Behind The Facade – Service Shenanigans
Thirty Years of the Mental Health Services – Mostly in North Wales
Bio – Dr Sally Baker
Home – The Beginning
Socio-Political Context of the North Wales Mental Health Services in the 1980s
Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board
Clwyd Health Authority
Clwyd Social Services
Community Health Councils
Coroners
Denbighshire Social Services
Donna Ockenden
Flintshire Council
Glyndwr University
Gwynedd County Council
Gwynedd Health Authority
Gwynedd Hospitals NHS Trust
Gwynedd Social Services
Health Inspectorate Wales
Independent Doctor's Federation
Leicester Child Abuse Scandal
Lord Denning
Margaret Thatcher's Cabinet
Maudsley Hospital
Medical Defence Union
Mental Health Act Commission
Mental Health Charities
North Wales Child Abuse Scandal
North Wales Hospital Denbigh
North Wales Police
North West Wales NHS Trust
Nursing and Midwifery Council
Parkhead Hospital Glasgow
Public Service Ombudsman for Wales
Royal College of Nursing
Service User/Carer Involvement
Special Hospitals
St Georges Hospital Medical School
Wales Audit Office
Welsh Assembly Politicians
Welsh Office
MORE HACKING – AND TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES
Normal Service Resumed – News Round-Up, March 8 2017
Counselling, Caring and A Bit of Identity Fraud…
The General Medical Council and Yet Another Forged Document
Another Scam Brought To You By CAIS…
An Opportunist Tweets
And Now – It's The Gallery…
BLOG IN DANGER
News Round-Up, April 13 2017
More On Those Prisons For Folk Who Dared Complain
Police Investigate Historic Abuse Claims Against Psychiatrist and Psychiatric Hospital
I Think That We've Been Here Before
When Showbiz Meets Politics
Correction and Apology
The Mary Wynch Case – Details
It's A Piece Of Cake…
Failings In Care – But Another Narrative Verdict
I Know Nuzzing…
Top Of The Cops
A Stalker's Network
A UK Network
So Who Was It Exactly Who Appointed The Corrupt Old Bastard?
This Is What Happened To Nicola, Niclas, Merfyn, Joan and Kathryn
Tower Hamlets, Paul Boateng And Tessa Jowell
'Ain't Nothing Clean' – Not Even The Welsh Calvinistic Methodists
More Post-Waterhouse Glittering Careers
Don't Be Silly, He's Nice
'A Pretty Classy Piece Of Operation'
'A Future Leader Of The Labour Party'
'One Of The Safest Pairs Of Hands At The Criminal Bar'
One Dangerous Fucker
Ian Brockington's Mischief
Are You Local?
A Top Doctor In The News
Did Glenda Occupy A Key Role In Keeping It All Out Of The Media?
Dr Death
Professor Prestigious And His Associates
The Right Honourable David Jones MP
Computer Says No
News Update And A Few More Accessories
A Prescription For Murder?
Doris Karloff – Honest About Her Expenses But Not Much Else
Yet More Crime And Punishment
A Few More Who Might Be Able To Answer Questions
More Summer Reading!
MIND Are Out For Mental Health – Never For Themselves Of Course…
A Peer, More Top Docs and News Round Up
The Great And The Good
News Round Up, August 11 2017
The 'Celtic Iron Lady' And Yet More Recent History
I Want Serious Money Now Please
Corruption Bay Special
A Direct Threat From MIND In Haringey
Close Your Eyes And Make A WISH
It's The Sun Wot Won It
Update On 'Tainted Blood' Scandal – The Culprit
The Poisonous Tentacles Of The Home Office
A Vampire At Glyndwr University!
Running The Country – And All That Jazz
Wheels Within Wheels Or Flies Drawn To The Same Incestuously Corrupt Shithouse?
My How Things Haven't Changed
The Case Of The King's Sperm
News Round-Up, 21 September 2017
He Knows Where The Bodies Are Buried
The Newcastle-Upon-Tyne Connection?
So Look Who Won Awards
The Evolution Of A Drugs Baron?
Compare And Contrast – The Case of Two Doctors And The GMC
History Repeats Itself, First As Tragedy, Second As Farce
Ted Heath News
Judge James Pickles
Lord Robert Armstrong
News Round Up, 6 October 2017
A Very COHSE Relationship With Some Very Nasty People
Their Trade Is Fuckwittery
No Ordinary Methods
No Ordinary Methods – Supplementary Post
Little Things Hitting Each Other
Everywoman?
FAO Anti-Slavery Tsar!
'The Reality Is, There Is No Problem'
A Secret And Forbidding Place To Work?
Workers' Play Time
95 Glorious Years!
The Cradle of Filth
A Bit More Paleontology
I Don't Believe It!
The Most Dangerous Man In The World – Part I
The Most Dangerous Man In The World – Part II
The Most Dangerous Man In The World – Part III
News From Sicily
A Study In Tyranny
So Who Was Angry About What?
A Trabant That Wants To Be A Ferrari…
Disgusting of Tunbridge Wells And A Few Equally Disgusting Others
The Most Dangerous Man In The World – Part IV
The Crème de la Crème
'They Planned To Put Acid In All The Reservoirs…'
Radical Leicester And Some Other Free Radicals
Always On The Side Of The Children
The Most Dangerous Man In The World – Part V
The Most Dangerous Man In The World – The Scottish Play
To Raise Winds For The Destruction Of Ships…
'Twas The Night Before Christmas And The Culprits Were Named…
Is The Party Over Yet?
Security, Security
Additional Security Measures
In Memoriam – Bronwen, Lady Astor
A Galaxy of Talent
Inside Information About A Hergest Unit Death
The Discovery Of A Whole New Galaxy…
He Knew Far, Far Too Much
The Mentor
A Vintage Crop
Another Episode of 'Friends'…
Dogma and Disarray?
A Major Coup – Or A Complete Disaster?
The Battle Of The Cowshed
Yet More Inglorious Bastards
Just A Language Divide?
It Wasn't On Our Radar
Oh, No! It's The Pathetic Sharks…
NOTICE TO READERS – Feb 19th 2018
Message to Tamsin!
These Sharks Are Crap As Well
Oh Lordy, It's CR UK
Mary Turner – An Appreciation
Tuppence And His Fragrant Wife
Possible Discovery Of More Forged Or Amended Documents
Reports Of Death Were Greatly Exaggerated
I Warn You…
The Paedophiles' Friends Of Cardiff North
The Bodies Beneath Canary Wharf
In Memoriam – Professor Robert Owen
My Arse – It's Tatifliarious
Old Nick Bites The Dust
People With Energy
A Solicitor's Letter From North East Wales MIND
Cottaging At Castle Gate
The Banality Of Evil
Gwlad y Menig Gwynion
The Bloody State We're In
The International Language Of Screaming
Killing Floor – I Know Cos I Was There!
An Appalling Vista
Have The Lambs Stopped Screaming?
The Old Devils
The Defence Of The Realm
Sleeping With The Fishes
E mail Correspondence From A Former Undercover Police Officer
Pets Win Prizes
Mr Thomas Waterhouse – An Apology
Baroness Tessa Jowell – A Tribute
Feet In Chains
What Time's Chaos?
Criminals Are Getting Away With It
The Human Stain
No One Is Innocent
The White Heat Of This Revolution
Include Me Out
Today We Have Naming Of Parts
R.I.P. Two Paedophiles' Friends And A Poor Cow
BMA Calling, BMA Calling
Wimmin's Wellbeing – The Fortnum and Mason Connection
They Think It's All Over – It Is Now
Events, Dear Boy, Events
The History, Boys…
More Alan Bennett
They Are MYRIAD, They Are Legion
Now Then…
The Rakes' Progress
In Memoriam – Dr Julian Tudor Hart
Those Who Are Ready To Serve
Upper Class Twit Of The Year – 'Shooting Themselves'
He Got On His Bike And Looked For Work
A Local Boy Made Good?
In Memoriam – Lord Carrington
Life In Cold Blood
What's Left? The Politics of Social Justice
Rab, High Table and the Founding Fathers
Conference At Cold Comfort Farm
Hearing Voices
Jennifer's Diary
The Great Stink
A Vortex Of Eternal Shame
An Expression Of Their Faith
We've Been Expecting You…
Remember Girls – Never Get Into A Car With A Stranger!
A Legend Lives
No Cuts
Comedies of Menace
Rivers Of Blood
The Cry Of The Lunatic
A Demand From Gwynedd County Council
It's Just Another Gold Digger
I Told You I Was Trouble
R.I.P. Fenella Fielding
More Dogs That Did Not Bark
You Know I'm No Good…
Tan yn Llyn
I Predict A Riot
Yours Truly, Angry Mob
It's Bachman Turner Overdrive – Not 'Arf
Dr Victoria Winckler Threatens To Sue Dr Sally Baker
And The Lucky Winners Are…
Don't Mess With Daddy
Hey, Hey DAJ, How Many Kids Did You Kill Today?
Holding The Country To Ransom – Part I
Slaves, Perfect Slaves
The Compassion Centre
I Passionately Believe…
How Much Greater Is A Man Than A Sheep?
The Battle For The Labour Party's Soul
Lord Snooty The Third
The Point Is To Change It
Right To Reply
Meet The Gwerin!
On The Occasion Of The 70th Birthday Of HRH Carlo
Only One Died
Britain In Agony
Dr Victoria Winckler v Dr Sally Baker: Update
Yes, There Is Still Green Paint On The Renault…
O Jones, O Jones
The Wind Of No Change
There's Methodism In This Madness
Come, Friendly Bombs
Dr Adrianne Reveley – A Loving Tribute
News Flash – Welsh Labour's New Leader
The Bay Of Pigs Invasion
Hwyl Fawr Carwyn, Croeso Drakeford!
The Vermin Club
Captain Swing And His Crew
A Message Of Peace At Christmas
Bernard Levin And Jonathan Miller Talk Bollocks
Stations of the Crass
The Mrs Mills Experience
The Science of Animal Behaviour
R.I.P Julia Grant and Many More…
The Wrong Set
Uncle Harry's Friends…
The Bitterest Pill
Houseparty
Vested Interests Or Common Pool?
Arthur Dickson Wright – An Appreciation
The Naked Civil Servants
Theatre of the Absurd
Notice To Readers: Possible Threat To The Continued Existence Of This Blog
One Complaint Against This Blog Withdrawn – More Have Been Made!
Murder In Samarkand
Error Of Judgement?
Too Many Pills
International Women's Day! Let Us Celebrate With Jane…
The Logic Of Medicine
Oliver's Army
A Charming, Uplifting Sound…
A Trail Of Blood
All Inquiries To William Wales Please…
The Old Crowd
Jehova, Jehova, Jehova
A Holy Fool Among A Feast of Fools
Blog Under Attack Once More
Holding The Country To Ransom – Part II
BLOCK ATTACKED AGAIN – APRIL 30 2019
Shurely Shome Mishtake
The Joys Of Propaganda
BLOG UNDER ATTACK, 10 May 2019
The Milk Street and Other Mafias
Notice Re Discussions About This Blog
Politicians Who Resigned On Principle
Cymro 007
FUTURE OF THIS BLOG
Successful Surgery On King George VI!
International Finance, With Grateful Thanks To Gwynne
Sir Brian Leveson – An Apology
Update, 23 June 2019: The Future Of This Blog
The Two Cultures Of Organised Abuse
The Wizard War
Sex, Lies and No Democracy
He Was Looking At I In A Funny Way…
So Absolutely Sane, Clear, Quick, Intelligent and Safe…
Lord Tim Bell
We Shall Remember Them: Clever Hans
The North Wales Police Professional Standards Dept
TEXT GOING MISSING FROM BLOG POSTS
More Antonin Artaud
A Reply From The GMC!
Mr Fawlty, I No Want To Work Here Any More
Our Man In Llandegfan
Lord Gnome, My Distant Relative By Marriage
A Celebration Of Dafydd's Medical Training
This Is A Nightmare For All Of Us
MASSIVE INTERFERENCE ON THE BLOG – APOLOGIES
Devonshire Cream and Fudge
Putting Things Right – Perfick
A Little Something To Which We Can Look Forward
ATTACK ON THE BLOG OVERNIGHT, 21/22 Nov 2019
More Hollywood Gossip
Jonathan Wolfe Miller – In Memoriam
Unacceptable Behaviour!
For Those Battling With British Justice At Present
A Glass Ceiling Has Been Broken!
We Are Not Bloody Well Having It
A Bit Of Fanny Batter
A Reminder To The Amnesiacs Of The UK Police Force And MI5
Ysbyty Gwynedd
Westminster Polticians
Tag: St Mary's Hospital
I listened to the Radio 4 obituaries programme 'Last Word' yesterday and they paid tribute to Julia Grant, the trans-activist who was the subject of a series of BBC TV documentaries which charted her gender reassignment during the 1980s and 90s. I only watched one of the documentaries, screened in the 1990s. It was one which contained footage of Julia – who began life as George Roberts – during her consultation some years previously with a Top Doc at Charing Cross, a psychiatrist who was a gender identity specialist. Julia was obliged to see this man before the gender reassignment surgery that she wanted could go ahead. The Top Doc concerned refused to allow his face to be shown on camera or to be identified.
The Top Doc treated Julia dreadfully, absolutely dreadfully. So much so that the crap faced by transgender people gained a great deal of publicity. At one point he snapped at Julia 'you have stepped out of line and I don't like people who step out of line'. He subsequently turned down her request for gender realignment surgery. During the consultation Julia was reduced to jelly. She was not highly educated and had no education at all in medicine so was not able to identify the many ways in which the Top Doc breached all good practice and thus she did not say 'what the fuck do you think that you are doing?'
This was the Charing Cross Gender Identity Clinic, supposedly the global leader in that field. We take referrals from across the world! Yes and as far as NHS UK patients went, it was that shitbag whom they had to encounter if they wanted gender reassignment surgery. No other option. You have this bastard or you don't even get considered for treatment.
The nation however missed something. This Doc was not alone in being a psychiatrist who conducted himself in that manner. Many of them did, including Dr Tony Roberts at the Hergest Unit, until Roberts finally retired not so long ago. Exactly the same bedside manner: rude, insulting, with bizarre notions of what constitutes 'gender appropriate' behaviour, deliberately intimidating. The geographical area covered by Tony Roberts had the second highest suicide rate among women in England and Wales, except for Camden. When I complained to the GMC about Roberts in 2002, the GMC did not investigate my complaint. They maintained that Tony Roberts had not done anything inappropriate. Although he had ordered my key worker off of my case – my key worker whom I liked – appointed himself my doctor against my wishes, refused to treat me and then ordered every other Top Doc not to treat me on the grounds that I was 'his patient'. One night a I rang the GP on-call, who recorded on my file 'suicidal ++++' and contacted Roberts. Roberts faxed two words back – 'DO NOTHING'.
I was not alone in having these experiences with Roberts. As another patient observed, he was 'another dangerous madman'. Tony Roberts graduated from Manchester University in 1984. He trained with the abusive nutters there who included Dafydd's old boss Dr Bob Hobson, who ran a sex abuse ring at the Maudsley and then in 1974 relocated to Manchester where he expanded on the ring there (see post 'The Mentor'). Ian Brockington, Tony Francis's former boss, also worked at Manchester University, until he joined Dafydd and Francis's mate Professor Robert Bluglass at the University of Birmingham (see post 'Ian Brockington's Mischief'). After learning at their knees, Roberts headed for a job at the North Wales Hospital Denbigh where he joined Dafydd and then Roberts was appointed Clinical Director of the Hergest Unit…
Years later, my lawyers discovered a document in the possession of the GMC purporting to be my letter of complaint about Tony Roberts. It was a forgery. See post 'The General Medical Council And Yet Another Forged Document'.
Although the Top Doc who treated Julia Grant so appallingly refused to allow himself to be identified at the time of the TV programme, he was later revealed to be John Randell. John Randell was one fun guy, but no-one dared mention anything at the time other than his sadism towards Julia Grant. By the time that Randell's earlier interview with Julia was broadcast on the programme that I watched, Randell had been dead since 1982. Although the old bastard had been 6 ft under for years, no-one dared say anything ruder about him in public other than that he was old fashioned, showed bigotry towards transgender people and had some rather odd views about women.
John Randell was born in Penarth, Cardiff in 1918. He qualified as a Top Doctor at the Welsh National School of Medicine in 1941. From 1942-46 he was a Surgeon Lieutenant in the RNVR. Randall knew Gwynne the lobotomist , Professor Geoffrey Chamberlain who facilitated the paedophile/trafficking ring at St George's Hospital Medical School which was linked to Dafydd's gang and Randell also knew about the Naughtiness In High Places re Lord Louis Mountbatten and the gay spies in the Admiralty, as discussed in my post 'The Defence Of The Realm'.
After serving in the RNVR, Randell worked at Guy's, St George's and Tommy's Hospitals. All of which were already facilitating the organised abuse upon which Dafydd et al expanded into a pan-European ring in the 1970s. In 1950 Randell was appointed Physician for Psychological Medicine at Charing Cross. There he worked with Lennox Broster who had been treating intersex people since the 1930s, but not transsexuals as such.
Lennox Ross Broster (1889 – 12 April 1965) was a South African-born surgeon who spent most of his career at Charing Cross. Broster was educated in Grahamstown, first at St Andrew's College, then at Rhodes University College. Broster received a Rhodes Scholarship and began studying medicine at Trinity College, Oxford. He continued his medical training at Guy's Hospital, qualifying as a Top Doc from there. Broster served with the RAMC during WW I. After WW I, Broster specialised in the treatment of endocrine disease. In the 1930s and 1940s Broster was among the first surgeons to operate routinely on intersex patients, in work that received frequent coverage in the British press and helped to establish Charing Cross Hospital as a centre for intersex and transgender medicine. His patients during this period included the Olympic athlete Mark Weston.
Broster held junior surgical positions at a number of hospitals, including at the Radcliffe Infirmary and at Guy's Hospital. He also worked at the Queen's Hospital for Children. During this period Broster became associated with Charing Cross, where he would remain for the rest of his career. A history of Charing Cross published in 1967 stated that Broster had been "one of the outstanding surgeons" there. Although employed as a general surgeon, Broster took a special interest in endocrinology. Simultaneously with his work at Charing Cross, Broster also served as a consultant to several other hospitals – the Bute Hospital in Luton, Chesham Cottage Hospital, Dunstable Hospital, Beckenham Hospital – and to the Church Army.
In the 1930s and 1940s Broster provided surgical and hormonal treatment to intersex patients, in collaboration with the psychiatrist Clifford Allen. This attracted considerable press attention to Broster and Charing Cross during the 1930s. A 1938 story in the News of the Screws described Broster as "the famous surgeon, who has brought new hope and happiness into the baffled lives of many men and women who were desirous of changing their sex". Although journalists often described the treatment as sex changing, the patients they wrote about would more accurately be described as intersex and there is no evidence that Broster operated on transsexuals.
Broster gave lecture tours of the United States and Canada in 1936 and 1937. Broster gave lectures to the American Surgical Association in 1941 and he became an honorary fellow of the Association in 1942. In 1948 the South African Medical Association invited Broster to lecture in South Africa and in 1950 he was a visiting Professor at Cairo University. Broster was Chairman of the Court of examiners of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and also acted as an examiner for the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Leeds.
Broster represented the South African branches of the BMA on the BMA's Council, 1938-45/46, when the independent Medical Association of South Africa was established. Broster was also involved with the BMA's Section of Surgery, serving as an honorary Secretary in 1929 and a Vice-President in 1950.
In 1950 Broster became Chairman of the Commonwealth Medical Advisory Bureau's Committee of Management. In 1952 he became Chair of a Committee, set up jointly by the Royal Society of Medicine's Section of Endocrinology and the Society for Endocrinology, which had the task of considering how British research in endocrinology could be encouraged. He was elected an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine in 1958.
Broster was a strong supporter of the Commonwealth of Nations.
Broster was an enthusiastic Rugby player as a student and a Top Doctor and served as President of the United Hospitals Rugby Football Club. Like all the best Top Doctors, Broster played golf and retained an interest in sports contests between Oxford and other universities.
Broster suffered a stroke after retiring, when about to sit down at Lord's Cricket Ground to watch a match. He made a partial recovery but later died on 12 April 1965.
Working as a high profile general surgeon in Oxford at the time that he did will have meant that Broster knew and almost certainly taught Sir Charles Evans, the surgeon who served as Principal of UNCW, 1958 -84. Sir Charles trained at Oxford and spent his very early career in surgery there. See previous posts.
Lennox Broster and his wife Edith had three daughters. Their eldest daughter Cynthia also became a physician and finished her career as Principal Medical Officer for the Oxfordshire Area Health Authority. So Cynthia knew about the organised abuse of kids in care in Oxfordshire with which social work manager Barbara Kahan and her child psych husband Dr Vladimir Kahan colluded. Babs was appointed a children's social work adviser to Keith Joseph when he was Heath's Secretary of State at the DHSS and Babs remained advising Gov'ts for years. See post eg. 'Always On The Side Of The Children'. Oxford University's Dept of Psychiatry has also been complicit with the abuse of kids and vulnerable adults, as well as being party to cancer research fraud funded by the Cancer Research Campaign. See previous posts…
Cynthia married the neurologist Charles Phillips in 1942. When Charles was called up for military service in the same year, Lennox provided a recommendation that led to Charles's appointment to the RAMC.
Charles Phillips died in September 1994 and as ever the Royal College of Physicians 'Lives of the Fellows' online provided an obituary:
Charles Garrett Phillips b.13 October 1916 d.9 September 1994
BA Oxon(1938) BSc(1939) BM BCh(1942) MRCP(1944) DM(1951) FRCP(1962) FRS(1963) Hon DSc Monash (1971)
As a neurologist who studied at Oxford and then soon after returned to work there, Phillips too will have known Sir Charles Evans. Phillips was only two years older than Evans…
Charles Garrett Phillips had a major impact on experimental and clinical neurology, recording from pyramidal neurons in the cortex and contributing to our understanding of central motor control. In his monographs and in many of his papers Phillips successfully demonstrated the relevance of animal data, intelligently adduced, for the management of motor disorders in man.
This sounds rather as though Charles worked in the area of primates in cages with things stuck into their heads.
Phillips' formidable analytical intelligence was evident at an early stage, and perhaps best demonstrated in his Ferrier lecture and in two monographs. In his 1968 Royal Society Ferrier lecture Phillips explained how the brain was involved in the servo control of the muscles of the hand in primates.
Secondly, with his main collaborator in the 1960s, Bob Porter, Phillips wrote a book entitled 'Cortico spinal neurones: their role in movement '(London, Academic Press). Published in 1977, the monograph is a seamless synthesis of electrophysiological and micro anatomical studies in which Phillips and Porter refer frequently to the work of their contemporaries as well as historical pioneers. Phillips' second monograph on 'Movements of the hand' (Liverpool University Press, 1985), based on his 1982 Sherrington lecture, was the acme of his scientific thought and writings. He described in detail the inputs and outputs of the cortical modules which resemble the "integrated circuits in electronics terminology". He particularly emphasized the importance of inputs from the muscle afferents which he had already highlighted in his Ferrier lecture, and moved easily from the micro to the macro by explaining the circuitry for programmed motor patterns in the central nervous system.
Charles Garret Phillips was the son of George Ramsey Phillips, anaesthetist to St Mary's Hospital, and Flora Phillips. He was educated at Bradfield College, Magdalen College, Oxford, and at St Bartholomew's Hospital.
The Bart's which by the 1970s was facilitating organised abuse which could be traced back at least to the presence of Dafydd's pal Lady Juliet Bingley working as a medical almoner at Bart's after she qualified at the LSE in the early 1950s. Lady Juliet's dad Reginald Vick spent most of his career as a surgeon at Bart's. See previous posts.
At Oxford he took a first in animal physiology. After medical qualification he spent three years in the RAMC as a neurologist during which time he took the MRCP. After the war Phillips returned to Oxford, where he became a fellow of Trinity College in 1946, a university lecturer, reader and subsequently appointed to a personal chair in neurophysiology in 1966. He was a secretary of the Physiological Society between 1960 and 1966. In 1975 he was elected to Dr Lee's chair of anatomy at Oxford and retired in 1983.
In spite of the high status he had achieved Charles remained remarkably modest. It was this modesty and a degree of uncertainty, together with the wish not to be constrained by commitments to outside funding bodies, which prevented him from applying for a research grant.
That is the best excuse that I have ever heard for not bothering to apply for research funding.
However, it must also be admitted that the generous 'class grant' which the University bestowed on the physiology laboratory made an application for outside funds unnecessary.
That explains Charles suddenly being overcome by modesty.
The realization that the University's generosity was not uniformly distributed in South Parks Road proved to be one of three culture shocks which stunned Phillips when he took up the chair of anatomy. In contrast to the situation in the physiology laboratory, Phillips found that virtually all research depended upon outside grant funding.
Charles was astounded that the manna from heaven did not continue.
The two other shocks in store for Charles were, first, the conflict between staff which was generated by the five years of uncertainty which followed Geoffrey Harris' untimely death in 1971,
This sounds interesting, I will dig a bit deeper when I have time.
Geoffrey Wingfield Harris was educated first at Dulwich College (1927-1931) and then at Emmanuel College, Cambridge (1932-1939). He began clinical training at St. Mary's Hospital, London (1936-1940), worked briefly at Hillingdon County Hospital (1939) and then worked at Cambridge as the Demonstrator in Anatomy (1940-1947), Lecturer in Anatomy (1947-1948) and also Lecturer in Physiology (1947-1952). From 1952-1962 Harris was Senior Lecturer in Physiology, University of London and worked in the Laboratory of Experimental Neuroendocrinology at the Maudsley. Dafydd 'trained' at the Maudsley in the early 1960s at the knee of Bob Hobson the trafficker and the wider collection of dishonest incompetents whom were abusing their patients in numerous ways. See posts 'A Galaxy Of Talent' and 'The Discovery Of A Whole New Galaxy…' In 1953 Harris was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1962 he moved to Hertford College, Oxford, becoming Dr. Lee's Professor of Anatomy, a post he held until his death in 1971.
and, secondly, the fact that the teaching of topographical anatomy had not changed since Phillips was a student. Charles Phillips' appointment allayed the uncertainty of the interregnum that followed the death of Harris and this, together with his gentle but firm democratic leadership, soon restored civilized relations between the staff.
Translate as 'Phillips imposed a regime and ruled over dissenters with a rod of iron'.
But he was not so successful in revising the teaching of topographical anatomy. Charles placed greater emphasis on 'functional' anatomy, including the introduction of transcutaneous stimulation of muscles. But, it was clear to all that Phillips' appointment was an interim measure. He will not be remembered as an anatomist, nor would this have been his wish.
This rather sounds as though Phillips wasn't much good at anatomy and that someone would remind the world of this if ever anyone did remember him as an anatomist.
During his years in human anatomy Phillips also served as editor of 'Brain' and on the Medical Research Council, tasks which he took very seriously.
Even though his anatomy wasn't up to much.
As editor he was proud of the fact that he did not reject papers: rather he urged respect for the work of others even though this sometimes involved major revision of the text or additional experiments to bring the manuscript up to scratch.
Everything accepted, even crap. The journal must have been very short of contributions because journal editors love rejecting papers and stressing that not any old shite gets in this journal.
Charles Phillips was a quick witted and articulate speaker and a gifted conversationalist. To dine with him at a dinner of the Physiological Society was always an immensely rich and pleasurable experience. Indeed Charles endeavoured to make each encounter with colleagues and friends an intellectual occasion using his gentle but penetrating wit and judiciously crafted turn of phrase to set the ambience.
Charles would have put Libby Purves in the shade. Please someone, take Arthur Mullard along to a Physiological Society dinner, secrete a camera about one's person and film the occasion.
Research for Phillips came to an abrupt end when he transferred to human anatomy and retirement, when it came in 1983, was complete.
His services were dispensed with at the earliest opportunity.
This contrasted quite markedly with the lifestyle of some of his close colleagues who were equally or more active in research after retirement. But it was characteristic of Charles to follow life in a precise and orderly sequence. He also confided that experimentation through the night, which recording from cortical neurons demanded, had become too great a strain. However, it seemed to the observer that Charles was in fact quite content in that he had by the age of 58 completed the task he had set out to accomplish.
58 yrs old is very early for a scientist to pack up work. They usually cling on for decades after retirement at 60 or 65, pursuing the research that they enjoy without being bothered by the onerous admin duties imposed on them before retirement.
It is a tragic irony that the end for a man of his powerful and acute intellect was accompanied by severe mental deterioration.
I wonder what happened…
He married Cynthia, herself a physician, in 1942 and they had two daughters.
The psychiatrist who worked with Broster at Charing Cross and established that institution as the world leader in gender identity work, Clifford Allen, made a sharp distinction between intersexuality and transvestism (the term then in use for what is now described as being transgender) which Allen saw as a psychological pathology not requiring surgical intervention. In 1954 Allen wrote: 'the abnormal minds should be treated in order to conform them with the normal body and not vice versa'.
I can't find much about Clifford Allen online, although David Andrew Griffith's article in 'Sexualities', Jan 2018, 'Diagnosing sex: Intersex surgery and 'sex change' in Britain 1930–1955' does discuss Clifford Allen:
Clifford Allen… the consultant psychiatrist at Charing Cross, the Physician in Charge of the Psychiatric Department of the Seamen's Hospital, Greenwich, and the Assistant Physician to the Institute of Medical Psychology at the Tavistock Clinic in Bloomsbury.
Previous posts have discussed the Tavi during those years and some of the Top Docs there who were facilitating abuse, including those with links to north Wales.
Broster and Allen shared the view that atypical biology could lead to atypical psychology; if adrenal glands were thought to masculinize the biological, then they would be expected to influence sex roles, aims and object choice as well. For both Broster and Allen, biological normality was structured into a binary of male and female bodies, and linked to a strict psychological normality, as measured by heterosexuality….
Broster largely saw adults, particularly at the start of his research, although he saw an increasing number of younger and pre-pubescent cases just prior to the interruption of his work caused by the Second World War…
In 1940, Clifford Allen argued that treatments should be strictly divided between psychotherapeutic treatment for individuals who do not have an identifiable atypical anatomy and surgical intervention for individuals who do (Allen, 1940). Broster had the authority to decide or deny physical treatments, or to refer to Allen, who had the authority to decide or deny psychological treatments. In Allen's chapter of The Adrenal Cortex and Intersexuality, he described a case study of a woman who 'wants to be a man' so that she could marry her girlfriend. No physical abnormality was found, so Allen offered psychotherapy to address her (in his view) homosexuality, which she refused (Broster et al., 1938: 106–107). Despite the agency that Broster narrated in his case studies, medicine seems to have remained the authority and conveyer of legitimacy for individuals who did not conform to biological or psychological norms of sex.
Broster's 1944 book, Endocrine Man, sharpens the distinction between individuals with what the medical profession defined as physical or psychological abnormalities. He was very clear that in both cases, treatment of some kind should be pursued, to obtain as close a state to 'normal' as possible:
When their troubles are due to natural causes their plight is pitiable. Society in general is not a respecter of persons, is suspicious, and indeed often hostile to these abnormals. This attitude should be rightly reserved for the decadent imitators and propagandists of these perverted states, who form a festering sore in our midst. (Broster, 1944: 95)
Broster and Allen were Top Docs who were knowingly working with colleagues who were facilitating abuse. As was John Randell.
Clifford Allen certainly came up with an interesting invention outside of the field of gender identity. During the 1960s, the presence of Caribbean Angels in British hospitals was so visible that it inspired Allen to diagnose a medical condition, Heterochromophilia: 'the compulsion in human beings to choose a mate of a different colour'. Allen published a letter in the British Journal of Psychiatry in 1968 which claimed that Heterochromophilia stemmed from a newborn's identification with the first face it laid eyes on when it emerged from the birth canal. 'It seems to be that the condition is rare and not of great importance,' Allen wrote. 'But since we are getting more coloured women nursing white babies these days there is a likelihood of this becoming much more common'.
Those white babies will clap eyes on a big black face and a lifelong taste for mating with negroes will be established.
It would however be preferable to seeing this as soon as one is born, or indeed at any point during one's life:
I was exposed to dangerous levels of Enid Blyton as a child and I had a copy of the later notorious Three Golliwogs book which contained the line about a big black face at the window. When I was a student, I had a friend who hadn't been exposed to Enid Blyton and I told him that the three gollies were called Golly, Nigger and Wog. He suggested that Blyton should have written in a fourth golly, Bleck Bestard. Thatch and Denis had investments in South African businesses at the time of this conversation, but their only reason for refusing to impose sanctions on South Africa was the suffering that sanctions would inflict on the people living in the townships. In South Africa as well as in Gwynedd.
Dafydd's mate Lord David Ennals, a Minister in the DHSS, 1968-70 and Secretary of State for the DHSS, April 1976-May 1979, was Chairman of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, 1960-64. His brother John Ennals was Chairman of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, 1968-76. Lord Ennals' other brother Martin was the DG of Amnesty International. Jeremy Thorpe was an Anti-Apartheid Campaigner. They all colluded with Dafydd's gang, as did many more more at the forefront of the Anti-Apartheid Movement. If any of them had gone public on the crimes of Thatcher's friends Peter Morrison and Jimmy Savile, Thatcher's Gov't – one of the few props which the South African Gov't had during the 1980s – would have been brought down. But none of them did. They and their network instead worked very hard at contributing to the effort to ensure that I and others were never heard re Dafydd. See previous posts for further info about those who were so distressed at what was happening in South Africa that they assisted the gang who supplied kids to Thatch's friends for sex.
At the end of the 1950s John Randell wrote a paper on 50 transvestites and transsexuals that he had worked with. In his 1960 MD thesis 'Cross Dressing and the Desire To Change Sex' (University of Wales), Randell discussed 61 male to female and 16 female to male cases. This was one of the first higher degree theses on transsexuality. The Expert was born.
Part of Nye's Great Achievement.
During the 1960s Randell was seeing 50 cases a year, which rose to nearly 200 in the 1970s. And every one of them will have been treated like dirt.
They did For The Poor! It's what they dreamed of!
By Randell's own figures, he saw 2438 patients (1768 male to female, 670 female to male). He also spent half his time with general psychiatric patients. Told you so. This man was let loose on people whom he was able to detain for years in psychiatric hospitals or recommend for transfer to a high security institution, forcibly inject with drugs which could result in lifelong debilitating 'side effects' or of course kill the patient, forcibly impose ECT on the patient or lobotomise them against their wishes. Or he could simply refuse to treat desperately ill patients who were unable to look after themselves. In the event of ordering such 'treatment', or indeed witholding lifesaving treatment, Randell's manners, attitude or rapport with his patients will not have been any better than they were with Julia Grant.
In 1969, Randell's name was mentioned several times in press reports about the First International Symposium on Gender Identity and he testified at the Corbett vs Corbett trial that he 'considered that the respondent (ie April Ashley) is properly classified as a male homosexual transsexualist', which contributed to the legal problems of transsexuals and intersex persons in the UK for the next 35 years.
April Ashley is an English model and restaurant hostess. She was outed as a transgender woman by 'The Sunday People' in 1961 and is one of the earliest British people known to have had gender reassignment surgery. April Ashley was constantly told how vile she was by people who then asked her to have sex with them.
Corbett vs Corbett was the case concerned with April Ashley's divorce. Randell appeared for Arthur Corbett who was petitioning for his marriage to April Ashley to be annulled on the grounds that she was a man. Eeh, he's a raving male homosexual transsexualist. It's been diagnosed.
Here's one of Randell's volumes.
Readers might recognise the name of the person who wrote the foreword to the book, Prof Desmond Curran. Dessie has featured in previous posts (eg.'Meet The Gwerin!'). Dessie was the daddy of the paedophiles/people traffickers of St George's, Dessie having founded their esteemed Dept of Psychiatry, to which abusers flocked once Dessie set up shop. It was Dessie who 'treated' Norman Scott many years before Norman became headline news after Norman had a breakdown as a result of the harassment and intimidation from Mr Thrope and his friends. Norman ended up in the hands of Dessie because Dessie was an Expert on Sexual Perversion, rather than an Expert on criminals in public life who have shagged both Ma'am Darling and Lord Snowdon, who subsequently marry Miriam, the ex-wife of Lilibet's cousin and try to have their former non-Royal partners murdered. The diagnosis was that Norman was a worm, a liar, a vagabond, a loathsome spotted reptile and a man, or woman, who chews pillows for kicks and that Mr Thrope was one of the most intelligent, prettiest politicians who could have, had he wanted, become Prime Minister Of This Country Or President Of The World…
Mr Justice Cocklecarrot: 'And now you must retire, as must I'. Which indeed he did.
Harold Wilson's good friend the crooked solicitor Lord Arnold Goodman was the first to come to Mr Thrope's aid:
Lord Goodman was a big mate of Nye's widow Jennie Lee and Harold Wilson gave them the flagship project of the Open University to play with. By the time that Mr Thrope appeared at Minehead Magistrates Court for the committal hearing in Nov 1978, Sir David Napley was representing him. Napley turned up at Minehead in his Roller, just to show the magistrates who was boss.
George Carman QC the bent barrister, who had known about Dafydd and the gang and the Westminster Paedophile Ring for years, made his reputation by defending Mr Thrope at his subsequent Old Bailey trial in 1979.
Killer Carman hosted two junior barristers in his Chambers who became famous:
Norman, the only man at Mr Thrope's Old Bailey trial who told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth:
Now that Norman has been declared to be a Gay Icon at a film stars ceremony, I'm thinking of campaigning for him to become Head Of State. I don't know if Norman would want to do this, he might prefer to remain in Devon with his horses, but Norman would undoubtedly do a far better job of Leading The Country than the gang of lying criminals who tried to kill him.
I note that on the cover of Randell's book Dessie is described as the Chancellor's Medical Visitor. The Chancellor in this context is the Lord Chancellor, rather than the Chancellor of, for example, UCNW, which for the many years that Dafydd'g gang operated in UCNW was Carlo. The Medical Visitor is an expert accepted by the judiciary as being eminent in his field. So the Lord Chancellor accepted Dessie, the foundation stone of a sex abuse ring, as a Medical Visitor. That doesn't surprise me after the research that I've done over the past two years. That edition of Randell's book was published in 1976 – the book was originally published in 1973 – by which time business for Dafydd's gang was booming and as previous posts have made clear, the crimes of the gang and related gangs such as the one that Dessie founded in south London, were being concealed at the highest levels of Gov't. I'm not sure when Dessie attained the status of the Lord Chancellor's Medical Visitor, it could have been an honour conferred upon him years previously, but the Lord Chancellor 1974-79 was Lord Elwyn-Jones.
The Lord Elwyn-Jones
My post 'Lest We Forget' discussed how for many years, Elwyn Jones, a crooked Welsh layer, was one of the principal links between London and Wales in Dafydd's ring.
1976 was the momentous year in which panic gripped the paedophiles and their friends. In Jan 1976, Norman was prosecuted for a minor social security fraud which was linked to Mr Thrope's harassment and intimidation of him and the story was finally reported in the press. In March 1976, Andrew Newton, who alleged that he had been hired to kill Norman, appeared at Exeter Crown Court, was convicted of firearms offences and subsequently imprisoned. Norman appeared as a prosecution witness and explained what had been going on. It was becoming clear that Mr Thrope could well find himself charged with a serious criminal offence, which indeed he subsequently was.
The gwerin at UCNW began tearing each other's throats out in 1976 (see previous posts) and a new Chancellor of the University of Wales – who's constituent colleges included UCNW – was appointed, Carlo. Dai Francis, a Communist ex-miner who had led the south Wales branch of the NUM during the miner's strike which brought down Heath's Gov't also stood for election as Chancellor, but no-one was going to risk appointing Dai at a time like that. Dai was the father of Dr Hywel Francis, the Labour MP for Aberavon, 2001-15. Hywel Francis was succeeded in the seat by Windbag Jr. See previous posts…
Harold Wilson suddenly resigned as PM on 5 April 1976 and there has been speculation ever since that he knew that he had Alzheimers or ooh he was a KGB spy and was about to be outed… No, the reason was that Harold knew that things re the Westminster Paedophile Ring could unravel quite rapidly and he either jumped or was pushed by the security services. He was only pushed so far, Wilson remained in Parliament for many more years…
He's popped in for a curry on the way home and is ringing the wife with his lame excuses as to his delay.
Pussy Galore's fed up that he hasn't Told His Wife About Them yet.
So in true Paedophiles In Distress style, in 1976, an Expert who was Of The Gang published a book which advertised the credentials of the Expert who knew all about the loathsome spotted reptile who also happened to be a prosecution witness and could well be again in the near future but in a rather bigger case…
Norman, I am touched that the tactics employed to deal with you were very similar to those employed to deal with me! Hilarious, I begin a career in cancer research and suddenly Tony Francis's mate begins a career in cancer research, funded by the Cancer Research Campaign, just like I was and he even worked with people linked to the team of which I was a member. Only Peter Mcguire et al participated in a massive research fraud which ended in the suicide of one of their colleagues… Brown and I show an interest in publishing about the North Wales Hospital Denbigh and suddenly ooh look everyone, Dafydd's friends have published on the history of Denbigh, ooh you can't believe Brown and Baker, YUK, READ US, READ US, DON'T LISTEN TO THEM ANYONE, SHE'S MAD… Brown starts up a journal about Arts In Health and suddenly the Top Doctors are all Experts in Arts and Health.
Oh they are a fucking joke aren't they Norman. Brown shares his salary out with his friends who have been shafted by those bastards and makes do with three pairs of trousers and a few T shirty things and the troughing bastards continue to demand more and more and more, while stealing Brown's ideas because they just cannot do it themselves.
After the Corbett vs Corbett trial in 1969, which did transgender people no good at all, Randell was the Expert sought out by the media and appeared on the occasional radio programs. In 1980 the 'News of the Screws' claimed that Randell and his surgeon, Peter Phillip, had made London the 'sex-change capital of the world'. It will have been for people who were prepared to stuff Randell and Phillip's mouths with gold, there's always room for more gold in a Top Doc's mouth even after many years of Nye's largesse. Randell had not actually been in favour of surgery until his patients who had had surgery abroad returned with positive evaluations. Randell spotted the gold mine and knew that if he didn't start offering surgery as well, Top Docs overseas would be mining the rich seam that was waiting to be exploited… Even in the 1960s less than 10% of Randell's patients managed to achieve surgery and only a third of the male to females had vaginoplasty. In the 1970s when numbers increased, still only 15% of patients achieved surgery.
The irony is that during the recorded consultation with Julia, in her desperation to get help, Julia asked Randell if the process could be accelerated if she became a private patient. The old bastard snapped 'no, my opinion cannot be bought'. Oh yes it can and it was, but not by Julia.
When I was unlawfully refused all NHS care by the CEO of the NW Wales NHS Trust, I wrote to the then Welsh Gov't Health Minister Edwina Hart and asked to be therefore provided with access to alternative care. Edwina wrote back and said that she would not access any type of private care for me and she had done as much as she could. Well, she had confronted the CEO and Chairman of the Trust, but they ignored her, refused to investigate my complaint or provide the NHS care to which I was legally entitled, so Edwina backed off. I had given her enough evidence to have both of them arrested. The Welsh Gov't is now commissioning the private sector to treat thousands of patients because the NHS just has not done it. The Top Docs in Wales are also now deliberately keeping their waiting lists so long that desperate patients in severe pain are being forced to pay for private treatment. This is what happens when Gov'ts pander to criminals…
Drop a bomb on them someone.
With regard to transgender patients, I'm not at all sure that the sort of surgery that people were begging Randell for is a good idea, but there isn't the scope in this post to expand on precisely why. Can I just note that one of my main reservations is that I have known for years that distressed vulnerable patients end up in the hands of Randell and people like him, who cannot be trusted further than one can spit a rat and who simply are not the people to advise on complex gender identity problems? I do understand that people feeling uncomfortable with their gender can feel absolutely desperate, but this lot are really not going to help, even these days. Hamfisted liars and conmen who really are best avoided…
In 1990 Dafydd tried to persuade a 19 yr old patient at Ysbyty Gwynedd to undergo gender reassignment surgery because he was gay. Dr Sadie Francis was later appointed as a gender identity specialist for Gwynedd, although she had no experience in this area. In the late 1980s, Sadie was appointed as a consultant psychiatrist although she was not, by GMC regulations, permitted to hold a consultant's post, having not followed the appropriate career path. The GMC knew that a fiddle had been carried out and colluded with it. For many years the gender identity specialist in north Wales was Dr Kenny Midence, a clin psy who is a long standing member of Dafydd's gang and has co-authored with gang members. Comments online regarding Midence's service – he has a big private practice – suggest that if one hands the dosh over to Kenny, he'll write the referral for gender reassignment surgery. It probably makes the patients leaving Midence's office feel a lot better than those who left Randell's did, but the 'all comers welcome in return for dosh' approach could prove disastrous a few years down the line if someone regrets their decision.
When Randell realised that the customers and their money were going elsewhere, he began arguing that surgery could be appropriate and that psychotherapy did not work. Even then Randell restricted surgery to 'sane, intelligent, single and passable individuals'. 'Passable' meaning conforming to Randell's rather 1950s ideas of being 'ladylike'…. Dafydd once yelled at me that I was not a 'normal woman'. Of course I wasn't, I had a brain and I took the piss out of him.
Randell must have been a bit like one of the men in the Monty Python 'Nudge Nudge' sketch, in which Having Sex With A Lady is discussed. 'Photographs ay he asked him knowingly'. Yeh, the child porn that was being produced in north Wales by Dafydd's gang, or Dafydd's mate Prof Linford Rees's photos of Bathing Beauties (see post 'A Galaxy Of Talent').
Lest anyone wade in with analyses of Randell's idiocy being a consequence of him being in possession of testicles, let me tell you that I know Lady Doctors and Angels who's ideas are every bit as laughable. One Lady Doctor told a friend of mine that many Lady Doctors think that 'periods are horrible old fashioned things which we could well do without'; an Angel I know told female psych patients that they should always shave their armpits – similar advice was dispensed by 'Jackie' magazine in 1976; a Top Doc stated in front of female Angels that he could tell when his Lady Patients were well because they wore dresses; one of the much nicer Lady Doctors at Springfield Hospital always wore dresses to work 'because a lot of my young female patients have problems with their femininity, so I always wear a dress to show them that I'm proud to be a woman'. I can see the idea behind that and this Lady Doctor wasn't a vicious bitch like her colleagues, but she did know that some of her colleagues were sexually abusing their patients which might be why so many of the patients were in such distress. The nicer Lady Doctor wearing a dress wasn't going to be sufficient to address that…
I could supply readers with many more laffs, the point that I am making is that the Top Docs and co are frequently as thick as yak shit and narrow minded with it and of course in north Wales and other areas they were preparing their patients for the sex trade. There are also many Top Docs and their colleagues with serious problems themselves in terms of body image, eating disorders etc and in in abusive relationships. Then there are the swathes on anti-depressants or who have alcohol problems… Dysfunction is everywhere among them and often their children.
Until the end of his life, Randall continued to refer to patients, including post-operatives, by the pronouns of their birth gender and would tell a male to female accepted for surgery that 'you'll always be a man'. This won't have reflected any clinical position of Randell's, it'll just have been Randell trying to be as offensive as possible. The general psychiatry patients will have been asked to discuss their anxieties and then the info will have been used to cause them as much distress as possible. Marjorie Dawes is far more realistic than people who are not Empowered Service Users ever realise.
Most patients described Randell as brusque, rude and cold. However the model Tula aka Bond girl Caroline Cossey found him to be 'absolutely charming'. Tula equated to Randell's idea of what a woman was. Esther claimed that Sir Nicholas Fairbairn was absolutely charming and he was a child molesting, wife-beating drunk. See previous posts. If one wants to achieve stardom, one is obliged to say that foul people are absolutely charming.
Randell is the doctor who told Christopher Wilson, the author of Dancing With The Devil: The Windsors and Jimmy Donahue, that Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, had Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. This rumour was doing the rounds, but one needs to ask how would Randell have known and if he did know for certain, what was he doing breaching confidentiality? The Royals are not immune from being kicked in the chops by the Top Docs, when I worked at St George's, 1989-91, the gynae records of a member of the Royal Family were being passed around and were the source of much ribaldry and moralising. I suspect that this person had been smeared by the Top Docs for the same reason that Wallis Simpson was, but I am saying no more lest the target is identified.
Other patients of Randell's included Rachel Padman, the physicist and Alice Purnell, the activist.
Purnell as a boy was sexually and physically abused at prep school by the Headmaster who was later convicted. Purnell worked as a research chemist and volunteer with the Samaritans. In 1965 Purnell, with Sylvia Carter, founded the Beaumont Society for transvestites. Initially there were almost as many overseas members as in the UK, with some in Malaysia, Kenya and other parts of the Commonwealth. Alice became the overseas contact person because of her French. Regional contacts were appointed but were often the only member in their region. Purnell was offered surgery by John Randell in 1966, but turned it down and married a woman instead, going on to have a family with her.
Alice was on Radio 4 with agony aunt Claire Raynor. Raynor knew about Top Doctors facilitating abuse, including Dafydd et al, many years ago. She kept quiet because she wanted a media career as Claire Rayner. See previous posts. Alice attended the TV/TS conferences at Leeds University in 1974, and Leicester University in 1975 – the latter was organized by the Beaumont Society. Leeds and Leicester were both host to paedophile/trafficking gangs directly linked to Dafydd's gang. Also in 1975, Alice was a co-founder of the Beaumont Trust, a registered charity, which separately from the Beaumont Society, set up a helpline and published educational booklets on transgender topics. In 1976 Alice became Vice-President of the Beaumont Society, and President a year later.
In 1977, Alice trained as a nurse, specializing in geriatric services. She then worked as such for 26 years, at one time becoming a matron, including nursing support for transgender surgery.
She finally had surgery in 1982 after the dissolution of her marriage and remained President of the Beaumont Society until 1984. Alice joined HBIGDA (now WPATH) and attended its European meetings. She found that they were dominated by US concerns and that the Standards of Care were mainly to protect the surgeons and that the emphasis was on psychiatry rather than on psychology/counselling. Alice organized the first of the GENDYS conferences which was held at Manchester University in 1990, a conference which brought together each type of professional who deals with trans persons and each type of trans person. There were a further seven GENDYS conferences.
After obtaining a Masters degree in counselling and psychology, Alice co-founded the Gender Trust. It was a registered charity intended to help transgender rather than transvestite persons. Alice has lived most of her life in Sussex, the location of Dafydd's partner gang as well as the brothels to which John Allen trafficked kids in care from north Wales.
Alice Purnell was awarded an OBE in the 2012 New Years Honours List, 'for services to Transgender People'. Alice Purnell contributed "Why does transexuality exist?" and "TV, TG, TS – What's in a label?" in Michael Trevor Haslam's volume Transvestism: A Guide. Beaumont Trust, 1993. Michael Haslam was one of the psychiatrists who starred in the Kerr-Haslam scandal. Haslam and his colleague William Kerr were Top Docs based in Yorkshire who raped and assaulted their female patients over decades under the guise of 'sex therapy'. Numerous complaints were made about them by patients and a la Dafydd, their activities were openly discussed. An Angel who raised concerns was demoted and a Professor at Leeds who complained about them was told to shut it or he'd lose his job. There was no investigation until the 1990s when Kerr and Haslam were approaching retirement. Only one of them was imprisoned and not for very long. See post 'All The Ingredients Of A Scandal'. One woman patient who had been assaulted by them was told that she would not be allowed to amend the records that they compiled about her. When the scandal finally hit the media, representatives of MIND who had ignored my complaints about those we know and love in north Wales appeared on prime time TV declaring that they were shocked and disgusted.
John Randell died of a heart attack in 1982. Just as Mary Wynch's litigation against Dafydd and the gang began to move in the direction of the Master of the Rolls…
Here's a few of the Expert's contributions to the World Of Knowledge. I haven't got the time to review them here, but I can guarantee that there'll be plenty of laffs for anyone who reads them.
John B. Randell. "The Early Recognition of Psychiatric Disorders in Adults". Medicine Illustrated, vol IV, 215-220, 1950.
John B. Randell. "Euphoriant Effects Of "Preludin". The British Medical Journal. 2, 5043, 1957: 508-509.
John B. Randell. "Transvestitism And Trans-Sexualism: A Study Of 50 Cases". The British Medical Journal. 2, 5164, 1959: 1448-1452.
John B. Randell. Cross Dressing and the Desire to change Sex, MD Thesis, University of Wales, 1960.
John B. Randell. "Preoperative and Postoperative Status of Male and Female Transsexuals" in Richard Green & John Money (eds), Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969.
John B. Randell. "Indications for Sex Reassignment Surgery". Archives of Sexual Behavior, 1:2, 153-161, 1971.
John B. Randell. Sexual Variations. London: Priory Press. 1973.
John B. Randell. Transsexualism and its management, Nursing Mirror, 45-47, 1977.
David Pearson (dir). A Change of Sex. With Julia Grant. BBC TV. 1980.
Alice Purnell. "Dr John Randell", Beaumont Bulletin, 14:2, 1982.
"Dr J.B. Randell", S.H.A.F.T. Newsletter, 15, 1982.
Dave King. "Pioneers of Transgendering: John Randell, 1918-1982". University of Ulster: Gendys Conference, 2002. www.gender.org.uk/conf/2002/king22.htm.
I don't know whether the offensive John Randell of Charing Cross had offspring who became Top Docs as so many Top Docs do, but there is a Dr John Randall who was/is the Clinical Lead for the Blackburn with Darwen NHS Clinical Commissioning Group. His surname is Randall rather than Randell, but one look at Dr Randall's biography tells us that he will know about the ring in the north west of England which was facilitated by Dafydd's mates:
Dr Randall, MB ChB, MRCGP, DRCOG, DipOccMED, qualified from Manchester University in 1988. He completed his hospital vocational training in Blackburn before becoming a GP in his current practice, in 1992; he is GP Principal at Oakenhurst Medical Practice in Barbara Castle Health Centre. Prior to the CCG forming in 2013, Dr Randall was a lead GP in Cardio Vascular Health for Blackburn with Darwen Primary Care Trust from 2002 until 2008. As well as working in Occupational Medicine in various Lancashire industries, he was elected by his colleagues to the Local Medical Committee in 2011 and subsequently Vice Chair in 2012. He is a passionate advocate in emphasising the true value of family medicine. Dr Randall is married with three teenage children. His interests outside of medicine include Manchester City FC, exploring the Highlands of Scotland and long distance running.
John Randell the offensive git from Charing Cross is all over the internet on trans websites; I note that he was linked with many of those we know and love who have starred on this blog before, particularly the lunatic Cardiff University contingent such as Dr Roy Mottram, who was a leading light in the Beaumont Society, along with Alice Purnell. See previous posts. The medical students at Cardiff in the 1980s knew that Mottram et al were bonkers and to be avoided and by the time that they were junior doctors they knew about Dafydd's gang, about George Thomas, the lot. Those who didn't want to be forced out of medicine and have their lives destroyed kept quiet about all of it. Those docs are now in their late 50s/early 60s and occupy roles as Professors and leaders of the profession. The gang rape of children and murders of witnesses. They knew about it.
After the offensive git from Charing Cross blocked Julia Grant's surgery, Julia found another surgeon who Helped, Dr Michael Royle. After her gender reassignment surgery, Julia subsequently haemorrhaged, collapsed and nearly died. She was taken to hospital and was accused of having performed an abortion on herself. The Top Docs didn't even realise that Julia didn't have a uterus in which to gestate a foetus to abort, but had in fact undergone reassignment surgery which had gone horribly wrong. Julia believed that the Top Docs didn't understand what had happened because in those days gender reassignment was so rare. No, they were either grossly incompetent or they knew that Julia had crossed the path of the Fuhrer in Charing Cross so like Brown and I, Julia was on the blacklist and competent healthcare would never be forthcoming. I have not read anything that suggests that Dr Michael Royle, the surgeon who nearly killed Julia and left her with lifelong disabilities, was ever the focus of an investigation.
When the documentary about Julia Grant that I watched was screened, I was in the throes of Empowered Service Userdom and was regularly being arrested by Dafydd's gang on the grounds of their perjury. I watched the documentary with Patient F and we discussed how Julia's life had been wrecked by the Top Docs. A few days later we discussed the programme with Ella Fisk, the Angel who ran the day centre at the Hergest Unit. Ella told us that she was incensed by Randell's treatment of his patient and that when she was young, she had known a lot of Top Docs like that, but now things were very different. Ella knew about Dafydd and the gang. She knew that at the very time that she had that discussion with me, that I had no idea that Tony Francis had for years being forging documents and evidence about my alleged 'dangerousness', that he was still doing this and that Francis and Dafydd had collected 'evidence' from numerous third parties, even from people with links to the gang who knew me in Somerset when I was a teenager, which was being accumulated to justify my incarceration in a secure hospital.
Ella didn't conduct herself like they did, I liked Ella, but she knew what they were doing and did not raise any concerns. I suspect that Ella was terrified of them. But the security services knew what they were doing as well and they didn't stop them either.
There is a lot of info about the Charing Cross Gender Identity Clinic and it's history online; it is fascinating stuff and I could be blogging about that alone for several posts, so I'll just make a few brief observations here. People involved with the Charing Cross GIC were also involved with the Albany Trust, which has at times conducted out research in support of paedophilia. The Albany Trust received Home Office funding when Leon Brittan was Home Secretary.
Rachael Webb underwent gender reassignment surgery as a result of a referral from Charing Cross. I encountered Rachael Webb when I worked at Bangor University. After Brown and I had appeared in the media discussing the parlous state of the mental health services, Rachael began e mailing me. That was fine by me, we received communication from a few people who had been treated appallingly but who's complaints had got nowhere and one couple were in hiding after having received threats. However it became clear that Rachael's reason for contacting me wasn't to support an improved deal for the targets of those we know and love. Rachael asked Brown and I to act as expert witnesses to help her to get her HGV licence back after she had lost it as the result of a drink driving conviction. I explained that we were sociologists, we were in no position to act as expert medical witnesses. She suggested that we should just lie. I said no. So Rachael offered to pay us to lie. I said no and Rachael told me that it was OK to lie as an expert witness, a Top Doctor had done it before for her… He was probably called Dafydd.
John Randell's partner in crime, Peter Phillip, who performed the surgery on those whom Randell deemed suitable on the basis that they had the characteristics of Real Women and wore nylons, girdles, ran a duster over the shelves daily and couldn't do science, was a urologist. Virtually all trace of Peter Phillip has been eliminated from the internet. North Wales however has its very own Peter Phillip, in terms of a urologist who was enthusiastic about gender reassignment surgery. I am talking about Dr Chris aka Christine Evans, a local celeb in Denbighshire. Dr Chris is a retired surgeon who worked at the lethal Ysbyty Glan Clwyd, but like Dafydd, Dr Chris continued working after retirement and used this to protect Dafydd's gang. Dr Chris also served as a Councillor for Prestatyn and was a mover and shaker behind 'The Raven', a community pub. Dr Chris helpfully wrote a blog in her capacity as a Councillor, in which she explained that she would ensure that the jobs of her surgeon colleagues at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd would be protected now that they were under threat. Were these surgeons local heroes, dedicated to their patients? No. They were grossly incompetent, had killed a few too many people and openly boasted that they were running the 'service' for their convenience, not for that of the patients. They were so bad that even the Royal College of Surgeons wrote a report condemning them and saying that the situation could not be allowed to continue. Call Dr Chris!
The surgeons of Ysbyty Glan Clwyd had disgraced themselves to such a degree that no-one would listen to the word of a surgeon from Ysbyty Glan Clwyd, so Dr Chris couldn't wield influence in that way. Dr Chris hit on a better ruse. Dr Chris doubled up as a Patients' Champ and got her mates to appoint her to the post of Leader of the North Wales Community Health Council, the Patients' Voice and Watchdog. It wasn't difficult for Dr Chris to do this, because the CHC appointments are not in the gift of a democratic vote on the part of any group of patients, they are instead the responsibility of the Welsh Gov't and County Councils. Dr Chris wasn't the only Top Doc on the CHC; there was a GP from Anglesey as well as Dr Sadie Francis. Other CHC members included Councillors and their relatives or other NHS staff and their friends and relatives. More recently, Eleanor Burnham, a former Lib Dem AM who was a social work manager and member of the Mental Health Tribunal for the North Wales Hospital Denbigh, arrived on the CHC after poor old Dr Chris resigned in the wake of revelations re her agenda. See previous posts…
When Dr Chris was the Patients' Voice, the CHC simply refused to investigate complaints about the mental health services, as well as many other matters. Dr Chris had to attend the Betsi Board meetings in her capacity as the Patients' Champ, so Dr Chris would turn up for the meeting, stay for the first 15 minutes during which time she would Give Her Orders and then would walk out, leaving everyone else to remain for the rest of the 2 hour (or longer) meeting.
I studied Dr Chris and I noticed that she was of the variety of Lady Surgeon who was so butch that she certainly wouldn't pass John Randall's Femininity Test. Dr Chris, being a urologist, was well-known for operating on men's bits and she would use her status in this regard to intimidate men. All men, not just men upon whom she had operated. This is a known technique of Lady Doctors like Dr Chris; Dr Chris had a reputation among women patients of being a crude old bag who was not to be taken seriously, but men are less likely to take the piss out of the Dr Chris's of the earth. It's OK men, we did it for you! Dr fucking Chris had no idea of the hilarity that she elicited, which was how I was able to gather so much info on her and publicise why she had led a Military Coup at the CHC.
Dr Chris was a friend of Tony Francis.
Dr Chris enjoyed photo opportunities and during her Brave Battle to defend the jobs of the mates of a gang of paedophiles who were maiming and killing their patients. Dr Chris had her photo taken with Wales's most famous transgender person and indeed one of the most well-known trans people in the world, the travel writer Jan Morris. When Jan was James, she was part of the 1953 Everest expedition team, along with Sir Charles Evans, the Principal of UNCW for so many years… Jan and her son Twm Morys, another well-known Welsh writer, were generous in their praise of Dr Chris. Jan used to be a posh English man from Oxford but he reinvented himself as a Welsh woman of the proletariat. Jan's son Twm spent his early years in Oxford, then went to Shrewsbury School, but he too is now a patriotic Welshman. I have no objection to this, of course it's great when people who migrate to Wales love the country and Jan and Twm are both talented writers, but they have certainly provided much good PR for some very unpleasant people. See previous posts…
Jan Morris was one of John Randell's patients in the early 1960s. Randell did offer Jan surgery but she could only have surgery in the UK if she divorced her wife, which, to Jan's credit, she refused to do. So Jan went to Casablanca and had surgery there. Jan's book 'Conundrum' provided an account of it. Jan has not suffered at the hands of John Randell, Dr Chris et al in the way that so many others have, because Jan is posh, she has money and is a famous writer. So the Top Docs who butcher and abuse the proles use Jan for a bit of free publicity when anyone dares challenge them.
The security services knew that John Randell was a dangerous doctor who was part of a network facilitating serious organised crime. No-one stopped him. Hundreds of vulnerable, desperate patients continued to be sent into his jaws, as well as into the jaws of his mates.
So why did you let it happen then MI5? It wasn't just me, I was just one who happened to survive. Where were the public warnings? Why were patients not told?
Julia Grant was part of the LGBT scene in Manchester in the 1980s and 90s. She knew about Bob Hobson et al and she knew about the North Wales Child Abuse Scandal as well. I bet that Julia also knew about Sir Peter Morrison in Chester and the Westminster Paedophile Ring. If a kid who had grown up in care in north Wales could tell me some 10 yrs ago about the 'vice ring' in Buck House involving Backstairs Billy aka William Tallon, the Queen Mum's loyal retainer who died from an HIV related illness in 2007, why was that vice ring only reported in the media recently? It was in existence by the 1980s and probably years before then.
Now don't you worry my dear, we'll look after you…
An major issue of national security and indeed international security, this network of traffickers jetted off abroad and had a global network. MI5 infiltrated the network successfully years ago, yet they did not stop the abuse of patients, some of whom died. They did not protect people like my friends and I who had begun to realise the enormity of the wrongdoing, instead they did all that they could to put us out of action. Meanwhile a constant source of prey for those we know and love were Referred For Help. Whatever MI5 did do about those we know and love, it was far too little too late. You needed a plant in medicine who would have brought down the Top Docs 30 yrs ago C or M or whatever your name is. That was where the source of the biggest problem was.
Recent posts have explained how Dafydd was a personal mate of Harold Wilson's Health Minister, 1964-68, Sir Kenneth Robinson. Like David Ennals, Robinson was a big wig in MIND, so helped Dafydd from that angle as well as during the course of his job in Gov't. I explained in one of my comments following my post 'The Big Questions' that I have just acquired a copy of Richard Crossman's 'Diaries'. I have already spotted some treasures in Vol III, 1968-70, regarding Brian Abel-Smith and Peter Shore.
Professor Brian Abel-Smith was the LSE economist who designed the flawed economic model which underpinned Nye's NHS and who oversaw the escalating problems for the next few decades until in 1978, even Abel-Smith gave up with the civil wars and the intransigent and greedy Top Docs and left his role as a DHSS adviser to take a job as adviser to Peter Shore, the Labour MP for Stepney, 1964-74 and for Tower Hamlets, Stepney and Poplar, then Bethnal Green and Stepney, 1974-97.
Abel-Smith went to work for Peter Shore when Shore was Secretary of State for the Environment and advised Shore on housing and urban planning issues.
Shore was the MP for a constituency in which Dafydd's partner gang was busy. Kids in care from Shore's patch were sent to children's homes in north Wales. Shore sprang into action to keep the gang out of serious slurry again in the mid-late 1980s, when the HIV infected kids in care who had been trafficked back to the East End as rent boys began dying of AIDS. Shore extracted funding out of Ken Clarke at the DoH to convert the disused Mildmay Mission Hospital in Shoreditch into an AIDS hospice. The victims of John Allen and Dafydd's gang died in invisibility as their Confidentiality Was Protected, because they were People Who Were Stigmatised. See post 'Apocalypse Now'.
Shore was Head of the Labour Party's Research Dept, 1959-64. He was PPS to the PM Harold Wilson, 1965-66; Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Technology, 1966-67 and the Dept of Economic Affairs, 1967-69; Minister Without Portfolio, 1969-70; and in 1969, Deputy Leader of the Commons. In 1974 Shore became Secretary of State for Trade and in 1976, Secretary of State for the Environment. See previous posts for more info on Peter Shore who along with a few others was once A Future Leader Of The Labour Party.
Shore's constituency was the turf of Lord Elwyn-Jones and his artist wife, Pearl Binder and their social worker son. See previous posts…
Abel-Smith was gay – it was why he turned down the offer of a safe Labour seat, he feared that his 'private life' would be made public and cause huge damage – and he and his partner ran a gents outfitters/fashion chain which flogged clothes to the best, including the Rolling Stones, the Beatles and the Who. Dafydd's gang procured sex workers for those on the rock and pop scene at that time. See previous posts for info…
Abel-Smith was appointed Prof of Social Administration at the LSE in 1965, the year that he launched his fashion chain. He was a member of the South West Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board, 1956-63; Chairman of the Chelsea and Kensington Hospital Management Committee, 1962-62; a Governor of Tommy's, 1957-68 and of the Maudsley and Institute of Psychiatry, 1963-67. Abel-Smith was a Governor of every institution in which Dafydd and his mates were facilitating a sex abuse ring. Abel-Smith served as a Senior Adviser to the Secretary of State for the DHSS, 1968-70 and was reappointed in 1974.
A gang of paedophiles ran the NHS and things were arranged to ensure that they were placed in positions which enabled them to do this. Brown has told me for years that a great many people's careers and liberty depended upon and still depend upon Dafydd remaining unchallenged, no matter what he did/does.
I have also learnt from Crossman's Diaries that Peter Shore's wife was a Formidable Lady Doctor, Dr Elizabeth Shore. Prior to marrying Shore, she was Dr Elizabeth Wrong no less. Dr Wrong married Peter Shore in 1948. She was a Fellow, Royal College of Physicians, London; a Member, Royal College of Surgeons; a Fellow, Faculty of Community Medicine; a Member, Royal College of Physicians, London.
Dr Elizabeth Shore was Deputy Chief Medical Officer for the DHSS, 1977- 1984, while the Secretaries of State for the DHSS were David Ennals, then Patrick Jenkin, then Norman Fowler. While Dr Liz was at the top of the DHSS, Mary Wynch was unlawfully arrested and imprisoned, kids in care in north Wales were being gang raped, trafficked, fitted up for criminal offences and found dead, as were psych patients. Gwynne the lobotomist was sitting in the UCNW Student Heath Centre running the trafficking ring and Brown and I were openly threatened. St George's were running their ring in south London, assisted by the Maudsley and others… At the DHSS, Health Minister Lord Simon Glenarthur – who for years was a Director of the MDU, which supplied the legal advisers to Dafydd and the Drs Francis, legal advisers who knew that all three of them had perjured themselves when they demanded my imprisonment – ordered the NHS to use blood products purchased from the US known to be infected with Hep B and HIV. Thousands of patients became infected and many have died, more will do. See previous posts.
It was when Dr Liz was Deputy CMO that Patient F found out about the boys in the Ty Newydd children's home in Bangor being violently assaulted by their social workers. Patient F challenged the social workers about it and dared tell other people. He was soon visited by the Drug Squad, fitted up for class A drugs, then for arson, then imprisoned in Risley Remand Centre where he heard what was probably a murder of an inmate by the screws, was then transferred to the 'care' of Dafydd, who sectioned him for a year in the North Wales Hospital Denbigh… In 1993, the gang prevented F having any access to his new baby after accusing him of being a risk to the baby and placed the baby with a family containing two known child abusers. F never saw his son again.
