1978: Tom O’Carroll writes to Antony Grey at Defence of Literature & Arts Society re ‘freedom of speech’

In 1978, during the passage of the Protection of Children bill through Parliament, and just as PIE were preparing to publish their Paedophilia: Some Questions & Answers and distribute the booklet to MPs pigeonholes in the House of Commons, Tom O’Carroll, Chairman of Paedophile Information Exchange and member of the NCCL Gay Rights Committee wrote to Antony Grey in his role on the Executive Committee of the Defence of Literature and Arts Society (‘DLAS’).

O’Carroll wanted to thank Grey for his support at the 1978 NCCL Annual General Meeting and “in relation to” the National Union for Public Employees. The NCCL AGM had taken place on 1-2 April at City University, a fortnight prior to O’Carroll’s letter.

“Dear Antony, I was pleased to see you the other day, and only regret that I had to dash off without having a chance to talk to you after the meeting. Allow me, however, to thank you very much for your support at the NCCL AGM, and in relation to NUPE etc.”

Motion. 39: Freedom of Discussion proposed by Nettie Pollard and Bill Forrester

At the 1978 AGM which O’Carroll and Grey had attended, PIE member Nettie Pollard had seconded a motion proposed by Bill Forrester to ask NCCL to condemn the protests against PIE’s meeting in September 1977:

“This AGM re-affirms the right of free discussion and freedom to hold meetings for all organisations and individuals doing so within the law.

In particular this AGM condemns the physical and other attacks on those who have discussed or attempted to discuss paedophilia and re-affirms NCCL’s condemnation of harassment and unlawful attacks on such persons.” [Bill Forrester and Nettie Pollard]

Tom O’Carroll was responding to an approach made by DLAS to David Grove, PIE’s Children Rights’ Campaign leader and keeper of the PIE mailing list.

In June/July 1976 edition of Understanding Paedophilia (PIE’s forerunner to Magpie) the ‘Magnificent Six’ had been announced, with the following people undertaking the following roles for PIE

‘It’s the Magnificent Six’, p. 7
New EC:
Keith Hose – re-elected to serve as National Chairperson for the coming year
Warren Middleton – re-elected as National Vice Chairperson/PIE Magazine Editor
Tom O’Carroll – elected as PIE General Secretary/responsible for the formation of local groups/PIE members’ contact service/Publicity [See further: Did NCCL’s trawl of List 99 radicalise PIE’s Tom O’Carroll? Palaver #6 October 1976]
David C Grove – elected as Director of PIE’s forthcoming children’s rights campaign/responsible for distribution of mail
Charles Napier – elected as Treasurer/responsible for recruitment of new members.
Peter Righton – elected as Organiser of prison-hospital visits/general correspondence and PIE befriending.
Want applicants for Legal adviser and Director of Research. [Ian Pace blog]

DLAS wanted an article from PIE on the ways in which their freedom of speech have been muzzled for the DLAS publication “Uncensored” Tom O’Carroll nominates Keith Hose to write this for Grey.

Three years later, in a letter to Tony Smythe, Grey wrote

“ The drubbing which free speech, civil rights and common sense have taken over the PIE case is appalling. I always feared that Tom O’Carroll was hellbent on opening this particular Pandora’s Box, and so it has proved.” [See further: With compliments from Ian Dunn, and while you were out Tony Smythe called March 1981 ]

Seemingly, a fear precipitated by Grey’s own invitation, adopting the role of a self-fulfilling prophet of doom while bearing in mind Grey’s ego couldn’t bear not to archive these writings publicly.

 

The Defence of Literature and the Arts Society (1968 – 1983)

The Defence of Literature and Arts Society attracted sponsors from “the great and good”:

Lords, charity directors, MPs, former MPs, lawyers and even doctors such as Dr David Stafford-Clark and Lords who were also Doctors such as Lord Winstanley (apparently a staunch supporter of everyone else’s freedom of speech bar Mary Whitehouse’s when he commanded Antony Grey to pursue her to the end of the road if not further! [Dec 1976: See further blog post here]

Francis Bennion, Parliamentary Counsel and Civil Liberties Barrister

One member of the Executive Committee who served alongside Antony Grey and Eric Thompson was Francis Bennion, Barrister and Parliamentary counsel, who had drafted the constitutions of Pakistan and Ghana, the Consumer Credit Act, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, and the hugely successful reference book for lawyers on ‘Statutory Interpretation’. In 1968 he founded the Professional Association of Teachers.

