UNITED KINGDOM
The Tablet
10 July 2014
The purpose of official inquiries into cover-ups is to uncover them. The clear risk that the Government is running with the inquiry to be headed by Baroness Elizabeth Butler-Sloss arises from the fact that the subject matter is an alleged cover-up of child sex abuse at the heart of the British Establishment. She herself, a former Tory parliamentary candidate, retired senior judge and daughter of a judge, is virtually the Establishment personified. Her impeccable rectitude and vast experience in these matters made her an ideal choice to head the inquiry – except for one thing, which has put her in an almost impossible position. It was her brother, Sir Michael Havers QC who later became Lord Chancellor, who was Attorney General at the time of events which have given rise to a strong suspicion that a paedophilia cover-up happened at the heart of Margaret Thatcher’s Government.
A dossier of allegations of systematic child abuse against prominent figures in Whitehall and Westminster was apparently “lost”. The allegations, collected by the late Geoffrey Dickens MP, were submitted to then Home Secretary Lord (Leon) Brittan, who promised they would be investigated. Nothing further appears to have happened, and a Home Office inquiry, separate from that to be led by Lady Butler-Sloss, is investigating why not.
At about that period, Dickens accused Havers of perpetrating “the cover-up of the century” by refusing to prosecute the late Sir Peter Hayman, a senior Foreign Office and MI6 official who was one of a group of men found to be in possession of images of sadistic child abuse. Havers gave as one of his reasons that Hayman was “a gentleman with a very distinguished career” with many honours, which almost sounds like an admission that the Establishment was protecting its own. So Lady Butler-Sloss may have to sit in judgement on her late brother’s conduct. Lord Tebbit, a member of the Thatcher Cabinet, said this week that he thought there may well have been an Establishment cover-up. It is not impossible Havers had been part of it.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.