Sir Edward Heath: a name ruined for nothing

Operation what? Myra Ling-Ling who?
The Ted Heath saga continues as the mystery deepens.
From being named by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) as some-one being investigated on Monday, we are, by Friday, even deluged with rumours that a young child was taken on a trip on Sir Edward Heath’s yacht as part of a group of 11, and vanished. Am I really reading it correctly, when I see wild claims that anyone actually turned a blind eye to the vanishing of a child to protect some-one’s good name, even if that person did happen to be a prominent – and once the most prominent politician?

Anyone who, like the Telegraph’s brilliant columnist Dan Hodges, dares to speak out about this moral panic will of course be rebuked and told to think about ‘the victims.’ Indeed. I have enormous sympathy for the man known as Nick – the star witness of Operation Midland, and any other victims, regardless of whether they were indeed abused, or whether they are so disturbed that they believe they were abused. Of course there has been a virtual silence where there are cases of people being accused before the law of making it all up, such as that of Ben Fellows (who, I probably ought to point out, was cleared in a court; allegations he made were dropped very swiftly indeed before focus shifted to him).
The trouble is, we also have to think of everyone as a potential victim until the facts are established. This means that yes, we have to acknowledge that there might have been a few or a lot of people who, at some point during the period of the 1960s to the 1990s, came in to contact with the late former Prime Minister and were sexually abused by him. But whilst it is alleged, we should also keep in mind that Sir Edward Heath may be the target of fantasist’s, suspicious people who thought his apparently suppressed homosexuality and lack of ability to form intimate relationships with people meant that there might have been something dodgy about him, or people who’ve simply got it wrong.
When the decision was made to publicise a dead man’s name in a press release, casting a permanent shadow over a lifetime’s service to queen and country, did anyone even care that nothing has been proven yet? Did anyone care that we have not established with any certainty, that Heath was guilty of any of the misdeeds with which he now stands accused?

With one stroke of a pen, a man’s good name lies in tatters. It lies in tatters because we have all gone stark staring mad. We have established the Goddard Inquiry in to historic child abuse, to establish what, if anything, was done to cover it up and get a powerful ring of VIPs off the hook. It is expected to run until 2020, but I can tell you exactly what will happen, as can anyone who has ever worked in any kind of public institution at the time of a landmark inquiry’s publication. The report will conclude that there is much we don’t know, but that a ‘culture of secrecy’ existed, where those at the bottom or middle of the pile didn’t feel that they would get anywhere if they spoke out because some-one higher up the chain probably told them to keep their mouths shut. Whether it’s the police, the NHS, the BBC or any other public institution, these inquiries always churn out the same findings after agonised years of hearing evidence and grabbing the day’s headlines with the latest lurid, sensational or diabolical revelations. Once published, lots of people will do lots of hand-wringing and scrabbling around for ideas for how we can show that we’re changing and learning ‘lessons’ from the inquiry.
We are doing all this because there are reasonable grounds to suspect that people covered up child abuse, or at the very least turned a blind eye to this. Jimmy Savile undoubtedly was the trigger for this moral panic. How did we not know? How come so many people had their suspicions but either chose not to voice them, or simply encountered a wall of resistance when they did? How did everyone not spot the monster in our midst?
Thanks to Jimmy Savile, it seems everyone is terrified that caution will be seen as amounting to conspiracy and so names are being released the minute a potential victim picks up the phone or wonders in to a police station with a story of abuse that is possibly over 40 years old and will naturally be hard to substantiate. This time, we haven’t even waited for the inquiry to get going before the panicking, hand-wringing and rush to be seen to have learned our lesson begins. And who have they picked on? Ted Heath, a man who is dead, and Lord Janner, who has dementia. Neither of them can answer for their potential crimes, or protest their innocence. Lord Janner, after the Crown Prosecution Service ruling was overturned by the political backing of mob rule, now faces an appearance before a magistrate and, at best, a trial of the facts – a little-used legal device in which the facts of a case are heard to establish whether or not the misdeed did take place, normally with the purpose of determining appropriate safeguards to be put in place for the incapable (or “insane”) person, such as supervision or hospitalisation. Does elderly Lord Janner really pose any on-going danger to the public? Or is this simply abuse of a legal measure that actually serves as a necessary evil where some-one unfit for trial might nonetheless prove a danger to himself or others? Isn’t this really an abandonment of equality before the law, and the notion that some-one is innocent until proven otherwise, for the blunt purpose of seeking retribution?

