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How much evidence is there of long term high level UK paedophile ring?

I don't want to stand up for Mr Brittan but the answer was in your question- others issued statements through their spokesman. He's retired so he won't have media handlers, and why answer journos calls when you can have someone else you trust do it. Nothing really sus in that

I'm not sure I agree. Both Clegg and Steel were interviewed on camera which means follow up questions could be asked. steel's on-camera interviews about Cyril smith certainly didn't do him any favours at all.

Issuing a statement through a solicitor does give the impression (possibly unfairly) that Brittan has something to hide.

It also means that it is easier for him to avoid answering any awkward follow-up questions arising from his statement and so minimizing the possibility of tripping himself up - always a possibility if you are being less than fully truthful.

And that any statement is pored over by the lawyers before it is issued - although they don't seem to have made a particularly good job of it in this case. Perhaps they were simply wrong-footed by the Home Office's statement seemingly contradicting Brittan's first statement.

The problem is that neither the Brittan and Home Office lines are credible and, even worse, they can't get their story straight between them.
 
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In 86 pages, this point will have been made I'm sure, but it really is fuckin' irritating searching around this stuff. Putting in 'Elm House' and 'xxxxxx xxxxx MP' seemingly brings up some brave clued in soul, willing to say stuff out loud. Dick as I am I even read 3 sentences and am still nodding along, till you discover it's some truther shite. :facepalm: Should be able to spot them by the tinfoil adverts they carry. Even more annoyingly, if you strip out 80% of the false connections, leaps and outright lizardry (and no doubt some false positives), they probably contain the bare bones of the story.

Presumably some of these sites carried on as normal when McAlpine was carrying out his scorched earth policy last year (unless their host got twitchy)? Just wasn't worth taking them on/feeding the fire.
 
I don't want to stand up for Mr Brittan but the answer was in your question- others issued statements through their spokesman. He's retired so he won't have media handlers, and why answer journos calls when you can have someone else you trust do it. Nothing really sus in that
Apparently not (retired) - wiki:
Peerage
He was created Baron Brittan of Spennithorne, of Spennithorne in the County of North Yorkshire in February 2000. He is vice-chairman of UBS AG Investment Bank, non-executive director of Unilever and member of the international advisory committee for Total. In August 2010, Brittan returned to the government under the Conservative-Liberal coalition acting as a trade advisor.[
 
Are we suggesting that any of the Satanic Panic allegations were anything other than fundie horseshit?

or a well funded smokescreen? Fuck knows. That moral panic happening at the same time was fair convenient

at risk of sounding tinfoil. I just don't know with this stuff anymore. Even the shit you'd label as fantasy is being served up and documented true
 
I suspect that many, if not all, of the names in the Dickens dossier are those that were published in Scallywag although this, of course, does not mean that all, or indeed any, of them are actually true (Elbows - can you help here? All my Scallywags are stored away at the moment and I don't have access to them. Eta - obviously not asking you to mention the actual names).

I've never actually had access to physical copies of Scallyway. But a bunch of us on the forum, quite some time ago, discussed the various Scallywag things in as much depth as we could, and I was able to read a shitload of the articles in digital form.

It's impossible to answer the question properly because we don't know which cases were discussed in the dossier(s). But if we assume that the Elm guest house stuff was a focus of it then no, going by Scallywag articles and the stuff that has been the focus in recent years, there is surprisingly little direct overlap between the two. Disregarding the more scurrilous Scallywag stuff, and sticking to their story that apparently actually involved detailed testimony from victims, the picture appeared to involve the transport of victims from, for example, North Wales children's homes, to a location in London. Whereas the Elm guest house stuff was more of a purely London affair, and the alleged perpetrators didn't have that much overlap either, at least not directly according to the limited info available.

In the post-Savile shitstorm I saw one thing in the media that may well have been directly related to the most specific, credible and detailed Scallywag accusation - a video interview (perhaps by Sky News) of an apparent victim, giving details about being transported to London to be abused at parties.

