One of the ugliest possible facts about the Thatcher government emerged recently:
A ‘big political cover-up’ of 1980s pedophile-ring in U.K. Parliament?
… Most everyone remembers Cyril Smith. The member of Parliament had a personal touch. He sang. He went on pal Jimmy Savile’s BBC show.
He also, according to hundreds of allegations since his 2010 death, was a pedophile of historic proportions.
That fact was one of many in a dossier prepared 30 years ago by a crusading member of Parliament who warned of a powerful pedophile ring of “big, big names.” At the time, the man told his family the allegations were “explosive,” according to the BBC. It would, he told his son, “blow the lid off” of the pedophile ring and perhaps take down powerful, famous sex abusers who had infiltrated the highest reaches of British life.
Despite the purported power of the allegations, they weren’t aggressively pursued and no arrests or prosecutions followed. “My father [Geoffrey Dickens] thought that the dossier at the time was the most powerful thing that had ever been produced, with the names that were involved and the power that they had,” son Barry told the BBC late last week after it emerged that the document has since gone missing. “It just seems so suspicious that something so important could just go missing.”
Over the weekend, as its disappearance ballooned into a national scandal, the Guardian reported it may be worse than that. An additional 114 documents relevant to allegations involving the ring are also missing — a revelation sparking suspicion that Margaret Thatcher’s government orchestrated a cover-up of child abuse by politicians.
Norman Tebbit, a former cabinet minister who served under Thatcher, told the BBC on Sunday the inclination at the time may have been to protect “the system” rather than delving “too far” into the claims. Asked if there had been a “big political cover-up,” Tebbit conceded “there may well have been. But it was almost unconscious. It was the thing that people did at that time. You didn’t talk about those sorts of things. It is not the sort of thing that people did.” …
Horrific.
I don’t believe that any NZ government would engage in such a coverup. I don’t believe that the current government is engaging in such a coverup (surely Slater’s mutterings are wrong). But in the context of the Thatcher revelations National’s actions last week were risky:
Govt Spikes Removal of Paedophile Name Suppression Bill
Parliament today refused leave for the Member for Northland Rt Hon Winston Peters to introduce a Bill to remove the right of paedophile’s to name suppression when the victim wants their attacker named. A host of National MPs objected to the Bill being introduced.
Name suppression to protect victims makes perfect sense. But if the victim wants their attacker named that’s a different matter, and surely worth debating a Bill. National’s excuse was that Peters’ Bill was a “knee-jerk reaction“. Knee-jerk reaction to what? That’s no kind of answer to anything, in fact it is beyond pathetic, see Peter’s press release in reply.
Presumably National shut down the Peters’ Bill out of petty spite at his Northland victory (there’s no way that they could be dumb enough to leave themselves open to accusations of covering for paedophillia, that would surely be the end of them). But petty politics as usual isn’t good enough, in the context of the Thatcher revelations this was surely an issue that would have been worth debating.
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress