Ted Heath

[ImperialBlether]

Has anyone seen this? There's going to be a full investigation into Ted Heath and historic child sex abuse.

The net will be growing tighter around a lot of others if there's something in this.

[redshoeblueshoe]

Surely the BBC wouldn't have outer him on the evidence of just one person ?

[noblegiraffe]

Ah I see, you meant he owned an art collection by someone in prison, it read as if McAlpine were the one in prison.

[noblegiraffe]

Oh I thought you meant McAlpine was serving time for sexual abuse, it wasn't clear from your post!

[noblegiraffe]

redshoe they aired the accusation of the guy who thought he had been abused by McAlpine but who retracted his accusation when shown a photo. It was a huge cock-up on their part. But they didn't name him, although it was thought that they would.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20269114

[noblegiraffe]

Sorry, more than one window open, posted the same thing twice!

[Metacentric]

I would hope that Lowell Goddard's enquiry into historic child abuse

I would bet a round of drinks that it will not be published until 2030 at the earliest.

She's already scheduled five years as a minimum. The Chilcot report is massively overdue thanks to Maxwellisation problems, and Goddard's enquiry will be far more complex than that. The Neville Report into the events that took place during one day, Sunday 30 January 1972, in one location, Belfast, with massive amounts of film and contemporary journalistic coverage of the events which only involved a handful of people anyway, started in 1998 and wasn't published until 2010.

Lowell Goddard is already 66, so will be approaching 80 by the time this process gets anywhere, by which time she will (not unreasonably) want to retire to her native New Zealand, if her health still permits. It will be forgotten about, no future government will be interested and, like Chilcot, it will be parked in the infinite "too hard, too toxic, too old" pile.

Politicians love enquiries that never report or take so long that they are all safely retired. They're Potemkin inquiries: they're deliberately set up with chairs who have every incentive to spin it out, given insufficient powers, have governance which ensures they are unstable and the reports are then long, boring and pointless.

[redshoeblueshoe]

Meta that's very depressing but I'm sure it's exactly what will happen

[Metacentric]

Another example of an inquiry which is simply a smokescreen is the recently announced inquiry into the activities of undercover police. There's already been one supposed inquiry that has been running for nearly four years (Operation Herne, which does lead one to ask why police forces need a Chief Constable when they can lend him out to something else for years on end) but even before that has reported May has announced a fresh inquiry under Justice Pitchford, rehashing all the same material, but starting from scratch again with no date set for delivering anything. Again, the chances of this actually reporting are close to zero. Pitchford will burrow away while the Met do little to assist his enquiries (they're already saying that they've lost and/or destroyed much of the records) and then when he has something to report, the Maxwellisation process will ensure it's a further five or ten years before anything is actually published, by which time most of the people will be safety dead and/or suffering from the convenient ill-heath that policemen accused of malfeasance are so regrettably prone to.

[achieve6]

re Lord McAlpine, I wondered if it was an attempt to smear him as I thought it was all so odd.

If we're still waiting on the Chilcot inquiry I don't think anything will be done about this for ages.

[BoneyBackJefferson]

Metacentric

just to add: -

then retired with a full pension.

[redshoeblueshoe]

I remember now when it came up about mistaken identity I thought how similar McAlpine looked to someone else. I'm sure they might have thought it amusing to tell the boys they were someone else - just another thing to make them less credible witnesses. I can't remember if other posts mentioning who I thought that is have been deleted.

[achieve6]

Meta - I've looked it up but there seem to be many Neville reports - what was the one you referenced please? Thanks.

[Garlick]

I suppose a lot of highly stressed, slightly overfed, older men look quite similar to a drunk & frightened teenager, red. Unless the child met the same abuser several times - as some evidently did - or there were clear distinguishing features, it might be difficult. A lot of the kids were assaulted by multiple adults during the same sessions.

I'm not even sure I'd recognise my old teachers from photos!

