Thatcher’s rear-gunner Sir Peter Morrison
Lord McAlpine, Boris Johnson, Edwina Currie, and David Mellor: an examination of motives
The Establishment (along with countless hacks and bloggers) have known for aeons that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher appointed a serial sex abuser and rapist as her pps in 1990. In this first part of a double-header today, The Slog analyses whether even he may well be a distraction from Tom Watson’s crusade.
The man behind Mrs Thatcher in 1990 – Sir Peter Morrison – wasn’t exactly discreet with friends about his proclivities, although I for one would wager that Mrs Thatcher didn’t know: she was, after all, incredibly naïve when it came to the characters of the men surrounding her.
But Morrison – a hopelessly drunken roue who died at the age of 51 – was until now a forgotten footnote of modern history. His reappearance as Another Bloke in the Paedo-Frame, however, may well have more to do with the dirty tricks of a rapidly retreating secret State than anything ‘dug up’ by Britain’s media.
While the vast majority of MPs do genuinely see the events of the last ten days as a classic case of media sharks in full-on, random feeding-frenzy, those manipulating events in the background know better. What’s been loosely organised but well-executed by a worried elite is, I suspect, a judicious mixture of leak, distraction, confusion and red herrings spun around in a washer/tumble dryer from the minute it became clear that Labour MP Tom Watson was onto something big.
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Boris Johnson will rush to the aid of anyone on his side. While such loyalty is usually an admirable trait, most of the time BoJo leaves one wishing he had better character discernment. The bloke’s history is that of a man who finds himself constantly fishing in sewers, and somehow compelled to defend every passing turd.
It started long ago with his old school chum Darius Guppy, a man who went on to defraud an insurance company and spend several years behind bars. Since then we have seen him first rubbishing attacks on Newscorp as “left wing poppycock” at the start of the Hackgate scandal, and then inviting Rupert Murdoch to the Olympics as his guest of honour at the end of it.
As for the bankers, I have lost count of the number of Telegraph columns the London Mayor has written that instruct us to stop bashing them. The only rationale given for his view is that he thinks them important. So it was no surprise when he accused the New York police authorities of victimising Baron Green and HSBC in the summer. He went very quiet indeed when the extent of the malfeasance was made clear, and the HSBC management hastily paid all the fines on the nose.
Given this unenviable record as a sort of political Lord Longford, I wasn’t surprised when Johnson called the wrongful accusations of paedophilia against Lord McAlpine “the real tragedy here”. How any bloke (let alone a man who fancies himself for the Number Ten job) could call the complete vindication of one rich Tory a tragedy more real than that of thousands of sexually abused children is an enigma I’ve yet to solve. But to be fair to Boris, this is the line that the Conservative press (led by the Dacre Mail) has been feeding to us since last Friday.
Many of us, I fancy, like to think of the Tory Establishment and Boris Johnson as thundering twerps blasting hither and thither with defective blunderbusses, but the truth is more subtle and disturbing. The carefully planned destruction of David Laws and Vince Cable (and the rush to deflect attention from Baron Green’s past) are tributes to just how nasty the Real Right can be in Britain. That is to say, as nasty as the Mandy-Tony-Gordoom-Bradshaw coven that ran the country before them.
I’m beginning to think that clever opportunism (not big conspiracy) is in turn guiding the moves of those keen to keep spreading confusion everywhere. Bojo mentions one innocent McAlpine while everyone else struggles to work out (a) who all the others are (b) which one if any Steve Messham identified and (c) how his police grilling was different to the jumbled muddle offered him by the BBC. Ex-spook David Rose in the Mail on Sunday, meanwhile – who along with his partner is a paid State dissembler with lots of form – misrepresents Messham’s victimisation as a life of heinous crime.
Reading the comment threads on many sites including mine this week – and talking to three senior hacks in the Fourth Estate – I have been struck by how successful the spaghetti junction of disinformation has been. Two Welsh care homes, two toffs both operating in the Chester-Wrexham belt, five separate enquiries, three police forces, and eight names bandied about from Schofield’s List: put together they have even quite erudite people utterly bewildered on the detail.
When Tom Watson stepped in and made some Commons allegations relating to “a paedophile ring with links to a former Number Ten aide”, for a short time there it looked like something specific was about to bubble up to the surface. Sharp-eyed Dave watchers might have noticed that he looked particularly shifty at that point…..up to the surprise Schofield grope at the truth on one of ITV’s sofas.
And then – bingo! – Lord Alastair McAlpine chose to reveal his shock, horror and revulsion at the allegations being aimed at him. Cue the PM saying “See – told you: no more innuendo please”. And then two days later, in jumps Bojo with “the real tragedy”.
