Dickens of a mystery

THE FRIDAY THING: The late Saddleworth Tory MP Geoffrey Dickens spent many months compiling a dossier that contained many serious child sex allegations and could well have contained the names of several establishment figures thought to be involved.

Dickens, a ferocious campaigner, presented the detailed document of his findings to the Home Office, headed at the time by Lord Brittan.

I was fortunate enough to be invited to lunch with Mr Dickens at Westminster, over which he hinted at a shocking piece of research about which he couldn’t or wouldn’t speak about until he was ready to hand it over to the Home Secretary.

But this document, which took many months, mysteriously disappeared.

Did it go missing because of the child-sex allegations and the embarrassment and shame they would have caused, or was it somehow mislaid inside the Home Office? We will never know now.

Understandably, Mr Dickens would not talk about his research and its findings to me, a journalist and, at the time, news editor of the Chronicle.

He was keen to do what he perceived as the right thing by passing his dynamite dossier to the Home Office and Home Secretary.

Mr Dickens was an excellent MP with an amazing memory for putting names to the many faces he saw as he walked round Uppermill on Saturday mornings. He became ill in 1983 and died soon afterwards, leaving behind him a mystery that will perhaps never be solved. But some people might well be relieved the dossier has disappeared...


FINAL WORD: AS the grandfather of a 13-year-old girl I cannot subscribe to the views expressed by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg that sex at 13 is “normal”.

Some teachers are appalled by a directive that suggests penetrative and oral sex should be regarded as “normal behaviour” for 13 year olds. Teachers quite rightly point out that sex under the age of 16 is a criminal offence.

I may be old fashioned but I believe this new liberal initiative shouldn’t leave it up to teachers or to politicians to decide what is appropriate sexual advice for a girl whose body is barely developed.

Shouldn’t those who encourage illegal underage sex at least be interviewed by the police?