As with Watergate, it now appears that the increasingly unconvincing Brittan and the equally unconvincing Home Office line about lost files is becoming the story rather than the actual contents of the dossier.

There are a couple of things that are almost certainly going on right now, and a few others that might be adding fuel to the fire:

The campaign to get loads of MPs to support an over-arching inquiry thinks it has done well in recent days, pushing the agenda towards this aspect rather than naming names etc.

Others, including various media and journalists, are more interested in the potential of recent events to lead to the naming of one or more people, and close one of the stupidly wide gaps between what some people have been talking about on the internet for years, and what can be said by mainstream media etc.

A gradual loss of faith in police etc investigations bringing any living politicians to justice as more time passes is another factor, and applying pressure to ensure this stuff doesn't go away with a whimper is also a factor.

The way the McApline stuff blew up and backfired is also a factor, both in terms of some being cautious and restrained this time, the build up of pressure that such restraint leads to, amplified by the amount of time that the press were left with nothing to get their teeth into to keep the stories alive in the wake of the McAlpine mess.

Slightly more generally, I feel that an additional factor in the lack of bringing political offenders to justice, beyond the obvious potential for coverup, intimidation, legal threats etc, has been a lack of critical mass of victims. For various reasons, not enough victims have come forwards to make arrests of high-profile political figures a completely unavoidable no-brainer. Due to the number of factors that can lead to this, including all the usual reasons a victim may not want to go through this all again before we even get to additional factors caused by the perpetrators being connected and powerful, its hard to say exactly what this means.

I might tentatively suggest that one other reason is that contrary to some hyperbole, we arent actually looking at a very large network of high-profile offenders and a vast number of victims. If true that is no less reason to go after those who did abuse in my book, but it is part of the picture of relative legal inaction so far. Just look at the celebrity cases that the CPS decided were worth charging - given a lack of hard evidence and the amount of time that had passed since the alleged crimes, they went for cases where there were numerous victims and recurring patterns of abuse, partially backed up by evidence such as letters to or from victims and their families. But going by detailed reporting by the likes of Exaro, so far I am only aware of two victims of the Elm guest house stuff having contact with the police.
 
It was about this time that Dickens had a 'dossier' on Satanic Ritual Child Abuse. i don't know if it was the same dossier but, if it was, that might explain why it didn't go much further.
Didin't he have a go at the 'Lamp of Thoth' shop in Leeds? It was around that time IIRC- lots of harmless pagan types were getting horrendous attention from the press and the govt, kids taken into care etc :mad::(
 
Thanks elbows - too tired to post sensibly now so can't do justice to your fulsome reply

Iirc Scallywag's allegations focused on a group of abusers at Dolphin Square involving senior politicians.
 
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Dickens was truly a buffoon, different politics and personality, but just as fuckin' daft as that UKIP nob Godfrey Bloom. It's a sign of the times that people with abuse info only felt they had him to go to.
 
In 86 pages, this point will have been made I'm sure, but it really is fuckin' irritating searching around this stuff. Putting in 'Elm House' and 'xxxxxx xxxxx MP' seemingly brings up some brave clued in soul, willing to say stuff out loud. Dick as I am I even read 3 sentences and am still nodding along, till you discover it's some truther shite. :facepalm: Should be able to spot them by the tinfoil adverts they carry. Even more annoyingly, if you strip out 80% of the false connections, leaps and outright lizardry (and no doubt some false positives), they probably contain the bare bones of the story.

Presumably some of these sites carried on as normal when McAlpine was carrying out his scorched earth policy last year (unless their host got twitchy)? Just wasn't worth taking them on/feeding the fire.

Yep, been there, discussed it, and have to discuss it again slightly every time something happens to re-peak mainstream interest in the story. I'll try to describe what is left when the various forms of shit are stripped away:

A) A bunch of well to do individuals who got somewhat caught or exposed at the time, and were often let off lightly or protected to some extent. One or two of them are still alive being reinvestigated and may not be so lucky this time. Others can be read about in press archives or by picking the good bits out of some hideously crap websites.

