Danczuk Did NOT Expose Cyril Smith

While the currency of Rochdale’s nominally Labour MP Simon Danczuk sinks lower and lower on the market of convertible credibility, following the revelation that he had been indulging in less than totally appropriate text message exchanges with a 17 year old girl, one mitigating factor is wheeled out time and again in his defence - that he was the one who outed, or exposed, his predecessor Cyril Smith.

But there was, as Captain Blackadder might have observed, only one thing wrong with this idea - it was bollocks. Danczuk has certainly made considerable personal capital out of telling the world what it already knew, and had known for 33 years prior to his intervention, but on no measure can he lay claim to exposing Smith’s behaviour. Moreover, some of what has been published in his name has since been debunked.

Some papers even cite 2010 as the date Danczuk became involved. But as I’ve previously told, “Until prompted by John Walker, formerly of Rochdale Alternative Press, the paper whose revelations were more widely publicised by Private Eye in 1979, and Paul Waugh, who, with Walker’s assistance, ran a piece ‘Cyril Smith - some justice at last?’ on 27 November 2012, on PoliticsHome, Danczuk had not been involved”.

Cyril Smith at full girth in the Commons

Walker later recalled “[The House of] Commons was holding a debate on current child abuse and grooming on that day [27 November 2012], and … Simon Danczuk - because of the on-going position in Rochdale - had preferential speaking rights in the debate … Prior to Paul's publication that day, out of courtesy, he contacted Danczuk to forewarn him of his article about his predecessor as Rochdale's MP”.

Only then did Danczuk seize the initiative, with the idea of a book on the subject only being taken forward after Walker had done a great deal of work to persuade the MP to get involved. And after Danczuk and his sidekick Matt Baker did publish Smile For The Camera, the book was soon mired in controversy.

The real exposure - in 1979

Baker and Danczuk claimed that Smith had been apprehended by Northamptonshire Police on the M1 in the vicinity of Watford Gap services with a stash of child pornography in the boot of his car. They also claim that Smith was allowed to go free as he was a “protected man”. Northants Police then spent a non-trivial amount of time and therefore money investigating the claim, only to find that there was no evidence of Smith having been the subject of a traffic stop, or that his car was searched.

It got worse: after a Freedom of Information request to Northants Police asked “Did the Police voluntarily request disclosure of all evidence accumulated by Simon Danczuk and Matthew Baker to substantiate this specific claim?” the answer came back “the investigators asked but there was no evidential material to take possession of. The issue of witnesses was discussed but there was no information as to the identity of any of the witnesses to the alleged events”. Part of Danczuk and Baker’s book was made up.

So when the press gives Simon Danczuk a free pass because he “exposed” or “outed” Cyril Smith, remember that not only did he not expose Smith, but he and Baker invented at least one key incident in their book. The Rochdale Alternative Paper and Private Eye magazine remain the only two publications to name any living politician with regard to child sexual abuse. Inventing stories after their death doesn’t count.