The inquiry into paedophile MPs — relaunched years after the Labour MP Tom Watson demanded it — has been forced upon the political Establishment amid fears of a further drop in its already low public esteem due to the emergence of horrific details of MPs’ crimes against children. 

But the efforts of the Establishment to stem this tide of revelations doesn’t stop, they just take new forms. By widening the scope of the inquiry and taking advantage of recent events in Rotherham, an opportunity has been seized to obscure the evidence of decades of covering up paedophile MPs’ sordid actions in a spider’s web of dodgy connections. 

Together with campaigning website www.no2abuse.com, the Morning Star has collated evidence from court reports and other sources to detail the numbers of suspected paedophile politicians identified so far. Those convicted or named as suspects in paedophile assaults against young children include three ex-Cabinet ministers, two peers, 16 MPs, one MEP, three general election candidates and 30 local councillors. 

It is easy to feel overwhelmed by the quantity of compelling evidence of organised sexual abuse by politicians of vulnerable working-class children placed in local authority children’s homes. So it is worth spelling out what the effects are of being abducted, tortured, drugged, and violently sexually assaulted by adult men. 

Bear in mind these children were already suffering psychological pain after being removed from homes where they witnessed domestic violence or were themselves abused sexually, physically or emotionally, or where parents could not cope with their own mental health problems or drug and alcohol misuse. 

These children were fragile, nervous, young, innocent little people who craved attention, security and love. What they got was the attention of predatory paedophiles, some organised into paedophile rings including MPs and peers who saw their chance to prey on the weak and vulnerable using their power and prestige to impress and then to cover-up their heinous crimes. 

For victims the result is a lifetime of growing up with feelings of shame, low self-esteem, guilt, rage, self-harm and the use of alcohol and drugs to blot out the physical and psychological pain. Many survivors have endured decades of mental health problems and been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. 

But the real impact of the launch of a new inquiry has been to distract attention away from paedophiles operating within Parliament. No fewer than 16 MPs, most now deceased, have now been publicly named as alleged paedophiles. 

They include Liberal MP Cyril Smith, and several senior Tories who were close to Margaret Thatcher, including her parliamentary private secretary Peter Morrison (died 1995), the late deputy chairman of the Scottish Conservatives Alistair Smith (died 2012) and the Scottish solicitor general Nicholas Fairbairn (died 1995).

Also recently mentioned are former Tory ministers Sir Rhodes Boyson and Sir Keith Joseph, as well as former Labour MP George Thomas and an unnamed Labour peer. 

A year ago, just after announcing that the Metropolitan Police were about to arrest a former Tory Cabinet minister, Commander Peter Spindler, who had been leading the police criminal investigation into organised paedophiles, was taken off the investigation and moved sideways to another job. 

He had been investigating the sexual abuse of young children from a council children’s home in Richmond on Thames, where children were procured and taken to a hotel frequented by paedophile Cyril Smith and other MPs.  

The suggestion is that powerful figures had complained about Spindler’s work in pursuing three major paedophile investigations and he had to be stopped.

This is the Establishment at work. It includes the links between Freemasonry, Parliament and the police which together form a well-known and formidable triangle of power. Many paedophile investigations have been undertaken by the Met yet none succeeded in convicting an MP. 

A convicted paedophile, Michael McAuliffe, recently claimed he is able to provide information about child abuse and parliamentary paedophile rings. 

James Bourne-Arton QC, defending McAuliffe in a current court case, succeeded in getting his hearing adjourned for police investigations to be made into his claims. Bradford Crown Court was told McAuliffe “has information [related to] the abuse covered up in the 1970s in Westminster.”

The late solicitor general for Scotland, Nicholas Fairbairn, who was appointed by Margaret Thatcher, was a regular visitor at the notorious Elm Guest House where paedophile MP and Freemason Cyril Smith abused small children. 

In 2000 the daughter of a Scottish lawyer alleged Fairbairn was part of a paedophile ring. Susie Henderson, who until recently had not revealed her identity, told the Daily Mail last month: “I told the police about him in 2000, I told them what Fairbairn was. But they wanted me to go away.” 

In addition to that report, police are also investigating historical sex abuse allegations made against Labour peer Lord Tonypandy, the former MP George Thomas, involving a nine-year-old boy who says he was raped. South Wales police confirmed they were looking into the claims, which date back to the 1960s and 1970s. 

Anthony Gilberthorpe attended Tory Party conferences starting in 1978 when he was 17. He claimed he was “manipulated and groomed” to procure underage boys for private sex parties on the orders of senior figures in Margaret Thatcher’s government. 

He alleges boys as young as 15 were plied with alcohol and cocaine before they had sex with powerful politicians. Those he named include Dr Alistair Smith, Rhodes Boyson, Keith Joseph and Michael Havers. 

Anthony Atkinson, the son of former Conservative MP David Atkinson, has also reported that he believes his father was a “prolific sexual predator” who he fears might have been linked to a Westminster paedophile ring. 

The link in the chain with MI5 is now becoming clearer. Geoffrey Prime was a Soviet spy for 20 years until the early 1980s. He was a GCHQ employee and a member of the Paedophile Information Exchange finally convicted for sexual assault of three children in 1982. 

So we know that at least two paedophiles were spies, Prime and Sir Peter Hayman from MI6, lending credence to the link between paedophiles and the Secret Intelligence Service. 

This link raises questions about the potential for blackmail, leaking of state secrets and the Establishment’s efforts to ensure evidence disappeared.

A former army intelligence officer has said he was ordered to stop investigating allegations of child sexual abuse at the Kincora boys’ home in the 1970s. 

Brian Gemmell said a senior MI5 officer told him to stop looking into claims of abuse at the home in East Belfast because people of the “highest profile” were involved in paedophile activity. Gemmell presented a report on the allegations to the police in 1975 but nothing happened. 

The new inquiry has a huge number of obstacles already in its way. It has been widened in order to obscure the activity of paedophile MPs and timed to last well beyond the next general election. 

The inquiry team will find an audit trail that has been shredded or seized by local councils, the police, the Home Office and MI5. 

Many of the paedophile MPs and peers are now dead. And the prospects of unwittingly disrupting or prejudicing current police prosecutions is strong, thus jeopardising the prospects of justice for victims.  

Steven Walker is the author of The Social Worker’s Guide to Child and Adolescent Mental Health