Patrick Jenkin was a member of Middle Temple, alongside Ronnie Waterhouse and was of the same vintage as Ronnie. When questioned on matters of equal pay, Patrick Jenkin stated that if God had wanted us to have equal pay, He would not have created Man and Woman. And when they say no they mean yes. Jenkin's son Lord Bernard and Bernard's Lady wife are both busy Tory peers. See previous posts.
Norman Fowler was the man who, along with Dr Liz's boss Sir Donald Acheson – another mate of Dafydd's – persuaded Thatch to agree to the AIDS public education programme, although Thatch had traumas over the references to the words 'back passage', by explaining to her than those friends and Ministers of hers who were forcing their members into the back passages of the boys in care in north Wales and elsewhere were at serious risk of contracting a virus which would kill them and even BUPA wouldn't be able to save their lives. Someone explained to Thatch that when Peter Morrison had anal sex with kids in care, his penis ruptured the capillaries in their back passages and HIV, being carried in body fluids, was a lot more likely to be transmitted than when Denis did the business with Thatch via her front bottom. Although had Denis been infected, Thatch would not have been 100% safe. Which is why the people forced into sex work by Dafydd charged extra for Doing It Without A Condom. See previous posts for more Acheson and Fowler-related fun.
Thatch allowed the public education campaigned but she was shocked and disgusted at What They Did and we really Didn't Need To Hear About It All The Time.
Dr Liz was Dean of Postgrad Medicine for the North-West Thames Region, 1985-93 and Dean of Postgrad Medical Education for the North Thames Region, 1993-95.
Dr Liz was a Director of the Medical Women's Federation, 1991-92 and the Policy Studies Institute, 1992-98.
Dr Liz was appointed Companion, Order of the Bath (C.B.) in 1980. As Mary Wynch finally emerged from the North Wales Hospital Denbigh and Mr Thrope had just a few months previously been found Not Guilty.
Dr Liz became Lady Shore of Stepney on 5 June 1997, when her people trafficking husband became Lord Shore, as the world called the former kids in care who were by then giving evidence to the Waterhouse Inquiry liars because they had criminal convictions – witnesses to Dafydd's criminality ended up with criminal convictions, even those who were medical researchers with postgrad degrees – and drug problems. One of the Shores' children died as a result of illicit drug use.
The Shores were a couple of swells who lived in the best hotels.
We've got a Lady Doctor if you'd prefer to see her!
Can you just find me one who's not a bloody sociopath working for a gang of sex offenders, male, female or intersex, I don't mind really?
They All Did it To Help The Poor!
Bethnal Green, where in 1986, I and my friends were threatened by sex offenders and nasties linked to Dafydd's gang (see previous posts eg. 'The Turn Of The Screw'), was on Lord and Lady S's manor. The area has now been gentrified, so the Poor who were Helped can't afford to live there any longer.
Author Sally BakerPosted on January 12, 2019 January 15, 2019 Categories Bangor University, Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, British Medical Association, Cancer Research, Community Health Councils, General Medical Council, Gwynedd Social Services, Jimmy Savile, Lawyers and Judges, Margaret Thatcher's Cabinet, Maudsley Hospital, Medical Defence Union, Mental Health Charities, North Wales Child Abuse Scandal, North Wales Hospital Denbigh, North West Wales NHS Trust, Prisons, Springfield Hospital, St Georges Hospital Medical School, Substance Misuse, Uncategorized, University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, Welsh Assembly Politicians, Welsh Government, Westminster Polticians, Ysbyty Glan Clwyd, Ysbyty GwyneddTags Albany Trust, Alice Purnell, American Surgical Association, Amnesty International, Andrew Newton, Anne Jenkin, Anti-Apartheid Movement, April Ashley, Bangor University, Barbara Kahan, Beaumont Society, Beckenham Hospital, Bernard Jenkin, Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, Blackburn with Darwen PCT, BMA, Bob Porter, Bradfield College, Brain, British Journal of Psychiatry, Bute Hospital, Cairo University, Cancer Research Campaign, Caroline Cossey, Charing Cross Hospital, Chelsea and Kensington Hospital Management Committee, Cherie Booth, Chesham Cottage Hospital, Christopher Wilson, Church Army, Claire Rayner, Clifford Allen, Commonwealth Medical Advisory Bureau, Commonwealth of Nations, Corbett vs Corbett, CRC, Cynthia Phillips, Dai Francis, David Andrew Griffiths, Denis Thatcher, Dr Bob Hobson, Dr Christine Evans, Dr Dafydd Alun Jones, Dr Elizabeth Shore, Dr Elizabeth Wrong, Dr George Phillips, Dr Hywel Francis, Dr John Randall, Dr John Randell, Dr Kenny Midence, Dr Michael Haslam, Dr Michael Royle, Dr Peter Mcguire, Dr Roy Mottram, Dr Sadie Francis, Dr T. 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Radio 4 announced this morning that Baroness Jean Trumpington aka Trumpers has died. I can only echo the sentiments of Trumpers's mate Thatch during the Falklands conflict when South Georgia was recaptured in April 1982: Rejoice!
Trumpers enjoyed so many biographical highlights that I will refer readers to my post on the life and career of Trumpers, '95 Glorious Years!' for full details, but Trumpers' greatest achievement was surely during her time as a junior Health Minister when she appointed Jimmy Savile to a senior management post at Broadmoor Hospital, in which role he subsequently raped and sexually assaulted a number of female patients, resulting in two of them committing suicide.
Here is a brief celebration of Trumpers' life in pictures.
Trumpers' was born on 23 October 1922 into an incredibly wealthy family which was hit by the Wall Street Crash when Trumpers' was a child:
It was OK though, Trumpers's dad and mum had so much dosh that even after they lost millions, they were still far wealthier than virtually anyone else in the UK and continued to live the life of Riley, hobnobbing with Royalty.
Trumpers's childhood playmates included the Carey-Jones's, members of David Lloyd George's family from north Wales. Two of the Carey-Jones's were members of the gwerin who created havoc in north Wales when there was a challenge to the Top Doctors of the Walton Centre after the wife of the VC of Bangor University failed to survive her encounter with them. Trumpers' was also friends with Jeremy Thorpe, who was seven years younger than Trumpers.
Trumpers' only ever had one job until Thatch gave her a peerage and appointed her as a junior Minister and that was when Trumpers worked behind the counter in Peter Jones's as a young woman. Trumpers was sacked after allowing one of her mates to steal from the store:
Peter Jones played a part in Trumpers' life once more many years later when she was a member of the Lords. Trumpers invited one of the Directors of Peter Jones to tea at the House and demanded discounts on expensive goods what with her being a Lady and no-one at Peter Jones twigged that this was the thieving cow whom they had sacked decades previously. Trumpers got the discounts and on subsequent shopping trips to Peter Jones, the staff scurried around ordering taxis for her and carrying all the bags of discounted goodies that she had purchased, lest Trumpers suffered from tired arms.
As a young woman, Trumpers' was groped by David Lloyd George while she was staying at his mistress's house:
Trumpers' dad was involved in running The Windmill Theatre; it opened in 1931 and naked girls famously stood motionless on stage throughout all performances. There was never any improper behaviour at The Windmill, because if there had have been it would have been closed down. On one occasion Trumpers and her dad had a good laugh when the men in the audience at a 'private showing' scrambled over the seats and stormed the stage to grope and manhandle the naked girls.
In later life, Trumpers maxed out on having Worked In Intelligence At Bletchley Park. By Trumpers' own account, she was only 'employed' there in a very junior capacity after her dad had a word with someone, was bored out of her head and spent her entire time messing about with her mates or escaping to London to go gambling and to get pissed.
Trumpers thought that she might have met Alan Turing on one occasion, although she wasn't sure. Whether she did meet him or not, Trumpers hated poofs and once left a party when she realised that there were some of them in attendance.
Trumpers was one of those who made a lot of noise about putting her name to the Campaign To Pardon Alan Turing. Unfortunately by the time Trumpers et al did that, Turing had been dead for many years, having killed himself in the aftermath of his conviction for Being A Queer and experiencing Help For His Homosexuality from the Top Doctors.
Trumpers' best mate at Bletchley Park was Sally Norton who later married Bill Astor and became mistress of Cliveden:
Sadly Bill wasn't very nice to Sally and once she had produced a male heir Sally was dumped and Bill remarried.
Nonetheless Trumpers continued weekending at Cliveden. Trumpers' continued partying at Cliveden after Bill dumped his second wife and married Bronwen Pugh, who went to school in Dolgellau and was the daughter of Sir Alun Pugh, a Welsh Judge.
Bill's mum Nancy hated all of Bill's wives and made their lives very difficult. Nancy is a Feminist Icon on account of her being the First Woman To Be Elected As An MP. Although she wasn't, there was a Woman Elected As An MP before Nancy Astor, but everyone's forgotten about her. Just as Trumpers' hated poofs, Nancy hated Jews.
The interior of the Fasanenstrasse Synagogue in Berlin after Kristallnacht, part of the Holocaust:
Trumpers was attending parties at Cliveden throughout the Profumo Affair:
Trumpers met Lilibet at Cliveden:
Trumpers never liked the common slappers who found themselves sitting at the dinner table at Cliveden next to members of the Royal Family and Russian spies and she did know that None Of It Was Bill Astor's Fault.
There was a happy ending though. Stephen Ward 'committed suicide'
and Christine Keeler went to prison for perjury although she had been terrorised by a gangster with a gun.
Harold Macmillan's Gov't fell
but it wasn't too bad because although Macmillan initially refused a peerage in 1964, he later relented, so he had access to a comfy chair and dining facilities. In old age Macmillan's successor as PM Sir Alec Douglas-Home lived in the same retirement apartment block as Trumpers.
Bill Astor dumped Bronwen and she was kicked out of Cliveden along with her two young children and blamed for the whole mess, being nought but a Welsh slapper.
Bill Astor died not long afterwards, in Bermuda.
Here's a few images from Hogarth's 'A Rake's Progress':
Call Me Dave's wife Sam's mum is married to Bill Astor and Sally Norton's son, William Astor III.
Profumo redeemed himself by throwing himself into charidee work with Toynbee Hall in the East End with fallen women and rent boys. The sort of rent boys who's services Lord Bob Boothby enjoyed while he was shagging Harold Macmillan's wife.
After more years of partying and drinking, Trumpers' married Alan Barker, a Master at Eton. Barker didn't have any dosh but he knew a great many Posh Rich people and a few former PMs.
Barker was appointed Headmaster of The Leys School, Cambridge
Trumpers threw herself into Cambridge life and Conservative politics and she made many good friends:
Trumpers became Lady Mayoress of Cambridge and Barker fumed after he was told that when he was misusing the Mayoral car for personal business, he had to remove the flag from the car. Trumpers was told by the police that it was OK for her to keep the unlawful offensive weapons that they knew were in her house even though as a magistrate and Lady Mayoress it could prove difficult if this ever became public.
Mind How You Go Sir, particularly when you're in the Mayoral car.
Meanwhile, in the Third World:
Trumpers was obliged to resign as a magistrate when it was discovered that she had been entertaining the Cambridge Rapist at her house. Trumpers continued with her work as a prison visitor, with Unmarried Mothers, the Mentally Ill and Juvenile Delinquents, making many useful contacts along the way.
Trumpers was involved with Addenbrookes Hospital
Has she fragrance? I have no idea, but she did perjure herself during that trial and only Tuppence was ever charged.
Barker was subsequently appointed Headmaster of University College School in Hampstead. As the Headmaster's wife, Trumpers entertained pupils' parents to tea, including Harold Wilson.
In Feb 1980 Trumpers' received a life peerage.
Trumpers was always frank that she was only ever able to have a political career in later life because of Thatch's kindness in giving her a peerage and she remained loyal to Thatch for ever after.
Barker's old pupil from Eton, Douglas Hurd, of whom Trumpers confirmed Barker was 'very, very fond', was asked by Barker to Get Trumpers A Job. So Hurd gave Trumpers a role in the UN's work with Wimmin. Thus Trumpers got to know Sally Mugabe.
In 1992, Sally was a patient at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington and Trumpers went to visit her. Trumpers was at the time Baroness-in-Waiting to Lilibet.
No-one knew that Sally Mugabe was being treated at St Mary's and indeed died there, the world was told that Sally was treated and died in Harare, because President Mugabe didn't want to admit that she'd gone to Britain for treatment. Sally Mugabe was in St Mary's under an assumed name although the Top Doctors all knew who she was.
Trumpers later pissed Robert Mugabe off when she let slip that she had visited his wife at St Mary's, particularly as Robert Mugabe had been having an affair with Gucci Grace at the time. Here's a PR shot:
Somewhere along the way Trumpers became a member of the Privy Council, where once more all rules were flouted.
As a junior Health Minister, Trumpers appointed Jimmy Savile to the senior management of Broadmoor Hospital
although Trumpers allowed Edwina Currie to take the blame for this after Savile's crimes finally were publicly admitted after his death
What was kept even more quiet than Trumper's decision re that appointment was Savile's sexual assaults on Broadmoor patients and the subsequent suicides of two of them.
Trumpers served as a Health Minister alongside Lord Simon Glenarthur, who made the decision to use infected blood products purchased from the US to treat NHS patients. Thousands of NHS patients contracted Hepatitis and HIV as a result and many of them have died.
Lord Glenarthur was a Director of the MDU when the MDU provided Dafydd with free legal advice during Dafydd's attempts to frame me for criminal offences in order to have me detained in Broadmoor.
There is one other OAP who has lived through nearly as many of these 20th century Events as Trumpers; a man not born into privilege a la Trumpers but who nevertheless found himself crossing her path many years ago as a result of their shared interest in Helping Those In Need:
God Save The Queen. Who won't be with us for much longer.
Baroness Jean Trumpington: aristocrat, socialite, member of Thatch's Gov't. Her contribution to society can be summed up thus:
As any fule kno, Marx believed that the Point Is To Change It. The Life and Career of Trumpers demonstrates quite clearly that it certainly does need changing. Now.
The people's flag is deepest red,
It shrouded oft our martyred dead,
And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold,
Their hearts' blood dyed its ev'ry fold.
Then raise the scarlet standard high.
Within its shade we'll live and die,
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,
We'll keep the red flag flying here.
Look 'round, the Frenchman loves its blaze,
The sturdy German chants its praise,
In Moscow's vaults its hymns are sung
Chicago swells the surging throng.
It waved above our infant might,
When all ahead seemed dark as night;
It witnessed many a deed and vow,
We must not change its colour now.
It well recalls the triumphs past,
It gives the hope of peace at last;
The banner bright, the symbol plain,
Of human right and human gain.
It suits today the weak and base,
Whose minds are fixed on pelf and place
To cringe before the rich man's frown,
And haul the sacred emblem down.
With heads uncovered swear we all
To bear it onward till we fall;
Come dungeons dark or gallows grim,
This song shall be our parting hymn.
Author Sally BakerPosted on November 27, 2018 December 4, 2018 Categories Bangor University, Jimmy Savile, Margaret Thatcher's Cabinet, Medical Defence Union, North Wales Child Abuse Scandal, Special Hospitals, Uncategorized, Westminster PolticiansTags Addenbrookes Hospital, AIDS, Alan Barker, Alan Turing, Alec Douglas Home, Bangor University, Baroness Jean Trumpington, Bill Astor, Bletchley Park, Broadmoor Hospital, Bronwen Astor, Bronwen Pugh, Christine Keeler, Cliveden, David Cameron, David Lloyd George, Douglas Hurd, Dr Dafydd Alun Jones, Edwina Currie, Eton College, Falklands, Grace Mugabe, Harold Macmillan, Harold Wilson, HIV, HM the Queen, Jeffrey Archer, Jeremy Thorpe, Jimmy Savile, Karl Marx, Kristallnacht, Lady Mary Archer, Lord Bob Boothby, Lord Simon Glenarthur, Margaret Thatcher, Mayoress of Cambridge, MDU, Nancy Astor, Peter Jones, Prince Charles, Privy Council, Profumo Affair, Rab Butler, Robert Mugabe, Royal Family, Sally Mugabe, Samantha Cameron, Sarah Norton, Sir Alun Pugh, Sir Peter Morrison, St Mary's Hospital, Stephen Ward, The Leys School, The Walton Centre, Toynbee Hall, University College School, Wall Street Crash, William Waldorf Astor III3 Comments on Rejoice!
Some scholars of Wales have maintained that until relatively recently, Wales was a land peopled by a 'gwerin', a population of rural dwelling folk indigenous to Wales who formed a sort of classless society in which there was no sub-group in a dominant social position. Other people have maintained that the notion of a gwerin is silly – I think the person who was ruder about the idea of a gwerin than most was Kim Howells, I imagine that he had some very harsh words for the gwerin once he'd stopped rolling around laughing – and that Wales was as much of a class-based society as most other societies. There was indeed a class structure in Wales and quite a rigid one, but it was not one that equated very well to the class structure used by sociologists who wrote about England. This used to cause Brown and I a lot of problems when journal articles that we had written about the recent history of Wales were peer-reviewed by people who very obviously had a great deal of experience of urban English sociology but did not know much about rural Wales fifty years ago. Rude comments would be returned such as 'the authors state that these were disadvantaged people. Farmers are not disadvantaged people.' Well no, barley barons in Lincolnshire aren't, but they are not quite in the same situation as certain Snowdonia hill farmers were in the 1950s…
The excesses of journal reviewers notwithstanding, I cannot really subscribe to the notion of a gwerin, but I know that some of those who were very influential in UCNW (Bangor University) in previous generations absolutely maintained that a gwerin existed and indeed that they were members of the said gwerin. A number of the gwerin who ran UCNW also ran a trafficking gang along with Dafydd, which targeted, er, the lower orders. Which sounds rather to me like a class structure.
I was dwelling on the gwerin the other day when I was reading Dr David Roberts's 2009 book on the history of Bangor University. Dr Roberts's volume names a few who most definitely believed themselves to be of the gwerin and the names were familiar to me; I can remember some of them from my days as an undergrad and I was aware of others because parts of Bangor University are named after them etc. Dr Roberts's book gives detailed accounts of some legendary events in the recent history of Bangor, including those which set the scene when the cohort of students of which I was one arrived.
I have mentioned in previous posts that UCNW was in danger of shutting down in the 1980s after an onslaught from the UGC. I had always believed that the axe was wielded by Sir Peter Swinnerton-Dyer in the mid-1980s (see previous posts), but Dr Roberts's book informs us that a near killer blow was inflicted upon UCNW by the UGC in 1981, which shattered the paedophiles' friends who were running UCNW at the time. It was when the axe was about to be wielded again a few years later that someone thought to remind Thatch's Gov't that this institution was full of people who were facilitating the Westminster Paedophile Ring or were keeping quiet about it. The member of the gwerin who actually reminded the UGC of that was a man called Alwyn Roberts, a PVC whom I have been told also spent time as a missionary. According to Dr Roberts's book, Alwyn Roberts worked as a senior lecturer in the Dept of Social Theory and Institutions (the Dept where I worked after finishing my PhD, but it was known by then as Social Sciences), but in the late 1970s when UCNW was in deep financial difficulty, a reorganisation took place and Alwyn Roberts became Director of Extra-Mural Studies.
The Waterhouse Report provides much information about the qualifications and work histories of those accused of abusing kids in north Wales or colluding with abuse. I have mentioned previously that a great many of those who abused the kids qualified at Cartrefle College at Wrexham, which became NEWI and then Glyndwr University. I received information from a former Cartrefle student telling me that standards were very low there and that the social work course tutors had an arrangement with Nefyn Dodd and Lucille Hughes to identify students who were potential whistleblowers and either remove them from the course or to force them out of their jobs after they had qualified.
A number of other people named in the Waterhouse Report as abusers held either degrees from UCNW – Lucille Hughes was a UCNW graduate – or social work qualifications gained from UCNW, particularly those people in more senior positions. They will have been students in the Dept of Social Theory and Institutions. Alwyn Roberts will have known them – UCNW was and is still small enough to ensure that people in Depts do know each other – and he knew who they were working with after they qualified and what was happening to the children in their care.
Dr Roberts's book mentions that Alwyn Roberts had served as Principal of Pachhunga Government College in India, as a member of Gwynedd County Council and as a Governor of the BBC. So Alwyn Roberts had all angles covered. He worked in the Dept which trained the social workers who were then employed in children's homes run by Gwynedd County Council, in which a paedophile ring was operating. Or they could pop over to the children's homes in Clwyd, which were part of the same ring. I have mentioned previously how many journos in BBC Wales were networked with Dafydd or even knew him personally and were happy top broadcast what they knew were lies about his alleged expertise and the state of the mental health services and other parts of the welfare system in north Wales. At the same time Alwyn Roberts was one of UCNW's senior managers.
The Vice-Principal of UCNW from 1981 onward was Professor Geoff Sagar, who was a member of staff in the Dept of Plant Biology and who taught me. Geoff Sagar knew virtually everything that I have blogged about staff in Plant Biology colluding with Dafydd's gang. He knew that some of the staff in his Dept were married to people who were members of the gang because they were married to social workers or Top Doctors and he knew that one of his lecturers, John Wilson, was having sex with local school girls and that this was openly discussed. It was of course openly discussed in terms of people's concerns that John was going to get caught, rather than with any degree of concern as to what was happening to the girls. The girls whom John had been seen with were described by Dr Adrian Bell's wife Alison, a technician in Plant Biology, as 'rather slaggy girls'. Well they won't have been conducting themselves in the way that most of the children of the UCNW staff were, but the kids of UCNW staff hadn't been removed from their families and been forced to live in a children's home where they were violently assaulted, raped and coerced into working as prostitutes. If the kids tried to make complaints to the police, the police refused to record the complaints or threatened to arrest the kids themselves.
In the 1980s, one of the Gwynedd social workers responsible for the area of Bangor in which the Ty'r Felin children's home was located was Meri Huws (see eg. post 'People With Energy'). Meri later became a lecturer at Coleg Menai – where many of the non-academic staff employed by UCNW trained – and the Normal College, which trained teachers and was also colluding with Dafydd's gang. Then Meri was employed by Bangor University as the Director of the Dept of Lifelong Learning, which was the then incarnation of the Dept of Extra-Mural Studies previously run by Alwyn Roberts…
By the way Alison, I sat in your husband's office distraught and told him that Brown was receiving death threats. He blanked me. As did your mate Dr D.G.E. Wood, but then Wood was facilitating the trafficking ring anyway. If two intelligent adults had gangsters after them, I don't rate the chances of 14 year old girls. As for the student whom you described as 'obnoxious' after he was sectioned in Ysbyty Gwynedd by the gang, well part of his distress was that his girlfriend was being targeted by them.
Just how stupid were you all??? The undergrads were being terrorised by a criminal gang but all you could do was obsess about nonsense like them wearing alternative clothes or blowing dope, it was ridiculous. As for Dafydd famously telling the Welsh Baptist Union that learning Bible verses in Welsh as a child can protect against a serious moral collapse in later life (see post 'A Serious Moral Collapse'), just about the only people in Bangor who hadn't suffered from a serious moral collapse were the students and even some of them succumbed, such as the psychology and social work students.
Somebody reminded me recently that Adrian Bell's hobby was vintage cars, he collected and traded them. I have been told that all areas of the lives of Dafydd's Little Helpers were used to shore up the gang, so someone ought to take a look at who in the vintage car world had links with Adrian and others who worked at Bangor University or in north Wales.
Geoff Sagar's son was a vet. My post 'The Wretched Of The Earth' described how targets of Dafydd's gang were refused treatment for their pets by the local vets in Gwynedd. Dr Katz, a Polish vet in Llanfairfechan who dared treat the pets of those who had spilt the pints of the paedophiles, was hounded out of the area during the years after the millennium.
In June 1994, Alwyn Roberts led a Joint Working Party which held discussions with a view to merging UCNW with the Normal College. Dr Roberts's book states that Alwyn was a 'skilled negotiator' 'in whom officers and staff of Coleg Normal had considerable confidence'. They probably loved him because they and the teachers that they trained were also colluding with, or at best simply ignoring, the trafficking ring which Alwyn Roberts knew a great deal about.
I will return to the other people involved in these negotiations in future posts…
Dr Roberts's book discusses the time – or rather one of the times – when key figures at UCNW all started hitting each other. I knew that things had become very fraught at UCNW in the late 1970s, which was when Dafydd had Mary Wynch illegally arrested and imprisoned; Mary worked as secretary in the massively dysfunctional Agriculture Dept, so I guessed that Mary had found something out about that Dept… What everyone knew at the time, even the students, was that the UCNW farm, which was under the domain of the Dept of Agriculture, was so badly mismanaged that it went bankrupt, plunging UCNW into severe financial difficulties. UCNW bailed College Farm out and a few years later it went bankrupt again. It was no advert for the Agri Dept or UCNW.
Lord Kenyon, the President of UCNW, 1947-82, considered his two big interests to be agriculture and health services. Lord Kenyon held numerous public positions, including that of Chairman of Clwyd Health Authority in the 1970s. Lord Kenyon's son Thomas was known to be sexually abusing at least one boy in care in north Wales and was eventually caught red-handed in the late 1970s. The boy was sent to a detention centre after Thomas Tyrell-Kenyon made a complaint of theft against him. Among many other things, Lord Kenyon was a member of the North Wales Police Authority, a JP and the most senior Freemason in north Wales. Thomas faced no charges. Thomas died of HIV/AIDS in 1993. See previous posts for further details.
Dr Roberts's book explains that UCNW became increasingly troubled during the latter half of the 1970s. There was much friction on the basis of language, with some students and staff feeling that there were far too many students from England who were overwhelming Welsh speaking students. This was a sore point for many because UCNW was proud of being a local, Welsh institution which had been established for people in north Wales.
Sir Charles Evans, the Principal of UCNW, 1958-84, was Welsh in that he grew up in north Wales and had learnt Welsh as a boy, but Sir Charles is the sort of person that demonstrated the myth of a gwerin. Sir Charles was 'Welsh' but he was posh. He was sent away to a public school at a young age – Shrewsbury – and then went to Oxford where he studied medicine. Charles Evans was completely unsympathetic to the concerns and protests of the Welsh language students and took a highly confrontational approach to them. The students enjoyed a lot of support from some of the gwerin on the staff, including those in very senior positions and the gwerin went to war with Charles Evans in an attempt to force him to retire.
In April 1981 – three months before the UGC wrote to UCNW telling them that they were going to be clobbered financially – a group of fourteen senior academics at UCNW signed a letter to Lord Kenyon stating that Sir Charles Evans could no longer 'carry the burden' of leadership. Non-professorial staff also wrote about their concerns re the 'present leadership'. By April 1981, Mary Wynch had begun legal action against Dafydd and the gang and it was clear that everyone could find themselves in a lot of trouble.
Sir Charles had been in a wheelchair for a long while having developed MS when he was quite a young man, which was why he gave up his job as a Top Doctor in Liverpool to become Principal of UCNW in the 1950s and he was becoming increasingly disabled. However Evans was a member of the successful 1953 Everest expedition so he was made of stern stuff and was fuming at being told that he wasn't up to it any longer, although he was fully aware that he wasn't able to do the sorts of things that he had even just a few years previously. Evans maintained that the College was being subjected to 'wanton efforts at disruption by small groups of misguided people'. Which it was, they were assisting a trafficking gang which Evans had ignored because many of his Top Doctor colleagues had been involved for years, but now the gwerin were at each others throats.
Lord Kenyon was most concerned at the escalating civil war and consulted his Vice-Presidents, Sir Elwyn Jones and O.V. Jones.
I discussed Sir Elwyn Jones and his wrongdoing in my post 'How Much Greater Is A Man Than A Sheep?'. Sir Elwyn was a solicitor who also served as the Labour MP for Conway. Sir Elwyn Jones was a member of the Caernarfonshire County Council, 1945-69. Lucille Hughes worked as a children's social worker for Caernarfonshire County Council. Sir Elwyn knew about Dafydd's gang in its early days and indeed the abuse in the region which pre-existed Dafydd's gang upon which Dafydd built. Sir Elwyn's son Elwyn Jones was also a solicitor in Bangor and served as the Treasurer of UCNW. Elwyn Jones the son of Sir Elwyn was most definitely a crook, he was fully on board with Dafydd and the gang and was involved with the fitting up of innocent people who were targeted by the gang (see previous posts). David Jones, the present Tory MP for Clwyd West, worked in Elwyn Jones's practice in Bangor in the 1980s when Elwyn Jones helped the gang frame people.
O.V. Jones had served as a senior Council member and was one of those who was supportive of the Welsh language protests on the part of the students. In 1976 four students officers of the Cymric Society were suspended from UCNW for their role in the occupation of a College building and this was followed by a massive student protest in the town of Bangor which was addressed by that well-known member of the gwerin, Dafydd Iwan. Dafydd Iwan later became a Gwynedd County Councillor and then leader of the Council when the gang raged within the Council's children's homes. Another student occupation followed and the College authorities applied for a High Court order to repossess the building. O.V. Jones, a Welsh speaking obstetrician, was right behind the students and raised concerns at the harsh treatment of the four who had been suspended from College. O.V. Jones asked for clemency to be shown and was joined in this by the Archbishop of Wales, Gwilym Williams, a man who was fully on board with Dafydd's gang (see previous posts).
Gwilym Williams was one of those who, along with Alwyn Roberts, used his knowledge of Dafydd's gang to twist the arm of the Thatcher's Gov't with regard to Welsh language issues such as the creation of S4C and the passing of the Welsh Language Act, 1993. Thatcher was utterly unsympathetic to these matters that were dear to the hearts of the gwerin, but a few words in the ear of Willie Whitelaw and others about that gang soon did the trick (see posts eg. 'The Cradle Of Filth' and 'A Bit More Paleontology').
O.V. Jones also knew about the grim reality of Dafydd's gang and was part of the nuts and bolts of that gang. Previous posts (eg. 'I Predict A Riot', 'Yours Truly, Angry Mob' and 'It's Bachman Turner Overdrive – Not Arf') have detailed how all the Top Docs in north Wales co-operated to unlawfully ensure that no woman in north Wales could access NHS abortions, even years after the Abortion Act 1967. However any woman with the money would be referred on demand to a private abortionist in Chester who was known to have put women's lives at risk. When freshers enrolled at UCNW, one of the first things that they were given was information on to how to access a private abortion via a referral from the Student Health Centre. Brown and I thought that this was rather unsavoury and a strange thing to prioritise, but we didn't realise that a trafficking ring was operating in the region, targeting female students as well as other people and that the people running the ring were the very same Top Doctors who denied women NHS abortions but referred them to their mate in Chester for a fee, no questions asked. Less privileged women who didn't have the dosh for the butcher in Chester were sent to stay at the North Wales Hospital Denbigh to be 'assessed' by Dafydd, where the view was taken by everyone who sexually exploited them there that they couldn't get more pregnant and they were then denied an NHS abortion anyway because everyone was. The women did not emerge from Denbigh with a baby, yet a great many of them went through the doors pregnant.
O.V. Jones will have known what was happening to those babies. He will also have known about the babies who were unlawfully removed from some adult women with full capacity who gave birth at St David's Hospital during the 1970s after their families had conspired with Top Doctors; he will have known about the obstetrician working at St David's in the 1970s and 80s who was so dangerous that he left several babies brain damaged or dead and who was smuggled quietly out to begin a new career in Australia after he inflicted serious injuries on the baby of a policeman who was not going to keep quiet about it; he will have known about the forced sterilisations of Denbigh patients to avoid any problematic pregnancies as a result of them being abused by mental health staff and prostituted by the gang; he'll have known about the girls in the children's homes being fitted up with contraceptives at the age of 13 or 14; he'll have known about the kids in children's homes becoming pregnant and catching STIs; and he'll have known about the underaged girls who were not in care but became pregnant being denied abortions and told 'you got yourself here, you can now look after the baby' when they very obviously couldn't cope with a baby and the baby would end up being taken into care during the early years and handed over to the trafficking gang… See previous posts eg. 'The BMA And It's Ethics'.
O.V. Jones and his mates were responsible for a bloody nightmare of the sort that laypeople believed had died out decades previously in mainland Britain. Everyone conspired to keep quiet about this, including the gwerin.
The gwerin continued fighting each other at UCNW and in June 1982 Charles Evans announced that he would retire in 1984, but by then he would have reached retirement age anyway. In Oct 1982 the gwerin forced Lord Kenyon out of his position as President and another paedophiles' friend of the highest order was parachuted in to replace him, Sir William Mars-Jones, a corrupt High Court judge from a Denbighshire farming family and a friend of Sir Ronald Waterhouse. See previous posts.
In Jan 1983, O.V. the family butcher became Chair of Council at UCNW and it nearly ended in tears very shortly afterwards. In May 1982 UCNW had advertised for a new Registrar but the selection committee did not appoint any candidate. The post was readvertised in Jan 1983 and in March 1983, the selection committee, led by O.V. the family butcher, recommended the appointment of Frederick Smyth, then Registrar and Deputy Secretary of Stirling University, a non-Welsh speaker. The UCNW Council then blocked the appointment. The warring gwerin on the Council had appointed Gwyn R. Thomas as Acting Registrar in Dec 1982 and although the appointment was confirmed at a later date, O.V. the family butcher threatened to resign as Chair of Council. The gwerin somehow persuaded him not to. I would not be surprised if that was related to the havoc that had broken out in the Student Health Centre by the summer of 1983 as a result of the chaos resulting from Dr D.G.E. Wood and his colleagues being far more interested in running a trafficking ring than caring for their patients. If the ship lost the family butcher there is no telling what would have happened.
Gwyn R. Thomas must have been the long thin man who was the Registrar whom I went to see in 1984 to raise my concerns about Gwynne the lobotomist forging medical records and libelling me. The long thin man just freaked after about two minutes and threw me out of his office, because I suspect he knew how far this would unravel if anyone tugged at a few of the threads.
People like Lord Kenyon – who didn't speak Welsh and was based in Shropshire – did not equate to any aspect of the gwerin's notion of what the gwerin was, but this gwerin were all in it together, literally. That is what really bound the gwerin together rather than any Welshness or classlessness. Gwerin like Sir William Mars-Jones – who fulfilled the qualities of a member of the gwerin in that he was rural and Welsh – and Dafydd, who was quite happy to lay claim to being a member of the gwerin when it suited him although he was accumulating vast wealth by procuring child sex workers for Thatcher's friends, were essential to the working of a huge machine that the rest of the gwerin were depending on for a comfortable life. After all if the gwerin didn't have jobs for themselves and their families as teachers, lecturers, social workers, Angels etc they'd be in the same boat as those who were being fed into Dafydd's machine along with their children, which was not an appealing prospect.
Previous posts have discussed at length how the member of the gwerin which was Dafydd networked with corrupt professionals and elites in England which was what completely protected him, while he really shafted the locals as well as the kids in the children's homes in north Wales, many of whom were disadvantaged kids imported from English metropolitan Councils.
Before Dafydd and John Allen ever went into business big time in the late 1960s, Dafydd and Gwynne the lobotomist had a sound track record of serving the interests of the most unlikely gwerin, such as Bertrand Russell and his friend Sir Clough Williams-Ellis's bohemian mates of the Bloomsbury Set in England who holidayed at Croesor in north Wales. See previous posts eg. 'The Village' and 'So Who Was Angry About What?'.
