Confronting a culture of cover-up
When I was elected member of parliament for Rochdale in 2010 I felt confident that I understood the main challenges facing our town. What I had not factored into my plans was dealing with sexual abuse.
In the last four years this has featured heavily in my caseload and we have invested a lot of time in fighting terrible injustices. The Rochdale grooming scandal, which saw nine men jailed for appalling child sex crimes, the murder of a Rochdale Red Cross worker, in which his partner was subjected to horrific abuse, and the historic child abuse committed by the town’s former MP, Cyril Smith, all crossed my desk in rapid succession.
In every case our team listened to extremely disturbing stories of abuse. I cannot deny that this did not affect us and the cumulative impact was to create a lasting sense of anger. The Rochdale grooming case, in particular, left us in no doubt there had been a terrible lack of interest among many professional agencies in tackling an endemic abuse problem. That is not to say there were not some good workers trying their best. But the system was simply not fit for purpose – and there had also been clear attempts to cover it up.
It was from this campaign that I started to hear from people who had been abused by Smith. At first there were only a few voices – but once I raised this issue in parliament in November 2012 more and more people started to come forward. I spoke to many victims, police officers, social workers and politicians who all painted a truly horrifying picture.
By now I knew that the cover-up of Smith’s abuse for years had created an extremely unhealthy environment in Rochdale. Too many child abusers had been allowed to get away with heinous crimes and the time was right to confront years of failings, set the record straight and clear the air once and for all.
At this point it is only right that I acknowledge the ambivalence I had about Smith. He had been the MP for Rochdale for 20 years and there were many things I admired about him. He was a formidable, straight-talking, innovative campaigner. And he was certainly popular. Smith was a fascinating political figure and when I sat down to write a book about him with my colleague Matthew Baker we had several goals.
We wanted to capture what made him tick, the spirit behind this political tour de force that cast a long shadow over northern politics. We also wanted to reveal the efforts made by police to prosecute him and expose the awful double life he led that was hidden from view by his power and celebrity status. But, most importantly, we wanted to tell the stories of those he bullied, abused and trampled over.
In doing this we have opened a Pandora’s box. I am now speaking to other police forces about investigations into politicians over allegations of child abuse and I am becoming more certain that Smith was not the only politician with dark secrets to hide.
Child abuse is a terrible stain on our country and the public want to know that people in power are fully committed to trying to keep our children safe. We cannot have anybody, never mind lawmakers in parliament, able to get away with child abuse.
The disgust and anger that guided my desire to write this book has not left me, but I remain optimistic that Rochdale will emerge a lot stronger as a result and children will be much safer in future. Ultimately, though, this is a book about personality politics and power, where unchallenged civic control breeds corruption and a politics of threats and favours. It is rooted very strongly in the 1960s and 1970s but its lessons are just as relevant today.
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Simon Danczuk is member of parliament for Rochdale. Smile for the Camera: The Double Life of Cyril Smith is published by BiteBack Publishing
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