Heffer Says Enoch Didn’t Do It

The unwavering hero worship of Simon “Enoch was right” Heffer for the late Tory and later Unionist MP has been put to the sternest of tests this weekend, as news emerged that an allegation had been made against The Great Man of potential involvement in historic child abuse. “Detectives investigating claims of a VIP paedophile sex ring have been passed lurid allegations relating to Enoch Powell” told the Mail.

The Hefferlump was aghast: “A monstrous slur against my friend: The allegations against Enoch Powell are lies beyond contempt … When on Saturday evening a fellow journalist told me of the allegations made by the Church of England, my first instinct was to laugh: but that soon changed into utter outrage when I realised he was serious … The Church has publicly accused Enoch of being involved in ritual satanic abuse on hearsay, without the slightest evidence”. As Sir Sean nearly said, I think we got the point.

Yes, it’s all the Church of England’s fault: “It is disgraceful and destabilising for clergy to behave in this way … He has been demonised not least because to attack his memory is a quick and effective way for them to score points by setting out their own political correctness. What better way for some mischievous Leftist priest to damage Enoch further than by linking him with the current rash of stories about child abuse?”

And he warns the clergy that he and his pals are going to come looking for them after it’s all over: “The allegations are a monstrous lie. That the lie appears to have been retailed by a priest is beyond contempt … There must be an investigation and, for all the distress this outrage has caused, there must be a reckoning”.

Had Heffer actually bothered to read what has actually happened, though, he might have stopped and thought, but then, that would not have enabled him to use the bully pulpit of the Mail to generate More And Bigger Paycheques For Himself Personally Now. In any case, the Independent has told “the claims against Mr Powell were passed to police by the Right Reverend Paul Butler, the Bishop of Durham, more than a year ago … they have only now been made public”. So he’s too late now.

Moreover, Heffer’s accusations of “political correctness”, a “mischievous Leftist priest”, and “the lie … retailed [my emphasis] by a priest”, ignore the inconvenient fact that “Under safeguarding rules, institutions such as the Church of England now automatically pass allegations of abuse to the police for assessment”.

So if names are submitted to those who, like the Bishop of Durham, deal with safeguarding, they have no alternative but to submit them to Police. It should be noted that the clergyman putting Powell’s name forward had “first heard the claims when he was counselling young adults as a curate in the 1980s”. The idea that this is some kind of leftist plot to besmirch the name of Heffer’s hero is arrant nonsense.

Child abuse allegations have to be taken seriously. That is all. Get over it, Simon Heffer.