Paul Dacre – The Man Who Knew Nothing

[Update at end of post]

This morning, the Daily Mail has confirmed that its 35 year late interest in the activities of former Liberal MP Cyril Smith is not about the outsize Member for Rochdale, and nor is it about child abuse. The attack is a continuation of the vicious and personal vendetta which the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre has been waging for some years against Nick Clegg.

Who're you f***ing calling a hypocrite, c***?!?

“The man who knew nothing: As Cyril Smith furore grows, MPs and child campaigners scorn Clegg for claiming that he was too young to know about his abuse” thunders the headline, signalling a shift away from Smith to target the Lib Dem leader, who, when Smith was misbehaving at Cambridge House Boys’ Hostel in Rochdale (closed in 1965), had not yet been born.

So while Rochdale’s current MP Simon Danczuk has his book on Smith serialised by the Mail – today’s episode is titled “Sex ring at Cyril's school: He WASN'T a lone wolf. In our latest devastating extract from the book shaking Westminster, we reveal how Cyril Smith led a ring of abusers who launched night-time raids on a school for vulnerable boys” – the bullying of Clegg is ramped up.

“Seven Questions He Must Answer” treads the same ground as the earlier assault on senior Labour politicians who worked for the National Council for Civil Liberties at the time when the Paedophile Information Exchange has affiliated to it. If only Clegg would answer the questions, the Mail infers, all would be well. It would not: Dacre the bully would just come back for more the following day.

But check out this editorial comment: “As long ago as 1979, Private Eye magazine reported that the 29-stone Liberal MP, who sat as a Liberal Democrat before his retirement from the Commons in 1992, sexually assaulted boys in his Rochdale, Lancashire, constituency. In 1987, Smith’s then Labour opponent caused a sensation when he repeated the allegations publicly on an election hustings”.

Private Eye issue 454 - click for larger image

Dacre was News Editor of the Mail in 1987. It is inconceivable that he was not aware of the allegations made during that year’s General Election campaign. And his paper was sent a copy of the 1979 issue of the Rochdale Alternative Press which first brought Smith’s behaviour to the public’s attention.

Private Eye’s leader on the affair – again, reproduced above – begins “There is not an important or TV station in the land which has not received a copy of the May issue of the Rochdale Alternative Press”. That means the Daily Mail was told about Cyril Smith. They chose to do nothing. The paper’s current editor knew in 1987. But Paul Dacre also chose to do nothing about it.

Now that same Paul Dacre is blaming someone else for his own selective amnesia. And the Daily Mail is still part of that establishment cover-up.

[UPDATE 16 April 0945 hours: the Mail has emphasised that this is a personal assault on Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems by returning to the subject today, with a front page that proclaims "Squirming Of The Lib Dems", and asserting that the party's claims are "crumbling", whereas nothing has changed over the past 24 hours - including the obsessive rage of Paul Dacre.

What the accompanying article reveals, though, is that one senior Lib Dem has already had enough of the Dacre doggies' behaviour: David Steel is taking legal action against the paper. So, just to be consistent with the mean-spiritedness, the Mail has pursued the former Liberal leader to the Azores, where he might have thought he and his wife could enjoy a little peace and quiet.

And there is, to no surprise, no explanation from the Mail as to why they were told about Cyril Smith's behaviour as far back as 1979, but did nothing.

Stay classy, Vagina Monologue]