Tom Watson needs to ask William Hague in the House of Commons:

1. Did you know that claims of sexual abuse had been made against Tory politicians when you set up the Sir Ronald Waterhouse inquiry in 1996?


2. Why did you set up an inquiry with terms of reference that did not allow the boys to testify about sexual abuse by people outside the children's homes?


3. Did you ever attend one of the parties where Jimmy Savile supplied boys and girls from children homes for the enjoyment of the guests?

BBC, the JFK Assassination and Political Scandals

Several years ago I was approached by a former BBC journalist and government advisor about making a documentary on the JFK assassination. He said that with his BBC contacts he would have no difficulty getting the film made. Over the next few months we spent a lot of time working on an outline of the proposed documentary. However, the BBC eventually rejected the proposal. I thought we should go to C4 or C5 with it because over the years they had been more interested in investigating political conspiracies than the BBC, but for some reason he had completely lost interest in the project and all the work we had put in was in vain.

While we working on the documentary he told me that he had become interested in political conspiracies because of his experiences at the BBC and in government. He had been appalled about how the BBC had quashed great stories while he was working as a political journalist. He told me one story that involved a paedophile ring in the British government in the 1980s.
In 1996 it was agreed than an investigation into claims of abuse in children's homes in Wales. It was led by Sir Ronald Waterhouse QC, a retired High Court judge. The inquiry was held in private and Waterhouse heard evidence from more than 150 victims of abuse at 40 children’s homes. The published report in 2000 admitted that the children had been abused but it was decided that none of the important political figures involved in the abuse should be named. In 2001, 140 compensation claims were settled with victims of the abuse.

My journalist told me that one of the men named was Home Secretary at the time. He was later given a job in the European Union to get him out of the country. Another abuser was still a leading figure in the Conservative Party. In fact, he was the same man who had appointed Waterhouse to head the inquiry. It seems that the inquiry was all part of the cover-up. It was a bit like Lyndon Johnson putting Allen Dulles on the Warren Commission.

On 3rd October, 2012, ITV1 broadcasted a documentary, Exposure: The Other Side of Jimmy Savile, with claims by up to 10 women, including one aged under 14 at the time, that they had been sexually molested or raped by him during the 1960s and 1970s. Jimmy Savile, one of BBC’s biggest stars, had died the previous year. It has since emerged that the police carried out several investigations into Savile’s activities following complaints from under age girls and boys, but they were all dropped. Maybe it was because he was a close friend of Margaret Thatcher (they used to spend Christmas Day together).

It has also been revealed that earlier in 2012 BBC Newsnight were investigating Savile’s sexual behaviour on BBC premises (he apparently carried out his abuse of girls, usually from children homes who had been invited to appear on programmes such as Top of the Pops, Clunk, Click and Jim'll Fix It, in his dressing room). Obviously concerned that it would seem that the BBC was involved in a cover-up, they cancelled the documentary. However, journalists working on the documentary, leaked the story.

Since the programme was broadcast, over 300 people have come forward to the police stating they were sexually abused by Savile and other high-profile figures. So far Gary Glitter and Freddie Starr have been arrested. Others are expected in the next few weeks.
Last night Newsnight carried an interview with Steven Messham, who was one of those abused in the children’s homes in Wales. He claimed that he had been raped by a leading Conservative Party politician in the 1980s. In other words, the Home Secretary, that the BBC journalist told me about. I expect him to be arrested in the next few weeks. I am not so sure if the current government minister will be arrested for the same offence.

Charles Dickens E-book

Dickens: A Biography 1 873598 03 3
In September 1860 Dickens burnt thousands of letters on a bonfire at his home at Gad’s Hill Place in Kent. He also wrote to friends asking them to destroy any letters that they had received from him. We know that Dickens had always kept secrets from his friends and relatives. When he was a child his father was arrested for debt and sent to the Marshalsea Prison in Southwark. Yet during his lifetime he only told two people about this event. The same is true of his experiences working in the Warren's Blacking Factory. Dickens admitted he had fears about what biographers would say about him in the books written after his death. Why was Dickens so ashamed about these events and what influence did it have on his work? This biography attempts to answer these questions. It also includes a large collection of primary sources so that the reader can make up their own mind about this deeply flawed genius.

Narrative Text (54,359)

Primary Sources (22,577)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dickens-A-Biography-ebook/dp/B009PJFXRM/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1350051931&sr=1-1

George Gallup and British Intelligence

According to a secret report published by the British Security Coordination (The Secret History of British Intelligence in the Americas, 1940-45), George Gallup was recruited to work for British Intelligence in 1940 as part of its campaign against the America First Committee:

As the campaign against Fifth Columnists in the US continued, BSC was able, through the Gallup Poll, to see how its progress was affecting American public opinion. The results, as polled by Gallup, were most gratifying. On 11 March, only 49% of the American people thought that Britain was doing her utmost to win the war. On 23 April, this proportion had jumped to 65%, although no important naval or military victory had occurred during this period to influence the public in Britain's favour.
Gallup's assistant, who eventually joined the staff of BSC, was able to ensure a constant flow of intelligence on public opinion in the United States, since he had access not only to the questionnaires sent out by Gallup and Cantril and to the recommendations offered by the latter to the White House, but also to the findings of the Survey Division of the Office of War Information and of the Opinion Research Division of the US Army. The mass of information which BSC collected in this way was obviously of interest to London. But it was most immediately useful in helping the British Information Services, the Embassy and the Consulates throughout the country to plan effective counter-measures against anti-British propaganda in the United States. The BSC reports were described by one Department of the Embassy as "the most reliable index of Anglo-American relations available".