So what about Ted Heath? The argument for naming him runs thus: the evidence suggests that it is at least plausible that he was guilty of these abhorrent crimes. Fair enough, but since when did possibility constitute grounds for naming a suspect? IF this is all so in-line with normal police practice, could anyone tell me why no-one alive and fit to defend himself has been named? Why have we seen months of headlines telling us that living people, including sitting MPs, are up to their necks in this, but we never get given the names? The evidence of their guilt is presumably proven to the same extent that the evidence against Sir Ted Heath is proven. Come on! Let’s have the names! Shut people like me up, who think a dead man simply made easy pickings for a stupidly vengeful moral crusade. Name them! There are potential victims who might be able to get justice. Why wouldn’t they be named if the victims were really at the centre of all this? Any victim of Ted Heath’s will never have their day in court. Why are we encouraging them to come forward? Nothing will ever be proven. Instead, they will be made to relive their abuse, and eventually exposed to the glare of the media. If carrying the scars of sexual abuse isn’t enough of a trial, putting them in the public spotlight can only worsen their pain. Don’t kid yourselves that victims matter all that much in this. Their welfare is as marginal a consideration as Heath’s good name.
We should also consider this: whilst it is only a possibility that the evidence against Heath does have some credibility, it is also possible that it does not. This possibility is, in fact, rather compelling. One of the few concrete claims with any specificity about Ted Heath is that he was a client of brothel keeper Myra Ling-Ling Ford, against whom an investigation was allegedly dropped by Wiltshire police after she threatened to reveal that she provided her services to Heath. Her brothel is said to have supplied children as young as 13. From the reporting, you would be forgiven for assuming Ford’s provision of services to Heath to be fact, but it has been very quietly reported that Ford, through lawyers, denies any involvement with Heath. She has nothing to gain through this denial as she has already been jailed twice for keeping a brothel. Indeed, she has the public spotlight on her, whether she wants it or not, regardless of whether she did or did not provide services to Heath. She is already accused of facilitating the abuse of children, regardless of whether Heath was just another client or not. It seems the only thing that we know is that a nasty woman kept a nasty brothel in the same Wiltshire town that Ted Heath chose to make his home. Now there’s concrete proof for you.

So, in conclusion, what really lies at the heart of this? It’s not easy to find anything honourable in this mess, but perhaps this is all being done in a misguided attempt to prevent history repeating itself. Abuse may have been covered up deliberately, or it may simply not have held the status of a revolting, high-priority crime as it does today. Perhaps people didn’t think it was widespread, and hadn’t woken up to the idea that a paedophile does not walk around with a banner on his head, but appears every bit as ordinary and unassuming as anyone else in respectable society. The truth is that there has been a massive cultural shift and a greater awareness of the phenomenon. Jimmy Savile and a host of other celebrity predators showed us that it wasn’t just officialdom that covered things up, but that the culture of keeping quiet ran deep across multiple institutions. We have moved on so much that it is inconceivable now that any allegation would be quietly dropped, or that the victim would actually have any rational grounds to suspect that he/she would not be believed if he/she kicked up a stink about their treatment at the hands of officialdom. This moral panic, which has now shamed Ted Heath beyond the grave and ruined his name on the basis of no substantial evidence whatsoever, simply has to end. We have to draw a line under the past where some-one is unable to answer his accusers, and where his accusers will never get what they will consider justice. This is not a necessary evil to build a safer future for our children. Heath’s name is ruined, and when everyone climbs down from their moral high horse, we’ll all see that it was for nothing.