The Daily Telegraph Wednesday 24 July 2019 *** 25
llison �earson
The treatment of
Lord Bramall is a
national disgrace
am not a bad chap, am
I?” That was the sad
question 95-year-old
Lord Bramall recently
asked his son, Nicolas.
Let the record state that
Edwin Noel Westby Bramall is the
opposite of a bad chap. In 1944, aged
21, he led a platoon onto the Normandy
beaches. Throughout his Army career,
he served with distinction before
becoming Chief of the General Staff.
He has the highest awards his country
could bestow upon him, from Knight of
the Garter to the Military Cross.
He is tough, this old soldier – but
nothing had prepared him for what
happened when there was a knock
on the door of his Hampshire home
on March 4 2015. Lord Bramall was
eating breakfast with his wife, Avril,
who suffered from Alzheimer’s, when
a busload of police started tearing
the place apart. He assumed it was a
security matter, but it soon became
clear that officers actually thought the
veteran had been part of a paedophile
ring that had raped and murdered
children between 1975 and 1984. Others
investigated by Operation Midland
included Ted Heath, Lord Brittan,
Harvey Proctor and Lord Janner.
The whole thing – a £2.5 million
investigation over 16 months – wastriggered by one man: Carl Beech, aka
“Nick”. This former NHS manager,
accused Lord Bramall of raping him in
his office and at Armistice Day parties
where boys had poppies pinned to their
bare chests. There was no evidence
to support this grotesque tale. But
that didn’t stop the “abusers” being
identified, or the Met’s Det Supt Kenny
McDonald disgracefully announcing
that “Nick has been spoken to by
experienced officers... they believe
what he is saying is credible and true”.
Nor did it deter Tom Watson, now
Labour’s deputy leader, from a witch
hunt – writing personally to Alison
Saunders, then director of public
prosecutions. Just days after Lord
Brittan’s death, Watson quoted an
alleged “survivor of abuse” who said
the Tory peer was “as close to evil as
any human being could get”.
Turns out, the man who really
deserves that description is Carl
Beech. Watson’s warped and malicious
informer has just been convicted of
12 counts of perverting the course of
justice and one count of fraud.
In a twist worthy of a thriller, it is
Beech himself who was the devious
paedophile. Late in the day, when
police finally did their job and lookedinto the credibility of their prize
accuser, they found that this amoral
sociopath was in possession of the
worst possible child pornography.
What does this disgraceful chapter
in the history of policing tell us? How
could Beech’s lies ever have been
hailed as “credible”? I regret to say
that Lord Bramall and the others fell
foul of institutionalised confirmation
bias. They may have suffered a heinous
miscarriage of justice, but they were
the wrong kind of victims. Police
took forever to pursue the fiends who
groomed white working-class girls in
Rochdale and elsewhere because they
were mainly of Pakistani origin. (The
wrong kind of abusers, see?) Yet, they
lost no time in pouncing on white,
elderly, male establishment figures.
After Jimmy Savile, police needed
to be seen to be doing something
about historic child abuse, even if that
meant trashing the reputations of the
innocent. Under Saunders, a “you
will be believed” cult flourished, so
“survivors” like Beech were welcomed
instead of interrogated.
According to Simon Warr, author of
Presumed Guilty, vile individuals like
Beech thrive because this philosophy
and “compensation culture, feeds
the bogus sexual abuse industry
by rewarding the most outrageous
fraudsters with large cash payouts”.
To a soldier, such malevolence is
incomprehensible. That’s why it’s
painful to watch Lord Bramall’s police
interview. His training has taught him
to expect a chain of command with
accountability for one’s actions. “Please
report to your superiors and say there
is no evidence,” he asks. In vain, he
objects to the fact officers “thought
it was sufficient to get a warrant with
uncorroborated evidence”.
Only once does he show signs of
losing it – when he is forced to utter
the awful words “torture of children”.
“I find it quite incredible that anyone
would believe someone of my standing
and integrity would be capable of these
things. It is unbelievable.”
It was unbelievable. Yet those who
questioned “Nick” were damned as
“paedophile apologists”.
Scotland Yard insists that its officers
behaved “in good faith” and none is
facing misconduct proceedings. That
is an outrage. Operation Midland saw
innocent men go to their graves under
a shadow. Det Supt McDonald and
others don’t deserve their comfortable
early retirement. They should be
named and shamed and their pensions
confiscated. Let them be a warning to
any serving officers who behave with
such incompetence.
The case for granting anonymity to
the accused is surely unarguable. Carl
Beech will be sentenced on Friday.
Long as he is put away for – and let it
be as long as possible – his punishment
will be as naught compared to what his
victims have suffered. Lord Bramall
says it has left him “more wounded”
than anything in his military career.
So, if the police won’t apologise, if
Watson won’t apologise, let’s do it for
them.
We are sorry, Lord Bramall, that
a life dedicated to the freedom of
this country ended with you being
treated like you live in a totalitarian
state. We are sorry that the police
behaved like an absolute shower. We
are sorry for the witch hunt which
is so contrary to the values you were
prepared to lay down your life for.
It is not your reputation which is
damaged, it is that of your ignorant
persecutors. Field Marshal Lord
Bramall, Sir, we salute you.Read more
telegraph.co.uk/
opinion
Email
Allison.Pearson@
telegraph.co.uk
Twitter
@AllisonPearsonH
ere comes the sun, doo
doo doo doo! Six long
weeks ago, I told Radio 4
that Jeremy Hunt would
be lucky to get 30 per cent.