On Francis Bennion‘s website : http://www.francisbennion.com/pdfs/non-fb/1983/1983-007-nfb-dlas-pamphlet.pdf

In 1979 Bennion wrote a review of G Parker Rossman’s book Sexual Experience between Men and Boys [Freethinker Vol.99 1979] [See further for Antony Grey’s meeting with Parker Rossman on his July 1979 trip to UK from the states and Rossman’s letter to Grey and more on George Parker Rossman’s 1971 arrest in the Long Island New York ring with Dr Morris Fraser ]

In 1983 Antony Grey and his partner Eric Thompson were still serving on the Executive Committee of the DLAS along with Michael Rubinstein (the solicitor who Sir Harold Haywood was dismayed at charging for his advice on suing Mary Whitehouse due to his “special interest in the Trust”).

Lord Beaumont of Whitley (former Albany Trust Chairman 1969-1972?) is also a sponsor.

 Ben Whitaker (former Lab: Hampstead MP 1966-1970)

Ben Whitaker was the Chairman of the DLAS and had been Labour MP for Hampstead 1966-1970 during Wilson’s first term, at the same time Dr David Kerr, a fellow DLAS sponsor, had been Labour MP for Wandsworth Central.

NCCL AGM Ballot Papers 1978: Biographies for candidates standing for NCCL Executive Committee

Brian Sedgemore MP (Lab: Hackney South)

Sponsors included Brian Sedgemore MP (Lab: Hackney South)

See further for Mark Trotter, the Hackney Labour agent whose abuse of children left some victims with AIDS with a history of abuse in Liverpool:

• Poisonous regime that betrayed the children (07.01.98)
• Hackney’s tainted chiefs ‘will be axed’ (08.01.98)
• The council officer told her friend: Don’t use Trotter as your babysitter. But the public was never warned (21.01.98) [Evening Standard, Stewart Payne & Eileen Fairweather]
• MP’s attack on the man who helped expose Hackney abuser (04.02.98) [Evening Standard, Stewart Payne & Eileen Fairweather]

Ian Mikardo MP (Lab: East end, Bow, Poplar, Bethnal Green 1964-1987)

Ian Mikardo MP (Lab:  Reading 1945–50, Reading South 1950–55, Reading 1955–59, Poplar 1964–74, Bethnal Green and Bow 1974–83 and Bow and Poplar 1983–87)

“… the progress of the Child Protection bill was threatened by MP Ian Mikardo, who blocked it to protest against tactics being used by the Conservative party to block Edward Fletcher‘s bill on employment protection, the Prime Minister, James Callaghan, stepped in to ensure that the Bill received the time required to become law.^{[1]” [Wikipedia: Child Protection Act 1978]}

On 12 May 1978 Auberon Waugh wrote ‘Save the Children’ for The Spectator  when Mikardo was MP for Bethnal Green and Bow:

“After all the recent hysteria about the Child Protection Bill, when Mr Ian Mikardo was practically accused of supporting the vile trade in child pornography, we have at last been given a chance to examine the Bill as it ambles its way through its second reading in the House of Lords. To judge from press reaction, and from statements by various opportunist MPs, one might have supposed that child pornography was a new and hideous development which somehow escaped existing legislation on obscene publication and protection of minors, while threatening to corrupt a whole generation of British schoolchildren for the unscrupulous gain of these merchants in human misery . . .”

 

1967/68: Antony Grey serving on NCCL’s Legal Sub-Committee

When PIE member Nettie Pollard invites Grey to join the NCCL Gay Rights Committee on 3rd April 1978 [see here – scroll to bottom of post] he was no stranger to the NCCL having served on the Executive Committee almost a decade previously, albeit listed with his real name – Edgar Wright. The General Secretary at the time was Tony Smythe (future Director of MIND), who 12 years later Grey would pressure into responding to Ronald Butt’s allegation in The Times [26th March 1981: Spotlightonabuse here ‘The Questions Unaswered in the Hayman case’]. Butt had stated MIND was a ‘pressure group in receipt of government money and support’ was being one of ‘most guilty of conniving at the attempt to make the pedophile ‘movement’ respectable.’

[See further blog post: With compliments from Ian Dunn and while you were out, Tony Smythe, called]

[See also: MIND Workshop September 1975 on paedophilia, chaired by Peter Righton, attended by Antony Grey and Sir Harold Haywood, with speeches by two PIE members who concurrently served on the NCCL Gay Rights Committee, Chairman Keith Hose and Nettie Pollard)

During the passage of the Sexual Offences Bill through Parliament in 1967, Grey, as dual Secretary of the Sexual Law Reform Society and the Albany Trust, also sat on the Legal Group of the NCCL Executive Committee. Although he’d studied history at Magdelene College Oxford, Grey had also read for the Bar and had therefore undertaken legal training. Grey was very busy post royal assent for the Act, bitterly disappointed with its limited decriminalisation – not only was he sitting on NCCL’s Executive Committee he had also established a Project Study Group with Peter Righton involving Ian Greer [see further blog post here], was assisting with the editing of notorious child abuser Walter Breen’s UK publication of Greek Love and also planning to co-write a book with Dr David Kerr MP (Lab: Wandsworth Central 1964-1970) [see further blog post here]