So let's meet yet more of those very grand powerful gwerin who doubled up as really grand Top Doctors, upon who's support Dafydd's gang in north Wales were 100% dependant. O.V. the Welsh family butcher could never have kept this show on the road alone.
Dafydd's gang's powerbase lay in Liverpool and London. Liverpool was known as the 'capital of north Wales' for a long time; there was/is a big Welsh community in Liverpool and in north Wales the influence of Top Doctors who trained at Liverpool exceeds the influence of Top Doctors who trained at Cardiff. Liverpool Medical School saw itself as superior to Cardiff Medical School, but both institutions were concealing the serious crime committed by Dafydd and the gang.
Dr Roberts's book on the history of Bangor University noted that Prof Fergus Lowe massively expended the Psychology Dept in the late 1980s and 90s by 'working with health authorities'. Yes, Fungus knew what the Top Docs were up to and he knew what they had done to me and my friends, including killing one of them and Fungus had them all over a barrel. The research funding poured in…
Let us start with a lifelong and close friend of Sir Charles Evans himself, a Lady Doctor, Anne McCandless.
McCandless's biography gives every indication that she knew about the trafficking ring in north Wales with which Sir Charles Evans colluded throughout the years that he was Principal of UCNW, 1958-84. Although much of this blog discusses paedophile/trafficking gangs, I am not someone who believes that every other person is a paedophile; the problems is rather that the many, many relatives/friends/colleagues/associates of those who are sexually abusing or exploiting people collude with, or cover-up, for them, even when they are fully aware of what is going on. That has caused the real rot. I imagine that Anne McCandless fell into this category.
Anne McCandless was a fellow medical student of Charles Evans who lived in the same house in Liverpool as Evans did when he was appointed as a surgical registrar to the Northern Hospital. Like Evans and Denise Morin, whom Evans married, Anne McCandless was a keen mountaineer. She will have climbed in Snowdonia, it is the mecca for the day to day climbing activities of mountaineers in the north west of England and is used as a training ground to prepare for the big expeditions to places like the Himalayas.
The Royal College of Physician's 'Lives of the Fellows Online' as usual provides an interesting account of McCandless's life.
Anne will be remembered for her mischievous sense of fun and the way she loved to shock.
The tributes in 'Lives of the Fellows Online' always describe the most unacceptable conduct on the part of Top Docs in a very euphemistic way, so I suspect that Anne McCandless was probably deeply unpleasant to many people.
This she did expertly with her characteristically tongue-in-cheek outrageous comments.
As I thought. Anne was a Top Doctor so it was just tongue-in-cheek outrage. If she was a patient she'd have been refused treatment on the grounds of her 'offensive behaviour'…
She was born in Baltimore, USA. Her father, Joseph McCandless, was an industrial chemist… Some three years after Anne was born, the family moved to Southport, Lancashire, where Anne attended Southport High School and then the University of Liverpool where she graduated in 1939…
Liverpool University doesn't seem to have been too fussy with regard to the Top Doctors whom it allowed to qualify throughout much of the 20th century, after all Dafydd qualified from Liverpool in the 1950s. McCandless and Evans were of the earlier generation of Top Docs who were the senior colleagues of Dafydd and his contemporaries. No-one felt obliged to reign in anyone else no matter how appalling their misconduct. Many of the Docs of Evans's vintage were, as was Evans himself, very much gentlemen for whom medicine was an interesting side-line while they got on with the real business of the rest of their life, which in Evans's case was mountaineering.
Sir Robert Charles Evans
He wanted to get to the top of Everest, he wasn't even going to bother with 'now don't you worry dear, we'll look after you'. Although it was refreshingly honest of Evans to admit that he was far more interested in trekking in the Himalayas than in looking after patients. However, even an Everest hero should have woken up when he was told that there was a massive sex abuse ring in operation in north Wales and the Top Docs in his Student Health Centre were at the centre of it. Indeed when I told that Registrar Gwyn R. Thomas that all was not as it should have been, I hadn't got much further than 'I wish to raise my concerns about the conduct of a man called Dr Gwynne Williams in the Student Health Centre' and there was an explosion…
I didn't even mention the words 'greasy old pervert propositioning the female students' because I knew that I'd be told that I'd 'misunderstood', so I stuck to the libellous comments and the altered medical records…
The corruption in medical circles in Liverpool was probably embedded by the time that Charles Evans and Anne McCandless came along, but they certainly added to the party. Their generation of Docs are well-remembered by people of my age and many of them were obnoxious with truly dreadful attitudes to their patients or at least those who were members of the lower orders. When Ed Miliband waxes lyrical about his Uncle Harry's dedication to the NHS, Ed fails to mention the entrenched social snobbery that Docs of Uncle Harry's generation showed, that they had in turn learned from the generation before them. I picked up a copy of S. Mervyn Herbert's 1939 book 'Britain's Health' from a second hand book shop recently and it is a fine example of the thinking of Top Doctors of McCandless's generation, who trained Uncle Harry et al. S. Mervyn Herbert's book has a foreword by Lord Horder.
Lord Thomas Horder was 'an English physician recognised as a leading clinician and diagnostician of his day'. He was educated privately and at London University and Bart's Hospital, London. Horder began his career at Bart's and, when still quite young, successfully made a difficult diagnosis on King Edward VII which made his reputation. His patients included every British monarch from Edward VII to Elizabeth II (except Edward VIII), as well as two PMs, Ramsey MacDonald and Bonar Law and Labour Leader Hugh Gaitskill.
Horder was involved in many official committees including advising the Ministry of Food during WW II. After the war he opposed many of Nye Bevan's plans for the NHS and may have helped modify some of those less palatable to the medical profession. Horder held the positions of Deputy Lieutenant County of Hampshire; Extra Physician to the Queen (formerly Extra Physician to King George VI); and Consulting Physician to St Bartholomew's Hospital (1912–1936). Horder served as President of the British Eugenics Society, 1935-49 and as President of the Cremation Society of Great Britain, 1940-55, when he died.
In 1902 Horder married Geraldine Rose Doggett. Their son was the publisher Mervyn Horder, who died in 1997. Their daughter Joy Horder was mother to architect Edward Cullinan and married to a chief physician at Bart's.
Some senior staff at Bart's were facilitating organised abuse very long time ago. Dafydd's mate Professor Linford Rees added to the fun considerably in the 1990s, but there was a problem at Bart's decades before that. Lady Juliet Bingley concealed abuse in her capacity as a leading light in MIND from the 1970s onwards but seems to have been involved in colluding with abuse in High Places previously as well and was the daughter of a Bart's surgeon who worked as an almoner (social worker) at Bart's.
Lord Horder dripped with contempt for the plebs as did Top Docs like McCandless and Evans. In many ways they were admirably tough which is how Evans got to the top of Everest, but that didn't equip them very well for being Top Doctors to the masses, particularly as so many of those Top Docs came from such privileged backgrounds themselves. By the time that people of my generation encountered them, the impression gained was 'this person really should never have thought that medicine was a suitable career for them'. I understand that it is an historical phenomenon, but Ed et al need to stop banging on about those kindly Top Docs of yesteryear who Loved Their Patients and the Poor. Most of them didn't.
[Anne McCandless] spent the war in Paddington and Hackney…managing 150 medical and paediatric beds…
Hackney was a site of serious disadvantage and organised child abuse, which included the welfare state transporting kids to Australia knowing that they were going to lives of slave labour and cruelty and, by the 1970s of course, sending them into the arms of Dafydd's gang in north Wales.
she held house officer appointments in anaesthesia at Derby City Hospital and Leicester Royal Infirmary,
There were long-standing paedophile rings in Derbyshire and Leicestershire which by the 1960s/70s had linked up with other rings including Dafydd's…
but returned to Liverpool to undertake training in paediatrics under Norman Capon. She was neonatal paediatric register at the Liverpool Oxford Street Maternity Hospital and was then appointed lecturer in child health in the newly formed department of child health with clinical duties mainly at the Royal Liverpool Children's Hospital. In 1950 she was appointed consultant paediatrician at Warrington, but after about a year she was appointed consultant paediatrician at Liverpool's Alder Hey Children's Hospital and also neonatal paediatrician to the maternity units at Sefton General Hospital and Broadgreen Hospital.
So McCandless was back in the nest of vipers and the facilitators of abuse in Liverpool by the late 1940s and in 1950 she was appointed to a senior position in paediatrics in the region. Dafydd's mate and umbrella Professor Robert Owen who concealed very serious crime on the part of Dafydd et al in 1989 (see post 'Enter Professor Robert Bluglass CBE') was a leading light in orthopaedic surgery in Liverpool in the generation which followed McCandless. Robert Owen was a consultant at Alder Hey Children's Hospital and Broadgreen as well as at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Hospital, Gobowen. Owen was a farmer's son from Pwllheli and a key figure in the network of corrupt professionals who caused such problems in north Wales and facilitated the trafficking ring. Owen was busy calling the shots virtually until the day he died in March 2018. See post 'In Memoriam – Professor Robert Owen'.
Her pioneering work began in Warrington.
There was abuse in children's homes and other institutions in Warrington and the staff/abusers were part of the wider network covering the north west of England/north Wales. By the 1960s/70s, no politician in the region would do anything to tread on the toes of the ring, even when kids in care under 16 years old who were victims of the gang were fitted up and found dead in Risley Remand Centre, which was located in Warrington. After all, their constituents were those facilitating the ring. See eg. post 'Include Me Out'.
At the time 20 per cent of all infants admitted developed gastro-enteritis and five percent died not from the original complaint but from cross-infection. To combat this Anne encouraged family doctors to keep infants out of hospital. Treating sick children out of hospital was not easy. It meant 30 domiciliary visits every year, often after midnight. The infant mortality rate was 80 per 1000 when she went to Warrington and 40 per 1000 a year later due to keeping sick infants out of hospital. When they had to be admitted to hospital, their mothers were admitted with them. In Warrington she used the private wing of the hospital to accommodate the mothers and at Alder Hey her two side wards. She also encouraged daily visits of patients to her wards, a practice which was years ahead of its time.
So, as is de rigueur, a Top Doc who knew about a growing problem of organised abuse facilitated by a criminal gang whom she remained silent about until the day that she died – seven months after the publication of the Waterhouse Report – has been constructed as a Pioneering Paediatrician who achieved Great Things. It is difficult to judge the achievements of the Top Docs because accounts of their lives are just so dishonest.
Her interest was in epilepsy and in the early 1950s she started an epileptic outpatient clinic at Alder Hey. Her neonatal unit at Sefton General Hospital was the first in the region to monitor the true glucose levels in premature babies. In 1953 she introduced endotracheal intubation and insufflation with oxygen treatment for birth asphyxia. This led to the establishment of a resuscitation centre at Alder Hey and this was the first of its kind in the country.
So whatever McCandless colluded with, her reputation was enormous and she will have been untouchable. Nothing that she did will have been questioned and if there were complaints about student or more junior staff such as Dafydd and Robert Owen, they will have been blown out of the water and the person who dared raise concerns marked for ever…
She was a general paediatrician. She married late. She met her husband Tom Rimmer (a County Councillor) when they were both members of the Liverpool Children's Regional Hospital Committee.
This was and still is the scale of the problem…
Following retirement in 1974 Anne moved to St Andrews in Scotland where other members of her family were living.
By 1974, Dafydd's gang were running Liverpool and north Wales was positively a production line for child sex workers. Anne's pal Charles Evans was presiding over UCNW which by then was a deeply troubled institution and an essential part of the ring . Gangs across the whole of the UK had linked up into one big network which had also spread into mainland Europe. These criminals were untouchable and received protection from the highest levels of Gov't. Anne McCandless will not have disappeared when she retired. Top Docs remain available long after retirement to give their unfailing support to other Top Docs who might be in trouble and to use their influence to the maximum. St Andrews is a hub of elite Top Doctors. Dafydd's mate Bluglass is an alumnus of St Andrews University and by 1974 Bluglass was Chair of Forensic Medicine at Birmingham University and Mr Big himself. Hundreds of kids from the West Midlands were being sent to children's homes in north Wales. St Andrews is such a hub of elite Top Doctors that the Royal and Ancient Golf Club at St Andrews doubles up as a networking base for them. Lord Robert Kilpatrick had a great time at the R&A. Kilpatrick was President of the GMC, 1989-95, during which time he colluded with a great deal of crime carried out by Top Docs including Dafydd et al. Prior to that, Kilpatrick had been Dean of Leicester Medical School when that institution had facilitated the trafficking ring which operated in Leicester which had links to Dafydd's gang in north Wales and involved Greville Janner. For more information on Kilpatrick see post 'Remember Girls – Never Get Into A Car With A Stranger!'.
Of course by 1974, Liverpool had become famous as a result of the popular culture which had grown up in the city some 15 years or so previously – Cilla, The Beatles etc… Dafydd's gang produced sex workers for celebs and the explosion of 'talent' in Liverpool, talent which was world famous and very rich by the mid-1970s, meaning that Dafydd had a whole new market and was now rubbing noses with celebs. As indeed Dafydd's family boasted about when they hurled abuse at Empowered Service Users in north Wales. Dafydd knew Really Famous People and was going to have us nutters arrested!
I usually visited St Andrews annually in August and renewed a 60 year old friendship with Anne. At my last visit in August 2000…She died suddenly later that month.
Thought as much, McCandless received regular visits, being on the Elite Top Doctors circuit until the very end. This account of McCandless's life and work was written by one of her Top Doctor colleagues, Robert McLaren Todd.
Robert Todd died in May 2008 and his obituary appeared in the BMJ.
Robert McLaren Todd was very active in the Church of England, in the world of classical music and in medicine. Todd was born in 1915 at Syston in Leicestershire. Robert attended the local Syston Church of England school (1920 to 1926) before going to Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys (1926 to 1934).
A combination of Leicester and the Anglican Church…
Todd then went to Trinity Hall, Cambridge (1934 to 1937) and St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London (1937 to 1940). Bart's again then. Dafydd's mate Professor Linford Rees was able to take things at Barts to a new level when he took up his Chair there in the 1990s because Linford moved in celebrity circles as a result of his daughter, the 1970s 'Poldark' actress Angharad Rees and her showbiz husband Christopher Cazenove, who starred in 'Dynasty' with Joan Collins et al…
Dafydd knows really famous people!
After qualification in 1940, Todd worked as a house surgeon at Bart's, then as a senior house physician post at Bart's and St Albans. This was followed by a stint as resident medical officer at Leicester Royal Infirmary and house physician at the Children's Hospital in Leicester, 1942 -45.
Barnett Janner, a lawyer from south Wales, served as the Liberal MP for Whitechapel, 1931-35 and as the Labour candidate for Leicester West, 1945-70, after which he was succeeded as MP by his son Greville.
In 1946 Todd became medical registrar at Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children, Hackney. Previous posts have named various members of Dafydd's network were based in and worked at Hackney and specifically the Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children.
In 1947 Todd relocated to Liverpool in the new Department of Child Health. Todd ran the MRC trial on the treatment of tuberculous meningitis at Alder Hey Children's Hospital. In 1953 Robert Todd spent a short spell at Harvard as a Fulbright scholar. Otherwise he continued working as consultant paediatrician at Alder Hey Children's Hospital and also at the Liverpool Maternity Hospital, where he was responsible for creating the first special care baby unit in the Merseyside region. In 1949 Todd founded the Liverpool Paediatric Club and he was its first Secretary.
Robert Todd was yet another member of the network which later protected Dafydd who was constructed as An Eminent Top Doctor. Establishing that special care baby unit will have meant that Todd was a Top Doctor who Touched People's Hearts. Bless!
Todd retired from Top Doctoring in 1979. Not that his influence waned of course. Todd was present at celebrations relating to Top Doctoring in 1999.
Throughout his life, Robert Todd exerted influence in the Church of England, which we now know concealed organised abuse. As a Top Doctor, Todd will have known about that and he may well have been consulted as to what to do with those clergymen who had been caught molesting. That was very often how the Church dealt with abusers in the Church.
In 1941, Robert Todd became a reader in the Church of England in the Cathedral of St Martin in Leicester and was licensed to serve in the Parish Church of St Peter and St Paul, Syston. He had previously been appointed assistant organist at Syston Parish Church (in 1930) and at the age of only 15 Todd had became a Sunday school teacher.
While Todd was resident medical officer at Leicester Royal Infirmary, 1941-45, he continued to be reader at Syston and on Sunday afternoons he took services at various churches in the Leicester diocese, often two services each Sunday. Towards the end of 1946, when Todd began work at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Hackney, he became reader at St Olave's Church, Woodbury Down, which was in the Finsbury Park area of London.
Finsbury Park is just down the road from Harringay which is yet another area with a history of the welfare services facilitating the exploitation and abuse of vulnerable people going back decades. By the time that Haringey Borough Council was making headlines as an example of all that was ridiculous in the 1980s, Dafydd's gang in north Wales were working in partnership with them. See previous posts.
Todd's reader ministry at Finsbury Park lasted for about 18 months before Top Doctoring took him to Liverpool. In 1948 Robert Todd became a reader at the Parish Church of St Mary, Wavertree, Liverpool. In 2001 Robert Todd celebrated his 60 years as a reader and at the beginning of 2002 he was appointed reader emeritus to 'mark his long and distinguished ministry' in this church. In September 2001, a week before Todd celebrated 60 years as a reader, he was interviewed on BBC Radio Merseyside for the religious affairs programme "United in Song" by Hazel Bradley.
When a medical student, Robert Todd was in much demand as a wedding organist. Throughout his life he played the organ in church and he gave organ recitals regularly in Merseyside.
Todd regularly attended the midweek evening concerts given by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra at the Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool for 25 years. For several years Todd travelled to Sheffield to watch the later stages of the Snooker World Championships at the Crucible Theatre. He supported the football clubs of Aberdeen, Leicester City and Liverpool.
Todd 'became a good friend of' Calday Grange Grammar School on the Wirral and supported their hockey teams whenever they played against Liverpool College. He was a regular member of the audience at Calday Grange concerts and was the guest adjudicator of their annual house music competition in February 1999.
Todd enjoyed travelling abroad, particularly to visit his daughter, Rosemary, in Ibiza. He loved visiting Scotland, especially Pitlochry in Perthshire and Todd also enjoyed travelling throughout England, visiting friends at Padstow in Cornwall. Todd was friendly with and regularly visited Professor Conor Ward.
Conor Ward is an Irish paediatrician who is the son of another Top Doctor who was also an Irish politician and member of Dail Eireann. Conor Ward studied at University College Dublin where he was involved in Irish language activism. He became auditor of 'An Cumann Gaelach' and Editor of 'An Iodh Morainn', the Irish language annual. Some of Dafydd's network have links with people involved with Irish language activism eg. Meri Huws.
Following graduation in 1947, Conor spent seven years working at Alder Hey. In 1956 he was appointed Paediatrician and Paediatric cardiologist at the newly founded Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin. In 1970 he was appointed Professor of Paediatrics at UCD. Ward was the first paediatric cardiologist in Ireland and one of the first internationally and he spearheaded the development of cardiology and cardiac surgery services for children in Ireland. Conor's wife Pauline was an Angel and worked with Conor. Ward 'championed' care for children with Down's syndrome and he received lifetime service awards from the Down's Syndrome Associations in Ireland and the UK. Ward also worked on SIDS.
Todd was also a good friend of Barbara Miroy, who was a high profile figure in the All Women's Hockey Association.
When Robert Todd married in 1945, the Bishop of Leicester performed the ceremony. Todd had three children and two grandchildren. His granddaughter Laura studied at Trinity Hall, Cambridge as had Todd and began her research career at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge. Todd's other granddaughter Stephanie is a social worker, as were her parents.
Robert Todd died in May 2008, so he was another member of Dafydd's Liverpool network who lasted until well after the Waterhouse Report. Furthermore Todd was a high profile figure in the Church. The Church colluded with Dafydd's gang and Theresa May, the daughter of a vicar who has made much of her active membership of the Church of England, served as a Councillor for the Borough of Merton, 1986-94, when Dafydd's associates at St George's Hospital Medical School and Springfield Hospital facilitated the trafficking ring in south London which was linked to the ring in north Wales/Cheshire. Merton was served by St George's Hospital Medical School.
The biggest and best gwerin were of course to be found in the London Medical Schools and Dafydd knew many of them, partly because of his stint 'training' at the Maudsley in the early 1960s, but also because one the biggest trafficking rings linked to Dafydd's gang in north Wales/Cheshire was the ring based in south London which was largely facilitated by the psychiatrists at St George's Hospital Medical School. It was as much of a stronghold of organised abuse as the Maudsley was.
The beginning of the empire at St George's was Desmond Curran. Desmond was the corrupt Top Doc to the stars. Norman Scott was sent into the caring embrace of Demond Curran in the 1960s after making those outrageous allegations about Jeremy Thorpe.
The Royal College of Physicians 'Lives of the Fellows Online' tells us all about Desmond:
Desmond Curran was one of the most distinguished clinical psychiatrists of his generation, and many of his pupils were to fill eminent positions in clinical practice and teaching in this country, and in many other parts of the world.
That will be the problem, those who learnt at the knee of Des will be in positions across the globe in which they are wielding influence and ensuring that the gory truth about Des and what was really going on in his flagship Dept at St George's never ever becomes public.
He was born in Devon, grew up near St Andrews and was educated at Wellington and Trinity College, Cambridge, before entering St George's Hospital medical school. He chose psychiatry, regarded in those days as a lowly walk of life in medicine, and was appointed house physician at the Bethlem Hospital in 1928.
No matter how much gushing was done about Des in later life, when he and his colleagues were wielding enormous power because of their roles in the Westminster Paedophile Ring, we need to remember that psychiatry – which has never been a speciality attracting the brightest and best – when Des was young was what one did if one had blotted one's copybook in a major way and was not going to be accepted in any other field. Psychiatry has been in such a bad way for so long that the few capable people who were interested in it nearly always changed their minds after a stint in psychiatry as a student or a junior doctor. I know why that was, it was because the whole field was dominated by abusive professionals and good Top Docs could make no impact and they walked away. Research carried out in the 1980s showed that virtually every medical student who had wanted to take up psychiatry changed their minds after doing their psychiatry placement. No-one dared publish the reason for this. But then the medical students in Cardiff were all telling each other not to, under any circumstances, take a job as a junior doctor in Bangor.
'We didn't know.'
It was because there was no nightlife in Bangor and ooh these whippersnappers want a certain lifestyle, I mean they're young professionals!!!
Oh no it wasn't. Never mind, the Welsh Gov't will offer them more and more and more money to solve the Recruitment Crisis in north Wales! Golden handshakes, golden handcuffs, yet another expensive advertising campaign telling them how great it is being a Top Doc in north Wales. You will still find that
When Desmond Curran worked at the Bethlem Hospital in 1928, conditions and practices were truly dreadful and at that time the Maudsley, the hospital linked to the Bethlem, was dominated by the Top Doctors such as Sir Aubrey Lewis who were viewed as the early pioneers in psychiatry and gosh were they mad and dangerous. Many of them were eugenicists and a few of them worked with some of the Top Doctors who later carried out human rights abuses in their role as Nazi Top Doctors. This should of course be viewed in the appropriate historical context, but my point is that some of the Maudsley crowd were considered mad and dangerous for their time, a la William Sargant, Dr Death's old boss at Tommy's (see post 'Dr Death'). Previous posts eg. 'A Galaxy Of Talent' and 'The Discovery Of A Whole New Galaxy…' provide an overview of some of their excesses. Because psychiatry was considered to be a dustbin for unemployable Top Docs – in many regions of the UK it is still viewed as such – Aubrey et al were isolated from other Top Doctors' specialisms and they did exactly what they wanted to patients whom very few people were prepared to defend. Psychiatrists are fond of suggesting that their profession has been smeared by overblown horror stories of stereotypical mad doctors running amok, but I suggest that the situation was and still is far, far worse than has ever been admitted. Abuse of psychiatric patients is endemic, the law is routinely flouted and there is no effective protection for patients.
[Desmond] received powerful encouragement from Edward Mapother and, after a period in neurology at Maida Vale Hospital, he proceeded with a Rockefeller travelling fellowship to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.
This is why when the going gets tough even the Obamas will give a helpful interview re the Miracles of Modern Medicine (see post 'Right To Reply').
He came under the influence of Adolf Meyer whose wide-spanning concept of psychiatry did a great deal to enrich and humanize the clinical practice of what had previously been a narrowly organic and descriptive speciality.
This is not true. Psychiatric patients remained on the receiving end of the most appalling brutality and neglect until the asylums closed down and after that they were left to become destitute or die in the community or of course go to prison for the most bizarre and ludicrous of reasons.
[Desmond Curran's] leading disciples in Great Britain included Desmond Pond; Aubrey Lewis; R D Gillespie and D K Henderson.
Sir Desmond Arthur Pond (2 September 1919 – 29 June 1986) graduated from Clare College, Cambridge and then studied at UCL and at Duke University School of Medicine, North Carolina. Pond was Senior Lecturer at the Maudsley, 1948-52, then consultant psychiatrist at the Maudsley and UCL, 1952-66. In 1966 Pond was appointed the first Professor of Psychiatry at the London Hospital. He was a founder member of the Institute of Religion and Medicine in 1964. Pond served on the Neurosciences Board of the MRC, 1968-72 and was President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1978-81.
Pond was a senior member of staff at the Maudsley when Dafydd 'trained' there at the knee of Dr Bob Hobson; Hobson was abusing patients. The activities of Hobson and his team were widely known and Pond spent his career protecting Hobson, Dafydd et al. Pond was knighted in 1981, which will have been at about the time (or soon after) that Mary Wynch began her legal action against Dafydd and the gang. Pond was further rewarded for his valiant defence of people traffickers when he was appointed Chief Scientist at the DHSS, a post he retained until his retirement in 1985, serving under Secretary of State Norman Fowler. My posts 'Socio-Political Context Of The North Wales Mental Health Services In The 1980s' and 'The Old Devils' describe how people who were known to be involved with the organised abuse of children and vulnerable people were systematically appointed to senior positions in the DHSS with responsibility for mental health. My post 'Always On The Side Of The Children' describes exactly the same process at work with Gov't advisory posts regarding children's social work.
The London Hospital is located in the East End and facilitated abuse and by the late 1960s/70s it was linked to Dafydd's gang. The Councils of the East End sent numerous kids in care to children's homes in north Wales where there were complaints of serious abuse which were ignored. Desmond Pond had an 'interest in the social psychodynamic and biological aspects of personality development, which he considered to be inextricably entwined'. As a result of this interest, at the London Hospital, Desmond Pond established a 'mother and child unit' which conducted 'research for investigating the formative years' and 'became a community service station for the treatment, social support and guidance of problem children and their mothers in Tower Hamlets in the East End or London'. Which presumably included recommending that those 'problem children' should be sent on placement into the hands of John Allen and Dafydd in north Wales. Little wonder that when Mary Wynch went into battle, Desmond Pond was given a K and an advisory position in the DHSS.
Can anyone explain why everyone accepted a situation in which an 'expert' in the 'social psychodynamic and biological aspects of personality development' who was carrying out cutting edge research into 'problem families and children' was recommending that those problem children were placed in the care of the associates of a man whom he knew to have a history of sexually exploiting vulnerable people and continued to place the children with those people even after complaints of the most serious abuse were made? And why did Thatcher's Gov't think it appropriate to give the expert in personality development a K after someone began legal action against the man in receipt of the problem children and the following year appoint him as a Gov't adviser, keeping him in that post until the legal action against his fellow 'experts' had been successful after clinical negligence was admitted?
The Lord Fowler Kt PC
Pond served as a member of committees and ecclesiastical commissions which 'explored problems that arose within marriage' and from escalating rates of divorce. Problems arising from clergymen who were molesting children perhaps?
While helping Dafydd during his time as a DHSS adviser, Desmond Pond 'succeeded in strengthening some bonds between the DHSS, the Medical Research Council and the Royal Colleges and in creating some new ones.' So Desmond created yet more links between corrupt professional people.
Desmond Pond, who ensured that an enormous paedophile ring carried out their business unhindered, was married to another Top Doc, Helen, a consultant physician and they had three daughters. Two of the daughters 'have proved to have outstanding musical talent and a third is a gifted zoologist'. How fortunate that Desmond's own children's social psychodynamic and biological personality development did not affect them in such a way that they were best served by living with a vicious criminal gang who beat and raped them and forced them to work as child prostitutes! Sir Martin Roth, another Top Doc who protected Dafydd, observed that these talented children of Pond's had obviously inherited Desmond's genes. Call me naive, but I suspect that the main reason why the three Pond girls turned out all wonderful is that Pond and his wife did not send them to live with Dafydd and John Allen. That was for the Problem Families of Tower Hamlets, as recommended by an Expert.
Pond died in Torquay, in 1986. Perhaps somebody ought to find out what was going on in Torquay when Pond was living there.
Another one of Desmond Curran's leading disciples was the aforementioned Sir Aubrey Lewis of the Maudsley, who was famously very mad and very unpleasant.
Dr R.D. Gillespie, yet another leading disciple of Curran's, trained as a Top Doc at Glasgow and then worked at the notorious Royal Mental Hospital in Glasgow. After a stint at John Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, Gillespie returned to England and worked at the Cassel Hospital and then spent a period of time as a research student at Cambridge. After that, Gillespie was appointed as a Top Doctor and lecturer at Guy's. During WW II, Gillespie worked as an RAF psychiatrist. His obituary in 'The London Times' stated that he considered that 'his essential job was to get the air crews back at work when the mental strain threatened a breakdown'. Was Gillespie ever driven to a near breakdown himself with the stress of carrying out bombing missions? Er, no, because Gillespie was safely on the ground and his life was not at risk. Ever. But do you know, poor Gillespie suffered even more than those young men whom he forced back into the cockpit even when they could take no more. It was explained in his obituary that 'the strain for him certainly undermined his health and illness troubled him'. Thank God Gillespie was a Top Doc, because had he been an Other Rank he could well have found himself accused of Malingering!!! Fortunately Top Doctors don't Malinger, they are 'troubled by illness' for which sympathy is obligatory. Sadly although Gillespie was one of Desmond Curran's leading disciples, the distinguished expertise of Curran et al were unable to prevent the eminent Gillespie dying at the age of 47. It must have been his genes.
Professor D.K. 'Dave' Henderson was the fourth person who was considered to be a 'leading disciple' of Desmond Curran. Henderson co-authored with Gillespie, before Gillespie's genes bit him on the bum. Henderson was born in Dumfries and in 1913 he was awarded a PhD by the University of Edinburgh for his thesis "Cerebral syphilis, a clinical analysis of twenty-six cases, seven with autopsy". He co-published – with Gillespie – A Textbook of Psychiatry (first edition 1927), which became internationally influential for several decades. A series of lectures that Dave Henderson gave in New York were published as Psychopathic States in 1939 and 'ended up contributing to a narrowing of the public understanding of psychopathy as violently antisocial, though Henderson had described various different types, many of which were not violent or criminal'. Yes, there'll be a Type for every occasion if someone needs discrediting. The Henderson Hospital, a specialist national unit in London set up to manage and treat 'psychopathic' personality disorder, was named after him.
Such is the Pressure On Services for the many different Types described by Henderson that some people Slipped Through The Net:
Dave Henderson was physician-superintendent in charge at the Gartnaval Royal Hospital in Glasgow, 1921-32. Henderson's textbook on psychiatry has been described as the key to the 'Glasgow approach' to mental illness, and Henderson in turn credited the approach of Adolf Meyer with whom he had worked with in America. Henderson also studied for some months in Germany with a key founder of modern psychiatry, Emil Kraepelin, whom he admired but found lacking in sensitivity to patients. I can only wonder what Henderson must have witnessed when he worked with Kraepelin.
Henderson was President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, 1949-51. He died on 20 April 1965 in Edinburgh.
Henderson taught Donald Ewan Cameron, who also worked at the Gartnavel Hospital. Cameron became President of the Canadian Psychiatric Association, American Psychiatric Association and World Psychiatric Association, but is mostly remembered for conducting harmful experiments on psychiatric patients as part of the MK Ultra project.
Henderson's approach as expressed in his textbook 'is also thought to have influenced R.D. Laing'. I presume that Henderson was one of those people who convinced Laing that there was something terribly wrong with psychiatry, because Laing always maintained that what he saw at Glasgow Medical School and at the Gartnaval Hospital was brutal and gross. Sadly Laing seems to have taken the Prof Fergus Lowe approach to a clean sweep. In the way that Fungus overthrew Dafydd in the Psychology Dept at UCNW but replaced Dafydd's regime with his own which was equally as toxic and destructive, it is now very clear that R. D. Laing had feet of clay. While Laing attained the status of a guru and was feted by the world's media, he abandoned seriously ill patients and had others banged up in the very hospitals of which he was so critical. Laing's own daughter ended up in Gartnaval and it was said that he basically just let her rot in there although he knew how bad the conditions were.
Someone who knew both Laing and Dafydd told me that they were very similar people. They built up a media presence and promoted the notion that they were radical critics but it was all a cover for the abuse and exploitation of very vulnerable people. One of the Hergest Unit patients had worked with Laing when the patient had been a radical in London in the 1960s – I'm not sure that the staff of the Hergest ever knew this, it wasn't as if most of them took any interest in their patients – and he told me that Laing treated patients very disrespectfully. This man said that there would be a queue of desperate people hanging around in the waiting area, all booked in to see Laing, some of them having travelled many miles and paid a lot of money for the privilege, all wondering where Laing was. They would then be given a message that Laing had been seen in the UK a few days previously so he 'might' be coming to see the patients. Everyone would hang around for hours, Laing would not show and there would be no apology or explanation. Which is exactly what happened at nearly every 'clinic' that Dafydd held, except of course for his 'substance abuse' clinics, where he would flog the prescriptions, or his 'sex therapy' clinics…
Having said that the Hergest staff might not have even realised that they had a patient in their midst who had been at the centre of Laing's circle in the 60s, I wonder if someone somewhere did realise that this man had dirt on Laing? I noticed that this man was as neglected as any other Empowered Service User at the Hergest Unit and although he was quite seriously distressed he was herded into ridiculous inappropriate 'group activities' and 'therapies' which were so obviously ineffective, but he was far too polite to point this out. He was really well-read, had done a great many interesting things when he was younger and had known a lot of famous people but had just been dumped in Felinheli and was largely ignored. He also had a serious back problem which left him experiencing intractable pain and whenever he had sought advice for this in Gwynedd he was told to practice Mindfulness. Including by Tony Francis, who practised Mindfulness himself but took strong pain killers – opiates – as well and killed himself nonetheless.
I wonder if it was no coincidence that the man who had observed wrongdoing in Counter-Cultural Places had washed up at the Hergest Unit at a time when the Empowered Service Users were dropping like flies? Particularly as I was told by a few people that at one point Dafydd et al at Denbigh (!) were styling themselves as Laingians…
Laing's detractors used to maintain that Laing was getting through an awful lot of sexual relationships with female patients too.
