Westminster paedophiles: Colin Wallace, Kincora, child murder and Sir Maurice Oldfield’s sick MI6
The story of child abuse among the elite is taken up by the Times. “Child abuse cover-up at the heart of government,” says the headline.
The story will provide a link to the abuse at Kincora Boys Home in east Belfast. Three senior care staff at Kincora -William McGrath, Raymond Semple and Joseph Mains – were jailed in 1981 for abusing 11 boys. At least 29 boys were abused at the home between the late 1950s and the early 1980s.
News of the World, 21st February 1982
The British intelligence services allegedly kept a lid on the abuse. Why? Well, one of the convicted men, William McGrath, is widely believed to have been an MI5 agent.
Martin Dillon claims in The Dirty War, McGrath was leader of loyalist paramilitary group Tara.
News of the World, 14th February 1982
Irish Central adds:
Back in 1973 a full-time missionary in Paisley’s church, Valerie Shaw, approached Paisley with horrific news. A senior administrator at the Kincora orphanage in Belfast and a close ally of Paisley named William McGrath was abusing boys at the home.
Paisley ignored Shaw and refused to investigate.
Sunday News, 20th February 1983
Brian Gemmell, an intelligence officer in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, says a senior MI5 officer told him not to investigate Kincora.
Sean O’Neill and Francis Elliott notice papers “found” in a Cabinet Office storeroom amid a batch of “assorted and unstructured papers”.
A key paper from November 1986 shows Sir Antony Duff, then director-general of MI5, writing to Sir Robert Armstrong, the cabinet secretary, about inquiries into an MP said to have “a penchant for small boys”.
Who better than the secret service to keep secrets?
The MI5 chief writes that he accepts the MP’s denial and adds: “At the present stage . . . the risks of political embarrassment to the government is rather greater than the security danger”.
But if crime is being committed don’t MI5 have duty to tell the police? Don’t the people have a right to know if a nonce is looking to shag boys?
Letter from Richard Heaton to NSPCC head Peter Wanless and Richard Whittam QC, who examined how the Home Office dealt with files alleging child abuse from 1979 to 1999
The Duff note was disclosed to Peter Wanless, head of the NSPCC, and Richard Whittam, QC, who published a review last year into the loss of hundreds of Home Office files relating to allegations made in the 1980s.
The two men concluded last November that there had been no systematic destruction of files but, in a supplementary report quietly released by the government yesterday, they are fiercely critical of the attitude betrayed by the MI5 head’s note.Their new report says that Sir Antony’s words are a “striking example” of how “the risk to children is not considered at all”.
Well, so it would seem. But the note is without context. What happened next? Was the MP Sir Cyril Smith or some other pervert?
Sunday People, 3rd April 1983
Will Justice Lowell Goddard’s inquiry ever get to see all the documents?
The newly discovered Cabinet Office files will be passed to the inquiry. They include documents and correspondence relating to senior Westminster figures including Peter Morrison, an MP who was Mrs Thatcher’s parliamentary private secretary, Leon Brittan, the former home secretary, and Sir William van Straubenzee, former conservative MP and junior minister.
Good. Drag them before the Beak. Make them talk.
All three are dead.
Anyone else?
There are papers relating to Sir Maurice Oldfield, the former head of MI6, and his alleged connection to one of Britain’s most notorious abuse scandals at the Kincora boys’ home in Northern Ireland.
Sir Maurice is dead.
The Lobster No. 4, 1984 (via):
It has been claimed (in Sunday News 20th Feb. and The Phoenix, 19th Feb.1983) that at the heart of the disclosures over the Kincora scandal is an internal row in the intelligence services. A dissident faction is thought to have formed in the Secret Service. The scuffles over revelations concerning Kincora started with the writing of a book by Rupert Allason, pen name Nigel West, son of a leading MI6 officer.
The original fight was about whether the KGB had deeply penetrated every aspect of British Intelligence. Now a lot of dirty linen is being washed in public and the background to the purges in British Intelligence in Northern Ireland and, perhaps, some details of the private life of Sir Maurice Oldfield, the MI6 chief, are likely to
emerge.“Bachelor Oldfield’s dislike of women except his aged mother was so notorious that even the Sunday Times included mention of it in an obituary. It is often wrongly assumed that Oldfield’s links with Ireland date only from his appointment as Ulster Security Coordinator in 1979. But as Director of MI6 throughout the 1970s he was not only closely connected with Irish affairs, including the Kincora operation, but was a regular visitor to Belfast.”