 

On the Legal Board of the NCCL Grey got the opportunity to lobby with and learn from some of the leading lights of the civil liberties legal world, then and now, including:

Ben Birnberg (b. 1931 – ) civil liberties lawyer who acted for Ian Brady on being introduced by Harriet Harman’s uncle Lord Longford [Farewell to a non-fat cat lawyer, The Independent, 25 February 1999]

“He recalls his first meeting with Ian Brady, who was introduced as a client through long-time friend Lord Longford. “Brady was in a terrible state in prison – he looked like a skeleton coming out of a Nazi concentration camp.” Using an internal Home Office psychiatrist’s report, which recommended that Brady be moved to a mental hospital, Mr Birnberg started an action against the Home Office in the early 1980s and succeeded in having Brady moved to Park Lane (now Ashworth), where he has been since 1985.”

Dr Lindsey Neustatter – Albany Trust’s Deputy Chairman in 1962 – and member of the interviewing panel appointing Antony Grey to the Trust [see blog post here on Grey’s interview] had provided the initial psychiatric report on Brady in 1966 prior to his sentencing.

On retirement in 1999:

“He will also spend more time campaigning, with “maverick” MP Austin Mitchell, for a National Legal Service. He has already made submissions to the Lord Chancellor. “Needless to say, I’m a very old acquaintance of the Lord Chancellor, I think I gave him one of his first legal aid briefs – possibly the only one he has ever had.”

Lord Irvine, Tony Blair’s former Head of Chambers was the Lord Chancellor at the time Birnberg is mentioning having instructed him on a legal aid case, perhaps one of the very few. Bizarrely Austin Mitchell MP’s name is only familiar to me due to attracting headlines  a few weeks ago for declaring Labour will still win Grimsby even if the party selected a ‘raving alcoholic sex pedophile’  [Independent, 25 February 2015]

‘In his 69th year, the solicitor and his firm will have a lasting influence. His career has spanned almost two thirds of his life, during which time there have been the most radical of changes in the law, and in lawyers. The articled clerks who have been at the firm include Paul Boateng, Gareth Peirce, and Imran Khan, who acts for Stephen Lawrence’s family. Director of Liberty, John Wadham, who also worked at the firm , says: “Ben Birnberg has been an inspiration, not only to me, but to a whole generation of civil rights lawyers.”‘

John Griffith (b.1918-d.2010)  [Guardian Obituary 25 May 2010]

A leading public law scholar at the London School of Economics, I have fond memories of immersing myself in his controversial book Politics of the Judiciary (1977) when I should have been completing an undergrad essay on the separation of powers in Constitutional & Admin law.

“In common with his friend Ralph Miliband, Griffith had absorbed much of Laski’s socialist radicalism, and his more explicitly political analyses tended to highlight the authoritarian nature of government and in particular the close political, social and class linkages of the elites in power. It was therefore hardly surprising that he advanced a radical critique of the role of the judiciary, especially when it strayed into the field of politics.” [from Guardian obituary above]

Alan Paterson: (b.1911- d.1999) Guardian Obituary

“…provided the legal expertise to the National Council for Civil Liberties (now Liberty) during its crucial period of growth in the 1960s. A right-hand man to director general Martin Ennals, he was also a founder, trustee and administrator for the Cobden Trust, the NCCL’s sister charity.

In 1970, Paterson wrote one of Cobden’s early publications, Legal Aid as a Social Service. Its conclusions could be taken to heart today by a government which no longer views the law as a social service.”

Alan Paterson’s daughter Tess Gill became NCCL Vice Chairman in 1976, the year the battle with PIE putting forward motions at the NCCL’s AGM had raged most ferociously and Jack Dromey MP had been co-opted back onto the Executive Committee

“On their retirement, they moved to Calne, Wiltshire, opening their home as a haven for their family and for their daughter Tess and her colleagues on the NCCL women’s committee to plan their next campaigns.”

Cedric Thornberry (b.1936- d.2014) [Guardian Obituary] Also a lecturer at London School of Economics who would later become Assistant General Secretary to UN and advisor to NATO. It was during 1967/8 he left his first wife and children (his daughter, until recently Labour’s Shadow Attorney-General, Emily Thornberry MP Lab: Islington South since 2005, and her two younger brothers)

“Her mother Sallie, alas no longer with us, was a most courageous and distinguished person, and also much-loved by political allies and opponents alike. She was a teacher by profession, and an active and popular Labour councillor who became, despite the privations and difficulties of her life, Mayor of Guildford in Surrey, by no means a Labour town.