Laing has been dead for a long time now and he lost interest in psychiatry a long while before he died, but a great many people would have had an interest in keeping that man whom I knew at the Hergest Unit quiet because of all the celebs and other Thinkers whom Laing hung out with whose reputations need to be upheld. Laing's old colleague Joe Burke continues to practice and is well-embedded within north London psychotherapy circles, all of whom know a great deal about some of those whom I have named on this blog.
I wondered if Laing had links with Bertrand Russell and the crowd at Croesor (see post 'The Village'), who knew what Dafydd and the gang were doing. Many of them had doings with the Dartington crowd and Laing used to make guest appearances at Dartington Hall. Indeed I was going to try and get to one such event myself in the early 1980s, because when I was young I was quite attracted to that sort of thing, but Brown and I subsequently realised that many of those involved weren't all that they were cracked up to be and that there was a great deal of fuckwittery involved. The Dartington website is currently emblazoned with a message telling us that 'Dartington is not just a beautiful place to visit. It attracts people with big ideas who want to change the world'.
I won't hold my breath, we've been here before.
Could the Artistic Director at Dartington please do something about Dafydd as well as Universal Credit while she changes the world? Diolch yn fawr.
To return to the daddy of them all at St George's, Desmond Curran.
Desmond was too level-headed to espouse any teaching in doctrinaire fashion and, although influenced by Meyer, developed his own pragmatic style of clinical exploration and practice in psychiatry. He achieved the feat of being appointed as consultant to St George's Hospital at the age of 31.
This was the beginning of something terrible.
With the outbreak of war in 1939 he joined the Royal Navy, and established within it a worldwide specialist service in psychiatry – becoming its youngest surgeon-captain.
During that time, Curran gained knowledge of the shenanigans of those in Very High Places including Lord Louis Mountbatten, as described in my post 'The Defence Of The Realm'. It was concealing this which provided the powerbase for so many Top Docs as well as others, including politicians, who for the rest of their careers colluded with serious organised crime but were nonetheless considered untouchable. As a result, more than 40 years later, when I complained about a terminally ill lobotomist who was Of Them, some of the biggest names in psychiatry colluded to have me banged up for life, one of my best friends was murdered and there were attempts to murder Brown and his brother.
Sorry the Giants Of Psychiatry, but you're fucking mad. Even Lord Louis wasn't worth all this.
And what do you do?
We run a murderous sex abuse ring!
At the end of the war he returned to St George's and began work on what was to become the most important endeavour in the course of his long and distinguished career: the creation of the teaching hospital department of psychiatry at St George's Hospital.
Which by the 1980s was nothing more than a vehicle to facilitate a pan-European trafficking ring and the associated network of serious organised crime.
He had attracted to his side a number of men of clinical maturity and insight, including 'Bird' Partridge and Paul, later Sir Paul, Mallinson.
I will return to these men later in this post.
Desmond's exceptional clinical skills were the product of discriminating observation, an abundance of tolerance and compassion
Top Doctors excel in 'discriminating observation'. It is what allows them to carefully note that their patients were involved in benign school pupil pranks at the age of 17 which indicated that they were serious criminals in the making, while ignoring the fact that gangsters who are friendly with their Top Doc colleagues are trying to murder their closest friends. Furthermore, the only tolerance and compassion existing was that extended to Top Doctors who should never have been allowed to practice.
and an understanding of human personality progressively enriched over years of painstaking first hand study of patients.
Thus Desmond became an Expert who's conclusions could not be questioned by mortal souls, only by other Top Doctors. Who, Surprise Surprise, would always find themselves in agreement with Desmond when faced with a patient who was in possession of evidence that Well-Respected Men (or women) were doing things that they should not have been doing.
The force of his example in practice was emulated by his colleagues and students, and St George's became pre-eminent among the medical schools for its department of psychiatry. Its national and international renown increased steadily during the three decades in which Desmond served it.
Well fancy that. One can only wonder how, in the 1990s, after all those decades with Dessie and his Eminent Colleagues at the helm, that the most damning comments were made at a Public Inquiry about Springfield Hospital, the mental health unit attached to St George's where Dessie's colleagues housed their patients and carried out their global-leading ways. The Inquiry was held in the wake of a series of incidents at Springfield in which patients had murdered staff as well as each other and a number of sexual assaults on patients. Comments were made by the Chairman of the Inquiry that Springfield was in such a bad way that it was irretrievable and should be closed. At about the same time, a newly appointed Director of Nursing at St George's/Springfield resigned after a very short time, telling people that the situation at St George's was so serious that she could not 'turn it around'.
I had been a member of staff at St George's and a patient at Springfield (see previous posts) not long before that Public Inquiry took place. From what I saw, I could only conclude that the towering reputation of St George's and Springfield was predicated on bare-faced lies being told by a great many people and even more people feeling completely unable to say 'this is nonsense, have you seen what is actually going on here?'
His textbook Psychological Medicine, 1943, was written in collaboration with Erich Guttmann, one of the small group of eminent psychiatrists who sought refuge in this country from persecution in Nazi Germany.
It is an irony that many who fled Nazi persecution who were Top Doctors or became Top Doctors, were involved with the gross abuse of patients.
Including Sir William Asscher (who was really called Sir Adolph Asscher), who, after many happy years concealing the crimes of Dafydd et al in Wales, relocated to St George's where he subsequently spent many enjoyable years concealing the serious criminality in London which was linked to Dafydd's gang. Sir Adolph was called on to become Dean of St George's after Ollie Brooke, the Prof of Paediatrics at St George's, was jailed for the possession of child porn in Dec 1986 and the person who had been running St George's was deposed to show everyone that Lessons Had Been Learned. Ollie's mates, who were up to their eye-balls in it with him, remained at St George's and enjoyed full protection from Adolph. See previous posts. Top Docs were not the only professional group who exhibited this phenomenon, a great many lawyers who maxed out on their roles in fighting the Nazis or who even took part in the Nuremberg trials colluded with the organised abuse of which Curran, Dafydd et al were part, including that proud son of Wales, Lord Elwyn-Jones (see post 'Lest We Forget').
[Curran and Guttman's textbook] was to appear in numerous editions, including one with Maurice Partridge in 1955; recent ones having been edited by Curran's pupil, Peter Storey.
I'll be coming on to Partridge and Storey soon.
In 1961 Desmond was appointed the first professor of psychiatry at St George's Hospital. He developed a many sided academic department, including a large unit devoted to psychotherapy, the latter notwithstanding his reservations about psychoanalysis.
The Top Docs all 'had their reservations' about the whole field because they knew that much of it was nonsense. Nonetheless they developed their expertise in the field because tying everyone up in knots using discredited theory from the psy disciplines is the only thing that is going to save anyone's bacon in situations such as when a member of staff at St George's has been terrorised and then arrested on trumped-up but very serious charges by Dafydd and his colleagues and Dafydd admits that he wants to get his leg over her and his other patients. The sky's the limit for wacky theorising in the event of the St George's crew realising that some of their friends are mates with Dafydd et al and are not going to be able to get themselves out of trouble if anyone says anything like 'there needs to be a major criminal investigation into this'.
So I take my hat off to Dr Alice Levinson who excelled when she wrote her final report about me in 1991, in which she admitted that I showed no signs of psychosis at all, that I was suicidal as a result of what Dafydd et al had been doing to me, that I would be offered no care and discharged immediately but would be referred to the forensic team 'for containment' because it was agreed by everyone that I was Very Dangerous. The forensic team told me to move back to north Wales because Dafydd was my doctor and He Knew Me. See previous posts.
As everyone at St George's and Springfield had agreed with Dafydd that I was Very Dangerous and planning to murder him, I can only assume that Alice et al were secret agents who wanted me to kill the old bastard and give everyone a break. Sorry that I let you down on that one Alice.
Few senior psychiatrists burdened with manifold duties could have devoted themselves with such unswerving determination and energy to the professional advancement of those of his juniors whose clinical or scientific ability had earned his respect.
Now there's an admission. Des trained up a load of criminal junior Top Docs who had toadied to him and could be forever relied upon to keep the lid on the barrel of crap and then Des made damn sure that they rose to the very top of the medical establishment themselves… And, as Nicholas Parsons always stresses on 'Just a Minute', 'not just in this country but Around The World!!!'
His clinical eminence, and the publications he devoted to the classification of personality disorders, sexual deviation and antisocial and violent conduct, generated wide demand for his services.
Paedophiles In Distress, Paedophiles In Distress, an urgent referral to Des is required. No wonder that Norman Scott ended up in the hands of Des after his unpleasant experiences with Jeremy. The Jeremy who boasted of having had sex with both Ma'am Darling and her husband, Lord Snowdon.
I can't believe that I'm in the same category as Norman Scott, I and my friends were wowed by the Thorpe trial in 1979. I'm from Somerset and then I went to live in Bethesda and now I'm up with the nobs as the expression in Somerset always was. As would be said in Bethesda, Jesus Christ. I can only hope that this blog has delivered a crippling boot to their collective groins. Have this one on me Norman, Thorpe should have been inside, as the whole of the West Country agreed at the time, in spite of all the bollocks printed in the Torygraph about how no-one believed you. Oh yes they did.
He was a member of the Franklin Committee on punishment in prisons and borstals, the Wolfenden Commission on homosexuality, and he became adviser in psychiatry both to the Foreign Office and the Home Office.
Put this crooked lying bastard in every position possible where he can do real damage.
'There is no evidence that there was a paedophile ring in north Wales/Cheshire which was concealed at a high level'.
Brown always told me that Dafydd would have been in possession of a Home Office licence to be flogging all those prescriptions for Class A drugs and that a great many careers and indeed the whole Home Office would be dependent upon concealing Dafydd's activities. For years I thought that Dafydd was the only madman whom the Home Office had foolishly embraced, but no, they actively selected for madmen and they did it for decades, it wasn't just a case of one bad appointment..
He was president of the psychiatric section of the Royal Society of Medicine from 1951-52, and of the Royal Medico-Psychological Association in 1963-64. Although Desmond did not originally favour the secession of psychiatrists from the Royal College of Physicians, he gave the new Royal College his full support once it received its Royal Charter in 1971. Many of its officers have reason to be grateful for his sagacious advice and support, and the exercise of his wide influence on its behalf during the early formative years.
I get the picture. Dafydd's been found in the women's dorm at 2 am again and someone won't shut up about it, can you ask Des to help out?
Desmond Curran was a man who knew his own mind; integrity, personal simplicity, sharp wit, keen sense of humour and unfailing kindness rounded a personality of rare distinction.
In no way was he a sadistic, crazed offender with links to serious organised crime. He was only ever a Nice Young Doctor.
It explained, in part, the undivided loyalty and affection he inspired in his many pupils.
One doesn't argue with a Mafia boss. Neither does one ever leave the Mafia.
The clinical excellence of those who trained under him, the scientific distinction of many, and the fine thriving department he created at St George's commanded respect for the subject he professed, as well as for himself,
This can only be an obituary published by the Royal College of Physicians…
among many colleagues in many disciplines, and enabled him to leave a lasting imprint upon the psychiatry and medicine of his time both in his own country and wider afield.
To quote Roobarb and Custard, 'they stood back – and gawped at the mess'.
He married Marguerite Claire Gothard in 1938. She survived him, with their two sons.
Oh God. Desmond Curran bred. There's descendants out there who will be flying the flag…
In March 2015, Professor Andrew Curran was appointed as Chief Scientific Adviser and Director of Research at the UK's Health and Safety Executive. Whether Andrew Curran is a relation I do not know but it would be worth someone finding out. Andrew's career highlights include his time as Deputy Chief Executive at the Health and Safety Laboratory and as Scientific Chairman of PEROSH (Partnership for European Research in Occupational Safety and Health).
Des died in 1985, so he was around for long enough to give Dafydd et al a helping hand in concealing serious crime after Mary Wynch and Alison Taylor raised the alarm and Des might just have heard that I had joined in the racket in his final days as well. Des was very much with us in 1979 when Jeremy Thorpe stood trial for incitement to murder and Norman was roundly insulted by the Presiding Judge, Sir Joseph Cantley, during the summing up. Des will have known that Norman was being hung out to dry by a corrupt old judge and that the trial had been very carefully rigged. It was admitted by Thorpe that one reason why his bent barrister George Carman QC was able to prevent some highly incriminating material from making an appearance at the trial was that it would have caused embarrassment to the Royal Family. Cherie Booth worked in George Carman's chambers until 1988 and Miranda was a junior barrister under Carman.
In 1976, Charles had been appointed Chancellor of UCNW (in fact Chancellor of the whole of the University of Wales, that was at the time made up of a number of colleges, including UCNW at Bangor), which was facilitating a branch of the same sex abuse ring that Desmond and his colleagues at St George's were concealing/had concealed for years.
In October 1975, Andrew Newton, who claimed that he had been paid to kill Norman Scott, made a bungled attempt to shoot Scott that resulted in the killing of the Norman's dog Rinka. Newton was arrested on charges of possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life, yet the press remained muted, possibly awaiting the bigger story that they hoped would break. Their reticence ended in January 1976 when Scott, in Court on a minor social security fraud charge, claimed he was being hounded because of his previous sexual relationship with Thorpe. This statement, made in court and thus protected from the libel laws, was widely reported.
On 16 March 1976 Newton's trial began at Exeter Crown Court, where Scott repeated his allegations against Thorpe despite the efforts of the prosecution's lawyers to silence him. Newton was found guilty and sentenced to two years' imprisonment, but did not incriminate Thorpe. The erosion of public support for the Liberal Party continued, which their former Leader Jo Grimond attributed to increasing lack of confidence in Thorpe. On 14 March, The Sunday Times printed Thorpe's answer to Scott's various allegations, under the heading "The Lies of Norman Scott". Harold Evans was Editor of 'The Sunday Times' when that article was published.
Scott was threatening to publish personal letters from Thorpe who, to forestall him, arranged for the Sunday Times to print two letters from 1961. Although these did not conclusively indicate wrongdoing, their tone indicated that Thorpe had not been frank about the true nature of his friendship with Scott. On 10 May 1976, amid rising criticism, Thorpe resigned the Party leadership, "convinced that a fixed determination to destroy the Leader could itself result in the destruction of the Party".
David Steel succeeded Thorpe as Leader of the Liberal Party.
My God, no wonder the distress flares were going up at UCNW. In 1976 Carlo was appointed Chancellor in favour of Dai Francis, the father of Dr Hywel Francis, Labour MP for Aberavon, 2001-15. Hywel Francis has remained on excellent terms with the paedophiles' friends and Top Docs throughout his entire life despite boasting of his dad Dai's Communist past and leadership of the South Wales NUM throughout the years of industrial unrest in the 1970s. Like his dad, Hywel was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. So Hywel and Dai knew all those other members of the CP of GB who knew about George Thomas, Dafydd's gang etc, including those English radicals/intellectuals who spent their summers in Llanfrothen/Croesor and had the best gen of all re Dafydd and Gwynne the lobotomist, including the gen on Bertrand Russell. See previous posts, including 'The Village'.
In 1974 Dai became the first Chairman of the Wales TUC. So although Dai gained much kudos from being a miners' leader when the miners did battle with Ted Heath and brought him down, Dai's role as Chairman of the Wales TUC will have given him the most powerful muscle of all – his knowledge of what the NHS/social care trade unions were concealing. Dafydd and the associated gangs…
Dai also knew that the beginnings of the NHS were rather more sordid than we are told, because he was involved with the miners' welfare associations before the NHS came into being. Dai will have known about Nye and Jennie buying off the Top Docs while Nye and Jennie shopped at Harrods. They didn't hang around south Wales for long.
For the full gen on Dai and Hywel see previous posts eg. 'Don't Mess With Daddy' and 'Hey, Hey DAJ, How Many Kids Did You Kill Today?'
Hywel Francis was succeeded as MP for Aberavon by the Windbag's son Stephen, who, having spent nearly all of his life outside of Wales, many of his adult years outside of the UK and had managed to marry the PM of Denmark, returned to south Wales where his true heart lay, straight into a safe Labour seat. See previous posts.
All part of one big happy classless Gwerin! Bechod!
On 5 April 1976 Jim Callaghan became PM and governed by courtesy of the 1977 Lib-Lab Pact. While everyone kept quiet about Cyril Smith, what with Jeremy Thorpe being more than enough to deal with. Jim's wife Audrey Callaghan colluded with the abuse of children when she was a member of the London County Council and for the many years that she sat on the governing body of Great Ormond Street Hospital (see post 'Cry, The Beloved Country').
Callaghan had been a big pal of Glenys Kinnock's parents via their friendship with Lord Cledwyn, the Labour MP for Anglesey, 1951-79 and it was Callaghan who gave a boost to the Windbag's early political career. The Windbag had known Dr Tony Francis when they had been at Cardiff University. Lord Cledwyn served as President of UCNW/Bangor University, 1995-2000, throughout the Waterhouse Inquiry…
When Dafydd and the gang went after Mary Wynch, Sunny Jim was PM. Every Gov't Minister successively threw Mary to the wolves until Home Secretary Michael Howard finally destroyed her some 15 years later, although it was admitted that Mary had demonstrated that her allegations re a corrupt ring of solicitors in north Wales and associated wrongdoing on the part of Dafydd and other Top Doctors were true. See previous posts.
George Thomas was appointed Speaker of the House on 3 Feb 1976, the month before Andrew Newton appeared in Court after trying to shoot Norman. George Thomas was a child molester and this had been widely known in Parliament and in south Wales for years. George Thomas's close friend was Leo Abse, a bent lawyer who served as Labour MP for Pontypool and then Torfaen, 1958-87 and Abse bribed and threatened victims of and witnesses to Thomas's offences for years to protect Thomas (see post 'It Wasn't On Our Radar'). Abse was succeeded as Labour MP for Torfaen by Paul Murphy, who when he was Secretary of State for Wales took receipt of the Waterhouse Report and declared that he was delighted to have been reassured by Ronnie Waterhouse after an exhaustive and extensive Inquiry that there had been no paedophile ring in operation in north Wales involving VIPS, there was just a few local dirty old men. Paul Murphy is a Roman Catholic who is a Bachelor and has not been blessed with children.
Leo Abse came from a legal and medical/psychoanalytical family. His brother Dannie Abse was a well-known poet and Top Doctor. There was another brother Wilfred, who was a psychiatrist. Dannie and Wilfred both trained at Westminster Hospital and Dannie at least studied at Cardiff University first. Dannie also studied at King's College, London.
Dannie Abse was taught by George Thomas when Dannie attended Marlborough Road Elementary School. Dannie Abse mentions in his autobiography that George Thomas very obviously favoured boys from Jewish backgrounds – the Abses were a Jewish family – although Dannie Abse claims not to know why this was. Just to add to Dannie Abse's cultural mix, after he attended Marlborough Road Elementary School, he went to St Illtyd's College in Splott, Cardiff, which is a Catholic School. So Dannie Abse, by the time he was Top Doctoring as an adult, will have known about organised abuse in the Methodist, Jewish and Catholic communities in south Wales and elsewhere.
Paul Flynn, who has been the Labour MP for Newport West since 1987, also went to St Illtyd's. Flynn stood for election as the Labour candidate for Denbigh in the 1970s and in the 1990s he used to appear on Vincent Kane's TV programmes arguing with Dafydd with regard to Dafydd maintaining that the youth of Wales were suffering from reefer madness. Yet Flynn has never uttered a word about Dafydd's vast crime network although he does know about it. See previous posts.
When I was involved with work on the sociology of religion when I was working at Bangor, I too found links between Methodists – George Thomas was one of the UK's leading Methodists – and the Jewish community. I attributed this to both groups having a lot in common in terms of their socio-cultural values and aspirations and I later found out that the Jewish community in the north west of England actively recruited school teachers from north Wales because of the Nonconformity which dominated north Wales politically and culturally.
I cannot believe that there is anything about Methodism or Jewishness that promotes organised abuse, but close links between the two religious groups would provide a very big umbrella for abusers within the network. Nonconformists formed a regional elite in north Wales and they occupied most of the professional positions; as well as being Ministers of religion, they were the teachers, the doctors, the politicians, the lawyers, the scholars and for a long while they controlled the press. Nonconformists in north Wales were usually Liberals. There were Jewish communities in north Wales and some members were influential people, but there was a much bigger and more powerful Jewish community in south Wales, of which the Abses were a part. Their roots were often in poverty, but they gravitated to the professions, particularly law and medicine. There were of course many more and much bigger Jewish communities in England, again containing many people who worked in law and medicine, as well as in the financial services and politics. There was much anti-semitic comment regarding Margaret Thatcher's first Cabinets, because of the number of Jewish Ministers. (Thatcher was brought up as a Methodist and it was this that formed the basis of her good friendship with George Thomas.) The vast network of Jewish and Methodist professional people could have been very effectively used to protect abusers and I very much suspect that it was. How many of those within the network understood the full extent of what had developed I do not know.
I am wondering whether that network holds the clue to something that I've been puzzling over for months now, which involved Sir Martin Roth, another one of Dafydd's umbrellas. When the Royal College of Psychiatrists was established in 1971, there was much opposition by other Top Doctors who viewed psychiatrists as a laughing stock and not being deserving of a Royal College all of their own. However, Roth and a few others including Curran and co who were concealing organised abuse in High Places bulldozed ahead with a Royal College and got one. Then Martin Roth wanted a really grand building in which to house his Royal College, although the newly created Royal College had absolutely no money at all. Martin Roth however was able to acquire a building for his Royal College that even other Top Doctors envied; Roth bagged the palatial 17 Belgrave Square. Roth was only able to acquire 17 Belgrave Square because Marks & Spencer had given the Royal College a substantial unsecured loan on very favourable terms, a deal which Roth somehow thrashed out single-handedly with M&S. I have not been able to find out why M&S were so generous to Roth and the Royal College of Psychiatrists, although in subsequent years the Royal College moved out of the building which everyone knew that they could not afford and was feared would bankrupt the Royal College. I note that the widow of the late Chairman of M&S has been involved in initiatives of the paedophiles' friends. M&S were famously a Jewish company. I can only imagine that Roth called in a few favours. Which M&S might well have subsequently done as well after handing over all that dosh. See posts 'The Newcastle-upon-Tyne Connection'.
In the 1980s and 90s, I was told by lawyers in Bangor that there was no M&S in Bangor because local big wigs had got together and 'wouldn't let them in'. The lawyers obviously knew why this was but they wouldn't tell me. I was told that M&S were banging on the door of Bangor as hard as they could, but the Councillors Who Said Ni would not entertain the notion of an M&S in Bangor, although there was one in Llandudno. I'm fairly sure that this ban on M&S will be tied up with Dafydd's gang in some way, because everything was, but I have yet to find out how. One would have thought that Dafydd and the paedophiles would have ensured that M&S was the only place where one could shop… Or was there a fear that if M&S arrived, the rather hopeless little shops in Bangor would die a death???
In the 1980s and 90s, Bangor was OK for hippyish clothes and jeans and jumpers, but for the sort of 'Daily Mail' reader who in those days favoured M&S, it was a desert. For Ladieswear, there was really only 'Megan of Bangor', near the Cathedral, which was the butt of many a joke. 'Megan of Bangor' sold really, really naff clothes but at top prices. I theorised with Brown that 'Megan of Bangor' had purchased the clothes from suppliers of crimplenes and nylons but were flogging them at high prices pretending that they were of superior quality. One day Brown and I were sitting on the bench outside of the Cathedral and some elderly tourists walked past and one of them looked in the window of 'Megan of Bangor' and said 'oooh look at those prices, you can get those in the market at home for half the price'.
In my first year at UCNW, some of the other girls in our hall went out and purchased a truly vomit-worthy dress, I think from 'Megan of Bangor' and one of them put it on and she was photographed wearing the dress and the photos were posted up in the kitchen under the title of 'M&S Lady Of The Year'.
'Megan of Bangor' closed down in the early 1990s, but the premises continued the fine tradition of selling crap disguised as something special. It was replaced by a shop called 'Saks' that sold kitchenware and 'Saks' tempted people in by putting nice stuff in the window. Once inside 'Saks' however, rip-offs could be spotted. For example, 'Saks' were trying to flog, at high prices, those tartan blankets for inside of cars, which at the time were going free with petrol purchases. I went in there with Patient F and we just pissed ourselves laughing at this scam. We were frozen out of the shop, but our mirth had obviously touched a nerve, because when we next went past, a handwritten notice had appeared on top of the rugs saying 'Real Wool. You don't get this quality with petrol coupons'. Which just made us laugh even more. Over the following weeks, all the items in the window of 'Saks' were decorated with similarly snooty labels, explaining to the customers that it wasn't really rubbish, it was worth paying through the nose for.
There was another Ladieswear shop nearby in Menai Bridge that was owned by the wife of one of the lecturers in the School of Plant Biology, the lecturer known as The Most Boring Lecturer On Earth. He 'did' mosses and bryophytes and one of my mates did her final year project with him and I asked 'oh God how can you bear it?', but she said that he was actually very nice, but he really hated lecturing which is why he read his lecture notes out in a monotone without looking at the audience. Like everyone else, The Most Boring Lecturer On Earth will have known about his colleagues facilitating a paedophile ring. He had contacts at Oxford, one of whom then gave my friend a place to do her PhD there.
This is weird, because I bumped into this Bangor grad when I was out walking in Bethesda in the early 1990s, after I had been hounded out of St George's and had returned to Bethesda. She came back to my place in Rachub and we exchanged Horrific Experiences. I told her about St George's and she told me that after she'd finished her PhD, she got a job in Oxford and was very badly bullied, so much so that she developed clinical depression and was forced of her job. It all sounded very familiar. She subsequently became very ill and told me that as far as she could see, she was being left to kill herself by the mental health services in Oxford, she said they really were negligent. She never had any problems when she was a student at Bangor, but she did know how I and others had been (mis)treated. Furthermore, she originally came from Bristol, which is where Dr D.G.E. Wood's family ruled over the medical services. I wonder – did those we know and love realise that this was another student who knew that not all was as it should be and who was gunned down in the Massacre of 1991, when so many of us Who Knew were stuffed over?
One person whom this Bangor grad did know was the student in the Dept of Plant Biology who became engaged to a Muslim girl who's family had lined her up for an arranged marriage and who threatened to kill him. This was common knowledge, they went into hiding as soon as they graduated, but just like when I told Wood and Adrian Bell that someone was threatening to kill Brown, their plight was simply ignored…
The Ladieswear shop that wife of the The Most Boring Lecturer On Earth owned in Menai Bridge sold even fewer clothes than 'Megan Of Bangor', in fact it sold so few clothes that the wife of the Most Boring Lecturer On Earth covered the windows in that yellow cellophane stuff that prevents clothes going off when they've been in the window for years. But at least the Most Boring Man On Earth and his wife weren't receiving murder threats. Or I presume that they weren't.
Another shop that provided much entertainment a few years later was a shop in Bethesda owned by a lady known as Mrs Racist, because she was rather, er, racist. After Diana was killed in the tunnel, Mrs Racist filled the shop with naff but very expensive Di memorabilia. One of my friends from the Hergest Unit – someone else who had been targeted by Dafydd and the gang – invited me to go to the shop to marvel at the overpriced Di mementos. F and I knew that Mrs Racist was a racist but I didn't think to warn my friend, so we all went to Bethesda to take the piss out of Mrs Racist's stock. My friend's brother was getting married in South Africa, so the story that she span to Mrs Racist was that she was looking for a present for her brother's bride. Mrs Racist's ears pricked up when my friend said that she was going to South Africa for the wedding and that her brother was marrying a South African girl. Mrs Racist looked at my friend and said 'White? White? Is she white?' So my friend said 'no she's black actually' and I thought ooh I should have given an advanced warning… Mrs Racist's expression fell and she then conducted an interrogation of my friend regarding as to who was going to the wedding, which simply consisted of repeatedly asking 'White? White?' As there were far too many guests going who were dangerously black, we were pushed out of the shop.
Mrs Racist probably thinks that I don't know this, but her husband was an electrician who was involved in a building scam with local builders and building societies. Corrupt surveyors would be commissioned by building societies in Gwynedd to compile reports stating that work needed doing on houses for which people had put in offers. If the purchasers didn't agree to have the work done, the building society would not lend the money for the purchase. Everyone knew that the surveyors reports were coming back saying that all the houses needed a damp proofing course even when they didn't and usually a demand was made that the house should be rewired. I caught them red-handed, a twat arrived at a house that I knew had been damp-proofed and said 'it needs a damp proof course..' No-one offered an explanation when I provided evidence that it had already been damp-proofed.
So perhaps Mrs Racist aka the wife of the man who owned Dob Electrical in Tregarth could tell us all what was going on. If Mrs Racist and Dob are no longer with us, then their son can fill us in, because he was the one who sat in my house drinking a paned for TWO HOURS before he even lifted a finger – the idea, Dob junior, is that you drink the paned while you work – and while supposedly rewiring my intended house which did not need rewiring, did a really, really bad job, left wires sticking out of walls and did not bother to finish the plastering. Nevertheless, I was charged thousands so that Dob senior, Dad, could sign on the dotted line as required by the building society to ensure that the dosh would be released.
The building societies in Bangor participated in the scams and included National & Provincial.
We knew what was going on scumbags, but you had the whole of Gwynedd rigged…
Particularly Bethesda. Corrupt police officers, corrupt builders, open drug dealing in the Royal Oak in Rachub – by the one favouritised client of Slob Ingham the CPN from the Arfon Community Mental Health Team – was ignored, class A drugs as well, not just a bit of mari-jew-ana – attempts to set fire to houses of those who had crossed the path of the gang…
Dafydd grew up in Bethesda.
In terms of rigging in High Places, Jeremy Thorpe's family were friends with David Lloyd George's family. Ronnie Waterhouse also came from a well-known Liberal family in north Wales and Waterhouse's dad was friends with the Lloyd Georges. The Lloyd Georges were of course a family of lawyers. The Deputy Principal of the Normal College in Bangor knew Lady Megan Lord George; the Deputy Principal also knew Dafydd. The Normal College trained and employed a great many people who colluded with the North Wales Child Abuse Scandal. There was only the occasional Normal College alumnus who was actually caught and convicted and I don't believe that the place routinely produced child molesters, but the problem was that most of them knew at least some of what was going on and turned a blind eye, which led to enormous problems with an operation like Dafydd's at work in the region.
The man who wrote a pack of lies for the Royal College about the world's greatest Nice Young Doctor, Desmond Curran, was Sir Martin Roth.
The grave of Sir Martin Roth in Cambridge City Cemetary.
Sir Martin Roth (6 November 1917-26 September 2006) was Professor of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, 1977–85, then Professor Emeritus and was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge from 1977. He was one of the pioneers in developing psychogeriatrics as a sub-specialty. Roth was also a Trustee of the Schizophrenia Research Fund, a charity founded by Miriam Rothschild. Not only did Martin Roth know about Dafydd and the gang, but there was a big network of people in the Cambridge area with links to Dafydd, including Jonathan King, Baroness Jean Trumpington and Tuppence and his fragrant wife Lady Mary Archer. Roth lived for years after the publication of the Waterhouse Report to keep the lid nailed down. See previous posts for info on these people and Roth.
Carlo went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where Rab Butler was appointed as his special counsellor. Rab knew Trumpers and the rest of the network… See previous posts.
Among the many things omitted from the account of Curran's life provided by Martin Roth was Curran's involvement in some extraordinary matters in the late 1930s, of which I found details in some very interesting letters written by Curran from his Wimpole Street address that are stored in the Wellcome Library in the Eugenics Society Archive. One letter, dated 8 May 1939, concerns a patient who is engaged who wishes her fiance to undergo sterilisation because she does not consider him suitable to breed as a result of some of his relatives having conditions such as epilepsy or 'psychosis'. She is requesting Curran's help – whether her fiancé actually knows that she has approached Curran regarding this matter is unclear, it is simply mentioned that the young man is currently in South Africa. It is not impossible that the young man himself knows nothing of this plan, because Curran is involved in some almost unbelievable plans with certain patients.
Another letter from Curran is dated 11 March 1938 and is addressed to a Dr C.P. Blacker at 28 Weymouth Street. It concerns a patient whom Curran describes as 'a Jewess' who is caring for 'an elderly whining Jewish mother'. The patient is married to a man who is unfaithful and who contracted gonorrhoea. Curran writes that the gonorrhoea has been treated but 'his seed is not active'. Curran explains to Dr Blacker that Elliot Slater had suggested 'artificial impregnation'. Curran writes 'if the King was not willing to provide active seed, she could possibly get some from a distinguished scientist or author or whatever quality she wanted'.
Yes, Curran seems to believe that there is a possibility that the KING might be willing to donate sperm to a well-to-do patient of Curran's whom he seems to be helping acquire elite sperm. Before I receive e mails demanding that I be thrown into the Tower for making this up, go online to the Wellcome Library, go to the archives of the Eugenics Society and see those letters for yourselves – there are photographs of them. It is there in black and white, there is no doubt about what is written, it is crystal clear – Curran was going to approach the King to see if he would be willing to donate sperm. That would have been George VI, the present Queen's father. This really puts Charles, Diana and Camilla into perspective…
Did the King offer this sort of service regularly? It couldn't have been completely unthinkable or Eliot Slater would never have suggested it.
For further details of the plans that Desmond Curran and others had for the King's sperm, see post 'The Case Of The King's Sperm', which I wrote some time ago before I realised quite what an enormous crazy bizarre mess the Top Doctors had created.
One of Curran's closest colleagues at St George's was Maurice Partridge. Now let's see what the Royal College of Physicians 'Lives Of The Fellows Online' says about Maurice Aubrey Partridge.
Maurice Partridge was educated at Shrewsbury School
Sir Charles Evans went to Shrewsbury School, although he was a bit younger than Partridge. However Top Docs do love alumni networks.
and Balliol College, Oxford.
Ted Heath studied at Balliol and under Ted Heath's Gov't, Dafydd and the gang expanded their business unimpeded. Heath was PM when Barbara Kahan, a senior social worker who had colluded with child abuse in the Oxford area, along with her husband the child psychiatrist Dr Vladimir Kahan, was appointed a Gov't adviser on children in care (see post 'Always On The Side Of The Children').
He did his clinical studies at Guy's, for which he retained much affection and where he lived in bachelor rooms in the Warden's House for many years, although a consultant at St George's.
So Partridge had a foot planted firmly in both camps, Guy's and St George's and was a Bachelor as well. Ted Heath was a Bachelor who was not blessed with children. Dafydd's mate Professor Robert Owen trained at Guy's.