Since then, the Boris Bashing
Corporation and the legions of
Johnson haters have done their
damnedest to derail him. Laura
Kuenssberg, BBC’s political
editor, refused to concede
defeat, announcing that there
was “anecdotal evidence of a
Hunt surge”. As if. Conservative
members had been waiting for
this moment since 2016. They
wanted Boris. It was always
Boris. Yesterday, with a sense
of elation and excitement, they
finally got him.
According to taste, the
blistering heat was either
evidence of a brighter
tomorrow or a harbinger of the
“hot mess” one exultantly grim
BBC correspondent warned
was facing the incoming prime
minister. There is certainly
no shortage of critics wanting
to rain on his parade. “I knowthere will be people... who
question the wisdom of your
decision,” Boris observed
drily after Dame Cheryl
Gillan announced the huge
mandate he had been given
to sort out Brexit. He could
have been referring to the
Defence Secretary. Poor Penny
Mordaunt looked as queasy.
Brace yourselves for lots of
fatuous Trump comparisons
and warnings, like the one
yesterday, from a Labour MP
about “the alt-Right takeover of
the country”.
Hysterical nonsense. Less
tiger of populism, more Tigger
of Pop (the Eton society),
Prime Minister Johnson will
be a cosmopolitan centrist far
closer to the politics of Tony
Blair than Jeremy Corbyn. He
struck a rather lovely chord
when he spoke about how it is
Conservatives who have best
understood “how to manage
the jostling sets of instincts in
the human heart”. After the
punishingly prosaic Mrs May, itsounded like pure poetry. Boris
knows his premiership will live
or die according to his ability to
rally the troops to leave the EU
by October 31.
Yesterday, he mocked the
naysayers and summoned
the can-do spirit he means
to govern in. “Do you look
daunted?” he demanded in best
pantomime manner. “Do you
feel daunted?” It fell a bit flat,
but only because the audience
of Westminster stiffs failed to
reply. It is the way the public
responds to him that counts.
In his book on Churchill,
Boris wrote about the way he
transformed himself into John
Bull. “He has channelled that
portly gentleman who for two
centuries or more has embodied
the truculent-but-jovial
response of the British to any
great continental combination.
He is fat, jolly, high-living,
rumbustious – and patriotic to
a degree that many have always
considered hyperbolical and
unnecessary, but which now, in
the present crisis, seems utterly
right.”
You want the plan? That’s the
plan. Jovial defiance, patriotic
spirit, national unity. We must
all hope he can pull it off. Sun,
sun, sun, here it comes.Like a ray of sunshine,
here comes Boris
‘I
S
o, farewell the office romance. No
more lingering moments by the
water cooler, no more
unnecessary trips to buy a disgusting
hot chocolate in the faint hope you
might bump into him/her on the
stairs. No more volunteering to be the
fire marshal for the fourth floor, as one
colleague of mine did, as an elaborate
pretext for getting me out of the
building. (His in-depth knowledge of
extinguishers has never been called
upon, but lies ready.)
Be gone the weeks of yearning
expectation, the daily application of
your best perfume/aftershave, the
suspiciously frequent loo trips for
fresh lippy, the sneaky glances across a
crowded room, the consummation
devoutly to be wished ... Probably at
the office party, a tragic affair in some
pub with warm white wine that
acquires the magic glow of a Disney
ballroom, so heightened are your
tender expectations when, at long last,
two become one.
Or maybe that’s just me. I feel sorry
for young people that the office
romance is facing extinction with just
one in 10 couples now getting
together in the workplace, according
to a Stanford University survey of
straight Americans.
For decades, people met their
partner at work, peaking in the
mid-Nineties when 19 per cent of
couples (Himself and I included)
reported meeting as colleagues. Two
decades on, that figure has slumped to
11 per cent while the number of people
“meeting” in the online cattle market
has jumped to more than a third. In
this anxious new world of MeToo, with
its accusations of sexual harassment,
people have become prudish IRL (in
real life). Apparently, it’s perfectly OK
to text a total stranger a picture of your
private parts, but now chatting up
someone at work is “creepy”.
What a shame. An office romance
allows you to collect comprehensive
data on your crush. Personally, I would
highly recommend the slow-burn of
the office romance. Twenty-five years
later, mine is still going strong. The
fire marshal for the fourth floor is the
father of my children.It’s a sad
farewell to
the office
romance
Honourable gent:
Lord Bramall
says what he
experienced left
him more damaged
than the warHe is tough, this old
soldier – but nothing
had prepared him
for what happened
GETTY IMAGES; DPA/PA
Sister love: Motsi Mabuse, below, will join sister Oti on Strictly but as a judgeI sense
there may
be trouble
ahead for
Strictly
Sorry, but I’m
already worried
about the new
judge on Strictly
Come Dancing.
Motsi Mabuse, a
regular panellist
on the German
version of
the show, has
been named as
Darcey Bussell’s
replacement.
I’m sure
she’s
every
bit as
sparkling
as the
producers
claim
she is,but Motsi is the
elder sister of
Oti Mabuse, one
of Strictly’s best
dancers and
my favourite
professional.
Oti has
already
confirmed she
is taking part in
the 17th series.
How on earth
is her sibling
supposed
to critically
assess her
performance?
When it comes
to cattiness,
competitive
sisters makeCraig Revel
Horwood look
like an amateur,
darling. Sisters
can get touchy
if you say their
hair looks
“fine”.
“What’s
wrong with my
hair?”
If Motsi
praises Oti and
partner, she
will be accused
of favouritism.
If she marks
them down, it’ll
be even worse.
Oti will pull her
hair and tell
mum.РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS