Much of Corbyn’s Islington North constituency was made up of white English and Irish workers alongside immigrants. Most inhabited either unrepaired private houses or dilapidated council estates. They suffered bad schools, stretched health services and one of the most corrupt Labour councils in the country.
But Corbyn never issued press releases about local issues. His frequent publicity flyers were about Palestine, Ireland, the Western Sahara or Nicaragua. He seemed oblivious to Islington being ranked as London’s worst borough for social services, housing, education and street maintenance.
Under Margaret Hodge, the council leader between 1982 and 1992, the People’s Republic of Islington boasted a red flag fluttering above the town hall and a bust of Lenin inside.
Despite levying London’s highest council tax, nearly half of its residents lived in 35,000 council houses plagued by crime, drugs, damp and dilapidation because Islington’s unionised labour force refused to undertake repairs.
Jerry MacLochlainn of Sinn Fein (left) with Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn (centre) and Sinn Fein Councillor Franis Molloy, during a demonstration march which marked 20 years since Bloody Sunday
Yet while Hodge regularly received complaints from Chris Smith, the Labour MP for Islington South, she never heard from Corbyn. Preoccupied by the needs of immigrants and foreign conflicts, he appeared uninterested in the many woes of his constituents.
Most shamefully, he didn’t seem to care about the systematic sexual abuse of vulnerable children in Islington’s residential homes, all of which were staffed by council employees, members of his old union, NUPE.
Horrifying evidence of sex orgies run from a ‘hot house’ on Islington’s Elthorne estate was exposed.
Children had been rented out from a brothel to paedophiles.
A newspaper clipping (pictured left and right) from the Islington Gazette in 1988
Among the many victims was Vivian Loki, a 17-year-old girl whose decomposed body was discovered on the estate six months after her murder by a paedophile.
Further north, at Gisburne House, another Islington home, children were being abused on an industrial scale. ‘All this,’ Islington social worker Liz Davies discovered, ‘was happening on Corbyn’s doorstep. He knew all about it because it was raised by [Conservative MP] Geoffrey Dickens in the Commons’.
In October 1992, five Islington council social workers, led by Liz Davies, confronted Corbyn in his office at the Red Rose Community Centre.
By then, dozens of drugged, hungry and distressed young people of both sexes living in 12 council homes were being routinely raped by council employees.
Gisburne House (pictured above) was one of the homes where the abuse is said to have taken place
Paedophile gangs were rampant across the borough, and at least 30 employees who were suspected of crimes had been allowed to quietly resign.
Peter Righton, founder of the pro-paedophile group the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE), had been given authority by the Home Office to brief council social workers to place vulnerable children with known sex offenders. Having set out this appalling scenario, the social workers told Corbyn that their complaints to Margaret Hodge had been ignored.
After London’s Evening Standard newspaper published a detailed exposé of Islington’s employment of known paedophiles, and the officials’ shredding of documents to cover up the crimes, the council accused the paper of ‘gutter journalism’.
The council employees’ meeting with Corbyn lasted 90 minutes, during which he pronounced
‘I’ve heard similar issues from other constituents,’ and then said little else.
As usual when confronted with complicated or unpalatable facts, he retreated into his shell, mumbling and smiling but offering no meaningful replies.
At the end, he promised to speak to Virginia Bottomley, the Health Minister, but she does not recall any such conversation having taken place.
‘We heard nothing more from Corbyn,’ Liz Davies recalled.
‘We don’t know whether he did anything to help us.’
I told Corbyn bad things happened to me 2 months before child sex scandal in his constituency was exposed...so why did he stay silent?
Jeremy Corbyn is facing damaging questions over claims he failed to respond to repeated warnings about a paedophile scandal in his constituency.
The Labour leader attended three meetings where shocking evidence of abuse in care homes in the North London borough of Islington was detailed, yet stands accused of taking no action.
An investigation by The Mail on Sunday has unearthed new details of the meetings which took place in the early 1990s, around the time that newspapers were beginning to expose the scandal of the widespread rape and sexual abuse of vulnerable children dating back to the 1970s.
In a devastating attack on the Labour leader, whistleblowers accuse him of remaining silent and failing to challenge the Labour-controlled council as it sought to cover up the scandal.
Demetrious Panton (pictured above at his home in Whitechapel, London) says he was subject to appalling abuse during the late 1970s while living at a children's home in Islington Council
1 Elwood Street (pictured above) where the alleged abuse is said to have occurred
Our investigation revealed that:
A man abused from the age of ten by two council employees told Mr Corbyn in August 1992 – two months before the scandal broke in the media – that ‘very bad things had happened’ to him at a council care home;Five social workers met the Labour MP just weeks later and he promised to raise the matter with Virginia Bottomley, the then Tory Health Secretary – but this weekend she said she had ‘no memory’ of any such approach;Fearing a council cover-up, an investigative journalist who exposed the vile abuse urged Mr Corbyn to speak out, only to be brushed off with a bland statement that the council were doing ‘everything that needs to be done’ – although it later emerged that they were actually destroying vital evidence at the time.
Demetrious Panton was just 10-years-old when the abuse started at the home in Islington (pictured above, 10 years old)
Jeremy Corbyn (pictured above) is facing damaging questions over claims he failed to respond to repeated warnings about a paedophile scandal in his constituency
A string of sexual predators infiltrated Islington’s care system from the 1970s and their sickening activities are now regarded as among Britain’s darkest child abuse scandals. Abusers – including paedophiles, pimps and child pornographers – had been employed at each of the council’s 12 children’s homes, but staff who raised concerns were accused of racism and homophobia.
At least 26 workers linked to abuse were allowed to leave their jobs without being investigated, but when the London Evening Standard first revealed the scandal