After Guy's he trained at the Phipps Clinic (Johns Hopkins) where, like many British psychiatrists of that generation, he was deeply influenced by the psychobiological approach of Adolf Meyer. Following service in the RNVR during the war, where he rose to the rank of surgeon lieutenant commander
Here we go again, Hello Sailor and of course Hello First Lord of the Admiralty Lord Louis Mountbatten…
he spent a short time at St Andrew's Hospital, Northampton,
St Andrew's was an asylum with a terrible reputation. St Andrews featured in the media in 1986 when the Evil Jeremy Bamber was convicted and imprisoned for shooting and killing his sister and her two children. Bamber has always denied the murders. Sheila was the former model known as Bambi who had been a patient at St Andrew's. Top Doctors from St Andrew's gave evidence for the prosecution at Bamber's trial although it later became clear that they did not have as much knowledge of Sheila as they claimed, having quite seriously neglected her. Jeremy Bamber is someone else whom many believe has been the subject of a serious miscarriage of justice (see post 'Family Annilihation') but was convicted of a crime so 'Orrible that he was convicted and imprisoned amidst a tidal wave of emotion and tabloid headlines involving Murder, Sex, Models, Insanity, Evil Sons Who Stood To Inherit Millions, Children and Top Doctors Who Cared and Could See Into People's Hearts.
In recent years St Andrew's has served as a privately owned hospital taking state-funded patients who are adults with learning difficulties, who have often been removed from the care of their families by Top Docs and social workers against the wishes of them and their families. There has been scandal after scandal at St Andrew's, with allegations made of brutality towards learning disabled patients and at least one man died after Angels 'restrained' him, or more accurately 'choked him to death'.
before his appointment to St George's Hospital, where he was one of a triumvirate with Desmond Curran and Sir Paul Mallinson. These men made St George's pre-eminent in psychiatry in the post war years; with a well developed department of psychiatry within a teaching hospital at a time when similar hospitals were in a string-and-sealing-wax stage.
Whereas St George's was a well-oiled machine for concealing Naughtiness in High Places.
Maurice was only involved in one major research project,
But he became Eminent nonetheless
a follow-up of 300 patients after prefrontal leucotomy, but that was splendidly carried out and led to an influential publication, Pre-frontal leucotomy, Springfield,Ill.,Thomas, 1950, the only one of its kind at that time.
I haven't read this contribution to medical science yet, but I am wondering whether any of Gwynne the lobotomist's victims were among the 300 followed up and whether Partridge was one of the nutters who advocated lobotomy on the grounds of the beneficial effects that it conferred upon patients in that the Angels found it so much easier to Manage Them after the 'operation' – they no longer objected to being physically and sexually assaulted, being capable of doing little more than vegging out in a chair all day – or whether Partridge was one of those who found that lobotomies had such dreadful consequences for most people that the procedure pretty much died out by the early 1960s. Except at the North Wales Hospital Denbigh of course, where Gwynne continued to enthusiastically wield the pick in the direction of anyone who objected to Dafydd and others joining them in bed. Cardiff University remained lovingly attached to lobotomies, so attached that in Sept 1999 – four months before the Waterhouse Report was published – they gave Lena Zavaroni one and she died shortly afterwards. Lena's death was followed by some not very honest explanations from the University Hospital Cardiff. Not that Lena or her nearest and dearest were told that she was being given a lobotomy, they were told that she was having a 'new treatment for depression'. After I blogged about Lena's case, I received an e mail from a Top Doctor telling me that the operation that Lena had was a cingulotomy. I appreciated the explanation but I remembered this e mail that I had received previously from someone who has spent years watching Top Doctors harm their patients:
'Once upon a time the people who had been neglected, mistreated or sexually interfered with in the care of the health or social services could be lobotomised before they started complaining too loudly. Eventually, that started to become unacceptable even if you tarted it up by saying that you were going to remove an epileptogenic lesion or were going to give them a cingulotomy or something like that. This then leaves you with the problem of all those people who might complain about what's going on. You might succeed in calling them 'substance misusers' and refer them to Dafydd (for goodness sake make sure that none of them have the chance to speak to that man from Liverpool) then they can be plied with whatever drugs they ask for. Maybe you can get them arrested and once they've been inside no-one will believe them anyway. Maybe you can make them very dependent and withdraw care so they're likely to kill themselves. Maybe you can style yourself an expert in pharmacology and give them drugs in mixtures and dosages that violate the manufacturer's recommendations and put them at risk of choking, heart attack, etc. If you get really desperate you can invite them all to a party and then throw a petrol bomb into the building. You can be a bit more selective and just sexually abuse people to whom you suspect that it's already happened so they've already been softened up by someone else and if they say you've done it to them as well you can say it's just transference or some sort of post-traumatic psychosis. The fact that you can't lobotomise them anymore doesn't mean the party's over, you just have to get a bit more creative. If Dafydd really was prescribing morphine, heroin and the like to people, there must have been a lot of folks helping him. To give drug users heroin for example you'd need a Home Office licence. However there are a few doctors in this country equipped to do this and who do so. Indeed, maintaining people on prescribed doses of heroin is sometimes referred to as the 'British System' abroad and it's been going on since the early 20th century. So people in senior positions would have been involved in enabling Dafydd to gain the licence and make sure that he stayed out of trouble to keep it. A lot of people's careers, livelihoods and even liberty depended upon Dafydd doing this job. So no wonder they were propping him up. And, apparently, still are.'
Which sums it up nicely.
[Maurice Partridge was also] co-author with Curran of their textbook Psychological Medicine, Edinburgh:New York, Churchill Livingstone, 1980, in which he managed to incorporate some very amusing footnotes.
The humour of Top Doctors often pivots upon the distress that they have caused patients, so there'll have been plenty of material for Partridge's stand-up at the St George's Christmas Review.
At St George's, Partridge was a popular teacher, and he and his two consultant colleagues provided lectures on psychiatry to all comers, at Hyde Park Corner, alternating with neurology given by Denis Williams and Hamilton Paterson.
Except it won't have been to 'all comers', I would be surprised if, for example, patients and their relatives attended those lectures.
Maurice Partridge was an extremely amusing man: dry, ironic, and with a superb gift of timing when telling stories.
There will have been many stories, particularly on the patients' medical records.
He became a well known after-dinner speaker in rather limited circles, because he was basically a shy man and turned down invitations to larger gatherings.
Bechod! So Partridge's stories were only shared among a discerning few then. They weren't the sort of stories that after-dinner speakers like John Humphrys can tell to a packed room who have paid him thousands for the privilege which might well appear in the press a few days later.
Everyone called him 'Bird', and his signature when writing to friends was a little wavy line which looked like the outline of a seagull. His holidays were always spent in extraordinarily remote places. Long before there were package tours to the Himalayas, 'Bird' was already sending cards and letters from places like Nepal.
Ah, a Doctor was never off-duty in those days! They were always there for patients and the hours were long and the pay not very good, Duw, it was hard. When Bird, Charles Evans and Anne McCandless weren't having a great time trekking in Nepal that was.
His appearance was a little eccentric.
Dafydd et al always took notes re their patients' appearance. Dafydd noted that F was 'a man with pleasant manners and casual attire', so one wonders why there were so many allegations about F striking fear into the hearts of Top Doctors, Angels and social workers. When I asked F what he thought of Dafydd, F replied 'I thought that he was a bit of a twat'. I caused WW III when, after I read the libellous crap that Dr D.G.E. Wood and Gwynne had written about me, I sent Wood a letter asking if Gwynne's medical notes recorded that he had false teeth, trousers with the crotch down by the knees and a liberal covering of Brylcreem. Wood denied that anything libellous had been written about me and then they altered the records. I could see the tippex, it was hilarious. Brown then wrote to Wood saying 'I note that a number of crude alterations have now been carried out on Sally's records' to which Wood replied 'there have been no alterations made to any records'. Brown and me could SEE THE TIPPEX and the retyping. Well I've acquired even more copies of amended and forged documents now, dozens of them.
I still do not know if Gwynne's records noted those teeth, trousers and Brylcreem, but I do hope so. My records contain evidence of all sorts, an Afghan hat, a mini-skirt, hiking boots, a rucksack, Doc Martens, although not all at once of course. I wonder why they didn't just document that I'd arrived at the Hergest Unit naked, riding a horse, Lady Godiva-style. It's not as if anyone ever worried about complete fiction appearing on the records.
The Royal College of Physicians were obviously as experienced in the art of observation as Dafydd et al:
He was short and rotund, untidy, usually wore thick tweed suits even in summer, and always had a large, coloured handkerchief in his breast pocket which he used to flourish and then mop his brow. He looked rather like Pickwick, but plump rather than fat. He was a good squash player and took part in matches with the students, and others. On the hottest days he would wear a white sweater on the court, and on occasions would leave the court between sets and return wearing an extra sweater; which was usually worth two or three points against a student opponent.
I am someone who will defend anyone's right to wear however many jumpers they wanted to wear in whatever climate, but I can only imagine to what ends Bird's attire would have been used if he had been an Empowered Service User…
Maurice was a kindly and cultured man, helpful to his juniors, much respected as a clinician and colleague and his death has saddened many.
He also facilitated a VIP trafficking ring. Maurice pegged out in 1984, which was also the year that George Thomas was hospitalised as a result of an STI and Leo Abse and the Top Docs lied to the press about the reason for Thomas's hospital stay. Dafydd lost a valuable ally when Partridge croaked, no wonder Sir Charles Evans was forced to retire in that year and the rather better camouflaged paedophiles' friend Professor Eric Sunderland was installed as Principal of UCNW.
This account of Bird and his life was provided by Peter Storey, 'a distinguished consultant psychiatrist at St George's Hospital, London, greatly respected as a clinician and teacher and author of the later editions of the classic textbook 'Psychological medicine: an introduction to psychiatry'. Rather than yet another dishonest crazy butcher who was completely out of control.
Peter Brett Storey is now in that great consulting room – or more probably bar – in the sky, along with so many others who provided the many umbrellas under which Dafydd sheltered. Storey died in 2008, at the end of yet another life dedicated to serving the cause of Dafydd and the gang. Storey was one of Desmond Curran's students.
The Royal College of Physicians 'Lives Of The Fellows Online' has of course published an account of Peter Storey's life and works.
Peter Storey was a distinguished consultant psychiatrist at St George's Hospital, London, greatly respected as a clinician and teacher, and author of the later editions of the classic textbook 'Psychological medicine: an introduction to psychiatry'. He was born in Whitley Bay, where his father, Henry Storey, was a master builder and company director. He was educated first at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
Storey got in early to avoid the rush. Newcastle-upon-Tyne hosted the trafficking ring which like so many others was preceded by organised abuse which went back a long way. The ring in Newcastle supplied Dafydd's gang with both staff and children from the 1970s onward.
During the war the pupils were evacuated to Penrith, and when they returned he changed to Mill Hill School, which had also been evacuated nearby. He then moved with it when it returned to London. He qualified in 1953 at St Mary's Hospital Medical School.
St Mary's isn't really posh like Tommy's, but it likes to think that it is quite posh enough to be pompous about it. St Mary's has got a Posh Bit, namely Lindo Wing, which was sufficiently posh to be deemed to be acceptable for the delivery of Prince William. Di suffered unnecessarily nonetheless, not because of the insufficient poshness, but because Sir George Pinker screwed up. Pinker was a colleague of Professor Geoffrey Chamberlain, the Prof of Obs and Gynae at St George's who was a friend of Ollie Brook as well as of Cilla Black. Chamberlain was colluding with Dafydd et al as well as Ollie's gang in London. Despite Di being less than happy, more Royal babies have been delivered at Lindo Wing. Whether that is because the Royal Family haven't realised the cock-up re William's birth or whether it is because St Mary's are considered to be a Safe Pair of Hands for other reasons I don't know. See previous posts for info on George Pinker.
Subsequently he spent three years in the Army and was promoted as captain in the RAMC, having enlisted at the time of National Service.
He then completed three years in acute general medicine in Portsmouth and six months in neurology at Atkinson Morley Hospital, associated with St George's Hospital.
They were fully on board with Dafydd et al at Atkinson Morley by 1990…
He trained in psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital, where he passed his London University academic diploma in psychological medicine (DPM).
Dafydd 'trained' at the Maudsley. Dafydd didn't pass through the Maudsley until the early 1960s, but there was already organised abuse at the Maudsley by the time that Dafydd arrived. Dafydd 'trained' under Dr Bob Hobson, who was notorious. Hobson's obituaries make no mention of him being known as someone who, along with his team, was shagging patients, but other Top Docs had coded ways of writing letters to each other to flag up patients who had the dirt on Hobson's lot. Hobson decamped to Manchester University in 1974 and his colleagues at London claimed to be surprised and not know the reason why. Hobson of course set up a trafficking ring at Manchester. Tony Francis worked with Hobson's lot at Manchester as did Sadie Francis. For the Drs Francis it was then from Manchester straight over to Dafydd's gang in response to the distress flares which were sent up after the Mary Wynch case when reinforcements were called for. See post 'The Mentor' for more information on Hobson and Manchester and 'A Galaxy of Talent' for information on the grandiose idiots who held the fort at the Maudsley. 'The Discovery of a Whole New Galaxy…' provides the background of the gang at Manchester who preceded Hobson and who subsequently spread their wings taking their toxicity with them far and wide.
He spent two years as a research fellow at Atkinson Morley's, where he carried out at an important study showing major psychiatric, personality and emotional sequelae from subarachnoid haemorrhage. He had previously undertaken the first well-controlled study using air encephalography to investigate chronic schizophrenics, which, although small in size and failing to demonstrate abnormalities, can be seen today as a forerunner of later studies using CAT scanning and other modern imaging techniques to show abnormalities.
Oh classic Top Doctors' hype, 'although small in size and failing to demonstrate abnormalities' it was of course a forerunner. If I had conducted a piece of research which was small in size and didn't show anything at all I don't think that I'd bother to publicise it, I'd get on with something more fruitful.
But then Dafydd was Europe's Leading Forensic Psychiatrist.
He was then a senior lecturer in psychiatry at St George's for four years and in 1969 was appointed as a consultant psychiatrist at St George's and at Springfield Hospital, near St George's in Tooting, and then becoming closely linked.
So THIS is the Mr Big who blended the Knightsbridge Crooks To The Nobility with the south London trafficking gang which had been in operation for many years in the Wandsworth/Tooting area. I wondered who did that. I suspected that when Harold Wilson's Gov't drew up plans to relocate St George's from Hyde Park Corner to Tooting that it was something to do with the ring at Tooting, but I didn't realise that the St George's trafficking psychiatrists had made the link to Springfield as long ago as 1969, when they were still all living it up at the Hyde Park Corner site.
In 1971, with the foundation of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, he was awarded the MRCPsych.
They all were, at the time the Royal College put in strategies to ensure that every consultant psychiatrist came out with a prize, even Dafydd, because it was acknowledged that so many of them were hopeless and would not pass an exam under normal conditions. In the same spirit that Brown and me were systematically marked down because we had this annoying habit of doing quite well in exams having crossed the path of Dafydd's gang. Oh shit they've both topped 90% again, MOVE THOSE GOAL POSTS…
He was greatly respected as the best psychiatric clinician at St George's, and was also elected by his colleagues for six years as medical administrator at Springfield, where he brought about many improvements and greatly fostered the link with St George's, which culminated in Springfield being recognised as a university hospital. For nine years he also saw students at Imperial College.
Of course Mr Big was 'the best psychiatric clinician at St George's' he was organising the whole ring and bringing more and more Distinguished Eminent Doctors on board, including those at Imperial, which was under the rule of Lord Brian Flowers, who grew up in Swansea (see previous posts)…
Harold Wilson's resignation was undoubtedly something to do with this ring and I suspect that it was related to Jeremy Thorpe's activities getting so out of hand that Harold though that this was all going to blow up on his watch and in a very big way, but I need to do some more digging…
Harold Wilson waved through a huge investment to build the new St George's Medical School at Tooting, it was a flagship development. Planned for and given to a gang of people traffickers to run…
No To NHS Cuts!
[Storey] developed a large and successful private practice. He saw many survivors of three major disasters with post-traumatic stress – the sinkings of the cross-channel ferry Herald of Free Enterprise (March 1987) and the Thames pleasure cruiser Marchioness (August 1989), and the Lockerbie plane crash (December 1988).
As these events were all in the recent past, I suggest that someone takes a fine toothcomb through everything related to them. They were all famous cock-ups that took place on Thatcher's watch with legal implications of nightmarish proportions.
He was invited to become a co-author of a widely-used textbook, Psychological medicine, written by two eminent St George's figures, Desmond Currran and Maurice Partridge seeing through its 7th to 10th editions (1972 to 1986), and ultimately becoming its sole author. He retired from the NHS, but not from practice, in 1987.
So Storey had everything completely sewn up with Curran and Partridge and the three of them dominated the scene and trained Top Doctors up to those of my generation. Not that Storey even bade a fond farewell in 1987; well he didn't dare, Brown and I had started mouthing off about Dafydd by then and furthermore we were two postgrad students rather than kids in care…
In 1991 he retired completely, and with his wife decided to return to his earlier roots, in Penrith.
No, he won't have gone completely, although 1991 was the year in which his mates at St George's forced me out of medical research. This bastard was never going to go, there was far, far too much at stake…
A few years later he developed progressive Parkinson's disease. He was however for some years able to be a member of Penrith Golf Club, where his father had been captain in 1958, and to continue with fell walking. In retirement he also took a variety of evening classes, in French, conversational Italian and pottery, and completed two Open University courses in literature and history.
None of this will have been benign. I would not have thought that one could make much mischief at Penrith Golf Club, but Peter Storey will have and when he was fell-walking and when he was in his French evening classes and at the conversational Italian and at the pottery and while he was in his OU classes, he will have been networking and organising throughout all of it… Who played golf at Penrith and was in those evening classes with Storey???
Two possibilities: Willie Whitelaw and William Bingley. Whitelaw concealed the crimes of Dafydd et al in every position that he held for years and years and he had a house in the Lake District. William Bingley – who's parents Admiral Sir Alec Bingley and Lady Juliet concealed abuse involving Mountbatten et al in an earlier era (see post 'The Defence Of The Realm') – colluded with Dafydd and all associated gangs when he was Legal Director of MIND and then when he was Chief Exec of the Mental Health Act Commission. After that, Bingley was Professor of Mental Health Law and Ethics at the University of Central Lancashire (2000–04) and was non-executive Director of Morecambe Bay Primary Care Trust (2000-06), which also managed local mental health facilities, then Chairman of North Lancashire NHS Primary Care Trust. Morecombe Bay was the Trust who concealed dangerous midwives whose idiocy and lies resulted in the deaths of many babies. Bingley resigned as Chair of North Lancashire NHS Primary Care Trust three weeks before he died, after he was exposed as running a financial scam with the NHS from which he personally benefited. Bingley died in Aug 2011 in a fell-walking accident. Perhaps someone gave him a shove, after all Operation Pallial had just been launched and there was going to be a review of the Waterhouse Inquiry.
The Viscount Whitelaw
I have only just realised that Bingley's mum Lady Juliet did her social work training in Liverpool. Which is where Lucille Hughes trained and where Dafydd studied medicine… Lady Juliet was appointed Chairman of MIND in 1979. Which was the year that Mary Wynch languished in the North Wales Hospital Denbigh, illegally imprisoned…
Willie Whitelaw was appointed Home Secretary in 1979. He served as Lord President of the Council, 1983-88, which meant that during those years he was the visitor to UCNW…
Willie believed in getting tough on young thugs and giving them a short sharp shock. It didn't work on the boys from Bryn Estyn because they were already accustomed to being gang raped at gunpoint, although Willie knew that, he'd worked very hard to cover it all up for years.
Willie wasn't a Bachelor and he had been blessed with children, but I wouldn't have put anything past him frankly.
[Storey] was a man of many interests, cultural and sporting, with a positive outlook and a dignified presence. In his London years he was very much engaged in opera, and a regular attender at Covent Garden. He was a keen golfer, squash player, mountain walker and skier, continuing into his 60s.
He picked up a few more elite mates at the opera then. Nicky Mitchell-Heggs, the corrupt occupational health physician at St George's Hospital Medical School, liked going to the opera. See previous posts.
At St Mary's he was a rugby player, until an injury with two prolapsed intervertebral disks ended his rugby career. He married in 1952, while still a student, Ann Geraldine Murray. He was survived by his widow, two sons and two daughters, and seven grandchildren.
Oh God. Seven grandchildren. They are myriad, they are legion… They won't be working in MacDonalds.
Peter Storey died in 2008, so he was on hand to help with Waterhouse… Storey was also alive and kicking when all those people were trying to remove Merfyn Jones from his job as VC of Bangor University.
Did you know anything about it all Miranda?
There is another old fossil that I need to cover in this blog post as well, another of Desmond Curran's colleagues, Sir Paul Mallinson, who was with us until 1989.
Paul Mallinson came from two worlds, the timber trade and farming, and made medicine his calling. A shy and private man, he blossomed within his work where his kindness and infinite capacity to care could be formalized. Generations of patients and trainees have cause for gratitude.
Another shy, private bunny who always hid his light under a bushel throughout his entire life, which was somehow spent Caring, while working hand in hand with a bunch of ruthless gangsters of the finest pedigree.
He went to school at Westminster before studying medicine at Oxford and St Thomas' medical school, and entered psychiatry in 1937.
So Mallinson predated Dr Death at Tommy's…
He spent the war years in the Royal Navy working under Desmond Curran and afterwards joined him at St George's Hospital in London.
What better introduction to his future career could Mallinson have had?
The service and teaching programmes he and Curran developed, together with Maurice Partridge, became pre-eminent amongst the London teaching hospitals. For many years the Saturday morning postgraduate teaching at Hyde Park Corner, combined with neurology contributions, was the basis of formal training for countless young psychiatrists aiming at the DPM.
Curran and his mates infected the whole profession…
The outpatient department became famously located at No 15 Knightsbridge, and the inpatient unit at Atkinson Morley's Hospital in Wimbledon.
It sounds rather posh for the likes of Empowered Service Users, but from what I remember, Jeremy Thorpe or someone close to him payed for Norman's 'care' at the hands of Curran. Before Ed's Uncle Harry's NHS Looked After The Poor, wealthy people who had found themselves in a tight spot often footed the bill for the Top Doctors to 'care' for a distraught person who was making worrying allegations about them. Reading biographies of posh people who suffered at the hands of other posh people I've been quite taken with how often Top Doctors were paid good money by charitable abusers to cause their victims even more distress and I'm not just talking of Freud and The Case Of Dora, which is always the example given when questions are asked about Freud and his motivations. Lord Lucan's wife always maintained that 'her' Top Doctor – a Private Psychiatrist – was working on behalf of her husband, not her. Where did poor Lady Lucan end up when someone bludgeoned her over the head after/before killing the nanny? St George's Hospital. Where she was accused of being mad. In true Top Doctor style, Lady Lucan was noticed to be distraught and not making much sense tch tch and making the most extraordinary claims about her husband, that lovely man who did nothing but gamble the family fortune away while hanging out with John Aspinall who kept wild animals who kept eating their keepers. Oh please, someone marry off a few of the Top Doctors to some grade A gits and let the gits bludgeon them over the head after murdering someone else, admit the bludgeoned Docs to St George's and let me know when all this happens. I'll turn up and film the fun and then show screenings free of charge to every Empowered Service User who has ever been on the receiving end of this lot.
Paul's beloved Rover car always proudly bore the registration plate '15K AMH'.
Dafydd's corrupt policeman friend Elfed Roberts drove a penismobile with a number plate with the letters EWR, so I always knew when Elfed had turned up at Bangor University to cause problems for me, even when he wasn't actually sitting in his penismobile shrouded in the 'Daily Post' as he so often was.
The professional and intellectual climate in the department was second to none,
Oh don't titter…
sceptical yet benevolent to a marked degree. Training as a registrar in these circumstances was a joy,
Nay, nay and thrice nay
so that the author of this tribute [I'll come to him shortly] had no qualms about turning down a post at the Maudsley Hospital when the opportunity arose to work at St George's instead.
I can imagine that many people would have been torn having to choose between two such opportunities…
Neither Mallinson or Curran did much research themselves, though their consummate clinical knowledge and skill led to several memorable publications of a clinical kind.
This is a familiar story re those Distinguished Eminent colleagues of Dafydd's. As with David Davies, who was the Dean of the Institute of Psychiatry at the Maudsley when they let Dafydd in, the Davies who built his global reputation as an expert in alcoholism after conducting a study of seven alcoholics, a number of whom Davies later realised weren't actually alcoholics after all (see post 'The Discovery Of A Whole New Galaxy…'), Mallinson and Curran will not have done very much of anything except pompousing and gunning down anyone who might have acquired dirt on the rich and powerful, but they'll have written a few things on the back of their zilch knowledge and that will have been enough for them to have been lauded as Outstanding Clinicians and Clinical Teachers.
The ludicrous thing is that the students and juniors whom this lot lorded it over were fully aware that they were the King's New Clothes, but because most of those students and juniors would go on to build their own careers on the basis of the King's New Clothes themselves, no-one ever did the job of the little boy in the crowd who yelled out 'look they've got no clothes on'.
Almost every registrar working with them was inspired to become embroiled in clinical research within a year or two, and the subsequent publications are still sometimes quoted thirty years later.
Yes, I've just commented on how it works…
At least five of their registrars eventually went on to established university chairs.
And it is highly likely that they won't have actually been robust academics, although they'll have done the right favours for the right people and continued to do so. Some decades ago, FIVE PROFS trained at the knee of a trafficking gang who had no knowledge of psychiatry. What does that tell us about the state of psychiatry? Those profs will have been turning up in court as expert witnesses, they'll have been taking decisions as to who to section for months on end or who to send to live with Jimmy Savile in Broadmoor or who to deny treatment on the grounds that they were 'not ill' when they were too ill to function. It is a nightmare and it is why when Dafydd put on his best grave voice and said to me years ago 'Everyone is saying the same thing about you. Can we really all be wrong?', I replied 'yes, because you're all mates and you're all a bunch of liars.' Furthermore Dafydd, you'd previously rung me up and offered me a place at Liverpool Medical School in return for dropping my complaint about you after telling me that I was a 'remarkable person' and Brown was listening in to that call…
As were MI5, but no, they weren't going to interrupt this fuckwittery.
'We are all saying the same thing'. Take your pick:
Paranoid schizophrenia; Process psychosis; Manic depressive insanity; Bizarre personality disorder; Paranoid personality disorder; Homicidal; Remarkable Person; Attractive and seductive; Anti-social Personality Disorder; Bipolar I; Bipolar II; Borderline personality disorder.
Anyone want to give the tombola another spin???
Brown once suggested a few diagnoses that Dafydd could use, such as Chapel Psychosis and Cottage Ignition Syndrome. We were having a laugh at the time, but I wouldn't be entirely surprised if someone in Denbigh ended up with being diagnosed with those syndromes.
Dafydd mustn't worry, I know what is wrong with me. It's a wandering womb and over-education for my feminine state, it really has turned my mind.
Paul used to go to endless trouble to help his juniors in their careers – more often by simply being empathic to their aspirations and a sound judge of their abilities, coupled with his wish to help them fulfil themselves.
This translates as 'he ensured that those who kept their mouths shut and toadied to him were given a boost, which resulted in his lackeys and partners-in-crime holding key positions of responsibility to keep the show on the road.'
His own conscientious approach, his endless clinical curiosity, open mindedness and modesty, provided a model which was irresistible.
I never encountered this man, but I encountered those whom he 'influenced' and 'mentored' and 'inspired'. In no way did they live up to this spin.
Trainees subject to his influence changed
I saw them post-transformation. It was not a pretty sight.
– as did countless patients. Many young doctors were privileged to share something of his home life. They would spend summer holidays, with their wives and children, at his lovely Bembridge home, where Paul indulged his love of cricket, sailing and gardening.
Bembridge is on the Isle of Wight. So Paul Mallinson invited his coterie and their families for upmarket holidays at his place. It would be nice to think that shameless toadying to a crooked old git in return for crumbs from his table would not be so common as to pervade medicine and effect practice, but from what I saw it does. Geoffrey Chamberlain held summer garden parties at his place in Wimbledon to which everyone was invited, which I think were designed to rub in how important and influential Chamberlain and his wife were. At least Chamberlain and his wife did make pleasant chit chat to their guests though. Chamberlain's friend Cathy Wilson, the Reader in Reproductive Physiology in the Dept of Obs and Gynae, owned an even more impressive place than Chamberlain. Cathy lived at Notting Hill Gate and she too held parties there where the catering could not be bettered. What did Cathy do at her parties? She got pissed and hurled abuse at people. But they returned, time after time. People were aghast when I told them that no, I really would not be wasting my free time chez Wilson. It was simply emphasised what I would me missing – ooh she's got such a beautiful house, the food will be fantastic etc. Well yes that was true, but it came with Cathy Wilson. One day after there had been a great deal of frostiness towards me because I really was not going to go to a party at Cathy's – I tolerated her appalling conduct at work because I don't think that one should cause WW III with one's colleagues when one is being paid to do a job – I was interested to hear what had happened at the Notting Hill Gate party. Cathy had got pissed and screamed racist abuse at a Yugoslavian junior doctor and she'd had a screaming row with a consultant. Well that was a surprise.
For the same reason I turned down all the invitations to join the St George's Wine Club. It was finally noted by Nicky Mitchell-Heggs that I 'didn't really fit in with the rest of them'. No and I was most relieved that I didn't and I had no intention of doing so. They were a bunch of vacuous tossers who wasted their money on bottled water and courgettes, treated people like turds and furthermore they were facilitating a paedophile gang. But at least they partied with Cilla and Prince Edward and Nanette Newman turned up to their ball, which for some baffling reason actually meant something to them.
In his day he was president of the St George's medical school club, and also of its cricket club, and he knew most of the undergraduates fairly well. He eventually retired from St George's in 1969 but continued to practice privately until he was 70 years old.
Mallinson was probably in Wine Club as well.
He was the third baronet and succeeded his father in 1943.
Cathy and Chamberlain would have moved so fast to attend his parties that they'd have broken their legs.
He was married first to Elia Mary Guy in 1940 and they had a son and two daughters; one daughter is a doctor.
They are myriad…
The marriage was dissolved in 1968. His second marriage was to Dr Margaret Cooper Bowden, a former pupil of his
I wonder if Margaret Cooper Bowden was any relation of Bluglass and Dafydd's mate Paul Bowden, another Eminent Distinguished London-based psychiatrist who was also colluding with serious organised crime?
There is a great deal of shagging the boss in medicine. I don't have a problem with that if the people involved actually like each other, but medicine is so dysfunctional that very often they don't. It all looked like a very high risk activity to me. Top Doctors become very traumatised if you are not participating in the shagfest, it's an even worse crime than not going to Wine Club.
and her care – and his stoicism and good humour -made bearable his prolonged final illness. She survived him, together with the three children of his previous marriage.
So the old bastard had someone to look after him when he spent a few years with Parkinsons and she'll have inherited the dosh. There'll have been a fight over the will – after all, where there's a will there's a relative – and the children of the dear departed loving father will all be using the old git's network to bag themselves powerful positions.
Who wrote this tribute to the trafficker who invited those assisting in the crime to live it up with him on the Isle of Wight? One Professor Arthur Crisp. Crisp is now dead, but Arthur Crisp was very much alive when I was working at St George's and when I was a patient at Springfield in early 1991. Crisp was a specialist in anorexia and like everyone at the phenomenal Psych Dept at St George's, Crisp was a towering figure, 'with the best clinical outcomes' of any eating disorder specialist. I know how Crisp achieved his phenomenal results. An Angel who worked at Springfield told me and was remarkably honest about the magic formula. Crisp discharged any patients who refused to eat when they were in the unit and he would not treat them again. So the most seriously ill patients who er, didn't eat, were refused treatment. Anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness, even higher than manic depression. One of the symptoms of anorexia is a refusal to eat, no matter how malnourished one is or how much pressure is put upon one. So Crisp didn't actually treat anorexics, he treated patients with less serious eating problems who could bring themselves to eat.
Any cardiac specialists out there who fancy improving their outcomes by not treating people with heart problems? Your patients will make a fantastic recovery if they're not actually ill.
Arthur Crisp will have been discharging those patients to die and everyone knew that. One outcome of sexual abuse in some people is the development of eating disorders. Crisp and his colleagues were facilitating a paedophile/trafficking ring. So which patients was Crisp treating??? Or refusing to treat?
Crisp's junior doctors are now to be found in the most senior positions re eating disorders. One of his juniors, Adrienne Key, became the Director of Eating Disorders for The Priory Group. I remember Adrienne Key, she was working as a junior doctor in Springfield when I was there. I and other patients watched Adrienne routinely slam the door shut in patients' faces when they tried to talk to her. She wouldn't even reply to the desperate greetings of 'oh hello Dr Key'. Adrienne would march through the ward, straight into the nurses office, slam the door in the face of anyone who dared approach and if they stood patiently waiting outside of the door, an Angel would emerge and shout at them to go away and leave Dr Key alone. The callousness was breathtaking.
Not long after I left St George's Adrienne Key and Tom Burns featured in a TV documentary called 'Minders', which Showed Life In A Mental Hospital, ie. Springfield. I presumed that it would be yet another PR piece, but incredibly enough it wasn't. The documentary makers had not edited as the Top Docs usually bank on them doing. They screened everything and my, did Adrienne and Tom look bad. They actually did exactly what I remember them doing to patients, but I don't think that they ever expected it to be shown on TV. Adrienne turned up on the doorstep of a vulnerable man accompanied by the police, with no warning and snapped at him that he was coming with her, NOW, or these police would handcuff him and she carted the man off to Springfield. He was terrified and confused, there was no attempt at communication with him, simply Adrienne snapping 'you are ill and you are coming with us'. The problem was that the man had a belief that his hair was blue. However it was very evident that this was the only 'symptom' that he had. He had been coping at home, he was OK, he wasn't even distressed, but he did think that his hair was blue. At Springfield he was sectioned and forcibly injected with massive doses of anti-psychotics. He reacted very badly to them, began dribbling uncontrollably and shaking. He continued to maintain that his hair was blue, so they upped the dose. He sat there repeating 'look what you've done to me, look what you've done'. Tom said 'yes we have done this to you because you think that your hair is blue and it is not'. There was no attempt to titrate the dose yet alone give him any side-effect medication, which should be routine.
The grim reality of what Tom and Adrienne did to this poor sod caused uproar and there were a great many complaints about bad practice at Springfield Hospital. Tom Burns demanded that he be allowed onto Channel 4 to defend himself. Burns was filmed saying 'you made us look like the Gestapo'. Indeed they did Tom. Because they filmed what you actually did to people rather than take orders from you as to only show the bits where you were keeping a civil tongue in your head.
I was ordered to see Tom Burns myself by Nicky Mitchell-Heggs, in the wake of me refusing to drop my complaints about Dafydd et al when ordered to by my colleagues at St George's. Nicky told me that Tom Burns was the loveliest man that she knew. Tom Burns was very personable until halfway through the interview, after I'd told him what was happening in north Wales. Burns interrupted me and said 'you think I'm an idiot don't you? You think that I don't know that this is going on and that I'm naive. Well I do know and I believe everything that you've told me about them'. Burns then told me that psychiatry 'attracts disturbed people' and that this was causing great problems.