I wonder how many of you felt that, in the midst of all this, another piece of long-dead meat was being tossed to the wolves? Ian Bone pointed out that no less a diarist than Edwina Currie had blown the gaff about Margaret Thatcher’s pps way back in 2002…by referring to him as “a known pederast with a penchant for underage homosexual liaisons”.
But three key points have gone largely unremarked here. First, Channel Four nailed Morrison (albeit with careful wording) over a week ago, by using care home resident testimony. Second, Ian didn’t pick the Currie gem out of a library, Currie leaked it herself. And third, Tom Watson – no doubt aware of what the smoke-screeners were at – flatly denied that the man named – Sir Peter Morrison – was the man he was after. Watson is gunning for an entirely different Number Ten habitué. Perhaps nothing at all to do with Thatcher.
This is what the Labour MP wrote a few days ago on his blog:
‘I am not naming the person for obvious reasons, but for clarity it is not former MP Peter Morrison. This afternoon my office has been bombarded with calls regarding Morrison, I think because he was named by Edwina Currie at the weekend as having inappropriate sexual relations with teenage boys. I’ll say more when I can but this may not be for some time.’
The plot thickens. Obvious reasons? They’re far from obvious to the rest of us Mr Watson. But while Tom has his cards close to the chest, it’s mainly the rearguard Right that has turned a relatively simple case of long-standing abuse and Establishment depravity upside-down and inside-out ..until it emerges from the washer/dryer’s permanent spin programme as a bundle of whiter-than-white McAlpines and deeply soiled complainants, each suffering tragically from the colour-stains of cheap tabloid and blogosphere innuendo.
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The truth is still out there, and many of the guilty are still alive. Some witnesses have been smeared (exactly as they were in the Anglesea libel trial), and their suffering depicted as deranged “weirdo” criminality: is David Mellor merely an insensitive plonker, or is he too pushing an agenda in the manner of David Rose?
But set against all this intrigue is for me and millions of other Brits the heart of this story: how have thousands of care-home kids been destroyed here, and why is the State still following a bankrupt policy of denial and disinformation?
Tom Watson’s Commons question referred specifically to a 1992 Report’s evidence of endemic paedophilia in government. That’s thirty years ago.
This is what Channel Four’s anonymous identifier of Sir Peter Morrison said earlier this month:
“I’ve been carrying this around for 35 years. It’s destroyed every relationship in my life. I don’t trust anybody. I’ve tried to commit suicide on three occasions, rather than actually tell anyone. I never even told my family. Nobody in my family knows about it because you were made to believe that you were wrong, nobody would believe you. You’d be shunned and it would be your fault.”
And this is the roll of honour listed by MP Paul Flynn on his site recently…a list of respondent witnesses mentioned in the 2002 Enquiry Report…meant to be pulped in a cover-up, once copy survived and wound up at the Independent on Sunday:
R1: Fell to his death from a railway bridge. Former resident of Bryn Alyn Home.
R2: May, 1978, committed suicide aged 16 by taking an overdose of pain killing tablets. Former resident of Bryn Alyn.
R3: March 1985, was found dead in a flat in which he was living in poverty, aged 21. Former resident of Little Acton Assessment centre.
R4: April 1992, died in a fire aged 32 in premises in which he lived in Sussex. The inquest verdict – unlawful killing. Former resident of Bryn Alyn.
R5: June 1992, found dead aged 18 in a bed-sitter. Cause of death, acute respiratory failure due to solvent abuse. Former resident of Bryn Alyn.
R6: January, 1994, committed suicide by hanging, aged 27.
R7: April, 1994, died aged 27 from alcohol abuse. Allegations that he had been the subject of a serious sexual offence. Former Bryn Estyn resident.
R8: July 1994, found dead in a car, aged 18. Former foster child in Clwyd where he allegedly suffered from maltreatment.
R9: November, 1994, committed suicide aged 16 by hanging.
R10: February, 1995, died from and apparent heroin overdose aged 37. Former resident of Bryn Alyn where it was alleged he had been sexually abused.
R11: February, 1995, hanged himself aged 31. Allegations of sexual abuse against care workers.
R12: May, 1995, found hanging aged 27. Allegations that he had been sexually abused by a senior care worker. Former resident of Bryn Estyn.
It doesn’t represent a murder conspiracy, it represents the guilty misery of those who deserved so much more. It represents the real tragedy here, Boris Johnson. So stick that in your Turd Defence System and think on it, laddy.
British citizens have a right to know the full story. Stay tuned for Part Two of this Slog Special later today….as the speculation reaches higher and higher into the men around David Cameron.
The Slog 