Gallup himself was by no means unreservedly pro-British, but BSC's contact was able to dissuade him from publishing the results of certain polls which would have had a damaging effect on British prestige. It would have been unfortunate, for instance, if Gallup had released to the hundred or more newspapers which published his findings the fact that only 50% of the British people believed that Britain was doing her utmost to win the war and only 54% believed that America was doing hers. Yet these were the results of a poll conducted by Gallup's representative in England in 1942. Nor, again, could it have proved other than harmful had it become generally known that a large number of Americans were in favour of immediate self-government for India and of the formation of a Palestinian army.   http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPYgallup.htm   http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAfirstC.htm  

Charles Dickens: Important Announcement

My webpage on Charles Dickens has recently gone missing in the Google rankings. I imagine it was too large a file and caused problems loading. The narrative had reached 56,218 words and the primary sources on Dickens accounted to another 15,057 words.

I have therefore decided to divide the material into five different parts. It has allowed me to include a lot more photographs of Charles Dickens.


1812-1836 (Part 1)


http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRdickens.htm


1836-1840 (Part 2)


http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRdickens1.htm


1840-1850 (Part 3)


http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRdickens2.htm


1850-1860 (Part 4)


http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRdickens3.htm


1860-1870 (Part 5)


http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRdickens4.htm

Hadley Cantril and the Lend-Lease Conspiracy

As an Englishman I am very grateful that Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act in March 1941. However, recent research that the act would not have been passed but for the activities of British intelligence.

Winston Churchill became British prime-minister in May, 1940. Soon afterwards Churchill appointed William Stephenson as head of British Security Coordination (BSC). As William Boyd has pointed out: "The phrase (British Security Coordination) is bland, almost defiantly ordinary, depicting perhaps some sub-committee of a minor department in a lowly Whitehall ministry. In fact BSC, as it was generally known, represented one of the largest covert operations in British spying history... With the US alongside Britain, Hitler would be defeated - eventually. Without the US (Russia was neutral at the time), the future looked unbearably bleak... polls in the US still showed that 80% of Americans were against joining the war in Europe. Anglophobia was widespread and the US Congress was violently opposed to any form of intervention."

At the time Britain was in a very difficult situation. In 1940 Germany had a population of 80 million with a workforce of 41 million. Britain had a population of 46 million with less than half Germany's workforce. Germany's total income at market prices was £7,260 million compared to Britain's £5,242 million. More ominously, the Germans had spent five times what Britain had spent on armaments - £1,710 million versus £358 million. Churchill was informed that Britain would soon run out of money to fight the war.

Churchill asked Franklin D. Roosevelt for help to beat Nazi Germany. At first Roosevelt said he was unable to help because public opinion in the United States was completely opposed to becoming involved in the war. However, British intelligence had some important agents within the White House. This included Ernest Cuneo, Robert Sherwood and David Niles. Cuneo later recalled: "Given the time, the situation, and the mood, it is not surprising however, that BSC also went beyond the legal, the ethical, and the proper. Throughout the neutral Americas, and especially in the U.S., it ran espionage agents, tampered with the mails, tapped telephone, smuggled propaganda into the country, disrupted public gatherings, covertly subsidized newspapers, radios, and organizations, perpetrated forgeries - even palming one off on the President of the United States - violated the aliens registration act, shanghaied sailors numerous times, and possibly murdered one or more persons in this country."

Eventually Roosevelt was persuaded to change his mind. On 17th December, 1940, Roosevelt made a speech to the American public: "In the present world situation of course there is absolutely no doubt in the mind of a very overwhelming number of Americans that the best immediate defence of the United States is the success of Great Britain in defending itself; and that, therefore, quite aside from our historic and current interest in the survival of democracy in the world as a whole, it is equally important, from a selfish point of view of American defence, that we should do everything to help the British Empire to defend itself... In other words, if you lend certain munitions and get the munitions back at the end of the war, if they are intact - haven't been hurt - you are all right; if they have been damaged or have deteriorated or have been lost completely, it seems to me you come out pretty well if you have them replaced by the fellow to whom you have lent them."
Isolationists like Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan and Thomas Connally of Texas argued that this legislation would lead to American involvement in the Second World War. In early February 1941 a poll by the George H. Gallup organisation revealed that only 22 percent were unqualifiedly against the President's proposal. It has been argued by Thomas E. Mahl, the author of Desperate Deception: British Covert Operations in the United States, 1939-44 (1998), has argued that the Gallup organization had been infiltrated by the British Security Coordination (BSC).

Hadley Cantril, a member of the faculty of Princeton University Department of Psychology, had used a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to establish the Office of Public Opinion Research. A supporter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and intervention in the Second World War he was also an agent for the British Security Coordination and did work for the anti-isolationist group, Fight for Freedom. Cantril was of the opinion that Roosevelt needed "an improving body of public opinion to sustain him in each measure of assistance to Britain and the USSR." Cantril was also an advisor to George H. Gallup and worked closely with David Ogilvy, who was employed by Gallup and was also an agent for BSC.

Another BSC agent, Sanford Griffith, established a company Market Analysts Incorporated and was initially commissioned to carry out polls for the anti-isolationist Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies. Griffith's assistant, Francis Adams Henson, a long time activist against the Nazi Germany government, later recalled: "My job was to use the results of our polls, taken among their constituents, to convince on-the-fence Congressmen and Senators that they should favor more aid to Britain."

As Richard W. Steele has pointed out: "public opinion polls had become a political weapon that could be used to inform the views of the doubtful, weaken the commitment of opponents, and strengthen the conviction of supporters." William Stephenson later admitted: "Great care was taken beforehand to make certain the poll results would turn out as desired. The questions were to steer opinion toward the support of Britain and the war... Public Opinion was manipulated through what seemed an objective poll."

Michael Wheeler, the author of Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics: The Manipulation of Public Opinion in America (2007) has pointed out how this could have been done: "Proving that a given poll is rigged is difficult because there are so many subtle ways to fake data... a clever pollster can just as easily favor one candidate or the other by making less conspicuous adjustments, such as allocating the undecided voters as suits his needs, throwing out certain interviews on the grounds that they were non-voters, or manipulating the sequence and context within which the questions are asked... Polls can even be rigged without the pollster knowing it.... Most major polling organizations keep their sampling lists under lock and key."


The main target of these polls concerned the political views of leading politicians opposed to Lend-Lease. This included Hamilton Fish. In February 1941, a poll of Fish's constituents said that 70 percent of them favored the passage of Lend-Lease. James H. Causey, president of the Foundation for the Advancement of Social Sciences, was highly suspicious of this poll and called for a congressional investigation.

It has been argued that both Arthur Vandenberg and Thomas Connally were targeted by British Security Coordination in order to persuade the Senate to pass the Lend-Lease proposal. Mary S. Lovell, the author of Cast No Shadow (1992) believes that the spy, Elizabeth Thorpe Pack (codename "Cynthia") who was working for the BSC, played an important role in this: "Cynthia's second mission for British Security Coordination was to try and convert the opinions of senators Connally and Vandenberg into, if not support, a less heated opposition to the Lend Lease bill which literally meant the difference between survival and defeat for the British. Other agents of both sexes were given similar missions with other politicians... with Vandenberg she was successful; with Senator Connally, chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, she was not."

During the Lend-Lease debate Vandenberg announced on the floor of the Senate that he had finally decided to support the loan. He warned his colleagues: "If we do not lead some other great and powerful nation will capitalize our failure and we shall pay the price of our default." Richard N. Gardner, the author of Sterling Dollar Diplomacy in Current Perspective (1980), has argued that Vandenberg's speech was the "turning point in the Senate Debate" with sixteen other Republicans voting in favour of the bill.

On 11th March 1941, Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act. The legislation gave President Franklin D. Roosevelt the powers to sell, transfer, exchange, lend equipment to any country to help it defend itself against the Axis powers. A sum of $50 billion was appropriated by Congress for Lend-Lease. The money went to 38 different countries with Britain receiving over $31 billion.

When David Ogilvy read an early draft of The Quiet Canadian (1962) he requested that William Stephenson put pressure on H. Montgomery Hyde to remove all references to Hadley Cantril and George H. Gallup: "I beg you to remove all references to Hadley Cantril and Dr. Gallup... Dr. Gallup was and still is, a great friend of England. What you have written would cause him anguish - and damage. One does not want to damage one's friends... In subsequently years Hadley Cantril has done a vast amount of secret polling for the United States Government. What you have written would compromise him - and SIS (MI6) does not make a practice of compromising its friends."

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWlendlease.htm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPYbsc.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWstephensonW.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKcuneo.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPYpack.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAsherwoodR.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAfishH2.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPYcantril.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPYgriffithS.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAvandenbergA.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKconnallyT.htm

Michael Faraday

In 1933 Harper's Magazine published an article stating: "At no period of Michael Faraday's unmatched career was he interested in utility. He was absorbed in disentangling the riddles of the universe, at first chemical riddles, in later periods, physical riddles. As far as he cared, the question of utility was never raised. Any suspicion of utility would have restricted his restless curiosity. In the end, utility resulted, but it was never a criterion to which his ceaseless experimentation could be subjected." William Ewart Gladstone, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, once asked Michael Faraday about the practical worth of electricity. He said he did not know but "there is every probability that you will soon be able to tax it!"

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SCfaraday.htm