After I left Burns's room I never heard from him again. Years later, when I acquired my medical records, there was the documentation from Mitchell-Heggs and Burns. Burns had told Mitchell-Heggs that I wasn't psychotic but that I might have a paranoid personality disorder. He told her that I was not a danger to anyone. After Dafydd et al tried to have me imprisoned and I was given bail on condition that I stayed in Springfield, Mitchell-Heggs had written to Burns again. He told her that he 'didn't think that he had anything to offer'.
Burns admitted to me that he knew about the serious criminality in north Wales. Tony Francis, Dafydd and Lucille were directly in contact with Wandsworth Social Services and Springfield Hospital with regard to me, I have all the documentation to prove it. Burns's colleague Dr Robin Jacobson stated in writing that Dafydd was sexually exploiting patients and that he thought that Tony Francis was as well. No-one mentioned a word of this to me. I was discharged from Springfield with no follow-up care and told to go back to north Wales because Dafydd was my doctor no less.
Tom Burns was later given a Chair at Oxford University. Burns is in the same Dept at Oxford as Professor Mark Williams, who left Bangor University for Oxford at about the turn of the millennium. Mark Williams worked with Dafydd and the gang for years and he knew what they were doing. See post 'The Biggest Expert Of The Lot'. I think that Williams got his Chair first and then Burns, from the London branch of the same ring, joined Williams at Oxford.
Tom Burns was a mental health adviser to Blair's Gov't. It was Burns who recommended that the Gov't impose Community Treatment Orders (CTOs) on thousands and thousands of people. When Burns came up with that terrifying proposal, he was told that it would result in mental health patients who were not guilty of any crime being pinned down in their own homes by the police and forcibly injected with anti-psychotic medication that they did not want. Tom sneered and reminded everyone that Top Docs don't behave like that.
Tom has now admitted that CTOs 'haven't worked as he expected' and that yes rather a lot of them have been issued and er OK, there have been some rather worrying incidents. Involving the police forcing their way into people's homes and pinning them down while they are injected… Some Empowered Service Users have run away from home and disappeared to escape CTOs.
What did Miranda think was going to happen when he appointed a member of a trafficking gang as his adviser on mental health? Miranda will have known what was going on at St George's, because he and Cherie had both worked in George Carman's Chambers when Carman was concealing the trafficking ring…
And we were supposed to believe that Merfyn was the problem!
Whoops, looks like you've been caught out Miranda!
It's the fucking Welsh again as Miranda is no doubt shouting at the TV right now…
For more information on Arthur Crisp, Adrienne Keay, Tom Burns and the other funsters who ran a pan-European trafficking ring while working as Top Doctors and Gov't advisers, see previous posts…
Dr David Roberts's book on the history of Bangor University names a number of other gwerin who gathered together in one big classless group for the benefit of the common people, embracing members of the Royal Family through to the landed gentry with hereditary peerages and those who can trace their ancestry back to the Welsh Princes, for the benefit of a vicious criminal paedophile gang.
More of the gwerin will feature on this blog soon. They've always believed that they deserve a place in history and now they've secured one.
Author Sally BakerPosted on November 12, 2018 May 26, 2019 Categories Bangor University, Clwyd Health Authority, Clwyd Social Services, Forensic Psychiatry, Freemasonry, General Medical Council, Glyndwr University, Gwynedd County Council, Gwynedd Social Services, Jimmy Savile, Language, Lawyers and Judges, Leicester Child Abuse Scandal, Margaret Thatcher's Cabinet, Maudsley Hospital, Mental Health Act Commission, Mental Health Charities, Mindfulness, North Wales Child Abuse Scandal, North Wales Hospital Denbigh, North Wales Police, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Prisons, Special Hospitals, Springfield Hospital, St Georges Hospital Medical School, Substance Misuse, Uncategorized, University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, Westminster Polticians, Ysbyty GwyneddTags Aberdeen Football Club, Abortion Act 1967, Adolf Meyer, AIDS, Alder Hey Children's Hospital, Alison Bell, Alison Taylor, All Women Hockey Association, American Psychiatric Association, An Cumann Gaelach, An Iodh Morainn, Andrew Newton, Angharad Rees, Anglia Ruskin University, Ann Murray, Ann Storey, Archbishop of Wales, Arfon Community Mental Health Team, Atkinson Morley Hospital, Audrey Callaghan, Balliol College, Bangor Normal College, Bangor University, Barbara Kahan, Barbara Miroy, Barnett Janner, Baroness Jean Trumpington, BBC, BBC Radio Merseyside, Bertrand Russell, Bethlem Hospital, Bishop of Leicester, Bloomsbury Set, BMJ, Bob Ingham, Bonar Law, British Eugenics Society, Broadgreen Hospital, Broadmoor Hospital, Bryn Estyn, Calday Grange Grammar School, Canadian Psychiatric Association, Cartrefle College, Cassel Hospital, Cherie Booth, Cheshire County Council, Christopher Cazenove, Church of England, Church of St Mary Wavertree, Church of St Peter and St Paul Syston, Cilla Black, Clare College Cambridge, Clough Williams-Ellis, Clwyd County Council, Clwyd Health Authority, Coleg Menai, Communist Party, Community Treatment Orders, Covent Garden, Cremation Society of Great Britain, Cymric Society, Cyril Smith, Dafydd Iwan, Dai Francis, Dail Eireann, Daily Post, Dartington Hall, David Davies, David Jones MP, David Lloyd George, Denis Williams, Denise Morin, Deputy Lieutenant of Hampshire, Derby City Hospital, Desmond Pond, DHSS, Dob Electrical, Donald Ewan Cameron, Down's Syndrome Association, Dr Adrian Bell, Dr Adrienne Key, Dr Alice Levinson, Dr Anne McCandless, Dr Bob Hobson, Dr Carlos Blacker, Dr Cathy Wilson, Dr D.G.E. 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My post 'A Bit More About Those Very Muddy Waters' detailed how in the early 1990s a young woman called Rebecca Teacher made headlines in the UK after she claimed to have been horrifically abused in a commune near Bangor as a child. Rebecca told a story of running away with a friend and telling both the police in Bangor and Gwynedd Social Services of terrible physical and sexual abuse of children in the commune, only to be taken into care for a short while and then returned to her abusers. Rebecca appeared on the 'Kilroy' programme, which at about the same time invited Dafydd along to star in one show in his capacity as an 'expert' to discuss PTSD. When Rebecca appeared on 'Kilroy', Kilroy also invited her dad along, Kevin Teacher, the leader of the community and, Rebecca alleged, her abuser. Kevin Teacher was aggressive and unpleasant to Rebecca on camera and carried on in a rather Top Doctoresque manner, making comments along the lines of 'well Rebecca you'll remember when the Bangor Police arrested you for stealing', when Rebecca was describing the brutal beatings that she alleged that she and other kids in the commune had received.
I have found an article in 'The Independent' dated 11 August 1993 reporting that Rebecca and her stepfather, William Webb, had appeared at the Old Bailey and denied conspiracy to blackmail Kevin Teacher (real name Kevin O'Byrne). It was alleged that Rebecca and William Webb 'carried out a blackmail campaign' in 1992, threatening to tell newspapers how children living with The Teachers had been sexually and physically abused unless her father paid up. David Bate, for the prosecution, told the Old Bailey that Rebecca had claimed that 'she and other children were treated like slaves at the cult commune near Bangor in North Wales' and that Kevin O'Byrne 'forced children to beat each other up. He also beat the children with curtain rails or horse whips' and that 'Ms Teacher told police she demanded between £40,000 and £60,000 from her father after failing to sue him for damage she allegedly suffered in childhood.'
On 19 August 1993, The Indie reported that Rebecca and William Webb had been cleared of blackmail and explained that:
'After her acquittal by a jury at the Old Bailey in London, Rebecca Teacher, 18, said that she would be asking the police to investigate The Teachers, set up by her father Kevin O'Byrne, 55. She said: 'The trial has been an ordeal and I want to try and put my life together now.' Her stepfather William Webb, 43, was also found not guilty. The defendants, both from Barnet, north London, had denied conspiring to blackmail Mr O'Byrne, who styles himself 'Kevin of the Teachers'. The court was told that Mr O'Byrne received telephone calls from the defendants last year demanding between pounds 40,000 and pounds 60,000. They threatened to expose the sect's activities to newspapers if he did not pay up. Mr Webb, a laser consultant, and Miss Teacher admitted demanding the money, but said it was to compensate her for years of suffering. She made the calls after her efforts to sue her father and her attempts to alert the authorities to her plight failed. Mr O'Byrne jointly founded the sect in 1972. The court was told that he believed incest should no longer be a crime because the 'genetic difficulties' that it might cause could be avoided through contraception. The court was also told that children were beaten, whipped, locked up for days without food and made to look after the animals at The Teachers' remote farmhouse commune near Bangor, North Wales.
But David Bate, for the prosecution, said that although the sect was 'weird and bizarre' it was not on trial. The issue was not whether the allegations of abuse were true, but whether the blackmail demands were warranted. Miss Teacher was born into the sect and the court was told that she was beaten and sexually abused until her mother and Mr Webb left the group when she was aged 11. She was one of at least 12 children fathered by Mr O'Byrne with six women. She said yesterday: 'I did this not just for myself but for the other children.' Mr O'Byrne did not give evidence. His absence was described by Judge Clive Tayler as being like 'Hamlet without the Prince'.
There must have been another trial soon after as well, because 'Court News UK' reported that on Nov 2, 1993 Kevin Teacher's son Matthew O'Byrne, age 28, told the Old Bailey that when living at the commune, he sexually abused other children. I do not have access to the full report on 'Court News UK', so I have no idea of the details of this trial or its outcome.
The Teachers were a community who lived on a farm at Tregarth. They had left by the time that Rebecca went public, but The Teachers were still at Tregarth when I arrived at UCNW/Bangor University in 1981. Wales was heaving with hippies, communes and alternative people at the time and many of them were making things – crafts, clothes, jewellery etc – which they would sell. The Teachers were rather different in that they had a shop in Bangor and a rather strange shop at that. The shop sold educational materials for children, but inside the shop, the walls were plastered in posters promoting the notion of 'family planning'. It was seriously weird. I looked around the shop a few times but because there weren't any books for adults in there I didn't bother to make it a regular stopping place of mine. The shop assistants weren't at all chatty, so I didn't get to know them either.
I hadn't been in Bangor long however when I heard more about The Teachers. I was living in hall and at one point I thought about moving out and I went to view a little cottage near Church Island at Menai Bridge. A young woman and her boyfriend were sharing it with another girl who was moving out of the house, so they had advertised a room. I went to see the house and spent the morning chatting with the two who I'd be sharing with if I did move in. The young woman was a dental nurse and her boyfriend was a PhD student in Marine Sciences. Because I was relatively new to Bangor, we chatted about everything and they briefed me. They asked me if I'd met any of the hippies in the communes and I said that I'd been in The Teachers' shop. They told me not to have anything to do with The Teachers because they were really bad news, but another community at Aber, the Sanyassins, were fine.
The Sanyassins, or Orange People, were followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, who excited the 'Daily Mail' because of the orgies which Bhagwan was alleged to have encouraged at his main communes outside of the UK and of course because Bhagwan owned a fleet of Rolls Royces. There were still a few former Orange People living around Bethesda when I lived there in the 1990s. One was called Promod, real name Peter Greenaway, who was married to Alison Greenaway, who was the manager of the MIND Centre at Abbey Road, Bangor. Alison Greenaway was a complete stooge of Dafydd and the gang, the MIND centre colluded with them and silenced all dissent. Alison Greenaway later became a psychiatric social worker and spent many enjoyable years standing by silently while patients died or were framed and imprisoned. Another Orange Person whom I knew was a mate of Alison's, a woman called Jackie, who used to spend much time in Turkey enjoying the company of young Turkish men while her partner, a gentle man who was constantly stoned, was told to put up with it. Then Jackie discovered the joys of The Gambia and moved a Gambian toyboy in and relegated her stoned partner to the attic.
I knew another Sanyassin very well, because he was a Hergest patient. He moved into Rachub and the whole village was told that he was a nutter who was 'a danger to women'. He wasn't – one of my friends was his girlfriend. He had spent some time living in south Wales and when he was there he told us that he was wrongly accused by a female police officer and then violently attacked by a number of male police officers and hit on the head with a truncheon so hard that he was seriously injured. He was arrested – for assaulting the woman police officer. When under arrest, he requested medical help and was diagnosed with 'paranoid schizophrenia' and sectioned. He appeared in court, was found guilty of assault and was put on probation. He wanted to return to Bethesda, so his 'care' was transferred to Dr Tony Francis at the Hergest Unit and the North Wales Probation Service took over his 'case'. His girlfriend told me that she had seen the photos of the serious injuries which the police inflicted and she also told me that both Tony Francis and the probation officer had admitted to her that the Sanyassin had been severely beaten up by the South Wales Police and framed. None of that was recorded on his medical notes or his probation file. The official story was that he was a 'paranoid schizophrenic' – Alison and Jackie agreed with the diagnosis – who had brought it on himself by blowing dope. Every time that this man announced that he would try and come off his medication, he would be sectioned and dosed up again. His girlfriend visited him regularly when he was an in-patient in Hergest and noted the abuse and neglect on the part of the staff, as well as their lies in the face of complaint.
The Hergest staff didn't know this, but before that man joined Bhagwan's community, he was doing a post-doc at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington. He spoke to me about the malpractice and fuckwittery that he witnessed there. A few months ago, someone from Bethesda told me that he'd been found dead, but I don't know any details. For further details of this man's brutal treatment at the hands of the South Wales Police and the collusion of the all agencies with the violent thugs who nearly killed him, see post 'A Bit More About Those Very Muddy Waters'.
The dental nurse who warned me against The Teachers had a mother who was a midwife at St David's Hospital in Bangor and she told me that there were constant allegations that the children of The Teachers were being mistreated and that the adults 'shared' the children, so the kids didn't have any specific parents to rely on. I heard about Kevin Teacher as well – that he was mad, an absolute git who accompanied the women and children EVERYWHERE, even to hospital appointments and dominated the whole commune. The midwife who worked at St David's had told her daughter that Kevin Teacher used to arrive at St David's with whichever woman from the commune was in labour and would refuse to leave them alone with the Top Docs and Angels. Furthermore, I was told that there was an experimental birthing pool at St David's and Kevin really freaked the Top Docs out because he got into the pool along with the women.
As ever with An Everyday Story Of North Wales Folk, one had to untangle the mess. The Teachers did have a terrible reputation, I was later told that by other people as well. But so did St David's Hospital in Bangor. My post 'The BMA And It's Ethics' describes just some of what I knew was going on up there – the illegal abducting of newborns of women who's families had conspired with Dafydd, false accusations made against women miscarrying that they had tried to procure an abortion, women being treated appallingly insensitively and even concerns that patients were sexually assaulted by some staff. St David's Hospital was fully on board with Dafydd's gang. There was one obstetrician up there who severely brain damaged one baby after buggering up the delivery. The mother wasn't told what had happened and no admissions were ever made by the Top Docs. The same Top Doc then buggered up another delivery, resulting in another brain damaged baby and was found a job in Australia in order for silence to be maintained. St David's employed a monster of a senior nurse who's sole purpose was to intimidate parents who were complaining of damaged or dead babies. There were very, very big problems at that hospital and every Top Doc and midwife knew it.
When I told the Hergest Unit a few years later what I had heard about St David's, it was flatly denied. Er – I had spoken to women who had delivered up there and they supplied quite enough evidence to confirm that what they were saying was true. There was also a problem with the community midwives back in the 1980s. One of my neighbours on Anglesey told me how bloody rude the midwife was, she even marched into their house without knocking, so her husband kicked her out.
If I had given birth at St David's I would have taken the father of the baby in with me as a bodyguard, so who knows, perhaps the women of The Teachers felt like that as well. It is difficult to know who would have been less helpful to the patients, Kevin Teacher or the St David's staff.
As ever, people were reluctant to make a fuss about their 'care' at St David's lest there was Retribution. So now that Dr David Reed and his wife Fiona are safely out of the clutches of the Top Docs, perhaps they'd like to confirm that they were very, very distressed at the way in which Fiona was treated during the birth of her first baby, but Dave was doing his PhD at Ysbyty Gwynedd and Fiona was working as a secretary there…
St David's closed down in the 1990s, but as with the closure of the North Wales Hospital Denbigh, the mad, abusive staff were simply relocated to a new unit at Ysbyty Gwynedd. The bad attitudes and mistreatment of patients continued. When I was doing my PhD, one member of staff at Bangor University told me that the delivery of her baby had been so badly handled that the baby had been left brain damaged – but fortunately not seriously – and she had been left with PTSD herself because of the brutality with which she had been treated. She sued and won. How did this patient win a case against Gwynedd Health Authority when women who's babies actually died were told to sod off and no admissions were made? She was an Angel of course, who had the dirt on them, so they paid up. This Angel continued in the same vein over the following years, bagging successive jobs which she could not do on the back of her knowledge of NHS wrongdoing. She hit the jackpot when she shared an office with me because she found out about the first batch of documents that my lawyers got hold of which included those describing how Alun Davies and the Top Docs were going to fit me up in court. It was on the basis of this that the Angel bagged a research grant from the North West Wales NHS Trust. When I wrote an article for a newspaper about the mental health services, the Angel asked me if I would publish false allegations about the VC of Bangor University in the press. I refused and a few days later the Angel screamed at me that Brown and me were 'damaging her career' with our articles about the NHS.
Had Dr Dee Jones aka Dr Dee Gray not hitched her fortunes up to a paedophile gang, she need never have worried about Brown and I publishing the wrongdoing of the NHS. Dr Dee Gray now runs an 'executive coaching business', 'Gray's Learning', through which she flogs her 'expertise' to the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board and others for many thousands of pounds. As Dee has built her entire career upon her knowledge of the crimes of the Top Doctors, perhaps she could give us all the details of the deal which she thrashed out with corrupt NHS personnel and corrupt union reps that resulted in her bagging a massive compensation pay-out from Bangor University after the joint NW Wales NHS Trust-Bangor University project which she 'led' went tits up and hundreds of thousands of pounds were wasted and two PhD students did not get PhDs. See post 'Little Shop Of Horrors' for more Dr Dee Gray laffs.
As well as hearing about The Teachers during my visit to the cottage near Church Island, the dental nurse's PhD student boyfriend told me something else as well, which I attributed to homophobia at the time, because I didn't know that an abuse ring targeting boys was operating in the region. The dental nurse's boyfriend expressed concern about the Gay Soc at UCNW. UCNW was not a hot bed of leftist politics, the SDP were the dominant force among the English speaking students, although of course many of the Welsh-speaking students were involved with Welsh activism. However, UCNW did have a very active Gay Soc, one of the most active in the UK and it was networked to much UK-wide gay activism. The dental nurse's boyfriend kept repeating that he didn't think that Gay Soc should be allowed to appear at the freshers events and tout for business. I was gobsmacked and told him so; this PhD student then said 'but they're trying to get the students who aren't gay interested as well, they're forcing it on them'.
I didn't click, even when in my second year I was told repeatedly by other students that Gay Soc were 'extreme'. It was only toward the end of my third year when a very obviously predatory older man – who was a teacher at St David's College, Llandudno – joined the UCNW Bird Group and bothered some freshers so badly that they asked to be protected from him when I realised that students at Bangor were being targeted. During those years, a number of people left the Chester branch of CHE because they maintained that it was a front for paedophile activity. I now realise what that PhD student whom I met in my first year was concerned about. Dafydd's trafficking gang was targeting children/adolescents/vulnerable young people, male and female and the gang was operating within UCNW. See post 'Just A Language Divide?'.
Two other people who were students at the same time as me at UCNW who probably knew something about the gang even if they didn't realise it are Julian Oliver and his (now ex) wife Heather. Julian studied zoology and had a very bad experience with Dafydd's partner in crime Dr D.G.E. Wood just before finals. Julian's girlfriend, whom he later married, Heather, was doing teacher training at Bangor. Heather was difficult and didn't get on with other students very well, but she was truly appalled by what she witnessed on her teacher training placements. She was very voluble regarding what she thought were dreadful standards, the qualifying of the most unsuitable students and the neglect of children in one primary school in particular near Colwyn Bay. Dafydd's gang had a stronghold at Colwyn Bay.
To return to The Teachers. The other person who told me that The Teachers were abusing children was Meleri Tudor, a solicitor in Bangor, who later practised in Caernarfon and then became an employment tribunal judge. Meleri and I discussed The Teachers and their alleged abuse of children on the day that Meleri accompanied me to Chester Court when Gwynedd County Council attempted to have me imprisoned on the basis of the perjury of the Arfon Community Mental Health Team, in July 1990. See post ' 'Some Big Legal Names Enter The Arena'. Meleri confirmed that other people knew that The Teachers were abusing children as well – she told me that 'people don't like them much because of the way that they treat their children'.
Yet when Rebecca Teacher and her friend ran away and reported the abuse to Bangor Police Station and Gwynedd County Council, Rebecca and her friend were treated as delinquents – 'Rebecca was stealing' – and they were very soon sent back to The Teachers.
Although Rebecca and her stepdad were acquitted of conspiracy to blackmail, I can remember being told by people in Bethesda – which was some two miles away from The Teachers' farm – that 'that girl was just after money'. I was even told this by two hippies who had previously told me that The Teachers were 'bad news'. One of these hippies was friends with a man called Alan Patrick, who had joined The Teachers and left, but refused to give anyone details why. I was simply told that Alan was trying to forget all about ever having been one of them. Alan then ran a shop in Bethesda and shared a flat with Dr Chris Barnes. Chris taught at UCNW and then later at Hillgrove School. I always liked Chris Barnes, he was very jolly and entertaining, but Chris was married to Gwyneth Barnes (see post 'Pets Win Prizes') who worked as a cleaner at the Hergest Unit, who must have known how badly the patients there were treated, because some of the cleaners used to tell their friends and families that they couldn't believe what they were witnessing at the Hergest Unit.
Rebecca received all that publicity while the North Wales Police investigated the possibility of a paedophile ring operating in Cheshire and north Wales but concluded that there wasn't one; when hundreds of complaints about the abuse of children at the Ty'r Felin children's home in Bangor were made but no action was taken by the DPP; when Dafydd was popping up constantly on TV as an 'expert'; when former kids in care and psych patients were dropping like lemmings; when I was prosecuted and convicted of 'staring at a social worker in Safeways' – a social worker who had previously illegally detained me and then lied to the police and admitted this in court (see post 'Some Big Legal Names Enter The Arena'); when I wrote to Michael Mansfield QC regarding what was happening to me at the hands of Gwynedd Social Services, only to receive a one line reply; when Superintendent Gordon Anglesea sued 'Private Eye', 'The Independent On Sunday' and HTV for libel after they named him as abusing boys in care in north Wales.
No-one defended Rebecca. She was firmly branded a money grubbing liar.
Less than one year after Rebecca's acquittal, Peter Howarth was jailed for sexually abusing boys at Bryn Estyn. Howarth was a key figure in a massive paedophile ring. Still no-one suggested that perhaps Rebecca might have been telling the truth.
Meleri Tudor, the lawyer who knew that kids at The Teachers were being abused, was the daughter of a Minister of religion. Meleri's sister had served time in Holloway for Welsh language activism. I'm fairly certain that Meleri's husband was a lawyer. Meleri at that time worked for Carter, Vincent, Jones, Davies in Bangor and one of the partners was Alwyn Jones, who was my main solicitor. At that time, Alwyn was married to a lawyer who worked for Gwynedd County Council. Alwyn's wife's father was a police officer who was a Freemason in Bangor. Meleri was friendly with people who were in the Bangor University Lodge.
On the day that Gwynedd Social Services tried to frame and imprison me at Chester Court in July 1990, the reason why Meleri came to the court with me was that I was warned that I could well go to prison so someone from my solicitor's practice would definitely be coming with me, but it had to be Meleri because although Alwyn had been handling my case, on the big day he found that he had to be elsewhere, so Meleri, his junior, came to Chester with me, although Alwyn was very worried that he couldn't be there.
That was the Alwyn who's wife worked as a lawyer for Gwynedd County Council – who were taking me to Chester Court in order to have me imprisoned. Documents now in my possession demonstrate that Ron Evans, Gwynedd County Council's lawyer, knew that lies were going to be told about me on oath and indeed Ron had sent a note to the perjurers of Arfon Community Mental Health Team telling them who to meet at Chester before the case, where they would be told what to say and shown their affidavits. Which presumably they had not written and signed themselves as alleged. Three of the people who gave evidence against me had never met me before. One of them had met me at most, twice. Documents in my possession also show that Ron Evans knew that the Court had been changed, as had the judge, days before the hearing. Ron sent the Arfon perjurers a little hand-written note telling them this and giving them precise details of which Court to go to and how to get there. Meleri knew that the Court and judge had been changed as well. My barrister, Suzanne Evans, didn't. She went to the wrong court, arrived very late for my case, was all of a fumble and the corrupt judge – for he was indeed corrupt – Justice John Roch, later Lord Justice John Roch, snapped and shouted at her.
Fourteen or fifteen charges against me were thrown out because the Arfon perjurers were demonstrated to have lied on oath. Roch offered to give them extra time to rewrite their statements. Their barrister declined, saying that Gwynedd County Council had already spent a great deal of time and money on this case.
Justice Roch was clearly intimidating Suzanne Evans, but she knew damn well that extensive perjury and conspiracy had been committed. She didn't utter a word and I never heard from her again after I left the court. For more information on Suzanne Evans, see post 'Life In Cold Blood'.
No-one ever mentioned the industrial scale perjury and conspiracy after we left Chester Court. I told Meleri that I thought it was very odd that the Court and judge had been changed and my barrister didn't know. Meleri brushed it off and maintained that it was just a little mistake. Meleri gave me a lift back to Bethesda but I was so stressed that she had to keep stopping the car so I could throw up. She told me that her daughter got car sick as well, but nothing like this!
Bechod!
Roch, Alwyn, Meleri, Ron Evans, Lucille, Arfon CMHT, Gwynedd County Council, Suzanne Evans: It's A Rat Trap – And You've Been Caught…
A Tonic for the Troops
I must congratulate Alwyn on his camouflage, it was even better than that of Prof Eric Sunderland.
Alwyn:
Professor Eric Sunderland:
Alwyn's crooked lawyer of a wife later left him – she was having an affair with another crooked lawyer who worked for Gwynedd County Council – and Alwyn remarried, to a pharmacist whom he had known at Abersytwyth University. Alwyn's stepson Sean (it might be spelt differently) Hudson went to school with Laura, the daughter of Ella Fisk, who was the Angel who ran the Day Centre at the Hergest Unit. Ella knew that I and other patients were being fitted up in court by her colleagues. Sean went to Oxford to read law and Laura went to Cambridge and is now a clinical psychologist!
Tony and Sadie Francis's son Adrian went to the same school as Sean and Laura – Ysgol David Hughes – and Adrian became a lawyer as well! Adrian is now a barrister at Dean's Court Chambers in Manchester. Adrian's Linked In profile provides the following info regarding his biography:
University of Liverpool, 1995-98, BA, 2:1; College of Law, 2001-03; RMNJ Solicitors, Chester, Trainee Solicitor in Criminal Defence, Mental Health Law and Conveyancing, 2003-05; Abraham & Co Solicitors, Criminal Defence and Mental Health Solicitor, 2005; The Law Office of Paul D'Ambrogio, Claimant Personal Injury Solicitor, 2006; Wirral Borough Council, Locum Adult Social Care Solicitor, 2006-08; Cheshire County Council, Adult Social Care Solicitor, 2008-09; Cheshire East Council, Adult Social Care Solicitor, 2009-10; Wiltshire Council, Locum Adult Social Care Solicitor, 2010-12: 500k recovered in Ordinary Residence Disputes. In addition in excess of 500k saved. 3 successful determinations by The Secretary of State for Health; Leeds City Council, Locum Adult Social Care Solicitor, 2012-14: Clients included Leeds City Council & NHS Leeds Clinical Commissioning Groups, Full range of Adult Social Care Advice to include – Litigated COP health & welfare matters, Ordinary Residence disputes, S117 Funding disputes, Community Care Law, Defendant Judicial Review Litigation; Cumbria County Council, Adult Social Care Legal Consultant, 2014: Court of Protection Litigation, Care Home Fees Recovery, Training of Solicitors; Manchester City Council, Locum Solicitor Adult Social Care, 2015: Adult Social Care Solicitor for Manchester City Council, Salford City Council & Manchester Mental Health & Social Care NHS Trust; Sheffield City Council, Locum Adult Social Care Solicitor, 2015-16: Court of Protection Litigation & Defendant Judicial Review Litigation on behalf of Sheffield City Council; South Tyneside Council, Locum Adult Social Care Solicitor, 2016-17: Litigation based role to include legal advice to the council on all matters relating to adult social care law to include advocacy before the court of protection & county court; LGSS Law Ltd, Adult Social Care and Healthcare Legal Team Manager (Locum), 2017: I carry a full adult social care law caseload and manage a team of Adult lawyers across 3 counties Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire & Central Bedfordshire for the ABS LGSS Law Ltd. Providing Legal Services for the Public Sector to include local authorities & NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups; Borough of Poole, Locum Adult Social Care Lawyer, 2017-18.
Observant readers will have noticed that this son of two of the Top Docs who facilitated the trafficking gang in north Wales/Cheshire has been employed by a number of the County Councils who for years sent kids in care to children's homes in north Wales where they were abused. Adrian Francis has been employed by some of the most troubled, scandal ridden local authorities in the UK to fight 'service users' who have dared to make a claim on those authorities. He has worked for the mental health services in Salford and Manchester – they employed his parents before the Francis's relocated to north Wales…
I note that Adrian worked for the Wirral Borough Council, 2006-08. The corrupt HR Director at Bangor University, Lyn Meadows, who was busy trying to force me out of my job at the University at that time (see post 'A Demand From Gwynedd County Council') had recently been a non-executive Director of an NHS Trust on the Wirral. When in post, Meadows assisted in a fraud with three Top Doctors and was subsequently named in Hansard and on Frank Field's blog. As well as helping Top Docs defraud the NHS, Meadows also had responsibility for developing mental health care on the Wirral. She therefore participated in yet another scam with dodgy people and it was later found that patients whom had been 'cared for' as a result of arrangements organised by Meadows were abused and neglected. When abusing her position in the NHS on the Wirral, Meadows was employed as a senior manager with the Welsh NHS Trust. She was in that post when Tony Francis was still alive and when Sadie Francis was still working at the Hergest Unit. After her retirement, Sadie Francis was a member of the North Wales Community Health Council – the 'patients voice'. The CHC ignored all serious complaints about the mental health services. Lyn Meadows is now a member of the Betsi Board. Bernie Cuthel, another Board member from the NHS Trust which served the Wirral, also turned up on the Betsi Board a few years ago, after she had been obliged to leave the Wirral NHS in the wake of allegations of serious bullying and misconduct. Bernie is of course a mental health specialist. See post 'The Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board' and 'Conflicts Of Interest – And Some Very Big Salaries' for further information about Bernie.
Adrian Francis describes himself as:
'An experienced lawyer who is a specialist in adult social care law specifically in the law relating to elderly & vulnerable clients, mental incapacity law, mental health law, care home fees, community care challenges, ordinary residence disputes, s117 aftercare funding disputes and all matters that are before the Court of Protection.
With over 10 years post qualification experience as a solicitor prior to qualifying as a barrister having advised local authorities nationwide on all legal matters relating to adult social care law and policy over the last decade.
Advocacy experience before the Magistrates Court, County Court, Mental Health Tribunal (First Tier Tribunal), HM Coroner and Court of Protection having appeared before the Courts nationwide from Newcastle in the North to Bournemouth in the South. A Welsh speaker and member of Grays Inn, The Law Society, Royal Society of Medicine & Court of Protection Practitioners Association (COPPA).'
When Adrian was at school and his parents were abusing us while pretending to be 'caring' for us, they used to tell us that Adrian wanted to be a Human Rights lawyer. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Surely a job with Cherie Booth is a must for Adrian now?
Two other rats who knew nuzzing are Sian Williamson and her husband Anton. Sian and Anton were Angels in north Wales for years. Sian worked on the psych wards at Ysbyty Gwynedd, Seiriol and Dwynwen Wards, before the Hergest Unit was built and then in the Hergest Unit. Anton worked as an Angel in Manchester for a while, he was an alcohol specialist. Sian and Anton did not abuse patients themselves but they witnessed their colleagues abusing patients on many occasions. They knew that patients were being unlawfully detained and fitted up in court. I met up with Sian when I was doing my PhD and she told me that conditions at the Hergest Unit were so dangerous that 'someone is going to get killed' there. She told me that the senior managers of the NW Wales NHS Trust would not listen to anyone no matter who was warning them that neither patients or staff were safe and that whistleblowers were simply sacked. Sian also told me that the Trust was buying the silence of certain mental health staff by 'looking after them'. Two of the people whom she named were Bob Ingham and Gareth Phillips, both Angels who had been involved in fitting up patients who had complained. Sian was very unhappy that the Trust hadn't 'looked after' Anton, who had retired early due to a back injury. At the time, Sian was working with the drugs and alcohol team on Anglesey – who were part of Dafydd's domain, so I expect that Anton will be very well looked after by now. Particularly as I have been told that when Sian found out that I was doing a PhD and was preparing to publish on the abuses of the north Wales mental health services, she rang a few former colleagues who had fled the area before the Waterhouse Inquiry and sent out an alert.
My post 'A Demand From Gwynedd County Council' and previous posts discussed Eileen Tilley, the UCU rep at Bangor University, who colluded with Lyn Meadows's bullying of staff and unlawful practices and who tried to shoulder the blame for Meadows' and Meadows' associates wrongdoing onto senior staff who were uninvolved, including the VC. I was told that Tilley wanted to bag a seat on the national executive of the UCU and that this was the basis of her chummy relationship with Meadows.
Today's 'Morning Star' contains a big advert for a TUC fringe meeting on Sept 11, being organised by the 'Morning Star', on the subject of 'How can the Labour Party link be developed from the workplace upwards? One of the speakers is Vicky Knight, the President of the UCU. When Vicky stood for election, her profile on the UCU website was headed by the words 'Vicky Price – Independent candidate – putting members first'. It was quite clear to me when I worked at Bangor that the UCU was putting the paedophiles' friends first.
Vicky provided the following biography:
I have more than 25 years' trade union experience in the public sector: within the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) and UCU as a local, regional and national representative. I am an elected member of your national negotiating team and sit on your National Executive Committee, Further Education Committee, Equality and Women's Committees. I have the honour of representing UCU at numerous events, on committees and platforms including; UCU Congress, TUC Congress, TUC Women's conference, TUC Northwest Regional Conference. For the last 3 years I have represented UCU on the TUC Women's Committee where I'm proud to have been elected as Chair for the last 2 years.
I do not know how Vicky ended up as a Fire Brigades Union rep, but the FBU has certainly hosted a few interesting people. Someone with a background as an FBU national official is Ann Jones, Labour AM for the Vale of Clwyd. Ann grew up in Rhyl, was educated in Rhyl and was a Rhyl Town Councillor and a Denbighshire County Councillor. Ann knew all about Dafydd and the gang and knows that the NHS in north Wales is endemically corrupt and is killing people, but Ann isn't saying a word. Which is why she is still sitting in the Senedd.
