Child Porn Arrest – What Did they Know?

“Child Porn: No 10 Aide Arrested ... Police quiz man who advised PM on web porn” howled the Daily Mail this morning, following up with the observations “Patrick Rock was one of David Cameron's closest aides ... Mr Rock was a protege of Margaret Thatcher and has held a series of senior posts in the Conservative Party. He has been close to Mr Cameron for many years”.

Well, well. This brings three questions into focus, the first of which is the involvement of Government advisors in web filtering, something that companies like Google were already actively doing of their own accord. The thought occurs that attempts to paint Google as one of the baddies – the Mail called the organisation “amoral” on one front page – might have been a distracting tactic.

After all, as Unity at Ministry Of Truth pointed out, the amount of child porn that could have been accessed via Google, which actively removes links to it and alerts law enforcement authorities after so doing, was vanishingly small. The greatest likelihood is that those wanting to view or obtain such images do not use a search engine. So did Young Dave’s team provide the smokescreen?

Moving to the Tory Party’s potential embarrassment following the arrest of someone who has been one of their leading members for well over 30 years (Rock was Gwyneth Dunwoody’s opponent the first time Crewe and Nantwich was contested as one seat, and came within 290 votes of becoming an MP), there is the rumour that MPs were told to keep schtum over the Mail’s paedophilia shaming recently.

And most of the Parliamentary party – well, except for self-promotion specialists like Rob Wilson and Philip Davies – indeed said nothing as the Mail launched into a succession of tirades against senior Labour figures who had been involved with the National Council for Civil Liberties in the late 70s and early 80s. But the largest question mark is placed against the name of the Mail’s editor.

Paul Dacre suddenly backed off last week, and despite extracting the specified apology from Patricia Hewitt, failed to continue his personally directed campaign against Harriet Harman and Jack Dromey. Why would he stop the beating when his targets – one the deputy leader of the party he loathes with a vengeance – were newly vulnerable? Rock was arrested five days before the first Labour assault.

Did someone leak the news that Rock had been arrested? Dacre knew that his paper would have to cover the news, or face accusations of partiality from Labour. And, if he did know, for how long have he and his hacks known? There has been a lingering suspicion that the sheer vehemence of Dacre’s attack on Labour was partly a distraction from something about to hit the Tories.

The questions are already piling up. And Rock hasn’t been charged yet.