The wheels of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse grind exceeding slow.
A few days ago — six years after it began its work — the IICSA disgorged the text of its first significant report.
This was an investigation into the sexual abuse and exploitation of children in the care of Lambeth Council, starting in the 1970s and lasting for well over a decade.
The value of this report lies, in part, in its setting of the political context. The head of Lambeth Council from 1978 to 1986 was Ted Knight — universally known as 'Red Ted'.
A few days ago — six years after it began its work — the IICSA disgorged the text of its first significant report. The value of this report lies, in part, in its setting of the political context. The head of Lambeth Council from 1978 to 1986 was Ted Knight (pictured) — universally known as 'Red Ted'
As the report pointed out, he and his colleagues were so focused on their political opposition to the Thatcher government (which led them to refuse to set a council tax rate) that 'children in care became pawns in a toxic power game' within the council.
Although 33 Lambeth councillors were removed from their positions for refusing to set a rate, the real losers were the children under their statutory care (705 of them from three children's homes are described as 'known victims').
The IICSA concluded that Lambeth council 'treated children in their care as if they were worthless' and showed 'callous disregard' by 'putting vulnerable children in the path of sex offenders' who infiltrated those institutions.
Brazen
As the report noted: 'Many councillors and staff purported to hold principled beliefs about tackling racism and promoting equality, but in reality they failed to apply these principles to children in their care.'
The former leader of Islington Council, Margaret Hodge, who dismissed the claims of one of those abused as coming from 'an extremely disturbed person' and who pressured the BBC not to report his accusations, was subsequently, with no sense of irony, made Minister for Children by Tony Blair. She is pictured in 2003, while holding that position
This was not unique within London councils dominated by the hard Left. There was also Islington, where in 1983 Jeremy Corbyn became the local MP.
A whistle-blowing social worker, Liz Davies, had unavailingly attempted to persuade Corbyn and Labour councillors of the urgency of investigating the way in which children as young as 12 in Islington's care had been targeted by what she described as paedophile gangs.
'These children would be queuing up outside our offices at 9am for help,' she told the Mail's Guy Adams in 2015. 'Most of them had obviously been out all night. We discovered that they were being driven around the country in vans.'
Guy Adams' report for the Mail, based on decades of investigation by Eileen Fairweather, starting in the Evening Standard in 1992, described how 'paedophiles had been able to systematically rape scores of vulnerable boys and girls in the borough in the 1970s and 1980s, infiltrating all 12 of its children's homes.
One Labour MP did 'weaponise' the issue of child sex abuse: this was the then deputy leader of the party, Tom Watson (pictured)
'The Labour-run council,' he wrote, 'had both facilitated the abuse by employing known paedophiles and brazenly attempted to cover it up, shredding crucial documents and dismissing subsequent media reports about the scandal as 'gutter journalism'.'
The former leader of Islington Council, Margaret Hodge, who dismissed the claims of one of those abused as coming from 'an extremely disturbed person' and who pressured the BBC not to report his accusations, was subsequently, with no sense of irony, made Minister for Children by Tony Blair.
Hodge, by then, was no longer a Left-wing firebrand: and more recently has been forthright in accusing her then party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, of a form of ideologically-based anti-Semitism.
But what was Corbyn's performance over the Islington child abuse scandal?
As Liz Davies told Adams, despite the fact that she had given Corbyn a thorough briefing (backed up by other social workers) 'after that meeting we never heard another thing . . . whenever I saw Jeremy afterwards, sometimes years later at Stop The War marches and events like that, I'd always go up to him and say: 'This scandal is still going on, Jeremy.'
'He'd be very polite, but never seemed to do anything.'
This might have had something to do with the fact that the Trade Unions, NALGO and UNISON, were ferocious in
