Legal chambers founded by Cherie Blair that made millions exploiting Labour’s human rights laws is in crisis after being accused of trying to ‘cover up’ sexual harassment against star barrister
- Benjamin Emmerson QC, a founder of the firm, is at the centre of controversy
- Emmerson accused of groping female collegue at work and against her will
- Matrix Chambers and Emmerson have both strongly denied the accusations
One thing is certain: they are holier than thou at Matrix Chambers, the influential firm of superstar ‘human rights’ barristers which rarely misses an opportunity to trumpet its credentials as a bastion of high-minded political correctness.
Founded in 2000 by Cherie Blair and a ‘dream team’ of 21 mostly Left-wing colleagues, the firm grew rich and famous cashing-in on the explosion of highly lucrative litigation spawned by the Blair government’s controversial Human Rights Act.
‘Fearless, formidable, and always highly aggressive,’ its members proceeded to ‘shape the modern human rights industry’, in the words of an admiring QC, righting perceived wrongs, taking on authority, and seeking to advance the causes of equality and liberalism in some of the most important and contentious court cases of recent times.
Its now-95-strong cohort of brilliant (if occasionally pompous) lawyers occupy one of London’s great ivory towers: a Victorian former police station situated a short stroll from the Old Bailey and Royal Courts of Justice.
Here, no fewer than three Sirs, two lords and ten professors currently earn their shilling, including several members of the Left-wing establishment, from (Lord) Ken MacDonald, Director of Public Prosecutions during the Blair era, and (Sir) Paul Jenkins QC, who became the New Labour government’s most senior legal official in 2006.
Among the other ‘big beasts’ are Hugh Tomlinson QC, a friend of actor Hugh Grant and founder of the anti-Press lobby group Hacked Off, Lord Brennan QC, a Labour peer, and Philippe Sands QC, the Guardian contributor and high-profile campaigner against the Iraq War.
Working for Matrix is less a job, and more a noble calling — or so this lot would have you believe.
So it goes that, on the front page of its website, the firm trumpets its credentials as a forward-thinking institution that promotes ‘equality’ where ‘diversity and accessibility are widely championed and outdated practice is challenged’.
Among the ‘core values’ is a commitment to being ‘dedicated to the promotion and advancement of women’.
How unfortunate, therefore, and how humiliating, that this bastion of progressive metropolitan liberalism should be accused of cynically betraying those ‘core values’.
For Matrix Chambers was this week revealed to be in a state of virtual crisis over the flawed — and some might say deeply hypocritical — way it handled a high-profile and extremely serious claim of workplace sexual harassment that occurred on its own doorstep.
Amid the fallout, an array of senior female staff members have filed a written complaint alleging widespread sexual harassment by colleagues. It claims that inappropriate comments, innuendo, (and worse), are routinely directed at them by ‘senior men’ on its payroll. Official reports looking at the issue have talked of ‘institutional failings’.
In a surreal twist, another internal email leaked this week accused women who had publicly voiced concerns about sexual harassment of being ‘deeply unsisterly’ because they were damaging Matrix’s reputation.
Ludicrously, it compared them to complaining farm animals, saying: ‘Women must help empower other women, not lead them down the path bleating.’
At the centre of this ugly controversy is one of the firm’s founders and most high-profile members of staff: Benjamin Emmerson QC, a ‘goliath’ of his trade who’s been an eminent human rights lawyers for over two decades.
Famed for his advocacy in a string of headline-grabbing cases, representing people such as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and the widow of Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, whose death by poisoning in London was blamed on Vladimir Putin, the ‘smart and charming’ Emmerson was once said to be the model for Bridget Jones’s dashing lawyer-lover, Mr Darcy.
His glamorous social set includes one-time colleague Amal Clooney and her husband, George.
The divorced father of four’s recent ex-girlfriends include Hollywood siren Ellen Barkin, who was once married to Irish actor Gabriel Byrne.
Last September, however, Emmerson abruptly resigned as lead counsel to the Government’s major child sex abuse inquiry, for which he was paid £1,700 a day from the taxpayer.
The departure was put down to unspecified concerns over his ‘leadership’. However it later emerged that the development had also followed an incident in which a female colleague claimed he’d groped her in a lift, during working hours and against her will, at the inquiry’s headquarters in London.
Emmerson vigorously denied the charge, as did Matrix, which subsequently said an inquiry into the incident by a senior judge had established that he ‘had not committed any act of sexual assault or sexual harassment’.
However, this week it emerged that this statement from a legal firm which is bastion of equality had been — at best — very misleading indeed.
For the inquiry had, in truth, ‘found as fact’ that Emmerson had attempted to either put his hand between his colleague’s legs or down her trousers, and that she had pushed him away.
It had described this conduct as ‘unwanted and of a sexual nature’, but concluded that Emmerson (who has always protested his innocence) was not guilty of either harassment or assault, partly because he honestly believed the women would consent.
Furthermore, it emerged this week that the woman had complained to Matrix that he was harassing her nine months before the lift incident. However, nothing was done.
We shall look at these events in detail later.
In the meantime, female staff — many of whom campaign for women to speak out about workplace harassment — were further galled to receive an email from Matrix management instructing them not to talk about the harassment case, saying ‘discussions of this sort may well prove highly corrosive’.
Though the law firm boasts about having fought honourable court battles over free speech and Press freedom, it decided in the message (which was leaked) to tell Chambers staff they were required to ‘respect the confidentiality’ of Emmerson by giving ‘a no comment response’ to journalists who might ask them about the case.
‘We also ask that you let us know [of any media inquiries], so that we may properly and effectively manage the situation and our organisation, in the interests of all,’ it read. To many, this added to the suspicion of a cover-up.
‘It’s impossible to underestimate how angry people are,’ says a source close to the firm. ‘What went on is outrageous. There has been no accountability, and no apology, and no heads have rolled.
‘This is the workplace of some of the most eminent equality lawyers in the world, but when a powerful man at the top of the organisation is accused of serious misconduct by a younger woman, its policies and procedures are in the Dark Ages.’
Several female barristers at the firm are understood to now be helping launch a campaign called Behind The Gown, which says sexual harassment ‘is endemic in our profession’, and plans to use social media to share examples.
Not surprisingly, this saga has been greeted with glee in legal circles, where rival lawyers have long regarded Matrix as too smug for its own good. ‘To say there is a degree of schadenfreude is an understatement,’ is how one human rights QC puts it.
‘Here we have the most preachy, right-on, pompous law firm, which has made small fortunes from discrimination lawsuits, failing to protect female employees in the most egregious way. The hypocrisy is extraordinary.’
To understand such anger, it is important to explain circumstances surrounding the formation of Matrix in 2000, when Cherie Blair and 21 colleagues founded the chambers as a potentially lucrative seam of new cases were expected after the Human Rights Act brought in by the government of her PM husband.
Despite, or perhaps because it was launched with a glamorous party attended by then-PM Tony, the legal media gave Matrix a lukewarm reception.
‘They have already been dubbed “the complaining chambers”,’ wrote one title. ‘They are all the whingers about civil liberties and much of their work will be from complainants.’
Other reports called it a ‘champagne socialist chambers’, ‘Mammon chambers’ or ‘whingers’ set’. The Spectator magazine went further, saying they were ‘leather jacket-wearing thought police’.
Yet for all the sniping, Matrix was hugely successful. It expanded rapidly and took on many high-profile briefs, perhaps most famously that of a Luton schoolgirl who claimed her human rights were violated when her headmistress banned her from wearing a head-to-toe jilbab.
Represented by Mrs Blair, the girl lost her case at the High Court but the verdict was overturned by the Court of Appeal — only to then see the House of Lords rule in favour of her school.
By then, such cases (many publicly-funded) had turned Matrix into one of the UK’s most well-remunerated chambers.
In 2006, its members were revealed to have appeared in 35 House of Lords hearings in the previous 12 months, more than double the number of any other firm. Average annual earnings for all Matrix barristers were then £225,000, though senior QCs were taking home more.
Cherie Blair was one of the higher earners, though her reputation was damaged by her husband’s government’s Iraq War, which was bitterly opposed by colleagues.
She left in 2014 to set up Omnia, an international law firm which has — how sweet the irony! — built lucrative connections with a number of foreign despots.
Matrix sailed on. Yet behind the scenes there were ugly rumours that the workplace conduct of some staff failed to live up to the high ideals of the organisation.
There were whispers (never confirmed) that one man had turned up to an office party accompanied by a prostitute. Another reputedly received an informal ban on working alone with juniors. Secretaries and receptionists are said to have been occasionally propositioned.
Then, last year, came the Emmerson case.
Details first emerged in January 2016 when a female Matrix worker, known in subsequent reports as ‘Ms A’, complained to the then chief executive, Lindsay Scott, that Emmerson had subjected her to sexual harassment.
She is understood to have asked for the matter to be dealt with informally. However, nine months later, matters escalated when an ‘unwanted’ incident ‘of a sexual nature’ took place in a lift at the headquarters of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, where Emmerson and the woman were working.
On September 28, the inquiry suspended Emmerson, expressing concern at ‘aspects of his leadership of the counsel team’.
The following day, he resigned, though continued to be paid his £1,700-a-day fee during a ‘handover’ that lasted several weeks. Then, in October, details of the alleged lift incident were revealed for the first time during an investigation by BBC2’s Newsnight.
Cherie Blair, with whom Emmerson helped establish the influential chambers
Matrix responded by ordering a secret inquiry. Its management committee hired David Calvert-Smith, a retired former Director of Public Prosecutions, to carry it out.
Calvert-Smith had no obvious specialist expertise in the field of workplace abuse or sexual harassment, and was not given details of Ms A’s previous complaints.
Perhaps more importantly, given the need for transparency, his report was never published, even in a redacted version, and was not shown to Matrix staff outside the management committee.
When that committee publicly announced that Emmerson had been cleared ‘without hesitation’, there was outrage.
‘A number of Matrix barristers, male and female, knew some details of the case, and took the view that the statement was at best misleading and at worst downright dishonest,’ says a source.
‘Since they knew the woman concerned, they also believed that Matrix was failing to properly deal with harassment claims.’
As a result, several female barristers wrote to the management committee calling for a review, saying: ‘We need to know that if something happened that required us to make a complaint, Matrix is equipped to handle it.’
Stung by the criticism, a sub-committee of senior Matrix lawyers commissioned a second inquiry into the handling of the abuse claims.
This was carried out by Dame Laura Cox, a prominent expert on harassment and equality law. Published in July, and leaked in part this week, its conclusions are damning.
Dame Laura concluded the chambers made a series of egregious errors, including failing to protect Ms A’s well-being and ignoring her initial complaint, and said the actions of senior management were ‘wholly inappropriate’.
She was also hugely critical of the firm’s original public statement exonerating Emmerson.
Adding that institutional failings had caused Ms A severe anxiety and distress, Dame Laura said the terms of reference of Sir David’s inquiry were too narrow, and was highly critical of the decision to appoint him in the first place.
She concluded that he’d been partly hired on the grounds that he ‘would be charging considerably less’ than any other candidate.
She also pointed out that Matrix management took few steps to ensure he had ‘expertise and experience in cases involving sexual harassment or in conducting sexual harassment investigations which require a particular sensitivity, understanding and approach’.
Regarding allegations of sexual harassment in the lift, she noted that Sir David ‘found as a fact’ that Ms A ‘had pushed Ben [Emmerson] away when he tried to put his hand between her legs / down her trousers. The conduct was, on his own findings, unwanted and of a sexual nature’.
Although Sir David decided this did not constitute harassment. Dame Laura said this took the wrong legal approach by failing to consider the Equality Act’s protections for people in the workplace.
‘The management committee’s decision immediately to accept this report was therefore an error,’ she wrote. ‘I consider that they ought to have realised that [Sir David] applied the wrong test and should have invited him to reconsider.’ Dame Laura’s report was filed in July. Since then, from Matrix, there has been silence on the matter.
‘This report highlights serious, institutional failings at an organisation which is supposed to be dedicated to equality,’ says a source close to the Chambers
‘The management contains some of the most eminent equality lawyers in the country. They have failed abjectly. Yet no heads have rolled and no apologies have been made.’
Emmerson has not commented on recent developments. However, he is understood to deny being guilty of any misconduct, and supporters point out that the Cox report focused on procedure and did not include any examination of first-hand evidence, meaning its author was not in a position to pass judgement over whether there had been harassment.
They add that he was never formally accused by the woman of assault.
Matrix, for its part, is saying nothing. This week, a spokesman declared it ‘does not intend to make any public comment on what are plainly confidential internal matters’.
Perhaps its PR team have other priorities: not long ago, they circulated a press release stating that the British Legal Awards — the industry’s ‘Oscars’ — had decided to short-list them as Chambers of the Year. Apparently, theirs is an industry in which abject hypocrisy pays.
The silencing of BigBen: Matrix ‘decided in the message (which was leaked) to tell Chambers staff they were required to ‘respect the confidentiality’ of Emmerson by giving ‘a no comment response’ to journalists who might ask them about the case’.
Staff at Cherie Blair’s old chambers complain of sexual harassment as review of serious misconduct probe finds ‘institutional failings’ in the way bosses handled investigation
- The independent review of how law firm Matrix Chambers, in London, handled a serious sexual misconduct allegation noted a lack of support for the woman
- Some of the actions of bosses at the company were ‘wholly inappropriate’
- Member Ben Emmerson QC was accused of sexually assaulting a woman in a lift
- 54-year-old denied misconduct and was cleared by judge ‘without hesitation’
- Female barristers raised concerns over case and review into probe was launche
According to The Times, the Matrix case stems from an incident in September 2016 when founder member, Ben Emmerson QC, was accused of sexually assaulting a woman in a lift.
The 54-year-old denied any misconduct and retired High Court judge Sir David Calvert-Smith cleared him ‘without hesitation’.
However, the report has never been published and female barristers raised concerns about the way it was handled.
Inquiry Updates:
BBC News – Child sex abuse inquiry breaches victim’s anonymity
The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse has admitted breaching its own procedures by publishing a victim’s name despite his right to anonymity.
The man’s name appeared on its website in the title of a document. The inquiry said it removed the name as soon as it was brought to its attention.
It was the seventh time the inquiry had been alerted to such a breach.
It notified the privacy watchdog – the Information Commissioner – and said it was reviewing its practices.
The inquiry, which was set up in the aftermath of the Jimmy Savile scandal, aims to investigate claims against local authorities, religious organisations, the armed forces and public and private institutions – as well as people in the public eye.
Thursday’s breach was spotted by a BBC journalist who alerted the inquiry to the fact that it had named a man who was applying for so-called “core participation” status at the inquiry.
The name was given in the title of a document, published for about a day, but had redacted that information elsewhere.
The inquiry said: “We understand that the document was viewed five times during that period.
“It was removed as soon as it was brought to our attention and the individual is being contacted and will be offered support.”
‘Totally unacceptable’
Since the inquiry began in March 2015, it has been alerted to seven breaches of anonymity and on four occasions, including this one, it reported itself to the Information Commissioner.
There are 1,150 people taking part in the inquiry who have had their identities hidden through the use of code numbers – this includes 200 core participants who have the right to take part directly in inquiry hearings.
The names of another 575 people are also protected because they are alleged perpetrators in cases where there has been no conviction or findings suggesting their guilt.
Richard Scorer, specialist abuse lawyer at Slater & Gordon solicitors who acts for many core participants at the inquiry, said: “This breach is totally unacceptable and it is extremely worrying that such a serious breach could occur.
“Such a breach would constitute contempt of court under the inquiry’s own rules.
“They need to review their procedures very urgently and ensure there is absolutely no repetition.”
Totally expected!
Colette L Annesley @ColetteAnnesley
Agreed Randolph. ‘Wilfully negligent’? Not possible to unanonymise the failed victim who’s come forward on account of past significant ‘failures’.
Andreas Baader @stop1984
It was the seventh time the inquiry had been alerted to such a breach.
Jay Jay Williams @JJsResilience
Amazing how there are never ‘mistakes’ against the perpetrators
Human rights lawyers chambers co-founded by Cherie Blair ‘is in crisis’ over new secret review into sex assault claims
- QC who was lead counsel in abuse inquiry was cleared over sex assault claims
- But a new review is critical of how the inquiry into the claims was handled
- The chambers at the centre of the allegations has told members not to comment
A top law-firm co-founded by Cherie Blair is said to have silenced its own members over a report into alleged sexual harassment.
Matrix Chambers, which was founded by the former Prime Minister’s wife in 2000, was at the centre of a storm last year over claims barrister Ben Emmerson QC sexually assaulted a woman in a lift.
He was cleared of any wrongdoing by a subsequent review by a retired judge, but a secret new report into that review is said to be critical of the way it was handled
The allegations centred on Mr Emmerson, who had been the lead counsel in the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA).
His quit his role on the inquiry after claims were made on BBC Newsnight about the alleged sexual assault.
Matrix Chambers then brought in Sir David Calvert-Smith, a respected senior judge, to look into the claims, over which no formal complaint was ever made.
The £1,700-a-day lawyer quit last September shortly after being suspended over concerns about his ‘leadership’, only to be cleared three months later of any wrongdoing.
Last year a Commons committee said the inquiry’s handling of the sexual assault and bullying allegations on its premises had been ‘wholly inadequate’.
It was accused of a cover up after lawyers who resigned from the probe said they were blocked from speaking out.
The Times reported today that a separate review commissioned by the chambers was critical of legal approach of the previous investigation and some of the findings.
However, the report is not being made public and members of the chambers are being told not to comment on it to the press, the newspaper reported.
The secret report will add to concerns over a perceived lack of transparency surrounding the investigations and any impact it may have had on the public inquiry.
Labour MP Lisa Nandy said: ‘It’s high time we saw some transparency and clarity from Matrix and the IICSA about these serious allegations.
‘It raises critical questions about how an inquiry set up to shine a spotlight on abuse failed fully to investigate allegations of misconduct within its own organisation.’
Matrix has been contacted for comment.
Mrs Blair left the chambers in 2014.
QC sex scandal could have ended child abuse inquiry Jay
- Prof. Alexis Jay said vested interests could have forced its closure in an interview
- Inquiry has 220 lawyers looking at cases from churches, schools and councils
- It is set to end with a final report and recommendations in the early 2020s
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4678490/QC-sex-scandal-ended-child-abuse-inquiry-Jay.html …
Media chief quits child abuse inquiry
A senior official has quit the public inquiry into child abuse amid reports of tensions over a consultancy firm that has been paid nearly £300,000.
Bron Madson left her role as head of communications at the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) last week. The inquiry revealed that it has paid the consultancy firm Crest Advisory £294,232 since 2015 for “strategic communications advice”.
Ms Madson is the latest high-level departure from the IICSA, which is scheduled to hold its first public evidence session this month. She and her team are said to have been frustrated by the reluctance of senior officials and members of the panel to engage with the media at a time when the future running of the Inquiry…
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/01b56dc8-f16b-11e6-b1cf-e834bbdfda95
Bron Madson aso a Trustee of the health charity, Headway Cambridgeshire
Dame Alun Roberts @ciabaudo
After yesterday’s complaints about Barbara Hewson’s ‘I hold the gun’ tweet, it would appear she has parted ways with Mansfield/Grays
Who Is Ireland’s Barbara Hewson? Age of Consent to 13, Murder, and Bono. 1498 Til Now
spiked watch @spikedwatch
“The myth of pedophilia: stop treating children like children” — #spikedheadlines
Update: Dec 16 2016
Another “safe pair of hands”…
Michael Mansfield QC – friend of Ben Emmerson
Tom Symonds @BBCTomSymonds
Shirley Oaks Survivors Association: Michael Mansfield QC will represent them in negotiations with Lambeth Council for abuse compensation
link
Kim Amanda Maloney @kimamaloney
Shirley oaks and Edward Heath all connected . My hubby went on so called sailing holidays too jersey from Shirley oaks . Lots abused
ww:
It seems strange that they are paying out to ALL children who were in the homes. http://brynalynvictims.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/lambeth-survivors-get-multi-million.html?spref=tw
Is this to buy silence about Jersey connections etc?
And Mansfield involved = put a lid on it.
Door2Door @jamesmcmenamin1
The #csa inquiry is a matter of life & death for the establishment & anyone who thinks that Twitter Facebook & survivor groups aren’t infiltrated & infested with state sponsored shills & gatekeepers is cuckoo, the establishments very being depends on them.
All in it together
Michael Mansfield, who will be representing survivors, now works in the same chambers as Barbara Hewson and he is a friend of Ben Emmerson.
COSY
Barbara Hewson mocks survivors. Doesn’t gel well
Barbara Hewson calls Hall’s crimes “misdemeanours” and warns against “fetishising victimhood”
Age of consent should be 13, says barrister
(Barbara Hewson’s cousin Jonathan Denby worked for Harvey Proctor and Enoch Powell)
Here are some of Barbara Hewson’s thoughts on child abuse survivors:
Dame Alun Roberts @ciabaudo
Hewson wants investigation into the survivors of convicted paedophile, former cop, Freemason…Gordon Anglesea
Dame Alun Roberts @ciabaudo
Can anyone explain to me why Barbara Hewson ALWAYS sides with the accused and never with the victims?
Several months ago…
Michael Mansfield willing to replace Emmerson in abuse inquiry
30 September 2016
Mansfield suggested Emmerson, whom he described as a “colleague and a friend”, had been unfairly treated by Jay. He said: “He is not abrasive. He is very sharp. His mind is well tuned to all the issues that are necessary and I think most people would have complete confidence in his intellectual abilities.”
More on Michael Mansfield:
Emmerson And Mansfield – members of the HALDANE SOCIETY
Haldane Society – Mansfield is President.
(Emmerson represented Assange against rape allegations)
Helena Kennedy also a member of Haldane Society
Helena Kennedy shared chambers with Michael Mansfield and has appeared in court with him.
Association of Women Barristers Dinner – Barbara Hewson, Helena Kennedy, Elizabeth Butler-Sloss
Barbara Hewson and Elizabeth Butler-Sloss’ nephew, Philip Havers – sit on same editorial advisory board – Justice Journal
Michael Mansfield, QC who on Radio 4’s morning programme today argued that Polanski should be treated “compassionately” and because his crime wasn’t as bad as genocide in Guinea and Darfur it shouldn’t be prosecuted.
In March 1977, film director Roman Polanski was arrested and charged in Los Angeles with five offenses against Samantha Gailey a 13-year-old girl[1] – rape by use of drugs, perversion, sodomy, lewd and lascivious act upon a child under 14, and furnishing a controlled substance to a minor.[2
Roman Polanski ‘should not receive special treatment in child sex case’, judge hears
Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski should return to the US to be sentenced for child sexual abuse and not receive special treatment as a “wealthy celebrity”, prosecutors have said.
A judge in Los Angeles is considering whether the long-running case involving the French-Polish film-maker – who has spent nearly 40 years on the run – should be drawn to a close.
Polanski, now 83, pleaded guilty to having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl at actor Jack Nicholson’s house but fled the US on the eve of sentencing in 1978.
Lawyers for the director say he is willing to return to America from France if he is assured he will not serve more jail time.
But prosecutor Michele Hanisee told a court hearing on Monday that Polanski was asking for “special treatment” and for the court to “completely abandon legal principles”.
“The People simply do not believe it is in the best interests of justice to give a wealthy celebrity – and that’s what Mr Polanski is – different treatment than any other fugitive from justice,” she said.
“If Mr Polanski returns, the People are confident he will get a fair hearing here in this court.”
Polanski’s lawyer Harland Braun said his client’s crime was “indefensible” but he fled at the time because he was “lied to” by the court about the sentence he would receive.
“This is a very unique case,” Mr Braun said.
“He is an 83-year-old man with a 40-year-old case that he wants to wrap up.”
Mr Braun told the court that the sentence at the time of Polanski’s offence was a maximum of two years in prison with 50% credit – meaning he would have spent 12 months in custody “at most”.
Polanski had already served 10-and-a-half months in custody in the US and Switzerland, he added.
Polanski fled the US after spending 42 days in an American jail when he feared a now-deceased judge would extend his sentence.
“He knows what he was promised,” Mr Braun said.
“We know he has served eight times what he was promised.”
The lawyer told the court the victim in the case said she wants “this thing over with”. He also called for a warrant issued for Polanski’s arrest to be dropped.
After hearing arguments from both lawyers, Judge Scott Gordon said he would issue a written ruling at a later date.
Director Roman Polanski fails in bid to end 40-year-old child rape case
April 4th 2017
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/roman-polanski-fails-bid-end-10153524#ICID=sharebar_twitter
Truthseeker1 @thewakeupcall09
Charles Manson claims Roman Polanski was involved in child porn
Charles Manson & Snuff Films
Dennis Hopper Los Angeles Times 1969
In Sharon Tate: A Life, author Ed Sanders writes that the Valley of the Dolls star’s husband was a dominating force in her life, urging her to fulfill his sexual fantasies by taking drugs and participating in affairs, orgies and home sex videos that he would later play for his friends at parties. The homemade sex tapes included “sadomasochistic-porno movies” that featured “quite a few recognizable Hollywood faces,” the author writes.
“Sharon told me about Roman – about imposed sexual scenes on her,” her friend, photographer Shahrokh Hatami, tells the author. “He was bringing other girls to have threesomes with Sharon, and Sharon didn’t like it that he was picking up girls on the Sunset and bringing them home to have sex with them.”
Polanski was nine years her senior.
The director allegedly refused to sleep with Tate after she became pregnant with his baby in 1968, and urged her to get an abortion. When she protested, he left the U.S. for London and had an affair with Michelle Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas, Sanders writes.
The summer after she became pregnant, Polanski “treated her like she was a piece of excess baggage,” writes Sanders. “He was even pointedly cruel to her in front of others at times, calling her ‘a dumb hag’ and criticizing her whenever she expressed an opinion.”
The couple’s baby would never be born. Tate was just two weeks from giving birth when she and four others were savagely killed by members of the Manson Family at her and Polanski’s L.A. home in August 1969.
http://people.com/celebrity/sharon-tates-marriage-with-roman-polanski-orgies-sex-tapes-and-more/
Did Bernadine Dohrn witness the murder of Sharon Tate on film ?
Bernardine Dohrn statements about Tate-LaBianca murders
Bernardine Dohrn WANTED BY FBI poster and supporter of Charles Manson
Michael Mansfield cases – Michael Barrymore; Barry George and Mohamed al-Fayed. Listen here at around 8.45am (give or take ten minutes).
Crimes of rape, globally, prosecution and conviction rates are appallingly low and to say that this is an insubstantial or unworthy crime to follow through on is denigrating every single rape and child sexual abuse survivor in the world.
Moneybags QC Michael Mansfield finds a lover 22 years his junior
She bizarrely describes herself as a ‘documentalist’, and also publishes a blog. But Miss Greenway, who calls herself Anna Christian, has suddenly found a deep interest in Left-wing politics after meeting Mansfield.
Their relationship began when she interviewed him for her online video channel
On Greenway’s website, Mansfield offers a glowing testimonial to her journalistic skills. It does not reveal that they are lovers.
Before her conversion to support for Palestine and other campaigns, her blogs and tweets had been notably more downmarket.
- In an earlier version of this article, we alleged that Ms Greenway had recorded an interview with Freddie Starr, and posted online a picture of herself with Stuart Hall. In fact, Ms Greenway has not met either man and is not associated with them.
Yvette Greenway, is certainly a woman of many hidden talents.
She has posted a poem, The Cup Of Comfort, on The Silence Of Suicide Facebook forum set up in honour of Mansfield’s daughter Anna, who died last May
The QC, got into hot water when he was reportedly arrested, then released without charge after a night in the cells, following an alleged assault at a hot-tub party.
Greenway, 51, a divorced mother of two who runs an online video and events business called Anna Christian Productions Ltd, is thought to have been caught up in the incident.
“It was clear that she felt that it was her fault, to some extent, that she had betrayed the company she worked for.
“She thought that she had given away some information about the reconfiguration of the company that she understood was going to lead to the loss of her job.”
Then she said she had resigned, which was confusing in the face of a supposed redundancy. A few days later Mansfield phoned again: “She thought she was being watched, listened to and, therefore, what had happened was getting back to the company,” he says.
He arranged to meet Anna that Sunday and when he called to check the arrangements she replied briskly, “Yes, Dad, yes, Dad – I’ll see you on Sunday. I’m fine.’’ Then she put the phone down.
She worked in the media and had spent 10 years at Reuters, before moving to a similar corporation.
Michael Mansfield QC, presented with the award for Outstanding Achievement 2010 by LALY chair Cherie Blair
Michael Mansfield QC and Mohamed Al Fayed appear for the press at the signing of Mansfield’s book ‘Memoirs of a Radical Lawyer’ at Harrods. Mohamed Al Fayed – good friends with paedophiles Michael Jackson and Vicar Guy Bennett
Career
Michael Mansfield was called to the Bar at Gray’s Inn in 1967, became Queen’s Counsel in 1989 and was elected as a Bencher of Gray’s Inn in 2007.
As of 2014 he was the President of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, and is a Professor at Law at London’s City University. Mansfield is a regular after dinner and keynote speaker.[3]
Notable cases
As well as representing those wrongly convicted of the IRA pub bombings (Guildford Four and Birmingham Six), Michael Mansfield has represented: the Angry Brigade; the Price sisters; Brian Keenan; the Orgreave miners; Mahmood Hussein Mattan, Ruth Ellis and James Hanratty (in posthumous appeals); those involved in the 1994 London Israeli Embassy attack; Stephen Lawrence‘s family; Michael Barrymore at the Stuart Lubbock inquest; Barry George at the inquest into the death of Jill Dando; the gangster Kenneth Noye;[4][5] the Bloody Sunday families; Arthur Scargill; Angela Cannings; Fatmir Limaj, a Kosovo-Albanian leader prosecuted in The Hague; Mohamed al-Fayed in the inquest into the deaths of his son Dodi al-Fayed and Diana, Princess of Wales; and the family of Jean Charles de Menezes.
In August 2001, it was reported that Dr Ibrahim Legwell, the Libyan lawyer in charge of Megrahi‘s appeal against conviction for the Lockerbie bombing, had invited US human rights lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, and Michael Mansfield to join his legal team.[7]
Many senior lawyers are freemasons and there are a number of lodges based on legal practice. These include the elite Chancery Bar and Gray’s Inn lodges….
https://www.thelawyer.com/issues/10-july-1995/freemasons-we-have-nothing-to-hide/
Update: Dec 14 2016
Dame Alun Roberts @ciabaudo
Ben Emmerson cleared by Ben Emmerson’s mate.
Ben Emmerson – Cleared by… Ben Emmerson’s chambers?
Mr Emmerson’s chambers – Matrix – set up an inquiry into Ben Emmerson’s conduct, including the alleged sexual assault¹. Mr Emmerson was cleared “without hesitation”.
How thorough was this “inquiry”? What evidence was presented to this “inquiry” for them to come to this conclusion? Did the alleged victim give a statement, was she even spoken to?
Bizarre.
¹Mr Ben Emmerson is innocent until proven guilty.
Ben Emmerson QC cleared of sexual assault allegation after inquiry ordered by (his own) Matrix Chambers
The former senior counsel on the national child abuse inquiry has been cleared of any wrongdoing in an independent investigation by his chambers.
(oxymoronic?)
Dame Alun Roberts @ciabaudo
What’s independent about bunch of cronies investigating their own? Particularly if Alexis Jay didn’t release info?
Sir David Calvert Smith, chair of the Parole Board
Sir David Calvert-Smith, who also served as Director of Public Prosecutions before moving onto the Bench, said he had concluded “without hestitation” that there was no truth in allegations that Ben Emmerson QC had committed sexual assault or harassment while working for the inquiry.
Background on Sir David Calvert-Smith
Cases
Sir David Calvert-Smith & butler Paul Burrell case
The ferocity of the public outcry that followed the collapse of the trial of the former royal butler Paul Burrell last year still haunts Sir David Calvert-Smith.
Queens’s Guardsman and wife- and yet another – Paedo probe at Windsor
School panic over castle ‘paedo’ wife
Mums demand answers after child-rape raid
The soldier performed guard duties at the castle when the Queen was in
residence.
Parents at the Windsor primary school where Parsons-Davies cared for three to
nine-year-old pupils were “very distressed” last night.
link
Warrington couple jailed for role in ‘sick’ child sex ring
A nationwide ring… ran sex parties with animals at an isolated countryside farmhouse, near Malmesbury, Wiltshire.
Discovery77 @discovery77_
Case was absolutely vile,he was a former cavalry soldier who even arranged for an HIV sufferer to assault child as he drove round Windsor!
and groomed a young girl to become an animal ‘porn star’!(Their term) Calvert Smith had sympathy & reduced sentence!!
was it not in the public interest?
could be worth looking at the other faces in the ring
Soldier who helped organise ‘paedophile parties’ to ‘block out’ trauma of serving in Afghanistan jailed indefinitely
- Household cavalry soldier Simon Wyn-Davies, 38, will serve minimum of 11 and a half years in prison
- Wyn-Davies was part of a paedophile ring that carried out a string of horrific sex crimes against young children
- Soldier claimed he raped children and hoarded child pornography to block out the trauma of his war-time experiences in Afghanistan
A soldier who was part of a sex abuse ring that held ‘paedophile parties’ has been jailed indefinitely.
Simon Wyn-Davies, 38, claimed he raped children and hoarded child pornography to block out the trauma of his war-time experiences in Afghanistan.
The Household Cavalry soldier told a judge he was suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome following tours of duty in the war-torn country.
The soldier abused a schoolgirl for up to 18 months and had even begun grooming her to become an animal porn star, the judge was told.
He filmed hundreds of indecent videos and still photo images of the molestation and sent the sick material to a string of other perverts by email.
Wyn-Davies even arranged for an HIV sufferer to sexually assault a girl in the back of his Jeep as he drove around Windsor, the hearing at Reading Crown Court was told.
The former Queen’s guard from Windsor, Berkshire, was given an indeterminate prison sentence for public protection at Reading Crown Court and will serve a minimum of 11-and-a-half years.
He was jailed for 22 counts, including rape of a child under 13, conspiracy to rape and distributing indecent images of children.
His sentence follows the previous conviction of his teaching assistant wife, Fiona Parsons-Davies, aged 45 years, who admitted child cruelty after her ‘willful blindness’ at not reporting sexual abuse to police and was jailed for two years.
Three other members of the gang were also jailed indefinitely in September – retired Nicholas Cordery, 63, from Wiltshire, charity worker Peter Malpas, 47, from Moulton, Northamptonshire and IT trainer Anthony Flack, 54, from Bristol.
Provided advice, prosecuted or tried.
Health and Safety
Herald of Free Enterprise. Marchioness. Buncefield.
Fraud
Marconi
Polly Peck (Part 1)
Lord McAlpine and Asil Nadir – on behalf of Tory party between 1985-1990, accepted almost £500 000 from the corrupt Polly Peck tycoon.
Her father is Thomas McAlpine of the Scottish McAlpine construction family She had, she admits, ‘a cushioned childhood’.
Miss Forsyth had been a high-flying personal banker whose clients had included film director David Lean and the Saudi royal family when the Polly Peck affair occurred.
Elizabeth Forsyth, 76, was Nadir’s personal banker at the time of the Polly Peck scandal. In 1996, year she was jailed for five years for handling stolen cash. Asil Nadir sentenced to 10 years for stealing £29 million from his own company more than two decades ago.
The 71-year-old returned to Britain in August 2010 after 17 years in exile following the collapse of his £2 billion company Polly Peck International (PPI).
In March 1996, she was charged with money laundering and found guilty of handling £400,000 of stolen PPI money.
She was looking after wealthy private clients at Citibank when in 1985 she was introduced to Asil Nadir by a Greek, Ted Petropoulos, with whom she had worked at the First National Bank.
Nadir & his “banker” Elizabeth Mcalpine ForsythProfile: Lord Midas, his zenith and nadir: Lord McAlpine, party treasurer for Mrs Thatcher
Customs
Iraqi Sanctions
Terrorism
Israeli Embassy (Botmeh and Alami), Hindawi (plot to blow up El Al plane), Airlines bomb plot, Karim (plot by BA employee) and a number of the cases tried since 2005.
General crime
Many of the highest profile homicide cases from 1986-1997. Hanson (murder of banker John Monckton), Tobin (murderer of 3 women, 2 of whom he buried in the garden of his house).
25 July 2012
The Honourable Mr Justice (David) Calvert-Smith has been appointed as the new Chair of the Parole Board today.
Sir David Calvert-Smith has been a High Court Judge in the Queen’s Bench Division since 2004 and was a Presiding Judge of the South Eastern Circuit from 2006 to 2010. He served as the Director of Public Prosecutions from 1998 to 2003.
The Lord Chancellor Kenneth Clarke said:
‘I am delighted to announce Sir David’s appointment as Chair of the Parole Board.
Iraq abuse claims ‘often very poor’ says former DP
Nov 18, 2016
Abuse inquiry defended after victims’ group quits
The Shirley Oaks Survivors Association, for 600 victims who lived in children’s homes in Lambeth, said it had no confidence in the inquiry’s leadership.
Chuka Umunna MP said the inquiry chair, Prof Alexis Jay, should be replaced.
Raymond Stevenson, who has previously spoken about being physically abused during his time at the Shirley Oaks home in the 1970s, said the group’s members had voted “overwhelmingly” on Saturday to pull out of the inquiry.
Mr Stevenson told the BBC that the group “felt relieved not to be part of this mangled attempt to get belated justice for our members” and he called the inquiry an “unpalatable circus”.
“The inquiry has just lurched from disaster to disaster and we do not believe Alexis Jay, the chair, is the right person to wrench open the Pandora’s box of historical lies and cover-ups that have happened over the decades,” he said.
He said the inquiry was not a “genuine attempt” to look at the truth.
“When you look at the debacle that has taken place with resignations, with heads leaving, claims of racial abuse, sexual abuse, this is not an environment we would put our members through,” he said.
In a statement, the group claimed the inquiry’s fourth chair – former social worker Prof Jay – was planning nothing more than a “social work talk shop”, which it said would achieve nothing, and described her as “an uninspiring leader”.
The Shirley Oaks Survivors Association is planning to publish the results of its own investigation.
It claims that the Home Office, which sponsors the inquiry and provided some of its staff, had a role in covering up abuse in the past.
Chuka Umunna MP said there was concern about her social work background because “for many of the survivors… a lot the perpetrators came from that profession”, and further concern about the “severe dysfunction” in the legal team.
“So for all those reasons I don’t have confidence in this chair and I think we need a new one,” he said.
Resignations
The inquiry has been beset by difficulties since it was set up in July 2014 to investigate allegations made against local authorities, religious organisations, the armed forces and public and private institutions in England and Wales, as well as people in the public eye.
Three chairwomen – former president of the High Court Family Division Baroness Butler-Sloss, her replacement, leading lawyer Dame Fiona Woolf, and Justice Goddard, a New Zealand high court judge – have already stood down.
A number of senior lawyers on the inquiry have also quit – the most recent of which was Aileen McColgan, who resigned on Wednesday amid concerns about the inquiry’s leadership.
Ben Emmerson QC, the most senior lawyer on the inquiry, resigned last month, and Elizabeth Prochaska – the inquiry’s second most senior lawyer – had stepped down on 15 September.
This week it was announced the inquiry has also delayed hearings into the late Lord Janner.
Update:
Theresa May insists she has ‘absolute confidence’ in child abuse inquiry chair hours before its probe into Lord Janner allegations is delayed due to ongoing police investigations
- Prof Aileen McColgan quits Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse
- She has concerns about competency of fourth chair, Professor Alexis Jay
- Two more barristers are also poised to leave the ailing abuse inquiry
- But PM told MPs she still has ‘absolute confidence’ in Professor Alexis Jay
- Inquiry’s probe into late Labour peer Lord Janner postponed to allow separate police investigations to take place
The departure of Professor Aileen McColgan, a law professor at Kings College London, dealt another major blow to the inquiry due to her experience of leading inquiries into child abuse in the Anglican and Catholic Church.
LazerLight @Lazer_Light23
Elizabeth Prochaska – Left Sept 2016
Ben Emmerson QC – left Sept 2016
Aileen McColgan – Left Nov 2016
All Matrix Chambers.
FIVE MOST SENIOR LAWYERS TO QUIT THE ABUSE INQUIRY
Hugh Davies QC – December 2015
Toby Fisher – August 2015
Elizabeth Prochaska – September 2016
Ben Emmerson QC – September 2016
Aileen McColgan – November 2016
Ben Emmerson and other lawyer Aileen Mccolgan who quit both Matrix Chambers & editors on European Human Rights Law Review.
Update:
Abuse probe denies claim top lawyer quit over ‘sex assault’ after Newsnight alleges cover-up of allegation
- Ben Emmerson QC quit as head of child abuse inquiry on September 29
- He denies claim he groped a colleague at the inquiry’s Millbank Tower
A chum of the Clooneys, Benedict Emmerson led the VIP child abuse inquiry. Now he and his junior have left in a swirl of toxic rumours
- Benedict Emmerson QC was suspended from his duties by the fourth inquiry chairwoman Professor Alexis Jay
- Professor Jay had ‘become very concerned about aspects of Mr Emmerson’s leadership of the counsel team’
- His deputy, Elizabeth Prochaska, quietly quit the inquiry on September 15 in mysterious circumstances
In Venice, his shipmate Ms Barkin, the star with Al Pacino of the film Sea Of Love — whose most recent marriage was to American billionaire Ronald Perelman — was reportedly swept off her feet by the British lawyer.
The odd couple — Mr Emmerson is nine years her junior — were even briefly engaged.
He had founded (along with others) Matrix Chambers, the holier-than-thou barristers’ set with the then Prime Minister’s wife Cherie Blair in 2000.
One of Mr Emmerson’s favoured juniors was — and continues to be — the glamorous and clever Mrs Clooney – British lawyer Amal Alamuddin
Their most high-profile collaboration came in 2011 when they represented WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange in his fight against extradition to Sweden to face charges of rape and sexual assault.
Mr Emmerson had told the court that Assange’s behaviour towards two women was not a crime.
It emerged that Mr Emmerson’s deputy, Elizabeth Prochaska — the daughter of the Principal of Somerville College, Oxford — had quietly quit the inquiry on September 15 in mysterious circumstances.
In the last fortnight Mr Emmerson, was suspended from his duties by the fourth inquiry chairwoman Professor Alexis Jay. Prof Jay had ‘become very concerned about aspects of Mr Emmerson’s leadership of the counsel team’. Those ‘aspects’ were not explained, but have been linked to the resignation of Ms Prochaska.
Twenty-four hours after his suspension, Mr Emmerson, a divorced father of four, had also resigned. Then the shutters came down.
How convenient and befitting for a coverup, non-disclosure agreements all round and no further investigation after resignations!
Emmerson leaves under a cloud of toxic rumour concerning his own behaviour behind the scenes — and, it was revealed this week, not a penny in severance pay, unlike the inquiry’s third chair, Dame Lowell Goddard, who received £80,000 in pay and allowances when she resigned in August.
After leaving Douai, Mr Emmerson studied at Bristol University and was called to the Bar in 1986. He made his first major mark the following year when he co-authored a report, commissioned by the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers (current President is Michael Mansfield) and a number of trade unions, into the policing of the 1986 Wapping Dispute at the News International headquarters (when war broke out between the print unions and Rupert Murdoch).
His fellow author was another young barrister called Anne Shamash. The two were part of a ‘brilliant young generation’ of civil rights lawyers who emerged during the Nineties.
They married and have four sons, but separated some years ago. Ms Shamash is now an immigration judge and has refused to comment on her ex-husband’s travails.
Conflicts of Interest:
Ben Emmerson was a boarder at the Douai School in Berkshire which was run by the adjacent Benedictine Abbey.
Ironically, a number of the school’s former staff were later convicted of child sex abuse offences and it closed in 1999.
Mr Emmerson replied: ‘I didn’t even know the school had closed after sex abuse scandals involving pupils and staff/teachers. I thought it had closed down after an affair between one of the monks and an adult female parishioner.
‘That all happened a long time after I was there, of course.’
Dame Alun Roberts CH @ciabaudo
This shows a truly amazing lack of interest for a man who was effectively in charge of an investigation into institutional child sex abuse!
……
Smith began abusing at the school in 1975 – Emmerson was born in 1963 – wouldn’t Emmerson have been a student at the school when Smith was abusing?
Douai Abbey
Vicar jailed for decades of sex abuse after church failed to take action
During the two-week trial, Bristol crown court heard that concerns about the vicar were raised with the church on two occasions, first in 1983 and again in 2001.
On both occasions, the complainants were assured the matter had been “dealt with”, but Smith continued to abuse boys in his parish.
Smith, vicar of St John the Evangelist in Clevedon, Somerset, began the abuse in 1975, during his time as assistant headmaster at the Douai Abbey monastic boarding school in Berkshire.
Ben Emmerson was consultant to Law Commission regarding its response to the Macpherson Inquiry into the death of Stephen Lawrence
https://www.thelawyer.com/issues/19-april-1999/the-top-five-criminal-talents/
http://www.lawcom.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/CP156.pdf
Ben Emmerson QC: The human rights lawyer who was expected to lead child abuse inquiry is accused of ‘bullying’ and ‘intimidation’
21 January 2015
Mr Emmerson released a statement describing the allegations as ‘entirely baseless’, adding that the complaints had been ‘fully investigated and dismissed as unfounded’
“Ben ….was the one able to give assurances about being able to see documents covered by the Official Secrets Act and seeing classified documents.
The former college of Margaret Thatcher, Somerville College, have chosen to establish a Margaret Thatcher scholarship scheme, a scheme in which they will give people the chance to succeed ‘against the odds’ and have a chance to study at Oxford University.
It can certainly be seen as a moving tribute to Somerville’s former pupil Margaret Thatcher.
Somerville College publicly refused to honour former pupil Margaret Thatcher, England’s only female prime minister, in 1985, because they saw her cuts on education and spending as contradictory to their principals. Current principal Dr Alice Prochaska spoke of her hopes to ‘readdress the balance’ of relations with Margaret Thatcher….
…hoping to raise £100 million to fund the scheme from Britain and overseas…
Mikhail Gorbachev, George Bush senior, Nancy Reagan and Tony Blair are amongst the list of high profile patrons that are supporting the scheme.
It is believed that Somerville College will be looking to establish a ‘Thatcher House’ within the college campus, in which students will be able to study
.
The trust is backed by an array of Lady Thatcher’s contemporaries and other eminent figures from across the political spectrum.
In the US George Bush Senior, the former President, and Ronald Reagan’s widow, Nancy, have both pledged their support alongside Henry Kissinger, the former US Secretary of State, George Shultz, the former Treasury Secretary and Robert Gates, the former defence secretary.
More recent US political figures who have agreed to act as patrons include Condoleezza Rice, the former Secretary of State, and Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Mikhail Gorbachev, the former President of the Soviet Union, is another of the patrons along with Brian Mulroney, the former President of Canada.
In Britain, patrons include Sir John Major and Tony Blair, the former Prime Ministers, Lord Owen, the founder of the Social Democratic Party, and Lord Carrington, the former Foreign Secretary.
During a joint press conference with David Cameron in Washington yesterday Barack Obama praised Lady Thatcher as “a great champion of freedom and liberty and of the alliance that we carry on today”.
Chris Patten behind Dr Prochaska. Mr Al-Kuwari shaking hands with Dr Prochaska, after signing the Memorandum of Understanding
Chris Patten is patron of St Benedict’s School, which has been run by numerous Benedictine paedophiles over decades.
Specific case studies will be identified by the investigation. The first case study will examine the English Benedictine Congregation which has been the subject of numerous allegations of child sexual abuse, including at schools run by the Congregation. The Inquiry will examine the relationship between Orders such as the Benedictines and the Catholic Church in England and Wales and consider how that relationship impacts on child protection. In this way the Inquiry will evaluate whether any failings identified within the English Benedictine Congregation, and within any other case studies identified as part of the investigation, are representative of wider failings within the Catholic Church.
https://www.iicsa.org.uk/investigations/investigation-into-failings-by-the-catholic-church
http://www.pressreader.com/uk/scottish-daily-mail/20140715/282230893805736
The Chancellor of the University – the Lord Patten of Barnes.
September 26, 2010
Presentation to the Visitor
Last Saturday, Somerville College officially inaugurated its new Principal, Dr. Alice Prochaska. The ceremony is actually known as “Presentation to the Visitor” …”Visitor” here meaning the Chancellor of the University – the Lord Patten of Barnes.
11th May 2016
Margaret Thatcher Scholarship Trust receives £3m donation from the Qatar Development Fund
The signing took place in the presence of HE Yousef Ali Al-Khater, Ambassador of the State of Qatar in London; Mr. Khalifa Jassim Al-Kuwari, Director General of the QDF; Lord Patten of Barnes, Chancellor of the University of Oxford and Lord Powell of Bayswater, close friend and foreign affairs adviser to Lady Thatcher.
Left to right: Mr Mubarak Ajlan Mubarak Al-Kuwari, Councilor at the Qatar Embassy; Lord Powell of Bayswater, Patron of the Margaret Thatcher Scholarship Trust; H.E. Mr. Yusouf bin Ali Alkhater, Ambassador of the State of Qatar in London; Dr Alice Prochaska, Principal of Somerville College; Lord Patten of Barnes, Chancellor of the University of Oxford, Visitor of Somerville College and Patron of the Margaret Thatcher Scholarship Trust; H.E Mr. Khalifa Jassim Al-Kuwari, Director General of the Qatar Development Fund
Alice Prochaska studied at Somerville College in the University of Oxford and received BA and DPhil degrees in Modern History.
Prochaska was initially a museum curator, and then an archivist at the Public Record Office, now The National Archives.
From 1984 to 1992 she was administrator and deputy director at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London.
From 1992 to 2001 she was Director of Special Collections at the British Library. She then became head librarian at Yale University, United States, from 2001 to 2010.[2][3]
She became Principal of Somerville College from 1 September 2010.[4][5] She will be stepping down at the end of her seven-year term in August 2017.[7]
Prochaska was involved with the design of the first National Curriculum for history in the United Kingdom during 1989–90. She was a governor of London Guildhall University, now part of London Metropolitan University. She chaired the National Council on Archives and was a member of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts.
Prochaska is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and served as Vice-President from 1995 to 1999.[1] In the US she chaired the Center for Research Libraries and several committees of the Association of Research Libraries, served on the Board of Yale University Press, and lectured on subjects relating to archives and special collections. Prochaska currently lectures and publishes on topics related to national heritage and national identity. She now chairs the Sir Winston Churchill Archive Trust, and serves as a Pro Vice Chancellor of the University of Oxford.
Personal life
Alice Prochaska is married to the historian Frank Prochaska.
“Giving what amounted to charitable status to statutory bodies stunned the charitable establishment,” he said, noting that Sara Morrison, (Sir Peter Morrison’s sister-in-law) chair of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations at the time, said the act was “the most damaging blow suffered by the voluntary sector for many years”.
He said that the existing contracting culture for public services had resulted in charities “swimming into the mouth of the Leviathan” by moving further from their roots and becoming less likely to be independent.
“The use of charities to do the government’s bidding has been criticised as a devolved form of government administration that turns the intermediary institutions of civil society into agencies of the state through contracts and financial control,” Prochaska said.
Our three-year residential programme runs for
38-weeks a year.
What is progress for our children and families?
Our children arrive from environments of family breakdown, high anxiety and trauma.
The 15th Mulberry Bush Women of the Year Lunch 20th September 2016
Milly Soames (The High Sherriff of Buckinghamshire) and Dr Alice Prochaska (The Principal of Somerville)
Milly and her husband Rupert Soames are in billionaire convicted paedophile Jeffery Epstein’s black book
As is Mulberry School guest speaker at the event Hannah Rothschild
Prue Leith with Hannah Rothschild
Mulberry Bush Organisation
Seven-year-old Stan. Four years ago he was rescued from a paedophile ring in which he saw other children murdered by members of his own family. By the time he arrived at the Mulberry Bush, Stan had been through 73 foster placements and was widely considered to be beyond rehabilitation.
Patrons
David Astor, CBE
Sir Hugo Brunner, KCVO
Dame Fiona Caldicott, DBE
The Right Hon. David Cameron, MP
Roger Graef
Lady Heseltine
The Right Hon. The Lord Hurd of Westwell, CH, CBE
Ian Marber
Jon Snow, Hon FRIBA
Joanna Trollope, OBE
http://www.mulberrybush.org.uk/our-charity/charity-leadership/
Milly Soames– wife of Serco chief Rupert Soames a great-nephew of the founders of the Scout movement, Robert Baden-Powell and Olave Baden-Powell.
Rupert’s brother is the Conservative MP Sir Nicholas Soames, close friend to Prince Charles
http://www.some.ox.ac.uk/people/dr-alice-prochaska/
Elizabeth Prochaska – should have recused herself due to her family’s links to establishment.
IICSA – “Independent” Inquiry into CSA
via Dame Alun Roberts CH @ciabaudo
Inquiry Update:
14 Oct 2106
Child sexual abuse judge Dame Lowell Goddard denies saying Britain has so many paedophiles ‘because it has so many Asian men’
Home Secretary claimed Justice Goddard resigned because she was ‘lonely’ and because the probe proved ‘too much’
More on The Mulberry Organisation – Tavistock – linked
Mulberry Bush School is an independent residential special school in the village of Standlake in Oxfordshire, for children aged 5 to 12 years.
The school was founded in 1948 by psychologist Barbara Dockar-Drysdale. It is a registered charity.[1]
Stephen and Pip Dockar-Drysdale -Pip, living in a house on her husband’s family’s 2,000-acre estate in Oxfordshire, took in evacuees from London.
She explained the theory of the super ego to a Jewish refugee who was familiar with psychotherapy. Impressed, he advised her to read Freud. The next thing that happened was that the Ministry of Education asked her to set up a school for disturbed children
She trained as a psychotherapist, at the Tavistock Clinic and at the Maudsley Hospital. There she met Melanie Klein, Anna Freud and Leila Rendel (who was running the Caldecott Community for disturbed children that she had founded in 1911), among other pioneers in the same field. She started her most creative and exciting work with children referred to her by child guidance clinics: she showed enormous determination to understand them and had an extremely focused mind. Her greatest mentor was the eminent child psychiatrist, Donald Winnicott, who encouraged her to extend her work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulberry_Bush_School
Psychologist Barbara Dockar-Drysdale’s mentor was Donald Winnicott who was influenced by the work of Ronald Fairbairn, father of paedophile Nicholas Fairbairn.
Mulberry Bush – In some ways it was chaotic and the fright of Home Office inspectors. In 1969, Pip left the Mulberry Bush as principal, but remained as consultant psychotherapist and took on a similar role at the Cotswold Community.
twitter.com/CassandraCogno
Sir Nicholas Fairbairn Dad Ronald Fairbairn huge influence on child psychology & early development even writes about abuse effects
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Fairbairn
Nicholas Fairbairn had affair with Sir Charles Morrison’s secretary. It got messy, and Michael Mates helped clean up.
Michael Mates attending service for Leon Brittan
Tavistock & Rudolf Hess
John Rawling Rees became its medical director (Tavistock) from 1934. This group specialised in the new ‘dynamic psychologies’ of Sigmund Freud and his followers, and in particular the Object relations theory of Ronald Fairbairn (Nicholas Fairbairn‘s father) and others. Recruited to the British Army during the second world war, he became an army Brigadier.
Brigadier John Rawlings Rees and the Rudolf Hess affair
Together with Henry Dicks, a fellow member of the Tavistock Clinic group, Rees was charged with the care of Hitler’s Deputy Rudolf Hess at the secret prison locations where he was held following his capture after landing in Scotland.[3]
Over the four-year period from June 1941 up to Hess’s appearance at the Nuremberg trial, Rees apparently established a relationship with Hess: Hess’s diaries record many meetings with Rees, referred to at this time as Colonel Rees, in which Hess accused his captors of attempting to poison, drug, and ‘mesmerize’ him.[4]
In 1945, Rees was a member of the three-man British panel (with Churchill’s personal physician Lord Moran, and eminent neurologist Dr George Riddoch), which assessed Hess’s capability to stand trial for war crimes.[5]
Post-War “Operation Phoenix”
After the war, Rees and five others got together and formed an ‘Interim Planning Committee’ (IPC) chaired by Wilfred Bion, meeting twice a week to formulate a new way forward for their work at the Tavistock, based on war-time experience.[1]
Wheels Within Wheels Or Flies Drawn To The Same Incestuously Corrupt Shithouse?
I have taken the title of today’s post from a comment left by Mike Claybrook in response to a previous post. Mike offered it as a reflection on the cronyism and corruption evident in north east Wales, but it’s a remarkably succinct summary of the prevailing situation in the many institutions, political parties and regions of the UK that have been discussed on this blog.
Readers will be aware that I spent my youth living under the long dark days of Thatcherism and I don’t think that I’ve yet recovered – when I was in north Wales it was a case of poverty and being the victim of the paedophiles’ friends and when I was in London it was a case of witnessing the extreme fuckwittery and greed of the highest echelons of the medical profession whilst they told me that I was a naïve sheepshagger because I wasn’t interested in joining in with their idiocy. I didn’t know at the time, but they too were the paedophiles’ friends, but just rather richer, grander and rather better connected friends than those in north Wales. The paedophiles’ friends in north Wales ended up with OBEs, the ones in London bagged knighthoods and peerages. Despite the joy that erupted throughout the UK at the news of Thatcher’s resignation however, the nightmare of course continued – because John Major took over with pretty much the same bunch of goons in senior positions.
One of the more unpleasant spectacles in the early days of Major’s Gov’t occurred at the Conservative Party Conference in Brighton in October 1992, when Peter Lilley decided that the way to endear himself to the Party was to launch into a vindictive poisonous attack on some of the most vulnerable in society. There had been much gnashing of teeth about the ballooning numbers of people claiming sickness benefits – which was of course happening because Tebbit et al had spent years making alterations to the way in which the unemployment figures were calculated in order to hide the ghastly truth and GPs had been quietly encouraged to shift claimants over onto sickness benefits where possible. Lilley achieved notoriety by singing a pastiche of the Lord High Executioner’s ‘little list’ song from The Mikado. He entertained the conference with a ditty about having a ‘little list’ of people who ‘won’t be missed’ – they included people claiming social security benefits, unmarried pregnant women and socialists no less. Liiley’s performance was truly unedifying.
Readers might have noted the date of the Party Conference concerned – October 1992. Six months after the arson attack on a building in Brighton which killed five people with connections to the North Wales Child Abuse Scandal. Two more deaths resulted from this event as well – the man who was alleged to have confessed to starting the fire was found dead himself days later and another young man who survived the arson attack alleged that the former residents of the children’s homes in north Wales were being murdered because they had knowledge of liaisons between child prostitutes and politicians but he was subsequently found dead himself after giving evidence. For full details of the fire and it’s aftermath, see post ‘The Silence Of The Welsh Lambs’. Presumably it was felt that after this fire, a few more people who wouldn’t be missed were out of the way.
Well Peter, I’ve got a list as well – a list of all those people whom I know colluded with the activities of a vicious paedophile ring in north Wales. Admittedly it’s not a little list – because of the degree of corruption that was involved it’s a very long list and many have already been named on this blog, but there are still a few obvious loose ends to tie up. So here is my own additional little list, to be read with reference to – and correlated with – previous posts.
My little list begins with three odious people who were friends and contemporaries at York University – Harvey Proctor, Michael Brown and Christine Holman, now Christine Hamilton. I don’t know what was going on at York at the time, but the York University Conservative Association spawned some deeply unpleasant people.
Harvey Proctor is legendary. He was Chair of the York University Conservative Association between 1967-69, then the Assistant Director (1969-71) and a member of the executive council (1983-87) of the hard right Monday Club. He was the Tory MP for Basildon (1979-83) and then for Billericay (1983-87). In the early 80s some mind-boggling rumours circulated about Harvey Proctor, rumours so florid that I didn’t believe them. He was alleged to be taking part in extreme S&M activities with under-aged boys. ‘Private Eye’ ran a few articles about him – he was featured in their ‘The New Boys’ column and I expected him to sue them. However he didn’t. Proctor became a source of fascination to the ‘Eye’ and sometime later they published allegations that a building that he owned was housing members of the League of St George (a far-right group) and then allegations that someone had been walking past his London flat, heard guttural noises coming from within and observed bloody handprints on the outside of the building. Interestingly, no-one from the Tories denied these stories, they just ignored them. The rumours continued to circulate and eventually some Tories started expressing the opinion that Proctor was a serious embarrassment and that they’d rather he stood down.
In 1986 ‘The People’ newspaper claimed that Proctor was in same sex relationships with males and then the shit really hit the fan – in 1987 Proctor was found guilty of gross indecency and fined after participating in spanking sessions in which young male prostitutes were tied up. The prostitutes involved were not ‘children’, but they were under the legal age of consent for gay sex between men, which at the time was 21. Proctor and others who were charged under similar circumstances now angrily point out that they were targeted for being gay and that the men that they were having sex with would these days be over the age of consent. I take their point about the relevant changes in the law – but whereas some of these men were charged for offences involving young men between the ages of 16 and 21, there were constant allegations that some of them had sometimes been sexually involved with boys under the age of 16. Furthermore these rent boys had frequently been trafficked into prostitution at the age of 16-17 after leaving children’s homes, where they had been ‘groomed’ by years of sexual abuse – often accompanied by violence if they resisted. This was certainly the pattern regarding the kids from north Wales children’s homes – and John Allen, the owner of the Bryn Alyn Community, was known to own brothels in London and Brighton where children formerly in his care were sent after they left the children’s homes. The boys pimped by Allen also alleged that he was involved with a major crime ring dealing in child porn and drugs. The defence used by Proctor et al never involves answering any difficult questions about where those rent boys had come from and why they were so willing to have sex with rather deranged sometimes elderly MPs whom they could not have found attractive in any way.
Proctor resigned his seat after his conviction and Theresa Gorman succeeded him. In 1988 Proctor established a shop in Richmond-Upon-Thames selling shirts, ties and waistcoats, after receiving a grant from the Gov’ts Enterprise Allowance Scheme. Proctor had considerable help establishing this business. The Tory Whip Tristan Garel-Jones organised the raising of the sum of £75,000 and over the following years, as Proctor’s shop repeatedly encountered financial difficulties, Tory MPs and former Tory MPs came to the rescue. Some of the people who were financially involved with Proctor’s business were Jeffrey Archer, Michael Heseltine, David Heathcote-Amory, Mark Lennox-Boyd, Sir Nicholas Bonsor, Richard Shephard, David Evans, Neil Hamilton, Christine Hamilton, Tim Yeo, Michael Brown, David Ashby, Sir Neil Thorne, William Benyon and Sir Charles Morrison. Charles Morrison was the older brother of Sir Peter Morrison whom it is now admitted was molesting boys in their mid-teens and younger, including boys resident in children’s homes in north Wales. Heseltine and Archer invested more than £100,000 in Proctor’s shop.
There was a punch-up in the shop in 1992. Two young men entered and asked Proctor ‘have you any ties for tying up rent boys before you spank them?’ Proctor tried to get them out of the shop and a fight broke out. Incredibly enough Neil and Christine Hamilton were in the shop at the time and Hamilton came to Proctor’s assistance when the young men assaulted Proctor. Proctor was punched in the face and had his little finger broken and Neil Hamilton ended up with a broken nose. The two men were charged and convicted.
In spite of the enormous helping hand that Proctor received from well-wishing Tories, his business eventually went bust. In 2003 Proctor was appointed the Private Secretary to the 11th Duke of Rutland at Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire. He entered obscurity but of course hit the media again in 2015 when he was named as a suspect in the Operation Midland investigation into child abuse. Proctor held a press conference at which he angrily denied all allegations made against him – which included allegations that he had sexually tortured boys, attempted to castrate one of them and that a boy was murdered. The allegations against Proctor were tied up with allegations that Ted Heath abused boys – Proctor maintained that he hated Ted Heath so much that he wouldn’t have shared a cup of tea with him, let alone have attended an orgy in his company.
The Operation Midland investigation was halted after the publication of Sir Richard Henriques’ highly critical report into the way that the police had conducted the investigation. In Nov 2016 the Commissioner of the Met, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, apologised to Proctor. Proctor began legal action against the Metropolitan Police in Feb 2017. Sir Richard Henriques was the judge who dismissed the appeal of Jeremy Bamber in 2002. Jeremy Bamber is serving a life sentence for the murder of three members of his family – there has been mounting concern for years that his case is a serious miscarriage of justice. Bamber was convicted substantially as a result of the evidence given by a Top Doctor from St Andrew’s Hospital Northampton, an institution with a history of patient neglect and abuse – the Top Doctor seems to have been untruthful when giving evidence (see post ‘Family Annihilation’).
Although I too found it difficult to believe that Proctor would have done anything at all with Ted Health including sexually abusing boys, I note that one of the investors in Proctor’s business, Sir Charles Morrison, had been a big fan of Heath’s. Charles Morrison was the MP for Devizes (1964-92) and died in 2005. His obituary in the ‘Daily Telegraph’ makes interesting reading. It contrasts the political differences between Charles and his brother Peter – Charles being a ‘die hard Heathite rebel’ and Peter being an aide to Thatcher. The Morrisons’ had a sister – Dame Mary Morrison, who was Woman of the Bed Chamber to the Queen for over 50 years. Charles Morrison’s wife was related by marriage to Ian Fleming, who wrote an article entitled ‘To Westminster With Love’, the opening words being ‘Charles Morrison – Licensed To Kill’. Well somebody certainly was, witnesses to the activities of Peter Morrison and his associates were constantly found dead.
Michael Brown, one of Proctor’s friends at York, was a part time research assistant to Michael Marshall between 1975-76 and between 1976-79 worked for Nicholas Winterton MP. In 1979 Brown was elected as a Tory MP himself and remained as one until May 1994. Brown was a member of the Monday Club and the Eldon League. He was a founder member of the No Turning Back group, which included Peter Lilley, Neil Hamilton and Michael Portillo. Brown and Portillo were extremely good friends in the early 80s, so much so that they went on holidays together, along with someone else close to them, Derek Laud, who was Brown’s research assistant for a considerable period of time.
Brown was a supporter of the apartheid regime in South Africa and in Feb 1988 visited South Africa with Neil Hamilton – their trip was funded by the South African Authorities.
Brown was PPS to Douglas Hogg, between 1989-90 when Hogg was at the DTI and then between 1990-92 when Hogg was at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Between 1992-93 Brown was PPS to Patrick Mayhew, Secretary of State for N Ireland. Mayhew was a barrister, who when he was younger had acted as Counsel for the GMC – the GMC who famously allowed Dr Morris Fraser, a child psychiatrist who was a paedophile, to continue practising in the 70s. But then they allowed Dafydd to practice and he was facilitating a paedophile ring. In 1993 Brown became an assistant Gov’t Whip.
Brown was involved with the Cash for Questions scandal, along with Neil Hamilton, Sir Michael Grylls and Sir Peter Morrison. Brown accepted money to lobby on behalf of U.S. Tobacco without declaring it and also failed to declare an interest in the notoriously carcinogenic Skoal Bandits.
Michael Brown resigned as an MP in 1994 after the ‘News of the World’ published photos of him on holiday in Barbados with a gay man who was under the age of consent.
Brown was in the wilderness for a short while but bounced back in April 1998 after he submitted a piece for the ‘Independent’ which they accepted. The Indie then offered him a regular commission as a political sketch writer, starting in 1999. I mentioned in my post ‘Running The Country – And All That Jazz’ that after he left office, Ken Clarke joined the Board of the ‘Independent’. Helena Kennedy, another name which will be familiar to readers of this blog, was also on the Board at the time. Clarke left office in 1997 – he joined the ‘Independent’ at some point after that. Michael Brown then also picked up work for other papers. He is now a political journalist who makes regular appearances as a commentator and newspaper reviewer on British TV, especially BBC News 24 and Sky News.
I note that Brown’s troubles began at the time that Gordon Anglesea sued for libel after a number of media outlets named Anglesea as abusing boys in care in north Wales and just as the Jillings investigation into child abuse in north Wales was launched. His career recovered whilst the Waterhouse Inquiry was nearing it’s end, when Amanda Platell had her feet firmly under the table at Conservative Central Office as Press Officer (see post ‘Did Glenda Occupy A Key Role In Keeping It All Quiet?’) and after Sir Peter Morrison had been found safely dead at the bottom of the stairs at his home.
I have mentioned that Brown and Portillo were good friends with Derek Laud, Brown’s research assistant and they even all went on holidays together. Laud was also a member of the Monday Club in the early 1980s. By the mid 1980s he was working for Tory MPs and Gov’t advisors as a researcher and as a special advisor to Sir Gordon Downey, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. During the second half of the 80s Laud was an aide and speechwriter for Thatcher. He also helped Alan Clark and Michael Heseltine with their speeches. During the 1992 general election Laud acted as a campaign aide and fundraiser for John Major.
In the mid 80s Laud established Strategic Network International, a company set up to campaign against anti-apartheid movements and in the late 80s he worked in private equity finance. In 1992 he co-founded the lobbying company Ludgate Laud. Laud is co-founder and executive director of New City Initiative, a think tank and financial lobbying company. He holds multiple positions at the ‘wealth management’ company Stanhope Capital LLP. In recent years Laud has became a TV celeb – including an appearance on Celebrity Big Brother and in 2005 he partnered Edwina Currie on a TV quiz.
In the 1990s Laud was active in support of the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance (DTA), a political party in Namibia backed by the South African Gov’t.
Laud has a rather different background to many of the people in the Conservative Party with whom he is mates. He came from a Jamaican family in south London but had a very big rift with his mother when he was fourteen, which he attributes to him being gay, but he never quite explained how exactly. He moved out of his mother’s house and had no contact with her for many years – he moved in with Anna Meeham the head of the school that he attended in Clapham. Anna lived with her sister Cecily who was a child psychologist – Cecily was friends with a Judge Ann Goddard. Laud has remained very close to these two sisters, particularly Cecily. In an interview with the ‘Daily Mail’ in 2007 he stresses their importance in his life and says that he consults them about everything.
I mentioned in my post ‘Are You Local?’ that teenaged boys from Ty’r Felin, the children’s home in Bangor run by the brutal Nefyn Dodd, were being trafficked into prostitution. They were hired out to men renting hotel rooms in the local area but they were also taken to London, where they were received by a Tory fundraiser and aide of Thatcher’s who had an apartment in Dolphin Square. I received an e mail from a journalist some weeks ago alleging that the man in question was Derek Laud.
Michael Portillo, a close friend of Laud and Brown’s, graduated from Cambridge in 1975 and in 1976 joined the Conservative Research Dept. He became a Gov’t advisor in 1979 and was elected to the Commons in 1984. He was given a seat in the Cabinet in 1992, as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. He was Secretary of State for Employment (1994-95) and Secretary of State for Defence (1995-97). Throughout this time he was known as the ‘darling of the right’ and in his early days as an MP many had seen him as the heir to Thatcher. He lost his seat unexpectedly in the 1997 general election. He returned to the Commons in 1999, after being elected for Kensington and Chelsea, Alan Clark’s seat, after Clark died. He became Shadow Chancellor. Portillo retired from the Commons in 2005 and is now largely known for his media work and is a regular on the BBC.
The right wing of the Tory Party eventually developed a problem with Portillo in the aftermath of him fessing up in 1998 that he had ‘had some homosexual experiences’ when he was a young man. As it became clear that Portillo’s homosexual experiences might have been rather more extensive than he’d let on, people like Norman Tebbit became very angry and accused him of deceiving them. Which I think he probably did – he married a woman in 1982, voted against gay equality legislation and denied the rumours circulating that he was gay. I knew someone in north Wales back in the 1990s who used to go to gay clubs in London and Manchester who told me that he’d seen Portillo in gay clubs. Many years ago Michael Gove alleged in one of his books that there was quite an interesting party scene in Portillo’s Cambridge College – Peterhouse – whilst Portillo was there, including cross-dressing parties at which men were given girls names which were attended by both undergrads and Fellows of the College. There were a number of allegations circulating about Portillo, including that he was one of the Tories who was having sex with under-aged boys. I have no idea whether he was or not – but I think that he certainly knew people who were. He has known one person since he was a teenager who definitely did keep quiet about paedophile activity in children’s homes – Diane Abbott, the former Press and PR Officer for Lambeth Borough Council, whose own children’s homes were rife with a paedophile activity and who also sent children in care to John Allen’s Bryn Alyn Community in north Wales.
Another Tory who was the subject of allegations that he was gay was the man with the little list, Peter Lilley. Lilley felt obliged to issue a denial in the end and he stated that he found the idea of homosexuality about as appetising as eating cardboard. Lilley had been at Cambridge with Ken Clarke, Michael Howard, John Selwyn Gummer and Norman Lamont. Lilley was a member of the No Turning Back group along with Portillo, Hamilton and Michael Brown. He was the Chair of the Bow Group, 1973-75. He was elected as a Tory MP in 1987 and retired in 2017. He was PPS to Nigel Lawson, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (July 1990-April 1992) and Secretary of State for Social Security (April 1992-May 1997). Lilley was always right behind Margaret Thatcher, but when he realised that she was going to lose the leadership contest in 1990 he very quickly changed his allegiances and supported John Major.
The toxic Child Support Agency was one of Lilley’s initiatives, although whether he was responsible for appointing as head of the CSA the equally toxic Ros Hepplewhite – formerly Chief Exec of MIND whilst that organisation concealed horrors in north Wales perpetrated by the paedophiles’ friends – I do not know. In 1977 Lilley co-authored a book with Samuel Brittan, brother of the dreadful Leon, who has been named as a child abuser. Leon’s family and friends have robustly denied the allegations, but what is certain is that Leon lost a dossier given to him by Geoffrey Dickens MP whilst Leon was Home Secretary – the dossier contained names and details of Westminster figures whom were alleged to be abusing children. Many other files relating to child abuse also went walkabout from the Home Office whilst Leon was there. Please see post ‘A Few Of The Relevant Politicians In The Mary Wynch Case’ for an account of the hissy fit that Samuel Brittan threw in the mid 80s when the box office at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival failed to pull strings for him and how dear old Michael Grade promised to help him out.
Lilley’s father was personnel officer at the BBC. R.D. Laing once commented when observing his son growing up that he felt himself rocked by successive generations. I’ve experienced a similar sensation when researching for this blog.
Proctor and Michael Brown’s friend from York, Christine Holman, eventually married Neil Hamilton. Christine had worked as secretary for Tory MP Sir Michael Grylls (father of Bear). Years later, Grylls ended up in a lot of trouble in the Cash for Questions scandal, along with Hamilton, Brown and Peter Morrison. Grylls was a Tory MP for 27 years who stood down in 1997. In 1990 he took cash payments and misled the select committee on members interests.
The most notorious MP involved in the Cash for Questions saga was of course Christine Hamilton’s husband Neil. Neil Hamilton has been involved in such extensive scandal and wrongdoing that I cannot detail it all here, so I’ll just provide a few highlights.
Neil Hamilton grew up in Carmarthenshire – his father was a manager for the National Coal Board. Hamilton eventually became a barrister specialising in taxation. He went to Aberystwyth University, that institution which trained so many of the corrupt lawyers named on this blog, although Hamilton didn’t read law there. After Aber, he went to Cambridge and then embarked on a legal career. There are a lot of people in Wales who remember Hamilton from his time at Aber and there are some interesting stories circulating. He was a member of the Federation of Conservative Students at Aber between 1968-74. He was elected for the Conservatives in Tatton in 1983 and held the seat until 1997, when he was beaten by the journalist Martin Bell who stood on an anti-sleaze ticket. Hamilton was a member of the No Turning Back group and his network included Alun Duncan and Gerald Howarth. He was also a member of the Eldon League.
In June 1984 Hamilton was the subject of a BBC Panorama programme, ‘Maggie’s Militant Tendency’, which detailed some seriously bad behaviour and worrying connections on the part of Neil Hamilton. In Oct 1986 Hamilton and Gerald Howarth sued the BBC for libel. The prosecution was funded by James Goldsmith and Taki, the Spectator journalist. David Davis was at the time a Director for Tate and Lyle and persuaded them to donate to Hamilton’s fighting fund. Hamilton stated that his main character witness would be Norman St John Stevas. I mentioned in my post ‘It’s The Sun Wot Won It’ that when I worked at St George’s Hospital Medical School between 1989-91, a member of staff there was a young man well-acquainted with the London gay scene who told me that Norman St John Stevas was known to holding ‘spanking parties with little boys’ and that ‘no-one knows how he’s getting away with it’. I was told this before the many allegations of politicians molesting children appeared in the media on a regular basis.
In October 1986 the BBC caved in to Hamilton suddenly and unexpectedly. A representative of the National Young Conservatives hinted at a stitch-up and the Director General of the BBC Alisdair Milne maintained that he had acted under the instruction of the BBC Governors, who had ordered the Board of Management to settle case before the defence interrogated Hamilton. The BBC paid the legal costs of Hamilton and Howarth and issued an apology. Attention focussed on the actions of Malcolm McAlpine, the cousin of Alistair McAlpine, the Conservative Party treasurer. Malcom McAlpine denied promising Hamilton that he could ‘deliver’ the Governors behind a settlement.
Alistair McAlpine became headline news in 2012, when he was named on ‘Newsnight’ by Steve Messham as being one of the men who had sexually abused him whilst Messham was in Bryn Estyn. McAlpine denied it and successfully sued a number of people who repeated the allegation. The McAlpine family do have a connection to north Wales though – the mother of Owen Lloyd George (THE Lloyd George’s grandson) was a McAlpine. Two descendants of Lloyd George, Annwen Carey Evans and D.B. Carey Evans, signed the ‘memorandum’ presented to Parliament in 2008 – the memorandum that was initiated and largely signed by the paedophiles’ friends (see post ‘A Vampire At Glyndwr University!’) and designed to put a stop to Edwina Hart’s efforts as she confronted the corruption of the paedophiles’ friends in the north Wales NHS.
Hamilton’s action against the BBC involved some very worrying happenings and there were allegations of witness intimidation – a BBC internal memo to the Board of Management claimed that 17 witnesses were intimidated into changing their testimony. Conservative Central Office were accused of orchestrating a cover-up. Dale Campbell-Savours MP maintained that he had evidence in the form of a letter and a tape that demonstrated BBC nobbling. Campbell-Savours sent a copy of the tape to Michael Havers, the Attorney General and accused Conservative Central Office of interfering with potential witnesses.
In Dec 1986 Hamilton became PPS to Sir David Mitchell. Mitchell was a Hampshire MP between 1964-97 and was a Minister in Thatcher’s Gov’t. His is the father of Andrew Mitchell, who was Chief Whip in Cameron’s Gov’t between 2010-12 and at the centre of Plebgate. Andrew Mitchell’s wife is a Top Doctor.
Hamilton became a Whip in 1990. In June 1990 he was recruited by Derek Laud to work for Strategy Group International for which Hamilton received a fee from Michael Brown.
Hamilton was a keen supporter of Thatcher and after Heseltine’s leadership challenge in Nov 1990 was quoted as saying ‘I fed all my intelligence into her campaign’. My post ‘It’s The Sun Wot Won It’ mentions the degree of socialising that the Hamiltons were doing with Sir Peter Morrison – whose constituency was next to Hamilton’s – at a time when Morrison’s abuse of under-aged boys was openly talked about at social events involving the City of Chester Conservative Association. Between 1992-94 Hamilton was a Minister in Major’s Govt.
During the Cash for Questions scandal it was revealed that Hamilton did not register his consultancy fee from Strategy Network International, that he enjoyed free hospitality at the Ritz Hotel in Paris – owned by al Fayed – had stayed at al Fayed’s castle in Scotland without declaring it and that he had received many thousands of pounds from al Fayed which was handed over in the now infamous brown envelopes.
In the wake of the allegations that flew during Cash for Questions, in Jan 1998 Hamilton launched a libel action against al Fayed. Lord Harris of High Cross raised £100k to help fund the case and many other Tories also donated, including Lord Tim Bell and Simon Heffer. Over £400k was raised. Lord Harris had founded the No Turning Back group in 1985 and had a long association with the economists and think tanks which had exerted such influence on the economic policies of Thatcher’s administrations. He was the founding President of the Institute for Economic Affairs from 1990 until his death in 2006, proposed the idea of an ‘independent’ university and then became a Council member of Buckingham University (1980-85), famously the UK’s first private university. In 2003 Harris was also the Chairman and President of FOREST, the pro-smoking charity which was largely funded by the tobacco industry. Between 2008-2001 Harris was a Director of the Murdoch-owned Times Newspapers. Harris also wrote for the ‘Telegraph’.
Hamilton lost his libel action in Dec 1999 and subsequently filed for bankruptcy.
Following their disgrace and a memorable ‘Guardian’ headline confirming that Neil Hamilton was a liar and a cheat, the Hamiltons reinvented themselves as celebs. The BBC welcomed them with open arms and they appeared regularly on various TV shows, including ‘Have I Got News For You’. Their celebrity status had a downside. In 2001 they were accused of rape and sexual assault by a young woman who it later transpired was quite troubled and enjoyed a rich fantasy life. Her allegations against the Hamiltons were found to be demonstrably untrue – although the Hamiltons were arrested and questioned. The young woman subsequently went to prison, which was probably not the best place for her. However, the identity of the Hamilton’s alibi is noteworthy – it was Derek Laud, who maintained that the Hamiltons were having dinner with him at the time that they were alleged to have assaulted the young woman.
Cash for Questions was one of the key factors that did for John Major’s Gov’t. Another Tory MP who faced allegations of sleaze was Tim Smith who was elected in 1982 and stood down in 1997 after allegations that he received bribes. Smith was known to have accepted cash payments from al Fayed. Tim Smith worked for Leon Brittan in the Home Office 1983-85 and was a N Ireland Minister between Jan and Oct 1994.
What is overwhelming obvious here – particularly when considered alongside the information in my previous posts – is what a cradle of filth this was. There were a number of politicians close to Margaret Thatcher at the heart of Gov’t who were utterly unscrupulous and using any means available to them, including the gross abuse of their positions, to line their own pockets. There were some politicians who were known to be abusing young boys and rather more who were using the services of rent boys slightly under the then age of consent without asking any questions at all concerning where those rent boys were coming from. The networks and links – even just the ones that I have detailed on this blog – mean that these activities must have been widely known about in Westminster, as must have been some of the means being used to silence witnesses.
It is striking how many of the people named on this blog as having been involved in child abuse or in keeping it quiet also had careers in the media. Even the Hamiltons who had been utterly disgraced – and that was before the child molesting activities of their mate Peter Morrison became public knowledge – were invited to appear on prime time light entertainment BBC programmes, as though they were simply an entertaining colourful couple rather than a pair of lying, cheating crooks who intimidated anyone who dared take them on. But then there was effectively a deal done between Thatcher’s Gov’t and parts of the media. The BBC was notoriously craven – because it was usually presumed they were terrified of the Gov’t stopping the funding of the BBC via the licence fee. But the BBC was of course also employing and concealing the activities of Savile – who was literally a mate of Thatcher’s. Everybody was doing so much that they shouldn’t have been that no-one dared grass anybody else up. As for the newspapers – well Murdoch and Thatcher had a very obvious deal which I was reminded of when listening to the Radio 4 programme ‘The Reunion’ this morning. They were reminiscing about the Wapping dispute, the means by which Murdoch broke the print unions. The print unions enjoyed the support of many on the left but I don’t think that they should have – their practices were dreadful and involved actively excluding women and ethnic minorities from jobs, as well as large scale fiddling. They were of course happy to keep printing ‘The Sun’ all the way through the Falklands campaign even when it published photos of ‘injured Argies’ and a fictitious interview with a war widow which helped Thatcher to win another election. The print unions only started squealing when Murdoch went after them. He used the anti-union laws that the Thatcher Gov’t had passed to do this – the union was broken when the Courts sequestered their assets. Under Murdoch’s ownership the Times newspapers undoubtedly changed in character with the installation of people like Andrew Neil as editors – all Murdoch’s publications became uncritical defenders of everything that the Conservative Gov’t did. They were never going to publish stories about Thatcher’s aides abusing children and participating in substantial financial corruption, particularly when some of the political figures connected to child abuse were involved with bank-rolling the Conservative Party.
I have mentioned many times in previous posts how the Labour Party stood by impotent – they couldn’t blow the whistle, because so many of their MPs had been Councillors on the London boroughs overseeing the ‘services’ in which the children were sexually abused and then trafficked – to be sexually used by some of the very people whom the Councillors loathed and dearly wanted to see out of office. I have mentioned that some people who later made it big in New Labour actually worked as social workers themselves in those Councils, such as Tessa Jowell and Janet Boateng. This blog has also named a number of ‘radical lawyers’ with connections to the Labour Party who undoubtedly knew what was happening to those kids and the further abuse of them at the hands of the mental health services if they dared complain – lawyers who did not say a word, or even some, such as Patricia Scotland, who actually acted for the state in public inquiries which were no more than massive cover-ups of the abuse of children by public figures. The role of Margaret Hodge as leader of Islington Council whilst the children’s homes were infested with paedophiles has received substantial publicity, but there is one former lawyer who hit the big time with New Labour who is still skilfully hiding away, although her biography suggests that she bloody well knew about all this as well – I am talking about that well-known victim of oppression, Harriet!
Harriet Harman was interviewed by Peter Hennessey on Radio 4 earlier this week and I steeled myself to listen to the whole interview, because I have always suspected that Harriet, daughter of a Harley Street Top Doctor herself and an eternal whinger – referencing very simplistic notions of gender inequality but showing a complete ignorance of class inequality – knew a lot more about institutionalised child abuse than she ever let on. Harriet was famously outed a few years ago as having been involved with the NCCL – along with many of her New Labour mates – whilst NCCL was affiliated with PIE, a group lobbying for paedophiles’ rights. Harriet got very angry indeed and claimed that she was the subject of a smear campaign – and then someone produced a document written for the NCCL by a Harriet Harman in her capacity as their legal officer, which certainly read as though it was arguing for paedophiles rights. See posts ‘The London Connection’ and ‘Tower Hamlets, Paul Boateng and Tessa Jowell’ for the idiocies of the NCCL and their officers who later became senior figures in New Labour.
I have always accepted that Harriet really is not very bright at all and I could well imagine a young, over-privileged stupid Harriet deciding that she was going to change the world by telling it what to do, only to find herself being used by a bunch of paedophiles’ friends who probably couldn’t believe their luck at stumbling across such a dimwit. I was right! Throughout her interview with Hennessey, Harriet stressed how she wasn’t going to listen to the old fuddy duddies in her family like Lord Longford – she obviously doesn’t understand that she only ended up at the top of the Labour Party because she came from that immensely privileged and well-connected family, it certainly wasn’t through ability – she and her friends were going to change everything and she was delighted to maintain that they did. Some of them even worked whilst they were pregnant, which Harriet pointed out had never been done before – her own mother hadn’t. Harriet – that’s because your mother was Very Posh and could afford not to work. If you had ever read any social history at all, you would know that Poor People have for many generations worked whilst they were pregnant. Likewise, your memories of dressing up in your mother’s barrister’s wig and robes when you were little because she’d put them in your dressing up box was not so much a symbol of your mother’s oppression, it was a Signal to you from your mother of the sort of adult that you were expected to grow up to be. It worked – you are as thick as pig shit but you still became a lawyer and indeed even Solicitor General.
I did however learn a few more things about Harriet from that interview. That she was at York University when Proctor and his mates were there. She mentioned that she was ‘political’ but that the Conservative students at York were foul. Yes and some of them just a few years later did some very interesting things with rent boys and money. Harriet will not have forgotten that she was at York with Proctor et al when they hit the headlines some years later – but she couldn’t say a thing about their activities…
I also learnt that after her stint at NCCL, Harriet worked at Brent Law Centre (1978-82) at a time when the paedophile gangs that supplied the Westminster Paedophile Ring were in full swing. Brent Law Centre will have dealt with child care and mental health cases. In 1984, the complete fuckwittery of Brent Social Services resulted in the death of Jasmine Beckford (see post ‘Ian Brockington’s Mischief’). Jasmine was starved and beaten to death by her stepfather – she had been in the care of Brent Social Services for two and a half years before she died. So Brent Social Services were ‘caring’ for Jasmine whilst Harriet worked down the road at the Law Centre leading the way for the nation’s wimmin and planning her future career in the Labour Party. Paul Boateng was also busy in the area at the time and was MP for Brent South (1987-2005). The Paul Boateng who worked in the legal firm that acted for Mary Wynch (see post ‘The Mary Wynch Case -Details’) and who is married to Janet Boateng, a former social worker for Lambeth who Chaired the Social Services Committee at the time of the death of Tyra Henry in 1984 (see posts ‘Tower Hamlets, Paul Boateng and Tessa Jowell’ and ‘A Few More Who Might Be Able To Answer Questions’). Ken Livingstone was busy in the area as well and served as MP for Brent East (1987-2001). The Ken who led the GLC when so many of the kids in it’s care were abused on Ken’s patch or exported to children’s homes in north Wales to be abused. Brent embraces part of Camden – Tessa’s old stomping ground. For details of the many links that those from the London boroughs had to the North Wales Child Abuse Scandal, see post ‘The London Connection’.
I think that Harriet definitely knew that there was a problem – and her silence meant that her and her mates were not able to ‘change everything’ at all. Harriet didn’t just keep quiet when she was a young woman with an eye on a Labour seat (she was subsequently elected for Peckham, one of the most disadvantaged parts of London. I very much doubt whether the Council there was caring for the kids properly). Harriet’s lips remained sealed when she was an Older Empowered Strong Woman. She was Solicitor General in 2001, shortly after the publication of the Waterhouse Report at the time of the allegations of a huge cover-up. Not a word. In 2005 she was Minister of State for the Dept of Constitutional Affairs and represented Charlie Falconer on the Commons frontbench – whilst Charlie concealed the heap of manure and ensured that anyone who had suffered at the hands of the paedophiles’ friends would have no legal redress by making it impossible to access Legal Aid. Charlie’s withdrawing of Legal Aid also very nearly put the two lawyers in north Wales who were doing a pretty good job of fighting the paedophiles’ friends out of business. Now that would have been a great relief for those we know and love.
When Harriet and her close friend Patricia Hewitt discovered that MI5 had kept files on them as a result of their involvement with NCCL they became very angry, took a case to the European Court of Human Rights and subsequently there was a change in the law. Well Harriet and Patsy were only working for an organisation that was lobbying on behalf of paedophiles whilst there was a problem with senior figures in Gov’t abusing children, children who were later found dead, with the alleged involvement of rogue members of the security services. Why ever would MI5 be keeping files on Harriet and Patsy?
Harriet remains good friends with Patsy to this day. Patsy was formerly the General Secretary of NCCL during it’s Paedophile Period and later became the MP for Leicester West, after Greville Janner stood down. The Greville Janner whom the CPS has admitted should have been prosecuted for abusing boys but wasn’t, for reasons that the CPS have never been able to explain. Keith Vaz – he of the male prostitutes and drugs – also became an MP in Leicester, after a stint working as the senior solicitor for Islington Council in the mid 80s as the paedophile ring operating in the Islington children’s homes ran riot and a further stint working as a solicitor in a Law Centre in Leicester which was funded by Leicester City Council between 1985-87 as the paedophile ring there did it’s best (see post ‘One Of The Safest Pairs Of Hands At The Criminal Bar’ for further details on Keith, his mum and his sister). The paedophile ring in operation in Leicestershire children’s homes had as it’s key figure the social worker Franck Beck who was later imprisoned. It is not only Labour politicians with dirty linen who are drawn to Leicestershire – Harvey Proctor ended up there as well.
During the Hennessey interview Harriet spoke a lot about her battles with the male creatures who clutter up Parliament and explained that the reason why she accepted a place on the front bench when offered one by Neil Kinnock was that Patsy had told her that she ‘had a responsibility’ to sit on the front bench or other wimmin would not believe that it was possible. Thank God we’ve got Harriet to show us the way.
