whip would cover up any scandal, even if 
it involved “small boys”, child sexual abuse, child rape, 
whatever you want to call it. They wouldn’t report the crime 
to the police, although they may use their contacts with the 
police to make sure to make sure the matter went no further
. This means that a paedophile would be the ideal 
candidate for promotion within the party, easily blackmailed 
and bought, loyalty and discretion guaranteed.

An example of how the dirt book may have been used is 
the case of Sir Peter Morrison, who was Conservative MP 
for Chester from 1974-1992, as well as being Margaret 
Thatcher’s Parliamentary Private Secretary. Morrison has 
been linked to a notorious paedophile ring that sexually 
abused children in North Wales care homes. Chris House, 
who worked as reporter for the Daily Mirror, twice received 
tip-offs about Morrison being caught abusing underage 
boys which resulted in just a police caution, but libel threats 
stopped the newspaper from running the story. Peter 
Connew, the former editor of the Sunday Mirror, said “such 
was the hush-up that nobody could get hold of a log of the 
arrest”.

Edwina Currie, who was a Conservative MP at the time, 
said “Peter Morrison has become the PM’s PPS. Now he’s 
what they call ‘a noted pederast’,’ with a liking for young 
boys; he admitted as much to Norman Tebbitt when he 
became deputy chairman of the party, but added, ‘However,
 I’m very discreet’ – and he must be!”

It seems possible that Morrison was given the job of PPS 
precisely because he was a paedophile; the party had ‘dirt’ 
on him so they could rely on his loyalty. Morrison was an 
alcoholic, famously incompetent, and often found asleep at 
his desk, so I can’t think of any other reasons for his 
promotion to PPS. Not a thought was given to the poor 
children who he abused, and nobody in his party went to 
the police to stop him committing these crimes. Edwina 
Currie was quite happy to save this ‘gossip’ about child 
rape to boost her book sales.

If an MP’s ‘indiscretions’ became too public to cover up, 
they were demoted or exiled to an obscure position. Mike 
Hames, who was head of Scotland Yard’s Obscene 
Publications Branch, talked of a raid on a brothel during 
which a man in pinstriped suit announced that he a cabinet 
minister. “That was before the end of Communism and, 
through a politician friend, I informed the PM, Mrs Thatcher.
 I noticed that the man, a junior minister, was quietly 
dropped later in a reshuffle.”

Elm Guest House would have been well known to Margaret 
Thatcher, having been raided by 60 police and then covered
 up by the DPP and the Attorney General, who stopped the 
press from reporting on it. It is thought that at least 7 
Conservative MPs were visitors to the paedophile brothel. 
Were any of these MPs later promoted to ministerial 
positions?


Ted Heath is credited with introducing the dirt book:

The most significant changes in the role of the whips 
appear to have taken place during the late 1950s and early 
1960s. Heath as chief whip from 1956 to 1959 brought a 
new professionalism to the job; he was the first holder of 
that position to routinely attend cabinet meetings,although 
neither he nor his successors have been full cabinet 
members. More significant was the way he systematically 
gathered information about every member of the party, and 
developed the art of using this to maximum advantage. He 
was after all responsible for piloting the Conservative party 
through the Suez crisis and its turbulent aftermath. When 
Edward Short became Wilson’s chief whip in 1964 he found 
that it ‘had been the practice to keep a “dirt book” in which 
unsavoury personal items about members were recorded’, 
and he immediately ordered this to be discontinued. It is 
probable that such stories arose simply out of the 
thoroughness with which Heath and his successors had 
gathered information. Heath himself explained his 
rofessionalism: ‘I acted on the principle that the more you 
know about the people you ae speaking for, and the more 
they know about you and what you are being asked to do, 
the better.’ (extract from ‘Churchill to Major: The British 
Prime Ministership Since 1945′ by
Donald Shell)

So the chief whip would proactively look for ‘dirt’ on MPs, 
not just wait for them to get into trouble. This might explain 
how the child abuse campaigner Geoffrey Dickens MP was 
so quickly exposed for having an extra-marital affair after 
he named the paedophile diplomat Sir Peter Hayman.

Although the Labour chief whip, Edward Short, claims to 
have discontinued the dirt book system, it seems obvious 
that both Labour and the Liberals would have continued to 
use it. The Liberal MP Cyril Smith would have needed his 
own book given his record of child sex offences stretching 
from the 1960s to the late 1990s, which makes it all the 
more staggering that former Liberal leader David Steel 
claims never to have received a complaint about him. 
Smith, as an Elm Guest House visitor, a friend of Jimmy 
Savile, and an associate of both Peter Righton and Sidney 
Cooke, would have been impossible for the chief whip to 
control, as he would have been able to bring most of 
Westminster down with him.

Fleet Street also have their own version of the dirt book, 
used to exercise control over politicians. What other 
explanation could there be for the Sunday Times/News 
International not using the leaked Operation Ore list, 
despite there being enough VIP paedophiles on the list “to 
fill newspaper front pages for an entire year”?

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