[NeedsAsockamnesty]

I knew off the woman who ran the brothel in the 90's whose been named in the papers today. And I remember her arrest afair she has actually been jailed twice not once as claimed in the paper and was at the very least held on remand in the late 80's early 90's for a serious violent offence.

She very publicly ran at least 3 houses spread over Salisbury & Southampton two of them being less than 5 minutes away from police stations at the same time as using vast quantities of housing benefit (the houses on paper pretended to be b&b's used by the LA for homeless people oddly they did not require a person to have a LA referral she just mostly found the people herself) to fund her lifestyle.

I had often wondered how she didn't end up in prison more frequently it was not even pretending to be a secret I would be surprised if anybody in Salisbury at the time didn't know.

She was known for getting youngsters girls and boys hooked on drugs and chasing them around the town with meat cleavers

[Metacentric]

there seem to be many Neville reports - what was the one you referenced please?

I had a thinko: I meant the Saville report.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_Inquiry

[achieve6]

Thanks Meta.

[suzanneyeswecan]

Thatcher's name keeps cropping up - i do believe she knew what was happening and the scale of it, but didn't solve it, just used it to her own advantage

sounds entirely plausible, or she may have actively facilitated and encouraged it in order to use it to get leverage over the people involved

[Metacentric]

Thatcher's name keeps cropping up

Folk devils usually do.

The depth of the hatred between her and Heath was a matter of record, so it's not plausible that she would have protected him. Thatcher was hated by the old guard in the 1970s Tory Party, who saw her as a lower middle class arriviste whose father was in trade. If there had been an opportunity to throw the whole lot of them to the wolves she would have done it, and no matter what else was fake about Thatcher, her puritanical social views weren't. It's not hard to imagine (as appears to be the case) the civil service and the agencies putting the reputation of "government" ahead of the interests of children: just saying autre temps, autre mores doesn't excuse it or defend it, but it does sort-of explain it. But it is hard to imagine Thatcher and her inner circle actively protecting posh child abusers.

[redshoeblueshoe]

Garlick - you read my mind

[achieve6]

Actually I'm still swithering
it just seems too convenient that the police are actively looking for information that connects to someone who is no longer here, has no offspring.... and now the woman in charge of the brothel is distancing herself from it as well

www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/05/ted-heath-child-abuse-claims-brothel-keeper-expose-threat

It's one thing to act on a complaint and another to source them? I understood they had names of serving MPs who are thought to be worthy of investigation. This seems a distraction.

how many people who might be linked, if anything happened, are actually now dead also?

[honeycrest]

This is a direct quote from the same lord McAlpine back in 2000 about how to deal with the media when they are about to expose something unsavory.

"Spread false defeat to gain public sympathy; or false accusation and then arrange for it to be exposed as such – so the accuser will forever be treated with suspicion."

You'd have to wonder. I suppose, for a time, it did work and the idea of an establishment abuse ring was back in the realm of crazy conspiracy theory in the eyes of the general public I think. Not anymore though.

[CalmYourselfTubbs]

the only former australian prime ministers that are alive are Hawke, Keating, Howard, Gillard and Rudd. can't be any of them. no way.
fraser and whitlam died recently. no way was it either of them.

go back a bit further and there's one that stands out to me. i can't get the my head around who the second one could be though, although i have some suspicions.

[AuntieStella]

BBC article which states that the person against whom charges were dropped is emphatically denying that she ever said anything about Heath whatsoever.

So is this going to turn out to be more about the conduct of police officers? Why would anyone call off an enquiry on the basis of allegations that were never made?

[achieve6]

Auntie "Why would anyone call off an enquiry on the basis of allegations that were never made?"

this statement has made my mind boggle and to a large extent sums up what concerns me about it.

However, as I understand it, Tom Watson was passed evidence quite recently about a claim against Heath so there's more to it than I heard yesterday....

[Sansarya]

Calm, did the one you suspect get married rather late in life and have a son who became a reasonably well-known actor?