Bully and bluster: paedophile Cyril Smith, Liberal party’s Jimmy Savile
03.03.19 Look out for later related articles
By Mark Watts
Former Liberal leader Lord Steel is to be grilled over why he dismissed evidence that Sir Cyril Smith MP sexually abused boys as “tittle tattle”.
The inquiry into child sexual abuse (CSA) has summoned David, now Lord, Steel to give evidence about his fellow Liberal MP during the second of three weeks of hearings in its Westminster investigation.
Counsel to the inquiry will quiz Steel over his “tittle tattle” comments in an interview with BBC2’s Newsnight last June about the late MP for Rochdale.
Steel will also be questioned about the Liberal party’s dismissal in 1979 of CSA allegations against Smith after they were first made public in the Rochdale Alternative Paper. The party said in a statement at the time: “All Smith seems to have done is spank a few bare bottoms.”
And Steel is also set to be asked why he nominated Smith for his knighthood in 1988 despite the long-standing concerns about him.
The shadow of the monstrous Smith loomed large over the Rochdale hearings of the inquiry in 2017.
The inquiry concluded from those hearings, as the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) admitted in 2012, that there had been three missed opportunities to prosecute Smith.
An investigation by Lancashire Police in 1969 to 1970 resulted in a file being sent to the director of public prosecutions (DPP), setting out allegations from eight witnesses that Smith had sexually abused them as boys.
But the response to the police was that there was no “reasonable prospect of a conviction”. It was the first of three missed opportunities to prosecute.
Des Wilson, former president of the Liberal party, is also due to testify to the Westminster hearings. In a review of a book about Smith, ‘Smile for the Camera’, co-authored by Simon Danczuk, a successor Labour MP for Rochdale, Wilson wrote that Steel and other MPs failed to confront him out of cowardice.
In a damning comparison with the case of the radio and television ‘celebrity’, Jimmy Savile, Wilson wrote: “Smith was protected as much by the culture within the parliamentary party as Savile was by the culture within the BBC.”
Not only was Smith a sexual monster, he said, “He was a political monster… licensed to bully and bluster by a weakly-led and self-serving parliamentary party.”
The problem was compounded because it came so soon after the scandal over Jeremy Thorpe, former Liberal leader, wrote Wilson. “I think they got the biggest spade they could find, dug the biggest hole in the sand they could manage, and buried their collective heads in it.”
Danczuk has supplied a statement to the inquiry, but he is not due to testify. His statement covers allegations of child sexual abuse against Smith and, separately, Tom Driberg, the late Labour MP.
The inquiry also plans to call Baroness Brinton, the current president of the Liberal Democrats, as it became after the Liberals merged with the Social Democratic Party (SDP).
It is to question her about the outcome of internal party investigations after Smile for the Camera about Smith was published in 2012.
It also intends to ask her what procedures, if any, the party has to deal with allegations of criminal behaviour in general and child sexual abuse specifically against MPs or parliamentary candidates.
And a senior official from the Cabinet Office, with some responsibility for the honours system, is to be asked about how “probity and propriety checks” are conducted, the policy for removing honours, as well as specific questions about Smith, Savile and Sir Peter Hayman, the late former diplomat and spymaster.
The ‘Smith’ witnesses are due to appear during the second week of the Westminster hearings, which are set to begin tomorrow with opening submissions from counsel to the inquiry and representatives of core participants.
As I also reveal today, the inquiry will also seek explanations from MI5 as to what it knew about allegations of child sexual abuse against Sir Peter Morrison, the late Conservative grandee.
Mark Watts (@MarkWatts_1) is the co-ordinator of the FOIA Centre.
CSA inquiry to MI5: tell us what you knew of paedophile claims about Peter Morrison MP
PREVIOUSLY
Police raised concerns about undue interest of Sir Michael Havers in ‘Playland’ 1975 trial
Roddam Twiss – son of former Black Rod – ‘went to party to watch sexual abuse of boys’
Playland review: evocative but troubling book testifies to scandal of abuse by VIPs
Cyril Smith, Rochdale and a lot of startling disclosures to CSA inquiry ignored by media
Cyril Smith’s Tory councillor boyfriend Harry Wild ‘groomed’ young prison inmates
Carole Kasir: coroner was blocked from asking ‘incriminating’ questions of ex-lover
Mike Veale: vilification of investigation into Edward Heath risks harm to abuse survivors
CSA inquiry lacks ‘investigative capability’ to probe ‘cover-up’ claims, warns Mike Veale
Mike Veale slams Keith Vaz’s intervention in Operation Conifer’s probe into Edward Heath
Operation Conifer: Mike Veale ‘appalled’ by previous cover-ups over child sexual abuse
Edward Heath: police delayed Conifer report to avoid overshadowing Tory conference
Exaro helped Britain turn corner on dark chapter of cover-up over child sexual abuse
Lord Steel faces questions at CSA inquiry over deriding claims against Cyril Smith MP
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