Child Abuse – Look Over There!

The allegations of a known paedophile being a close aide to a former Prime Minister seem to be getting shunted off as the North Wales care home scandal is revisited and a little whataboutery is entered into. Conveniently for the Tory Party, the names that are being fed to the Fourth Estate to satisfy their appetite for playing the blame game are dead, rather like Jimmy Savile.

Latest name to enter the frame is Peter Morrison, who was for many years MP for Chester, and was warned about his activities by the Metropolitan Police following his cruising around the Sussex Gardens area and “cottaging” in nearby Gents toilets, where he picked up young men who were under the homosexual age of consent at the time, that being set at 21.

Added to that is another unnamed “aide”, who is also dead. This makes it rather easier to divert attention away from a number of Tory aides and current and former MPs who I discussed on Sunday last. All of the seven figures to whom I gave a range of clues are very much alive. And there is one other problem with exploring the avenue of Only Dead People.

Labour MP Tom Watson, who brought this issue kicking and screaming back to centre stage last week, said categorically that Morrison was not the “senior aide” that he had identified. It could not possibly be: that person is alive, and duly threatened to issue proceedings against the BBC if he were named on last Friday’s edition of Newsnight. So why the change in direction?

Well, consider where the accusation against Morrison is coming from – Rod Richards, who is a Tory MP. What a coincidence! But rather than the press pausing to stop and think, they have taken Richards’ accusation as read, because he was involved in the original inquiry. But the files from that inquiry have not, despite calls from the opposition, been reopened.

So we don’t know just how deeply Morrison was implicated. Worse, as the Mail has reported, Richards “could not offer anything to substantiate his claims against Morrison” and that the Waterhouse Inquiry “had not uncovered any evidence to link Morrison to the abuse”. So, media people, what on earth are you doing taking this on trust without any evidence to back it up?

Think on for a moment: the Tory Party is implicated by Tom Watson. Several names of living current and former MPs, and other party figures, are pitched. Watson stresses that Morrison is not one of them. And then a serving Tory MP effectively shouts to the press pack “Look Over There!” and the sheep duly oblige. We should not allow Rod Richards to bounce anyone into the wrong conclusion.

Unless he can back up his claims, Richards should be ignored. He’s a party plant.