But the family was not fatherless in the sense that it had never had a father. Nor was Sallie Thornberry unmarried. On the contrary, she was married to a distinguished and talented academic lawyer, Cedric Thornberry, who lectured at the London School of Economics, and rose to become Assistant General Secretary of the United Nations. He is still active in the international human rights industry.

I do not know or seek to know exactly how he came to leave the family home, though he did so when his daughter was seven and his sons even younger. It is perhaps significant that Emily Thornberry omits all reference to him from her entry in ‘Who’s Who’ (those in Who’s Who’ write their own entries), though she does mention her mother.” [The phoney outrage of Emily Thornberry, Christopher Hitchens, Daily Mail, 18 June 2012]

In 1968 Michael Schofield, a fellow Albany Trustee, would join Grey on the NCCL Executive Committee further strengthening the links between the two organisations. Grey and Doreen Cordell’s animosity towards one another would fester throughout 1969 until Grey’s resignation and replacement with Michael De La Noy as Director of the Trust in December 1970.

[Excerpt above from blog post: July 1971 – Peter Righton at the House of Lords, Lord Beaumont calls an emergency meeting for 12 friends of the Albany Trust]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1974: Martin Loney calls for inquiry into Special Branch blackmailing informers – NCCL eject him

Antony Grey had met Eric J. Thompson, who became his life partner in 1960 when they were both living in Belsize Park, North London. By the early 1970s Eric, specialising in population planning, had become Chairman of the Census Research Group and Assistant Director of the Greater London Council (‘GLC’) Intelligence Unit and the pair had moved to Uplands Road in Hornsey/Crouch End, N8. Antony and Eric also sat on the Executive Committee of the Defence of Literature & Arts Society (‘DLAS’) together with familiar names such as Lord Winstanley. Since renamed the Campaign Against Censorship (‘CAC’) the group was originally formed in 1968 to campaign against laws on censorship.

Guardian 7 September 1974

 

 

 

 

 

In 1968 Eric also joined Grey at the National Council of Civil Liberties, not on the Executive Committee but on the Standing Orders Committee (‘SOC’) which met four times a year to consider motions to put forward to the Executive Committee for the AGM each year.

Report of the Standing Committee NCCL 1967/68

In 1972 Tony Smythe had resigned as General Secretary of NCCl to become field director of the American Civil Liberties Union and Martin Loney was appointed on 28 January 1973. Born in Bradford, Leeds, Loney had graduated from Durham University in Sociology and was working as Research Director for the World University Service in Geneva.

Loney, then aged 28, had barely been in position for a fortnight, appointed as General Secretary of NCCL in May 1973 when Thompson wrote to him regarding affiliation with individual branches of the National Association of Local Government Officers (‘NALGO’) which Thompson as a GLC employee was a member of.

 

In the NCCL Annual Report 1973/1974 the Council believed that Northern Ireland was being used as

“a testing ground for military control of civil disorder” 

with serious implications for Britain beyond the immediate concerns of ‘the troubles’ in that the ‘experiments’ may cross the Irish Sea.

[See further blog posts: Dr Morris Fraser, Belfast, New York Long Island, Islington and Savile, Dublin & Belfast: Time to re-evaluate his role in the ‘The Troubles’? ]

In September Patricia Hewitt joined NCCL has the first Women’s Rights Officer. [Liberty Begins at home, Guardian 12 December 1974]

Guardian 17 April 1974

 

Lennon said: Yard forced me into crime, 17 April 1974 The Guardian

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lennon had been on trial for the Winson Green plot in Birmingham Crown Court on Monday 8 April, acquitted while his co-defendant was jailed for 3 years. Court testimony that Lennon had been “frank and honest with the police when they asked him questions” alerted the IRA to the fact that Lennon had been a Special Branch informer.

Lennon said: Yard forced me into crime, 17 April 1974 The Guardian

On Tuesday 9 April he ended up on Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in Soho and over a brandy told George Melly his rambling story of being blackmailed by Special Branch into informing on the IRA following being approached in Luton, Bedfordshire on the hospital steps where his wife was being treated for brain tumours. Born in Ulster, Lennon and his family came from a staunchly Republican border town Co. Down. Melly suggested Lennon tell the NCCL his story and so the very next day, Wednesday 9 April,  Martin Loney and NCCL legal officer Larry Grant found themselves taking a 17 page statement from Lennon as he recounted the events of Special Branch’s blackmail on him to enter into various illegal escapades while informing on the IRA.

By Thursday 10 April Lennon had been shot in the back of the head and was found face down in a ditch in Chipstead, Surrey.