One story released, though not included in the Terry Report on Kincora, is the homosexual assault made on the attractive male personal secretary of Oldfield. At least one statement was made about the incident which occurred in Oldfield’s private apartment on the top floor of Stormont Castle. A senior English civil servant found the attractions of Maurice’s assistant too much and attempted to molest him. A scuffle ensued among the exclusively male gathering, as a result of which the civil servant returned to London.
All interesting stuff. But nothing new.
But let’s rake over the life and times of Colin Wallace.
Daily Mirror, 8th February 1990
Wikipedia is very good on Wallace:
John Colin Wallace is a former British member of the Intelligence Corps in Northern Ireland and a psychological warfare specialist.
He was one of the members of the intelligence agency-led ‘Clockwork Orange’ project, alleged to have been an attempt to smear various individuals including a number of senior British politicians in the early 1970s.
He also attempted to draw public attention to the Kincora Boys’ Home sexual abuse scandal several years before the Royal Ulster Constabulary finally intervened. He was wrongly convicted of manslaughter in 1981, for which he spent six years in gaol, until 1987.
The conviction was later quashed in the light of new forensic and other evidence that raised serious questions about the dubious nature of the evidence used to convict Wallace initially. The journalist Paul Foot, in his book Who framed Colin Wallace?, suggested that Wallace may have been framed for the killing, possibly to discredit the allegations he was making. This view was similarly expressed by Alex Carlile QC (now Lord Carlile), who later speculated that this may have been the motive not just for the alleged frameup, but also for murder.
Murder.
Who knew?
Steve Dorill has a “Who is/Was Who”:
Brian McDermott – aged 11, was found in the River Lagan, Sept. 1973, not far from the Kincora home. His body had been mutilated.
Stephen Waring, a teenager who had been sexually abused at Kincora, ran away from another home to which he had been sent and made his way to Liverpool. He was picked up by police and put on the Ulster Monarch Ferry that night so that the R.U.C. could pick him up at the other end. He never arrived. Passengers saw a boy fall into the water. An R.U.C. inquiry into details given by Liverpool police reported that “it was not established, and no evidence was produced or tendered, that
directly (emphasis added) connected his death with misconduct at Kincora”.Pastor Billy Mullan, a close friend of Ian Paisley, William McGrath and Joss Cardwell, was found dead with a legally held gun beside him during the probe into Kincora.
Robert Bradford MP, a former member of Tara and close associate of McGrath, was shot dead in the middle of the R.U.C. investigation. R.U.C. men privately claim that he was set-up for the killing in the same way that British Intelligence tried to set up the assassination of Ian Paisley in 1974.
You want the truth?
The Belfast Telegraph spoke with Wallace in 2014:
He said: “David Cameron has said no stone will be left unturned in uncovering child abuse rings in the 1970s and 1980s.
“Well, I can tell him there was a lot of information on Kincora, but people who know about it are dying and files may be destroyed. This is the last big opportunity to put Kincora and the other children’s home allegations to rest for good.”
Mr Wallace stated: “When I was working with military intelligence the Army did want to expose Kincora but MI5 didn’t. That led me to the conclusion that MI5 had some extra interest.
“Some in the RUC also tried to uncover it but were stymied. Whoever was stopping further activity had a lot of influence.”..
Since leaving the Army he said he had been told that boys from Kincora were being taken to Brighton to be abused.
While in the Army he believed well-connected paedophiles were using the home, including Sir Knox Cunningham, who was parliamentary private secretary to former PM Harold Macmillan.
The abuse allegations in the home centred around a secretive loyalist paramilitary organisations known as Tara, which met in Clifton Street Orange hall at the time and was largely made up of Orange Order members. Some, like William McGrath, who was later jailed for child abuse at Kincora, were in an Orange lodge known as Ireland’s Heritage.
…
In 1973 Capt Wallace prepared a briefing paper for journalists which set out allegations about Tara and its role in homosexual activity in Kincora and named Sir Knox. It was mentioned in a number of papers but no action was taken. “We didn’t specify allegations of assault in the home because the Army felt that it couldn’t be seen to be briefing on a police matter. However, we gave the names of those involved,” he said.
In 1974 Wallace and his colleagues received documents from the RUC showing that although some officers were aware that McGrath was a child abuser, they were obstructed from pursuing him. Wallace also tried to make this public.
After that he was removed from his job, accused of passing a classified document to a journalist, and eventually charged and convicted of murder. Years later it emerged that he had been cleared to pass the document and the murder conviction was quashed.
Who will tell the truth? Are they all too scared or too dead?
Posted: 23rd, July 2015 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
