The Spectator - 29.02.2020

the spectator | 29 february 2020 | http://www.spectator.co.uk 3

established 1828

A

cornerstone of any functioning

democracy is the separation of

police and the courts on one hand,

and government and parliament on the

other. Where the latter are charged with

making the law, they should never, ever be

allowed to interfere with the enforcement

of that law. Politicians have no power to tell

the police what to investigate. As Lord Den-

ning once observed, no policeman is subject

to orders of the Secretary of State: ‘No min-

ister of the Crown can tell him that he must,

or must not, keep observation on this place

or that. Or that he must prosecute this man

or that one... He is answerable to the law,

and to the law alone.’

In Britain, for most of the time, that sepa-

ration has been respected. Prime ministers,

leaders of the opposition and others with

political power do not pick up the phone to

Scotland Yard and demand that someone —

their political opponents, for example — be

investigated and prosecuted. But in recent

years, we have had a breach between law-

makers and law enforcers. Tom Watson, then

a Labour MP, worked out that if you accuse

police of a cover-up you can make them

panic, and persuade them to investigate your

opponents. His first success was over phone

hacking. He then moved on to paedophilia.

To no one’s surprise, the Independent

Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA)

has found that the ‘Westminster paedophile

ring’ that Watson described in the House

of Commons did not exist. The ‘clear intel-

ligence’ he referred to turned out to be wild

conspiracy theories. The claims that young

boys were procured for the gratification of

the former prime minister Sir Edward Heath

and his colleagues before being strangled or

knocked down by cars were concocted. That

much became clear with the conviction last

year of Carl Beech, the convicted paedo-

phile whose outlandish allegations led to the

setting up of the inquiry in the first place.

But the wonder is how Beech’s fantasies

were ever allowed to get so far, culminat-

ing in an inquiry which has cost taxpayers

£150 million. Police are bombarded with

such fantasists all the time. The difference

was Watson’s tactics: he used social media

to whip up a storm and see if the police

and prosecutors would buckle. They did —

with the result that the names of Leon Brit-

tan, Lord Bramall and others were dragged

through the mud.

The IICSA has not been entirely with-

out purpose. It has shown that in the 1970s,

police and other authorities were lax in

bringing paedophile politicians to justice,

and sometimes did not act when they could.

It emerged, for example, that the Lancashire

constabulary investigated Cyril Smith’s

abuse of children in a Rochdale home in

1969 — three years before Smith became

an MP. Smith even admitted that allegations

made by boys were true, but they took no

action. He went on to serve 20 years as an

MP and to receive a knighthood. But the

idea of an ongoing cover-up was a fantasy.

Police and parliamentary authorities,

having been embarrassed by their failure to

act in historic cases, were swept up in a sense

of panic and felt the need to show that they

took allegations of sexual abuse by powerful

figures seriously. Even that, however, does

not explain why the Metropolitan police

told reporters that Beech’s allegations were

‘credible and true’. They weren’t the only

force to be taken in: Wiltshire’s chief consta-

ble Mike Veale said he believed allegations

against Sir Edward Heath ‘120 per cent’.

Aside from the fantastical nature of Beech’s

claims, surely it ought to be obvious to the

most junior of police recruits that describ-

ing any allegations as ‘true’ is prejudicial to

a subsequent trial?

The 18-month investigation into the

Westminster allegations stands as an object

lesson in how not to carry out a police inves-

tigation. Officers dangled the names of well-

known figures before the public in the hope

of attracting more ‘victims’ to come forward

— when they should have known they would

attract fantasists and gold-diggers. Suspects

were left in limbo long after it should have

been clear that there was no proper evidence

against them.

In the space of a generation we seem to

have gone from a society in which people

making accusations of child sexual abuse

were routinely dismissed as liars, to one in

which they are believed automatically. Peo-

ple who make accusations are referred to as

‘victims’ before their allegations have been

tested in court. This is not a good foundation

for justice. The accusers should be treated

with respect and their allegations investigat-

ed, but their word should not be favoured

over that of the accused.

For the past ten years institutions which

should be reasonable and impartial have

been infected with moral panic. The police

have succumbed to hysteria, as has the

Church of England — which behaved dis-

gracefully over allegations against the late

Bishop Bell. It was as if both the force and

the Church felt they hadn’t taken abuse alle-

gations seriously in the past, and must make

up for it. Politicians and the media often

whip themselves up into a frenzy. The lesson

of the past decade is that the police and pros-

ecutors should be immune from it.

Trial and error

The ‘Westminster paedophile ring’

stands as an object lesson in how not

to carry out a police investigation

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