April 1974 NCCL Press Conference: Martin Loney Showing Signed Statement From Victim Kenneth Lennon (behind Larry Grant NCCL Legal officer)

On 16 April, 3 hours before NCCL called a press conference to demand a full-scale Parliamentary Inquiry into the activities of Special Branch in the days before Lennon’s murder a call was received at their offices threatening to kill 2 members of NCCL staff before the end of the week. Loney pressed on regardless with the press conference.

Two clues may hold keys to Lennon’s last hours, 20 April 1974 Guardian

On Thursday 7 June, Loney was sacked by the Executive Committee of NCCL chaired by Henry Hodge. Only 5 of the Executive Committee were shocked at the sudden turn of events.

Dr Jock Young, a lecturer in Criminology at Middlesex Polytechnic, resigned immediately sending a letter to the EC stating

“In all my years of political activity, I have never seen such a vicious hatchet job as that carried out on the NCCL General Secretary last night. If that is your committee’s idea of civil liberties, I’m glad to be out of it” [NCCL Split over sacking, Guardian, June 8 1974]

Guardian 8 June 1974 NCCL split over sacking

 

Mr Morris Pollack didn’t resign but started to gather the 50 signatures needed to call an Emergency General Meeting to condemn the EC’s action led by Hodge and ask for Loney’s reinstatement. Those employed by the NCCL as staff (as opposed to the Executive Committee) were also very unhappy about the way in which the decision had been reached and executed.

Guardian 8 June 1974 NCCL split over sacking

Tony Smythe, Director of MIND, had left the sacking meeting before the vote took place saying “I moved a motion to get everyone to withdraw their resolutions. It seemed to me that a bit of reconciliation was necessary. A number of very trivial arguments were put forward as reasons for the dismissal.”

After the meeting Loney said the E.C led by Hodge had “behaved with the sophistication  of a drunk on a bulldozer.” He said his dismissal had been pre-arranged and that Hodge, as Chairman, had only called the meeting because Loney had refused to be pressured into resigning privately. “I would not do the gentlemanly thing and resign. I thought the NCCL members should have a chance to know what was going on.”

Guardian 8 June 1974 NCCL split over sacking

 19 June 1974: The ‘Emergency General Meeting’ & the Grey/Thompson machinations

By Wednesday 19 June over 50 NCCL members had requested a ‘Special General Meeting’ to ask why Loney had been sacked. 181 individual members attended the meeting and 139 voting cards were issued to affiliated organisations. The meeting opened at 10.30am with Henry Hodge in his role as Chairman of the E.C. of the NCCL.  Eric Thompson and Antony Grey attended, quietly seething at Hodge’s ineptness at losing control of Loney.

By 11.45 am the following motion had been tabled to be carried – the rest of the day was spent with various factions trying to amend or dilute the condemnation of the NCCL Executive Committee’s actions by its members in order to prevent Hodge and the 11 other Executive Committee members who had ejected Loney from being deposed with a vote of no confidence.

“Motion by various members requesting the Special General Meeting:

“At a time of increasing attacks on the fundamentals of liberty this Emergency General Meeting reaffirms the need for a militant civil liberties organisation. This meeting deplores the irresponsible behaviour of those members of the Executive Committee responsible for the sacking of the General Secretary. In view of:

a) the adverse consequence this had in the Council’s political credibility and financial solvency;

b) the divisive effect this has had on the Council;

c) the absence of any reasoned explanation for this action;

this meeting declares its lack of confidence in those Executive Committee members responsible. This meeting recognises that the National Council of Civil Liberties faces a difficult financial situation and commits itself to fight to preserve and extend the NCCL so that it can continue to play a key role in the defence of civil liberties.”

Attachment from Eric Thompson to Mr Crampton 25/10/1974 reporting on the SGM to NALGO Branch Meeting

In Eric Thompson’s report to Mr Crampton, dated 25 October 1974 it becomes apparent how the Emergency General Meeting was manipulated. In the confusion of a group walking out and then returning Eric Thompson took the opportunity to move his amending motion to the above, seconded by Antony Grey (as Edgar Wright) which was carried:

Delete all after ‘deplores’ on line 3 and substitute:

This meeting deplores:

“the increasing weakness of the Council over the last two years and calls on the EC to take tighter control over the office and to give priority to building up a strong parliamentary civil liberties group and an active national civil liberties campaign.”

Letter from Antony Grey and Eric Thompson to Henry Hodge June/July 1974

Having averted Hodge and the EC’s deposal Antony and Eric wrote a scathing joint letter to Hodge to make it clear they had ‘rescued’ the NCCL Executive Committee.

Together they reminded Hodge “the giving of priority to building up a strong and active Civil Liberties Group of MPs” should be acted on before the next AGM in April 1975 and that they had asked him and the EC to take “tighter control over the office”.

“We trust that you will be able to give the next AGM a positive report on all the above points, and that from now on there will be no divisiveness in making the NCCL into the strong and successful force which it must be if everyone’s civil liberties are to be safeguarded.”

As was to become the focus of the NCCL Gay Rights’ Committee in 1975, everyone’s civil liberties would include those of pedophiles as a priority.

On 28 November 2007 a curious comment was left under an article about Labour Party funding on The Guardian website by a Martin Loney, PhD:

 

In November 1974 the Starrit Report was published clearing Special Branch of any wrong-doing in relation to Lennon’s murder, the Paedophile Information Exchange was established,  and Patricia Hewitt was confirmed as General Secretary of the NCCL (having been Acting GS since Loney’s undignified ejection). [Liberty Begins at home, Guardian 12 December 1974]

Lennon report clears police, 29 November 1974, The Guardian

 

With compliments from Ian Dunn & while you were out, Tony Smythe called

Throughout Grey’s correspondence it is clear he places pressure on various people at various times to write letters to the press, as part of his eminence gris role in shaping others to shape public opinion and acceptance of paedophilia. It’s unclear whether Joy Blanchard, David Astor’s former secretary at The Observer, was blackmailing Grey from the moment he brought her to the Albany Trust with him on his appointment in 1962, and/or whether Grey’s ‘achilles heel’ concerned under 21s or under 16s, but Joy was to exert a tight control over him (as she’d boasted to Doreen Cordell) until the onset of a non-malignant brain tumour in 1968.

In the wake of Grey’s autumn 1976 visit to Edinburgh and Dunn’s Scottish Minorities Group (SMG) where he met Thatcher’s future Lord Advocate Lord Rodger, (then working as the Clerk to the Faculty of Advocates), Ian Dunn who had co-founded PIE over 2 years previously endeavours to demonstrate to the Trust his public support for their work on paedophilia. See below –  10 January 1977 ‘Albany Trust – With compliments, Ian Dunn’. Grey’s plans for Ian Dunn to assist with forming a Scottish branch of the Albany Trust are still percolating following Ric Rogers, Albany Trust’s Youth Worker’s visit to SMG shortly after Grey.

 

 

 

Three years later, in March 1981, Antony Grey writes to Tony Smythe, to ask him to reply to The Times and Ronald Butt’s article of 26th March captured on Spotlightonabuse here ‘The Questions Unaswered in the Hayman case’. Butt had stated MIND as a ‘pressure group in receipt of government money and support’ was being one of ‘most guilty of conniving at the attempt to make the pedophile ‘movement’ respectable.’

Grey immediately wrote to Smythe (signing as his real name, Edgar, since he and Smythe had been friends for a long time previously “When are you coming round for that long-promised chat?”):

“No doubt you will be replying to Ronald Butt’s allegation (today’s Times) that you and MIND had promoted paedophilia by stealth. We seem to have arrived at the weird situation where anyone who ares to hint that not all pedophiles are sinister, sadistic, evil child-molsteors is promptly denounced for encouraging the practice of paedophilia. The drubbing which free speech, civil rights and common sense have taken over the PIE case is appalling. I always feared that Tom O’ Carroll was hellbent on opening this particular Pandora’s Box, and so it has proved.”

 

excerpt from Butt’s 26 March 1981 article, The Times

 

 

 

 

 

 

At 9.10pm one evening Tony called round to Antony Grey/Edgar Wright at 90 Uplands Road, Crouch End/Hornsey Rise and left an obliging if slightly sweaty message for Grey to give him a call and a message: “He’s v gratefull [sic] for your letter, but doesn’t think he can take more of this. Sends his letter for you to see.”

What was it Smythe didn’t think he could take much more of?

 

Another DES funded ‘Youth Experiment Project’, Henniker-Major & a WWII Military Intelligence Analyst

Within 2 months of the MIND/PIE/Albany Trust Workshop…[See before reading below: 1972 – 1976: The Art of Pervasion – Playland, Paedophiles, Power and Politics  – [Sir] Harold Haywood meets PIE hosted by MIND with other Albany Trustees – all six write to The Guardian to plead the case for vulnerable ‘bisexual’ married men indulging in a spot of extra-marital pederasty and beg the question ‘Who is exploiting whom?’ – Albany Trust, PIE & PAL begin co-drafting Paedophilia: Some Questions & Answers which a year later is used by PIE to drop in MPs pigeon-holes at Westminster during the passage of the Protection of Children Bill March/April 1978]

 

On 27 November 1975 Mr A Prosser, Department of Education & Science, agreed to provide a grant to Albany Trust specifically towards the support of a full-time Youth Officer.[i] Briefly during this early period 1974-1976 when Grey and Haywood move towards successfully securing government funds to extend the work of the Albany Trust, two Ministers of State for Education & Science in quick succession were Reginald Prentice MP (5 March 1974 – 10 June 1975) and Fred Mulley MP[Lab: Sheffield Park 1953-1980] (DES: 10 June 1975 – 10 September 1976) appointed under Harold Wilson’s second term as Prime Minister. Prentice was to later cross the floor and become a Conservative MP, given a peerage under Thatcher.

“The Albany Trust/DES Youth and Sexuality Project which ran from the summer of 1976 when the first Youth officer, Ric Rogers, was appointed, until October 1979 when his successor, Alan Smith, presented his final report. Whereas Rogers had concentrated his out-of-London activities in two main areas – the East Midlands and the North East – Alan Smith followed a more general itinerary, going wherever he found that a local authority or youth organization training programme wanted him to offer a training event.” [grey / footnotes]

The Youth and Sexuality Project report did not find much favour with W.H.Miller of DES when it was finally received by the department in late 1979. By then the DES came under Mark Carlisle MP who was to last [ ] months under Thatcher’s first term before [Sir] Keith Joseph took over for the next 5 years. Miller wrote to make clear that despite funding the ‘Experimental Project’ for 3 years the Department did not want their name attached to the report.

“This is of course a report by the Albany Trust and publication is primarily a matter for the Trust. It would not be proper for the Department to oppose publication, although I should emphasis that this does not mean that the Department supports the views expressed. If you do decide to publish, you will no doubt wish to correct the typographical errors and make it clear that this is an Albany Trust project which the Department agreed to support in 1976, as an experimental project (rather than a project funded by the Department through the Trust).”[ii]

In contrast Grey was either somehow unaware that the DES under Thatcher had expressed a cool distance between the Youth Worker ‘Youth and Sexuality’ Experimental Project or its resulting report (along with a sneer at the typos) and instead in Quest for Justice signposted the report as residing somewhere within the DES

“The Albany Trust’s existence during its final years of activity is amply justified by this impressive report. Doubtless it is now mouldering forgotten in some dusty pigeonhole at the Department of Education. It should be resurrected, studied afresh, and acted upon.”[iii]

 

[i] Referenced in a letter from Rodney Bennet England to John Leigh (DES) dated 13^th February 1978

[ii] Letter from WH Miller (DES) to Rodney Bennett-England (Albany Trust) dated 18^th January 1980, DES Ref: YO21/30/206 [for finding other files residing in DES, YO presumably stands for Youth Officer or Youth Office?]

[iii] Grey Loc 3960/6001

Shortly before [Sir] Harold Haywood departed the Trust for the Prince’s Trust for Young People, Ric Rogers resigned as Albany’s Youth Worker to move to the National Youth Bureau. Alan Smith replaced him and in mid September 1978 wrote the following outline of the Experiment for submission as one of the charities being funded by DES as ‘youth experiment projects’.

From details of other charitable projects being supported by the DES as Youth Experimental Projects running parallel and receiving DES experimental government funding was Inter-Action’s Make-It-Yourself project – which sounds like quite a fun proto Junior Apprentice business production project or ‘community education experiment’.

 

The history of Inter-Action and Kentish Town City Farm – a year after this document Prince Charles is filmed giving a speech and visiting the Kentish Town City Farm – an associate of Righton’s, Sir John Henniker-Major was a city farm adviser to the charity presumably for his establishment of the Islington-Suffolk Project.

Trustees

ED Berman’s theatre group the Ambiance ended up on Rupert Street in 1971 – equidistant between the Albany Trust at 32 Shaftesbury Avenue and Playland the amusement arcade on Coventry Street. Laurence Collinson who Antony Grey would later study Transactional Analysis with put on a play here during Gay Play season of 1975.

Clive Barker’s Theatre Games of 1977

Pamela Rose and her husband EJB Rose who as it happens was a noted military intelligence analyst during WWII – New York Times obituary 1999

“The advance knowledge of German plans, so laboriously deciphered at Bletchley Park, helped Britain when it was fighting alone against the Nazis, and Mr. Rose was head of the section that determined the military importance of the information they received.”

[Sir] Christopher Chataway (Former Conservative MP for Lewisham North – 1966 and then Chichester 1969-1974) Privy Councillor

American Names Association Timeline of Lloyd’s re-insurance market and asbestosis claims

Ian Hay Davison – became the Deputy Chairman and Chief Executive of Lloyd’s re-insurance market in the 1990s and became Chairman

In 1988 Ian Hay Davison wrote A View of the Room: Lloyd’s Change & Disclosure

British watchdogs sacked by Dubai over their advice

 

 

How to rescue a bank: be firm, be quick, be quiet, Ian Hay Davison draws lessons for the handling of the Northern Rock crisis from his experience as chairman of National Mortgage Bank after its collapse in 1992

David Kingsley: (1929 – 2014) Guardian Obituary Labour’s first spin doctor who was one of the 3 men advising Wilson during 1966-1970, fell out of favour after surprise loss of Wilson to Heath in 1970. Only went back into politics for Social Democrats in 1981.