B) A bunch of dead people who are unlikely to be looked at again in great detail now, but can have the worst assumed about them without legal fears. Maybe one or two of them will end up having rumours about them actually substantiated, e.g. by victims speaking out and adding much needed meat added to the rumour bones, but I might have expected this to happen already if it was going to. Obviously it happen with Cyril Smith, but not anyone else yet.

C) Details, including a list of names, relating to Elm guest house. This fuels much of the twitter anger and sense that some have that they 'know who is being protected', but what is out there in the public domain is the stuff I refer to as being a good start for further investigation, rather than fully formed smoking guns already. The frustration won't go away by finding out this info, only by having it built upon by rigorous inquiry that cannot be conducted by the likes of me using internet info.

D) People that have never been named or gossiped about on the internet who might yet be exposed by any of the numerous inquiries and investigations into abuse at specific institutions, e.g. North Wales care homes. But its probably safer to assume that all sorts of people who were not high profile will be the main ones to get nabbed, e.g. those who managed the children's homes, with few or no high-profile perpetrators exposed.

E) People who were not powerful or high-profile themselves, but who may have at times serviced higher-profile offenders with anything from pornography to supplying victims. Some of these will have been tabloid bogeymen at various points over the decades, but it remains to be seen whether any of the potential dot-joining between these people and politicians will come to fruition or have any merit.

Returning briefly to the shit that should be dismissed, there are complications caused by the historically huge Tory 'closet' and really dodgy attitudes towards things like homosexuality or simply not liking certain famous people and hoping they are guilty. There are surely some red herrings, but without further detailed investigation and exposure it will be hard to safely rule many of these in or out.
 
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Thanks elbows - too tired to post sensibly now so can't do justice to your fulsome reply

Iirc Scallywag's allegations focused on a group of abusers at Dolphin Square involving senior politicians.

Cheers. Yes the Dolphin Square stuff was the specific Scallywag accusation I was focussing on in my reply, as opposed to some of the more scurrilous shit they threw around without due care.
 
Probably goes without saying but I left out:

F) The stench of coverup and intelligence service games. We know its there, but easy to misjudge the exact motives behind each instance, or the scale of it in some specific cases. And pretty hard to imagine us getting great detail about the security services stuff, at least until many more decades have past.
 
Speaking of the McApline mess:

BBC News has instigated a “no surprises” rule in the wake of Newsnight’s Lord McAlpine scandal in which senior management including director of news James Harding are immediately alerted to issues of serious concern around a programme.

The new regime, outlined in a statement to the BBC Trust published on Tuesday, was put in place in the wake of the McAlpine fiasco and the BBC2 programme’s earlier decision to shelve its investigation into Jimmy Savile.

BBC management said it would “not shy away from investigative journalism in the public interest” but outlined a greater level of editorial supervision with a hands-on role for Harding, the former editor of the Times appointed last year, and his senior team.

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jul/01/bbc-news-no-subscribers-mcalpine-savile
 
Probably goes without saying but I left out:

F) The stench of coverup and intelligence service games. We know its there, but easy to misjudge the exact motives behind each instance, or the scale of it in some specific cases. And pretty hard to imagine us getting great detail about the security services stuff, at least until many more decades have past.

This is the bit I am particularly interested in.
 
This is the bit I am particularly interested in.

I was reading some stuff last night which sounded highly plausible but without solid evidence. Either way it did make me wonder just how many 'useful idiots' are doing what they do in politics at the behest of others.

Edited for clarity of language :)
 
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Didin't he have a go at the 'Lamp of Thoth' shop in Leeds? It was around that time IIRC- lots of harmless pagan types were getting horrendous attention from the press and the govt, kids taken into care etc :mad::(
He did, although you're confusing the shop ("The Sorceror's Apprentice") with the magazine published by it ("The Lamp of Thoth"). All credit to him, Chris Bray (the owner) wasn't driven out of business.

No thanks to Geoffrey Dickens, many a Pagan parent with young children lived in fear of them being taken into care if the neighbours heard the baby crying. :mad:
 
Didin't he have a go at the 'Lamp of Thoth' shop in Leeds? It was around that time IIRC- lots of harmless pagan types were getting horrendous attention from the press and the govt, kids taken into care etc :mad::(
There was the Roger Cook expose on television! :eek: Laying siege to a shop that sold occult paraphernalia! That was at the peak of the Satanic hysteria.

I've still got some of those television programmes on videocassette. And I still have some ORCRO (Occult response to the christian response to occultism) magazines that ran to about 12 issues over 3 or 4 years.

I can't remember Geoffrey Dickens getting involved but he probably did....:(
 
Interesting piece. Special Branch of course having close ties to MI5. Clearly a large number of people on the PIE list were not arrested for anything untoward.

PIE was being funded at the request of Special Branch which found it politically useful to identify people who were paedophiles. This led me not to pursue my objections. At that time, questioning anything to do with Special Branch, especially within the Home Office, was a ‘no-no’.

“I was under the clear belief that I was being instructed to back off and that his reference to Special Branch was expected to make me to do so.

“Hindley didn’t give me an explicit explanation of what Special Branch would do with information it gleaned from funding PIE, but I formed the belief that it was part of an undercover operation or activity. I was aware a lot of people in the civil service or political arena had an interest in obtaining information like that which could be used as a sort of blackmail.”

He said he asked for a file the Home Office kept on PIE, but his request was refused. However, he was certain then Tory Home Office Minister Tim Raison, who died in 2011, must have signed the 1980 funding application.
 
So did John Vassall :hmm:

One particular building used by the Government in Dolphin Square supposedly had a reputation of young boys walking around half undressed asking for directions to MP's flats. Another Tory MP with recent accusations against his name also lived there.
 
Vassall wasn't a nonce, he was just gay. Prime was the paedo-spook (right down to PIE membership).
Sorry, yes, the name is coming back to me now - the spy feller. I just had a slightly flippant mental image of the whole story appearing on a TV screen setting out the connections like that Rock Family Trees prog.
 
He was apparently blackmailed due to his homosexuality.
Quite famously, yes. But the point I was making is that there is no suggestion that John Vassall - a gay civil servant blackmailed into revealing secrets by Soviet intelligence - was a paedophile, involved in a paedophile ring, or connected to a “long term high level UK paedophile ring”.

On a behemoth thread about paedophiles I think it's an important distinction to clarify, given the number of people reading this who might otherwise mistake his presence here for something there has never been (as far as I am aware) any evidence for. It's just that he was a notable resident of Dolphin Square.
 
Quite famously, yes. But the point I was making is that there is no suggestion that John Vassall - a gay civil servant blackmailed into revealing secrets by Soviet intelligence - was a paedophile, involved in a paedophile ring, or connected to a “long term high level UK paedophile ring”.

On a behemoth thread about paedophiles I think it's an important distinction to clarify, given the number of people reading this who might otherwise mistake his presence here for something there has never been (as far as I am aware) any evidence for. It's just that he was a notable resident of Dolphin Square.
Absolutely. And ironically, the conflation of gay with abuser substantially muddied the waters when all this was first aired in the 80s.
 
Quite famously, yes. But the point I was making is that there is no suggestion that John Vassall - a gay civil servant blackmailed into revealing secrets by Soviet intelligence - was a paedophile, involved in a paedophile ring, or connected to a “long term high level UK paedophile ring”.

On a behemoth thread about paedophiles I think it's an important distinction to clarify, given the number of people reading this who might otherwise mistake his presence here for something there has never been (as far as I am aware) any evidence for. It's just that he was a notable resident of Dolphin Square.
Yep, and credit to elbows for making this point over and over. It's really quite important.
 
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