The fuckwittedness of Patsy’s comment had clearly escaped Harriet – whilst Harriet was exercising her responsibilities as a Role Model there was of course a woman PM. Harriet did know this. As she explained her ‘visceral hostility’ to Thatcher to Hennessey, she recounted a little anecdote – that just after her first baby was born (that will have been Joe Dromey who was famously taken into Parliament as a newborn), she was walking down a corridor with her baby when she saw Thatcher approaching. She was so desperate not to allow Thatcher’s ‘eyes to fall on my baby’ that she dived into a side room. Harriet told Hennessey that if that side room hadn’t have been available, she would have covered her baby’s face with a blanket to prevent the wicked witch from giving him the evil eye. I wouldn’t really want any children of mine to be left in the company of Thatcher, but the difference between me and you Harriet is that once I obtained the evidence pointing to a paedophile ring in operation with connections to Westminster that was concealed at the highest levels, I published it as soon as I was in a position to do so. You did not. But then there never was any chance of your child being taken into care by the sort of fuckwitted social worker like Tessa Jowell who were employed in the London boroughs in such great numbers and then being transported to a children’s home in north Wales where he would have been beaten, starved, forced to work free of charge, sexually abused and then trafficked back down to London as a rent boy. That Harriet is why Joe is now a senior research fellow in the IPPR, not stuck in an abusive mental health system, in prison or dead.
Since she released her blockbuster ‘A Woman’s Work’ recently, Harriet has explained that the reason why she never became leader of the Labour Party is of course because she is a woman and Gordon Discriminated. So we all had a lucky escape thanks to Gordon’s entrenched sexism.
There is yet another nightmare scenario looming on the horizon. There is talk in Labour circles of who is going to succeed Jeremy and I am horrified to read that the name being touted about is Emily Thornberry, on the grounds not of her brilliance but that she is of the left and that the next leader ‘must be a woman’. That’s sounds a rather dogmatic position, but if it has to be a woman, please don’t let that woman be Emily Thornberry. Emily is of course best-known for sending out an offensive and massively damaging tweet whilst she was campaigning – a tweet of a photo of a new-build house draped in numerous flags of St George with a white van parked in the drive. Emily’s tweet suggested that the inhabitant of the said house must be a right wing oik from the lower orders – and the world went apeshit with a backlash. Emily was denounced as the worst example of the Labour metropolitan elite, out of touch with and contemptuous of less privileged people. The damage to the Labour Party was massive, but instead of accepting that she probably shouldn’t try and take a leading role in the Party lest she inflict more damage, Emily conducted a series of media interviews in which she stressed her humble origins as a kid from a council estate. She then continued to appear on TV as a spokesperson for Labour, screwing up badly because she didn’t know salient facts – which she blamed on the sexism of the interviewers. At the same time, much appeared in the press about the very expensive house in which she lives – the same part of Islington as the Blairs, just around the corner from Margaret Hodge -and it was revealed that she owns a number of other not at all cheap properties as well. It was confirmed that for a while as a child Emily had lived on a council estate, although no-one was quite sure when or why – yet her father was an international lawyer, a Professor at King’s College London and UN Assistant Secretary General. Emily’s mother had been a Labour Councillor and the Mayor in Guildford. Emily’s mum had encouraged her to go into politics – Emily became Labour MP (she was selected on an all-woman shortlist) for Islington and Finsbury in 2005. It was also revealed that Emily is married to High Court Judge Sir Christopher Nugee, so she is actually Lady Emily Nugee, but she became very vexed indeed when David Cameron called her that.
As ever though, the right wing press haven’t done their homework – well maybe they have, but unlike Service Shenanigans, there is an elephant in the room that they won’t tackle. Has Sir Christopher Nugee presided over miscarriages of justice? No, he doesn’t seem to have. Has his chambers been involved in anything shameful regarding court cases involving politicians and children? No – although the chambers probably doesn’t have clean hands, it specialises in finance, including off-shore trusts.
The elephant in the room is Emily. Before Emily became an MP she was a barrister, between 1985 and 2005. She worked at Took’s Court Chambers, the chambers of Michael Mansfield. I wrote to Michael Mansfield in 1993 or 1994 and informed him of my prosecution in Bangor Magistrates Court for ‘staring at a social worker in Safeways’, after I had complained about law-breaking on the part of the mental health services. I also complimented him on his recently published book ‘Presumed Guilty’, about miscarriages of justice and the abuse of public order legislation – that’s why I wrote to him, I explained that it was that legislation (which Thatcher’s Gov’t had specifically passed to use against striking miners) that was used to prosecute me. I received a reply from Mr Mansfield, but it simply thanked me for my letter and said ‘it is always good to have support’. Michael Mansfield will have known when he read my letter that there had been a recent media storm regarding the possible existence of a paedophile ring in north Wales providing children to politicians and that there were allegations that the police, the social services, the Top Doctors, lawyers, judges and the Welsh Office were involved in a huge cover-up. He will have known that it was a social worker from Bangor, Gwynedd – where I lived, the address was on my letter to him – who had been sacked for blowing the whistle on the paedophile ring. He will have known that a senior police officer, Gordon Anglesea, had been named by two young men on TV as having abused them when they were in Bryn Estyn children’s home and that Gordon Anglesea had launched a libel case against the media outlets that named him and that he was being supported by the Police Federation.
One would have thought that my letter would have had the antennae of the UK’s most high profile radical barrister twitching like mad. Mansfield had defended members of the IRA, acted for the Birmingham Six and given his services to the NUM free of charge during the miners’ strike. He had a reputation as a lawyer who was not afraid to take on the British State at it’s worst. But Mr Mansfield walked straight by on the other side of the road. Although he must have realised that someone had written to him who had evidence that if, pursued, could do serious damage to John Major’s Gov’t as well as to the politicians involved in the previous administrations – including Thatcher herself, who had destroyed his personal friend Scargill. But defending members of the IRA is obviously easier than defending someone under attack from the paedophiles’ friends. Emily was working at Tooks when I sent that letter to Michael Mansfield. Other people who have worked with Mr Mansfied include Helena Kennedy and Patricia Scotland, both stars of this blog and members of the network of paedophiles’ friends…
Not only is Emily one of the paedophiles’ friends, but King’s College London – the home of yet more of the paedophiles’ friends – where Emily’s dad held a Chair, was host to some interesting activities. In the 80s there was a scam going on among some of the students. In order to earn a few quid they were marrying foreign nationals in order for them to acquire permission to enter or remain in the UK. Someone I worked with at St George’s, whilst he had been a physiology student at Kings, had married one of the other students from America to enable her to stay in the UK. He had been paid many thousands of pounds for his service – after the marriage they shared a house whilst leading a separate existence and went their separate ways entirely a few years later, once the legal requirements had been fulfilled. There was also a professor in King’s College School of Medicine who was having sex with his own children. This was openly discussed among the Top Doctors on the London medical scene. No-one suggested any sort of investigation into the Professor of gynaecology concerned.
I think that I’m going to have to devise a classification system for the paedophiles’ friends because there are just so many of them. There’s going to have to be a category of the paedophiles’ bestest friends, such as Arfon Jones, the esteemed North Wales Police and Crime Commissioner and dear old Dafydd and Lucille. Then there will have to be the paedophiles’ very good friends, such as Dr Peter Higson. Then the paedophiles good friends; then the paedophiles’ ‘colleagues’ – a mixed bag, some of whom have no problems with the paedophiles at all but this category also includes some who tolerate them in order to gain personal advancement (a very big category); then the biggest category of all, containing many thousands of people from across the UK in many walks of life – those who knew what the paedophiles were doing but were too spineless to do anything at all, no matter how minor, to stop them. I might also need a sub-category – the paedophiles’ friends who are just in it for the money. I met a few of these at St George’s. They would actually drool over the idea of serious money and say things like ‘ooh I’d love to be rich’ – they reached fever-pitch after visits to the West End when they would catch glimpses of the money-laundering crooks with gangster connections of whom they were so envious. They didn’t like me very much, they accused me of being ‘naive’ and being like I was because I was a sheepshagger from Wales. No you stupid fuckers, it was because I had seen what was happening to those kids who were living in the children’s homes in north Wales and being groomed for sex work in London who dared to complain. I met them in the North Wales Hospital Denbigh didn’t I Dafydd – before they died, went to prison or disappeared off the face of the planet.
Sir Richard Denby dining with Heathcote Amory:
Some of the people who were financially involved with Proctor’s business were Jeffrey Archer, Michael Heseltine, David Heathcote-Amory
Lord Norman St John-Stevas behind Prince Charles
Margaret Thatcher Edward Ted Heath and Baron Norman St John Stevas Lord Fawsley
Truthseeker @thewakeupcall09
Lord Norman St John-Stevas MP branded Geoffrey Dickens ‘a disgrace’ for naming doctor that raped an 8 year old girl. The girl suffered ‘horrific’ internal injuries & continued to suffer from psychological damage. The doctor is still alive and well, justice needs to be severed.
I gave Lord St John Stevas name to Geoff Dickens…he was a peadophile vunerable to blackmail..his mate was Lord Robin Maugham who had a flat on the tottenham ct road where they brought young 13 yr old boys and then on to Brighton in st johns roller
2 March 1998
SECRET Service agents bugged and tailed a Conservative MP who later became a Cabinet minister, according to a potentially explosive book by a former agent now living in Australia.
Anthony Holland, who describes his work as an MI5 and MI6 “asset”, claims that the MP was targeted because he was thought to be having a gay affair with the Tory peer Lord Robin Maugham, nephew of the author Somerset Maugham.
If true, his revelations will further embarrass the security services and result in calls for tighter controls on their activities. Last year, the Labour government was rocked to its core by the revelations of former MI5 officer David Shayler, who described surveillance operations on potential “enemies of the state” – who included John Lennon, several Labour MPs and a young Jack Straw, now the Home Secretary.
In Mr Holland’s book, which is due to be published in the summer by a small Melbourne-based publisher, he describes operations in the United Kingdom, South Africa, Iran, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. Working as a freelance agent for MI5 and MI6, Mr Holland, 54, claims his real skills as an engineer allowed him to be placed in sensitive areas by the security services.
During one period in 1969, he was found a job at the Rossing uranium mine in South West Africa in order to find out whom it was supplying. He says he reported that it was feeding the Israeli nuclear programme, and even describes one meeting he had with General Moshe Dayan, the Israeli defence minister.
“At that time, we were well aware what they were up to,” Mr Holland claimed from his Melbourne home. “They weren’t supposed to be developing their own bomb, but we helped them by turning a blind eye.”
In Britain, his most audacious operation involved gathering evidence of the MP’s alleged affair with Lord Maugham. He says the MP was regarded as a future minister and a potential security risk, although Mr Holland suspects the evidence was gathered to be used as leverage at a later date. Lord Maugham, who was openly homosexual, died in 1981.
The book, which is known only as “Project 21” at Geoff Coxon Publishing in Melbourne, describes how two addresses in London and Brighton, East Sussex, were put under round-the-clock surveillance. “By the time I joined the operation, most of the groundwork was done,” Mr Holland says in the book.
“They [MI5] had Maugham’s flat bugged throughout and the telephone tapped, and they had two miniature television cameras wired into the ceiling lights in the main bedroom and the lounge, so we could watch the show in comfort.”
The former minister denied the affair when approached by The Independent this week. He said he had no knowledge of ever having been put under surveillance.
Other chapters include details of a spying operation that Mr Holland says he conducted on a German project to help Iran develop a nuclear weapon.
Mr Holland wrote the book as the latest stage in a campaign to clear his name of a crime he says he did not commit. He was jailed in 1981 at Bradford Crown Court for allegedly receiving stolen goods amounting to pounds 250. He claims that he was framed by the security services.
Although it was his first offence, he was jailed for 12 months. Before his term was over, however, he was freed and sent to a new life in Australia, allegedly with the complicity of MI6. Melvyn Hodgson, the man he allegedly persuaded to steal for him, was found hanging in a prison cell in 1992.
His case has been taken up by Australian politicians and is being examined by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.
Dr John Illingworth, a Leeds city councillor, has examined the evidence against Mr Holland and described it this week as “preposterous”. He added: “I don’t believe he would be convicted today. It is difficult to check the rest of the claims in the book, but those that can be checked are accurate.”
Mr Holland said: “The only man who could clear me was Melvyn Hodgson because I believe he made a false confession. Once I heard he had been found hanging, I decided to blow the lid off these guys.
“I still don’t know why they framed me, but I had been associating with a suspected IRA commander and perhaps they thought I was going over.
Once the book is published, I know I’ll never be able to return to England. I just want to clear my name. I simply can’t let them win.”
Geoff Coxon, Mr Holland’s publisher, is hoping to avoid the kind of legal fight that resulted in Peter Wright’s book Spycatcher being dragged through the courts.
“If it is published in Australia, your Official Secrets Act does not apply,” he said.
“We are publishing in Victoria because in New South Wales truth is a defence, and we have gone to great lengths to prove the veracity of Anthony’s claims.
“You might have a bit of difficulty getting it over there, but if it goes well, we hope to launch it on the American market next year.”
The Home Office said it would not comment until it had seen the material. It never discusses operational matters.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/mi5-taped-cabinet-minister-book-claims-1147896.html
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The nine judges at the court ruled unanimously that Britain had violated a provision of the European Human Rights Convention that bars torture or treatment that is inhuman or degrading.
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