 

 

 

Familiar names amongst the City Farm Advisers:

– Sir John Henniker-Major (1916-2004)

British Council Director, Ambassador to Jordan and Denmark during the 1960s until retirement in 1972, Henniker-Major had also worked in Argentina for 7 years after Burgess revelations. While Peter Righton was being investigated by the police in 1993, the Islington-Suffolk project on Baron Henniker’s estate gave him sanctuary . Henniker-Major was Chairman of Suffolk County Council and a former Liberal parliamentary candidate. Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten (Duke of Edinburgh before he married the Queen) had attended Sir John’s eldest son’s christening, named as his godfather in November 1947.

Country house hideaway of disgraced care chief (6.5.93) [Evening Standard, Eileen Fairweather & Stewart]

“Recent scandals in residential childcare have led experts to believe that paedophile staff may be ‘networking’ nationally to exchange children and pornography – even protection. But only now are moves afoot to address this problem with investigators planning to meet Mr Herbert Laming, chief inspector of the Social Services Inspectorate, to request a co-ordinated nationwide team.

In the meantime it was left for officers investigating Righton to contact their counterparts in Suffolk to establish why he had gone to live there.

The Henniker estate has been the family home since 1756, a rambling mansion house set in farmland and woods. Day-to-day running of the estate has passed to the Lord’s son and heir Mark, 45, and his wife.”

In 2005, Baron Henniker-Major’s grandson Freddy, the 4th youngest of Lesley and Mark’s children committed suicide aged 21. [Inquest into death of Peer’s Son, Ipswich Star, 11 July 2007]  Born in 1983, Freddy was aged 10/11 when Peter Righton arrived at a cottage on his father’s estate.

“As the extent of his alleged activities emerged, police discovered that Righton had moved to the Henniker estate. Suffolk social workers were alerted to establish the circumstances in which he was living.

Lord Henniker, 77, told the Standard he did not know Righton and was not responsible for him living on the estate. ‘The estate belongs to my son.’

His son’s wife, Mrs Lesley Henniker-Major, said: ‘Mr Righton is a tenant. He came to us through an estate agent with impeccable references.’

She said she was not aware of the current investigation but had been told of his previous conviction for possessing indecent material by police and social workers. ‘I was very upset. But I have discussed this with Mr Righton and he tells me this material was unsolicited. I am a mother of five and I am very careful. I am not at all worried. He is innocent until proven guilty.’”

 

– The Rt Rev. Trevor Huddleston (Bishop of Stepney)

Bishop of Stepney who was being whisked away to Mauritius in 1978 due to the mounting allegations against him in the East End of London. See further for John Junor’s frustrated attempts to report and Attorney General Sam Silkin’s admissions to the BBC at Famous Mr X and the Rule of Law

1971: Bishop of Stepney’s promise of patronage  for Peter Righton’s ACCESS along with Jack Profumo

– The Rt. Hon Charles Morrison M.P.

Brother of Sir Peter Morrison, a ‘noted pederast’ who was Thatcher’s PPS. Lord Margadale, Charles and Peter’s father had Thatcher & Denis to holiday on his whisky producing Islay estate in the summer of 1977 and 1978. Lord Margadale had previously entertained two other of Savile’s favourites: Princess Alexandra (whose husband Sir Angus Ogilvy he’d been Vice-President to his Presidency of the National Association of Youth Clubs while Sir Harold Haywood reigned) and Conservative Prime Minister Ted Heath.

Glasgow Herald, 16 August 1979

It was Lord Margadale who had declared in 1976/1977 at his family home that Thatcher would be the next Prime Minister: Did Maggie know her closest aide was preying on under-age boys? [Daily Mail, Sue Reid, 16 July 2014]. By May 1979 she’d won the election and Peter Morrison began his slippery ascent.

 

 

 

– Tony Smythe (former MIND Director, Albany Trustee, NCCL)

Smythe had organised the Sexual Minorities Workshop, chaired by Peter Righton, where Haywood was introduced to PIE members Keith Hose (Chairman & NCCL) and Nettie Pollard (NCCL Gay Rights Worker)and reportedly had resolved that the Albany Trust had a moral duty to argue for the acceptance of pedophiles in society to ensure they could live a useful life, often by dedicating themselves to youth work.

-Lt. Col Satterthwaite 

Bob was the Director of the National Association of Playing Fields