I'm puzzled as to why Labour Wimmin have been involved with the FBU. The Fire Brigade until recently was famously macho, the firemen spent their time boozing and reading/watching porn and had ludicrous initiation ceremonies which involved new recruits being stripped and urinated upon. One very effective way which the Fire Brigade used to prevent women joining when they were obliged to stop their unlawful sexual discrimination was to subject the female recruits to the same initiation ceremonies as the male recruits.
Does this look like someone who has taken her fair share of being pissed upon by the lads and spent many enjoyable hours watching porn, downing pints and eating vindaloos?
'Don't fancy yours much mate'.
What has been going on in the FBU?
The 'Morning Star' also had a short article reporting the concerns of MIND that 'poor social housing' was contributing to the mental ill health of tenants. If only MIND had spoken out about this during the 1990s, when Hergest patients were systematically housed – when they were housed at all that was – in the most 'hard to let' housing in the area. After they'd been living in appalling hostels for months, the lucky few would be offered accommodation on the rough end of Maesgeirchan, the housing estate on the outskirts of Bangor, which was also where the Ty'r Felin children's home was located. One severely ill patient was left to be harassed and threatened by the paedophiles' friends who ruled the roost on Maesgeirchan and was eventually found dead in his house. He was called Charles Pearce and well-known in Bangor because he was floridly manic, used to call himself the King of Bangor and wear a home-made crown and robes. The mental health services banged him up in Denbigh for a few months, declared him incorrigible, released and then abandoned him. Charles was repeatedly arrested and fined for ludicrous offences, which eventually pushed him into so much debt that he had to sell his properties – he was then fleeced of thousands by the North Wales Housing Association – and after that he could only afford a former council house on Maesgeirchan. Charles subsequently developed a disorder which resulted in him pulling flesh off himself. He was seen out and about with visible injuries and was later found dead in his house, having disembowelled himself. See post 'R.I.P. The Previous King Of Wales'. Charles Pearce died slowly and painfully in full view of the whole of Bangor.
The other favourite location for housing Hergest patients was on the Morawelon estate at Holyhead. One part of Morawelon was so bad that absolutely no-one would live there. A homeless hostel opened on Morawelon and was managed by a young woman who did know what she was doing. Sadly some bigoted corrupt old farts of Holyhead Councillors constantly undermined her, sabotaged her work, forced her to employ inappropriate people – ie. their friends – the scheme fell apart and the hostel subsequently turned into a crack house. Hergest patients were housed nearby. They were harassed, threatened and occasionally beaten up. MIND knew all about it, because Holyhead MIND ran a much boasted about centre for service users, The Priory. Dr Mike Jackson, a clinical psychologist who worked at Bangor University and for the mental health services, was instrumental in establishing the flagship which was The Priory. A leading light in The Priory was Sue Sayer, who later was given a paid job as an advocate at the Hergest Unit. Patients were abused and assaulted by staff, fitted up in Court and were found dead regularly. Sue Sayer was told about the sexual abuse and trafficking of patients in a chain of private 'nursing homes', Prestwood (see post 'A Convenient Arrangement With The Private Sector').
MIND did not say a word about any of this to anyone, although they did ask me if I would provide free maths lessons for Prestwood residents. I of course said no, not wishing to be a source of free labour for a people trafficking organisation. I was told that if I didn't agree to provide free maths lessons for Prestwood clients, I would not be allowed to provide free maths lessons for the other service users at The Priory, which is what I had offered. So MIND prevented service users from accessing free maths tuition, which the service users had told me that they really wanted.
When Mike Jackson and his wife Sonia heard that my lawyer had finally obtained my highly incriminating medical records, Sonia shrieked at me 'I hope that you're not going to mention Mike's name' and a few days later Mike told me 'I know you suffered but I hope you never win a case against the Trust because it'll cost them nearly a million and that should be spent on my patients'.
Well Mike, I never received a penny from the dear old Trust, I and witnesses were simply threatened – including with guns – until I left Wales. But I don't think that the million which was saved was spent on your patients was it – they're still destitute and dying…
The extraordinary in-fighting in the Labour Party continues. Jeremy Corbyn has now subscribed to the precise definition of anti-semitism which Margaret Hodge demanded after she engaged lawyers to the Royals Mishcon de Reya because Jezza hurt her feelings, but Dame Madge is still not happy, because Jezza added a clause allowing people to have sympathies for the Palestinians should they wish. Dame Madge was given the prime time 8-10 am slot on the 'Today' programme this morning to tell the world that Jezza has 'sullied' the definition of anti-semitism by adding this outrageous clause. Dame Madge did quite a bit of sullying herself when she led Islington Borough Council and ignored the paedophile gang operating in its children's homes, who murdered witnesses. Then the Dame did a bit more sullying when she was MP for Barking and ignored the fact that the local hospital was killing maternity patients at quite an impressive rate.
After Dame Madge had told the world how disgusting Jezza is now that he has added a conscience clause to the definition demanded by the Dame, the Dame and Baroness Shami Chakrabarti held a debate about Jezza and the definition. All I could think when I listened to the Dame and the Baroness discussing how much 'hurt' Jezza has caused by being too slow to adopt the right definition and then adding the conscience clause when he did adopt the right definition is that throughout this summer, some kids' parents were too poor to provide lunches for them; some school girls are receiving free sanitary products because they cannot afford to buy them; the numbers of homeless are rising; disabled people and people on universal credit are becoming destitute because of changes to their benefits; most social service depts in the UK are under police investigation for grooming and people trafficking offences; social care for the elderly is virtually unavailable; and the mental health services have collapsed. And of course millions of people who aren't actually in dire difficulties are still working long and hard to keep body and soul together.
Margaret Hodge's immediate family, the Oppenheimers, moved to London after the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, concerned that anti-semitism had increased in the Middle East and started their family-owned steel-trading corporation, Stemcor. It is one of the world's largest privately held steel companies, with an annual turnover of over £6 billion in 2011. Hodge is a major shareholder. Stemcor was run by her brother, Ralph, until September 2013.
Madge looks like she's having a pretty good time, despite Jezza sullying things:
Dame Margaret Hodge
Why would anyone ever vote Labour when she is allowed to conduct herself like this?
By the way Madge, Lady Shami was quite correct this morning when she told you that much of what you claim to be anti-semitic is open to debate, even among Jewish people. One of my friends married a Jewish Canadian and this Jewish Canadian used to tell me that he didn't like visiting Golders Green because he found many of the people there rather difficult. I asked why and he said 'there's a lot of Israelis there, I don't really like them that much, they tend to be a bit arrogant'. He is as Jewish as you are Madge, when I went to visit him and his family, I would watch him carrying out every appropriate ritual. They aren't Orthodox, but he is Jewish. Neither does he own a steel company with an annual turnover of £6 billion and he's never colluded with a paedophile gang.
The think tank established by the Windbag which has served as a job creation scheme for the offspring of Labour big wigs, the IPPR, has produced a report with ideas to transform the UK economy. The IPPR haven't really transformed anything so far and they weren't even bothering to acknowledge applications from people who responded to their adverts for policy specialists a few years ago – I did notice IPPR, I had absolutely everything on my CV that you wanted and much more, but whoops my mum isn't Harriet and my dad wasn't Ralph! – so I doubt that their ideas for transforming the economy will be very exciting. Two people were invited to discuss the IPPR report on the radio – Lord Bob Kerslake and Kate Andrews. Lord Bob Kerslake is the former Head of the Civil Service and was also the Biggest Wig in the NHS at one point, so there's a sound track record there. Kate Andrews is a rather irritating right wing American who works for the Institute of Economic Affairs who arrived in the UK a few years ago and has been doing the rounds ever since, telling us all how crap we are, how crap our country is and how we need to take a leaf out of the book of the US. Er, OK…
In that case Kate, I want Stormy Daniels over here as well.
The Top Docs continue to discover a life-saving miracle on a daily basis. Today it was childhood leukaemia. Which is a little confusing because the big advances were made with childhood leukaemia many years ago, when it was discovered that a combination of vincristin and methotrexate did produce very, very good results. Childhood leukaemia was no longer a death sentence as a result.
Brave Babs Windsor has had a pacemaker fitted after her Alzheimers meds caused her to collapse, or at least according to 'The Sun' that is what has happened. Which suggests that Babs is doing rather better out of the Top Docs than most other people are, when one considers the usual dire 'care' to which Alzheimers' patients are subjected.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) are fuming because they have discovered that most people on the whole planet are not taking the required amount of exercise, as demanded by WHO. Uganda was mentioned as a particularly lamentable example. Call me naive, but I suspect that many people in Uganda probably have rather more pressing concerns than ensuring that they follow the WHO guidelines for daily exercise. For a start if they are gay, they'll be terrified because should they be accused/caught they may well be executed.
The UK Cabinet are also concerned with First World Problems, they have agreed that every restaurant, cafe and other eating place should display the calorie content of the meals on offer on their menus, although there has been concern expressed regarding the cost of doing this for small businesses. The Cabinet are doing this because the scourge of obesity shows no signs of abating. Which suggests that the general public are not taking a blind bit of notice of 'public education' messages, so they're not going to take any notice of calories printed on menus. Well Theresa May will, as will Chris Bryant, Jane Hutt, Julie Morgan and Stephen Kinnock, but they'll probably be worrying about the calories before they choose anyway. Somehow I do not think that I'll be witnessing the labourers with builders bums studying those calories when they order their fry-ups in the morning before starting work. Not that the Cabinet will realise that, most of them not having worked as hod carriers.
I look forward to hearing what lethal condition the Top Docs will announce that they have cured next, now that I have exposed Adrian Francis! I've had my eye on Adrian for a few years now, wondering if he was going to do the decent thing and resign as a lawyer after his father killed himself and then after I started this blog… No, Adrian's going from strength to strength like the rest of them.
More names coming soon Top Docs…
Author Sally BakerPosted on September 5, 2018 September 6, 2018 Categories Bangor University, Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, Community Health Councils, Freemasonry, Gwynedd County Council, Gwynedd Health Authority, Gwynedd Social Services, Islington Child Abuse Scandal, Lawyers and Judges, Mental Health Charities, North Wales Child Abuse Scandal, North Wales Hospital Denbigh, North Wales Police, North West Wales NHS Trust, Uncategorized, Welsh Assembly Politicians, Ysbyty GwyneddTags Abraham and Co, Adrian Francis, Alan Patrick, Alison Greenaway, Alun Davies, Alwyn Jones, Ann Jones, Arfon Community Mental Health Team, Bangor Police Station, Bangor University, Barbara Windsor, Bedfordshire Social Services, Bernie Cuthel, Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Bob Ingham, Bob Kerslake, Bryn Estyn, Cambridgeshire Social Services, Campaign for Homosexual Equality, Carter Vincent Jones Davies, Charles Pearce, Cherie Booth, Cheshire County Council, Cheshire East Council, Chester Court, Court of Protection, Court of Protection Practitioners Association, Cumbria County Council, Daily Mail, David Bate, Dean's Court Chambers, Denbighshire County Council, Donald Trump, DPP, Dr Chris Barnes, Dr D.G.E. Wood, Dr Dafydd Alun Jones, Dr David Reed, Dr Dee Gray, Dr Dee Jones, Dr Mike Jackson, Dr Sadie Francis, Dr Tony Francis, Dwynwen Ward, Eileen Tilley, Ella Fisk, Fiona Reed, Fire Brigades Union, Frank Field, Freemasonry, Gareth Phillips, Gordon Anglesea, Gray's Inn, Gray's Learning, Gwynedd County Council, Gwynedd Health Authority, Gwynedd Social Services, Gwyneth Barnes, Hansard, Harriet Harman, Heather Oliver, Hergest Unit, Hillgrove School, HMP Holloway, Holyhead District Council, Holyhead MIND, HTV, Independent On Sunday, Institute of Economic Affairs, IPPR, Islington Child Abuse Scandal, Islington Council, Jeremy Corbyn, Judge Clive Taylor, Julian Oliver, Kate Andrews, Kevin O'Byrne, Kevin Teacher, Kilroy, Laura Fisk, Law Society, Leeds City Council, LGSS Law Ltd, Lord Justice Roch, Lucille Hughes, Lyn Meadows, Manchester City Council, Manchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust, Matthew O'Byrne, Meleri Tudor, Michael Mansfield, MIND, Morning Star, Neil Kinnock, North Wales Community Health Council, North Wales Hospital Denbigh, North Wales Housing Association, North Wales Police, North Wales Probation Service, North West Wales NHS Trust, Northamptonshire Social Services, Old Bailey, Paul D'Ambrogio, Peter Greenaway, Peter Howarth, Poole Council, Prestwood Homes, Private Eye, Professor Eric Sunderland, PTSD, Ralph Miliband, Rebecca Teacher, Rhyl Town Council, RMNJ Solicitors, Ron Evans, Royal Society of Medicine, Salford City Council, SDP, Sean Hudson, Seiriol Ward, Shami Chakrabarti, Sheffield City Council, Sian Williamson, Sonia Woodward, South Tyneside Council, South Tyneside Social Services, South Wales Police, St David's College Llandudno, St David's Hospital Bangor, St Mary's Hospital, Stemcor, Stormy Daniels, Sue Sayer, Suzanne Evans, The Sun, TUC, Ty'r Felin, UCNW, UCU, University of Aberystwyth, University of Cambridge, University of Liverpool, University of Oxford, Vicky Knight, Waterhouse Inquiry, WHO, William Webb, Wiltshire County Council, Wirral Borough Council, Ysbyty Gwynedd, Ysgol David Hughes2 Comments on It's Just Another Gold Digger
My post 'The Old Devils' discussed Professor Brian Abel-Smith, the Labour Party-supporting economist who carried out much of the analyses which underpinned the planning of the NHS in its early years. Abel-Smith was an adviser to successive Labour Secretaries of State for the DHSS, namely Dick Crossman, Barbara Castle and David Ennals. Abel-Smith undoubtedly knew about the institutionalised neglect and abuse that the most vulnerable experienced at the hands of the NHS, but he ignored it while he got on with more important things like sitting on the Board of Governors of St Thomas's Hospital, with its many consultants who also ran Harley Street practices. The other day I found a copy of a 1978 HMSO publication written by Brian Abel-Smith, entitled 'National Health Service, The First Thirty Years'. It's a sort of gullible person's guide to the NHS and its wonderful work. Abel-Smith spent much of his career at the LSE and held a Chair there when he wrote this publication.
It's ironic that Abel-Smith's bit of propaganda was published by HMSO, because when I very first raised a complaint about the NHS – simply that they were unlawfully denying me access to my records – I used an HMSO publication as my guidance. Because I was being told so many lies by people employed by Gwynedd Health Authority, I had sought out an HMSO publication which clarified the legal position regarding access to records. Then I went to see an administrator in Gwynedd Health Authority, Bernard Rhodes, in 1985. Rhodes told me that he was the General Manager of GHA, which I later found out to be untrue. Rhodes was extremely rude and aggressive, was livid that a whippersnapper like me had dared complain and then lied to me again regarding access to my records. When I quoted the guidelines published in the HMSO publication, Bernard yelled at me that he suggested that I went and had a word with HMSO because he wouldn't be taking any notice of them. My meeting with Bernie ended in a substantial confrontation which resulted in me reminding him that the NHS was there for the benefit of the patients. Rhodes yelled 'No No No' and threw me out of his office. Years later I obtained a letter which Rhodes had written to the Top Doctors after I had been to see him in which he stated that he thought that I would be a nuisance for quite some time and 'the less said to this young lady the better'. See previous posts for details.
Rhodes wasn't Welsh, he had a northern accent – not Geordie, either Lancashire, Yorkshire or perhaps Cheshire – but then there was an exchange of paedophiles' friends between different regions, despite the perception of many English migrants to north Wales that 'they're all from Gwynedd'.
Years later when I was working as a sociologist at Bangor University, one of the University secretaries, Linda Jones, told me that one of her first jobs had been with Gwynedd Health Authority as Bernard Rhodes's secretary and that 'Bernie was a good laugh'. Bernie was also colluding with a sex trafficking gang. At Bangor University, Linda was the secretary for the social work tutors, one of whom was Malcolm John, who had been a fostering and adoption adviser for Gwynedd Social Services when kids were being abused by their foster parents (see post 'Local Accessories'). I knew that two other social work tutors at Bangor had also colluded with Dafydd and the gang, but one had not, he had left his job with Gwynedd Social Services because of the abuse and neglect of the clients. There was a co-ordinated attempt by his colleagues to force this tutor out of his job and Linda was part of this. Vulnerable students were also told that this man had 'abused' clients when he was a social worker. Linda Jones knew that was happening and she knew that there was no truth in the allegation.
Had Bernard Rhodes read the HMSO publication written by Abel-Smith, I'm sure that Bernie would not have found it quite so offensive as the HMSO publication that I got my paws on which confirmed that I had been told lie after lie after lie by Top Docs, Angels and administrators employed by Gwynedd Health Authority.
How did I used to know when an employee of the NHS in north Wales was lying? I could see their lips moving. That's how bad it was, none of them could tell the truth about any matter.
Abel-Smith's HMSO publication is a real laugh, because although Abel-Smith obviously wrote this as a PR exercise, there's a few giveaways in there. For example, in the first part of the publication, when Abel-Smith discussed healthcare before the advent of the NHS, he noted that there were 'twice as many doctors per head in London as in south Wales' and that 'four times the number of doctors per head lived in Bournemouth than in the industrial midlands'.
One look at present day statistics is enough to conclude 'My how things haven't changed'.
Abel-Smith confirmed that 'Wales was particularly poorly served with hospitals. In south Wales, about half the hospital beds were in buildings which were judged when they were taken over, to be too small or ill-equipped for their purpose. No general hospital of the requisite size and quality served the thinly-populated areas of north Wales.'
For years now, there has been constant bellyaching and protests mobilised by the paedophiles' friends whenever it has been suggested that any 'hospital' in north Wales should close. We are not talking state of the art centres of excellence. The first Chief Exec of the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, Mary Burrows, did have a good grasp of how shite and dysfunctional the NHS in north Wales was. Mary was never able to sort things out because she was faced with a co-ordinated attempt to undermine her from within which soon evolved into an all-out hate campaign and of course the problems were enormous anyway. Mary and her Board suggested the closure of, among other facilities, a community hospital near Pwllheli and the Blaenau Ffestiniog Memorial Hospital. I am not suggesting that the citizens of Pwllheli and Blaenau should be provided with inferior facilities, but that is actually what they had from those two institutions. Not that the paedophiles' friends told them that, the paedophiles' friends told everyone that their communities were under attack. There were ructions and at one public meeting Mary Burrows was confronted by a mob who threatened her with physical violence. This was witnessed by a group of local politicians, scores of local Councillors and a number of journalists, including some armed with TV cameras. No-one called for calm and no journos reported the threats that had been made to Mary. The inadequate 'hospitals' in north Wales which existed pre-1948 to which Abel-Smith referred included some of those which Mary was proposing to close in 2010.
Chapter 2 of Abel-Smith's book covered 'The Early Years, 1948-60'. It was explained that Boards of Governors directly responsible to the Minister of Health ran the 36 teaching hospitals in England and Wales. Those Governors ran the teaching hospitals in Cardiff and Liverpool, which were colluding with Gwynne the lobotomist and for the very first part of his career, Dafydd. Ministers of Health knew what was happening at the North Wales Hospital Denbigh, as well as at places like Whitchurch Hospital in Cardiff and at Ely Hospital. Abel-Smith knew what was going on as well. But then Abel-Smith and his gay partner were part of swinging London, they owned a gentlemen's outfitters which supplied the Rolling Stones and Abel-Smith used to travel to Italy himself to buy the latest styles. When you've got cashmere jumpers to purchase for the stars, you can't waste time concerning yourself with people illegally imprisoned in a dungeon in Denbigh and subsequently lobotomised.
Other hospitals were placed under the management of Hospital Management Committees. The planning of hospital services and the employment of the senior medical and dental staff were made the responsibility of Regional Hospital Boards. The Regional Boards appointed the Chairmen and members of the Hospital Management Committees in their region and the members of Boards and Committees 'gave their services without payment'.
I became familiar with the selfless service of those who sat on such Boards and Committees out of the kindness of their hearts at a later date in north Wales. It was noticeable how many of them subsequently bagged very lucrative numbers for themselves in health and social care or associated fields, or how many members of their immediate family bagged such lucrative numbers. A good number of those giving up their time willingly to mismanage the statutory services were also involved with businesses which were commissioned by the health and/or social care services.
Abel-Smith explained that separate Hospital Management Committees were set up to run most of the psychiatric hospitals and the hospitals for the mentally handicapped. In north Wales, that was the North Wales Hospital Denbigh and Bryn-y-Neuadd in Llanfairfechan.
So it will have been one such Board/Committee that appointed Dafydd as a consultant to Denbigh in 1964.
In north Wales, Lloyd Tyrell-Kenyon, the 5th Baron Kenyon, sat on a number of these NHS Boards and Committees. Lord Kenyon continued his selfless service into a more recent era; he was Chairman of Clwyd Health Authority in the mid-1970s. Lord Kenyon was also a County Councillor, President of UCNW (Bangor University) for decades, a Magistrate and a member of the North Wales Police Authority. Lord Kenyon was the most senior Freemason in north Wales. Lord Kenyon's son Thomas was known to be having sex with at least one under-aged boy in the care of the social services. In 1979, Thomas spent the night with this boy and made a complaint to the police that the boy had stolen from him after they had spent the night together. The boy was sent to a detention centre. Thomas faced no charges. In 1993 Thomas died of an AIDS-related illness. See previous posts for further information regarding Lord Kenyon and Thomas.
In 'the early days' of the NHS, all residents of institutions caring for mentally ill and mentally handicapped were hospital patients, unlike the elderly who could be either in institutions managed by the local authority or in hospital. Access to 'specialists' was only by the referral of a GP. Top Doctors still take advantage of this system at present. A number of people in north Wales who have complained about Dafydd and the gang have found it impossible to get a referral elsewhere. There is of course a legal right to a second opinion, but it just doesn't happen. Around and around the system one goes for years and years, even if a lawyer is employed to assist, but no, one does not ever succeed in getting a referral to anyone who is not a close mate of the member of the gang about whom one has complained and who simply snaps that they agree with Dafydd/whichever member of the gang of paedophiles one is trying to escape from.
Abel-Smith tells us that the NHS initially followed the tradition of the Chief Executive of the hospital being the medical superintendent, to whom the matron was responsible. Gwynne the lobotomist was the medical superintendent at Denbigh. As he was also the Chief Executive, if one did wish to make representation after one's lobotomy – presuming that you could still hold a pen and manage to utter a few words – it was Gwynne to whom one made representation. However, things changed in the early 1960s when a new broom arrived in north Wales. In the form of Dafydd, who then took over as medical superintendent at Denbigh. And who presumably doubled up as Chief Exec.
Abel-Smith explained that as the medical superintendents of general hospitals retired, they were not replaced. An elected member of the medical staff became the channel of communication between the Top Docs and the Management Committees and that 'later this arrangement was also applied to hospitals for the mentally ill and mentally handicapped'.
Dafydd's time as medical superintendent did expire, but Dafydd didn't. Neither did he go elsewhere, he continued banging his way around Denbigh and doing exactly what he wanted. Judging from my experience of Dafydd, he was the channel of communication between himself and everyone else on the planet, although I doubt that anyone had elected him to that position.
Abel-Smith notes that matrons were in 'an unfavourable position' compared with the medical staff. Well there it is from the horse's mouth, I've been telling people this for years in the face of all the appeals to Bring Back Matron because she kept everyone in order. Matron didn't. Matron did ensure that the beds had a nice hospital corner and hospitals in those days were usually clean, but Matron tortured the nursing students, bullied the Angels and ensured that only people in her own mould were appointed as Ward Sisters – people who kicked those below them in the chops repeatedly but toadied to Top Docs and colluded 100% with any wrongdoing. Matrons did wield a degree of authority over medical students and junior doctors, but one word from a Top Doc and Matron would back right off.
I have heard stories from Angels who nursed in the 1950s of student nurses in nurses homes being terrified by aggressive advances from lesbian senior nurses and Matron just telling them to go into their room and shut the door and not say any more about it. I was told by two now elderly nurses from two different hospitals of patients dying after medical students and junior doctors carried out 'experimental treatment' on them. Treatment that had been through no ethics committees, was not part of any programme, was done without anyone's consent and that could best be described as idiots out of their depth killing patients. Matron knew what was happening but had no authority at all in the face of lethal Top Docs.
With regard to funding decisions, in 1948 with the creation of the NHS, a circular was sent to hospital authorities which made it clear that the Minister for Health, Nye Bevan, wished Christmas to be celebrated and that there was authorisation for up to 5 shillings per patient and resident number of staff to be spent. In 1949, a circular from Bevan authorised the use of exchequer funds for patients to provide soap, toothpaste, razor blades, sanitary towels, a selection of newspapers but not 'cosmetics, permanent-waving, postage stamps, tobacco and sweets'. Hospitals not providing these things is fair with regard to patients who are in for a few weeks at most and who's relatives are bringing in the grapes every evening anyway. However patients in Denbigh were often there for forty years or more. In later years, those patients did receive a small allowance from social security, but because they weren't allowed out, there was nothing for them to spend it on anyway, except for the limited range of sweets at the hospital shop and of course fags. All of those hospital shops had ample supplies of fags.
People often used to marvel that long term residents of places like Denbigh dressed in such 'odd' clothes, in particular that young women dressed in granny-dresses. The patients did not have access to any other clothes, even in the 1990s. Those hospitals had 'spare clothes' for patients who's clothes wore out or were damaged and those spare clothes were ridiculous. They were not clothes that anyone else in that day and age would have worn. Where places like Denbigh managed to find such clothes from I do not know.
When I was a patient in Springfield Hospital in 1991, my shoes were stolen by another patient. Not in a theft type of way, this lady was brought in by the police late at night, she was an older lady who was completely psychotic and she spent the night in the TV room where I had left my shoes, making some interesting noises and yelling at her voices. In the morning she chucked her breakfast around the room, but not with any malice, it just went flying and then she told the Angels that she was off. Although the police had taken her to Springfield as being in need of care and safety, the Angels let her leave 'because she's been in here loads of times' and she was just a nuisance. This lady took my shoes with her.
I didn't have any other shoes and being really pissed off at the degree of neglect and callousness that was shown to the person who had gone off with my shoes as well as towards the rest of us, I told the Senior Angel that I thought that Springfield needed to take some responsibility for this and that I'd like the price of a pair of shoes to replace my others. They weren't expensive, I just asked for £30. I was refused. I explained that I had NO other footwear. After a couple of hours a message was sent from Oppression Central to tell me that I could go to the hospital clothes shop and choose a pair of shoes free of charge. The one human being who worked as an Angel on the ward, a young mixed race student nurse, warned me that whatever shoes I chose, they would be really bad because that's all that there was in the hospital shop and that I'd need to get some 'normal' shoes as soon as I got out of Springfield. She was right, the shoes and the rest of the clothes in the shop were like those that I had never seen before. Institutional 1950s items, nothing else. I didn't even know that such things were manufactured anymore.
This was a hospital attached to a London medical school, St George's, which boasted of a flagship Academic Psychiatry Unit. No wonder the long-stay patients looked like no-one else in south London. I selected the least grim shoes available – although they were seriously grim – and I did dispense with them as soon as I was out.
I cannot fathom how such a hospital shop existed. Someone manufactured those clothes and someone in south London in 1991 chose to buy them to sell to Springfield patients who needed clothes. No Angel, Top Doc, any other member of staff or indeed any other patient would have chosen to wear such such clothes. Patients entered Springfield wearing mainstream clothes. No-one resembled the characters from 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest' in the least and furthermore some patients were quite cool and trendy. So what was going on?
Some years ago a clinical psychologist told me that the standing joke among the clin psych students when they began their training was that many of them would notice that the chronic patients would be wearing 'schizophrenic trousers', trousers which didn't fit and which stopped a few inches above their ankles. I had a laugh at this observation because I'd noticed the syndrome myself, but the clin psych then told me that there was a belief that with chronic illness perhaps there was a problem with judgement and perception which caused people to be unable to choose clothes that fitted. It is an interesting theory, but schizophrenic trousers are far more likely to be the consequence of the utter neglect of the day to day needs of the patients and the presence of a 'hospital shop'. At very best, the only other opportunities to acquire clothing are usually a brief visit to whatever clothes shop is nearest to the hospital which the Angels agree to take the patient to visit when the patient finally gets the written permission in triplicate needed to leave the hospital to visit a shop. The patient will probably be given 'one hour's leave'. They need to get out of the hospital, into the car with the Angels, to the shop, purchase the clothes, back into the Angels' car, back to the hospital and down the corridor into the relevant ward within the space of an hour. I suggest that the clin psych students try looking normal under such constraints, they won't be able to.
Nye Bevan and his wife Jennie Lee were known for their champagne socialism lifestyle, their fondness for Harrods and other Knightsbridge shops. Nye Bevan and Jennie Lee lived in Belgravia, although much is made of Nye's humble origins in Tredegar in south Wales. This is the hovel in which Nye grew up:
I think that's a rather nice hovel myself, I'd be quite chuffed if I was slumming it in there and even more chuffed if I actually owned that hovel. That hovel would have been a good deal grander than the houses in which many of Nye's classmates lived. Nye Bevan obviously did not feel that way about the hovel in Tredegar and he left south Wales to be among like minded souls.
In 1953 a Committee Chaired by the Cambridge economist C.W. Guillebraud examined the present and prospective cost of the NHS to advise on how a rising charge could be avoided while maintaining an adequate service. Iain Macleod, the Minister for Health under Winston Churchill, set up the Committee. Why was Guillebraud's expertise in particular sought? Abel-Smith doesn't explain, but Guillebraud had been Macleod's tutor at Cambridge.
Iain Macleod was born in and spent his youth in Yorkshire, although he attended boarding schools in Scotland. He was the son of a Top Doctor, was close to his father, interested in medicine and accompanied his father on his rounds. Iain Macleod trained as a barrister, but his main income after he qualified was not from his legal work but from gambling, Macleod being an accomplished bridge player. He was Chairman of the Conservative Party at the time of the Profumo Affair. Macleod later became Chancellor of the Exchequer under Ted Heath.
Macleod had many high dramas in his life. At the age of 27, when serving in the British Army as a staff captain, a drunk Macleod nearly killed his boss, a Captain Dawtry. Dawtry had retired to bed rather than play stud poker with Macleod. Macleod shot at Dawtry's door until his revolver ran out of bullets and then passed out after smashing down the door with a heavy piece of furniture. Macleod demanded an apology from Dawtry the next morning for his refusal to play poker, although the two men remained friends thereafter. Dawtry later became Chief Clerk of Westminster City Council.
Macleod was selected as the Conservative candidate for Enfield in 1946, amid allegations of skulduggery. Macleod was strongly supported by the local Young Conservatives, who could vote on constituency association matters despite in some cases being not yet old enough to vote for Parliament. One of the branch officers for the Enfield constituency was 15 year old Norman Tebbit. Macleod was subsequently elected as Tory MP for the more winnable seat of Enfield West in 1950.
Macleod worked for Rab Butler in the Conservative Research Dept just before being elected to Parliament. Along with Enoch Powell, Angus Maude and Reginald Maudling, Macleod was seen as a protégé of Butler at the CRD. Butler was later to become a big mate of Trumpers' when Butler retired from politics and became Master of Trinity College, Cambridge (see post '95 Glorious Years'). Macleod and Powell were close friends at this time, although Macleod subsequently dropped Powell after Powell's 1968 'Rivers Of Blood' speech.
It was Macleod who in 1952 announced that Top Doctor Richard Doll had demonstrated the link between smoking and lung cancer. Macleod did so at a press conference throughout which he chain-smoked. Macleod was a Cabinet Minister in Eden's Gov't at the time of the Suez Crisis and Randolph Churchill alleged that Macleod almost resigned on 4 Nov 1956. Robert Carr, junior Minister at the Ministry of Labour, wrote that Macleod had doubts but was not especially morally outraged and that Carr saw no evidence that he planned to resign. William Rees-Mogg claimed that Butler persuaded Macleod not to resign, while a lady friend of Macleod's recorded him turning up at her flat, demanding a drink and declaring that he would have to resign having learned that Eden had deceived the Cabinet.
Suez alienated academics, journalists and other opinion-formers from the Conservative Party. William Rees-Mogg, then a Conservative candidate in the North East, made a speech urging that Macleod be party leader. David Astor of 'The Observer', who on 4 Nov 1956 had attacked Eden for 'crookedness' in an editorial, wrote to Macleod on 14 Nov, urging him to seize the party leadership so that collusion could be pinned on Eden and Selwyn Lloyd. On 20 Nov 1956 the question of collusion was raised in Cabinet, with Eden and Lloyd (who was in New York at a UN meeting) both absent; it has been suggested that it was probably Macleod who raised it. The Cabinet agreed to stick to Selwyn Lloyd's formula that Britain had not incited the Israeli attack on Egypt. Eden stepped down as PM in Jan 1957 and Macleod – despite his closeness to Butler – along with the overwhelming majority of his colleagues, backed Harold Macmillan for leader.
In 1958 Macleod, as Minister of Labour, saw the London bus strike. Macleod initially accepted his own Chief Industrial Commissioner's Investigation into the busmens' case. Macmillan, backed by the Cabinet, insisted on settling a separate railwaymen's strike, despite an arbitration award against them, as it was felt that they had more public sympathy than the busmen. On the bus issue, Macleod was overruled and forced to pick a fight with Frank Cousins, the leader of the TGWU, on the pretext that they accept an independent arbitration award. Macmillan had picked a scrap shrewdly, as the busmen had no allies amongst the other unions. Cousins felt compelled to support the strike and Opposition leader Hugh Gaitskill criticised the Gov't in a speech at Glasgow and moved a motion of censure over Macleod's treatment of the strike. Macleod, in his Commons speech of 8 May, made a blistering attack on Gaitskell. He was congratulated afterwards by the Labour frontbencher Alf Robens. Roy Jenkins described Macleod's attack on Gaitskell as 'high order jugular debating', accused Gaitskell of weak leadership in appeasing the militants of his own party and attacked him for refusing to endorse the findings of the arbitration tribunal. Cousins wanted to call out the petrol tanker drivers, in breach of another agreement, but was blocked from doing so by the TUC. The strike ended after seven weeks and Macmillan dated the Gov'ts recovery in the polls from this point. Macleod had acquired a national reputation as a tough figure.
Macleod was appointed Secretary of State for the Colonies in Oct 1959. He had never set foot in any of Britain's colonies, but the Hola massacre had helped focus his thinking on the inevitable end of Empire. In Nyasaland (later Malawi), Macleod pushed for the release of Hastings Banda, contrary to the advice of the Governor and of other politicians. He had to threaten resignation in the Cabinet to get his own way, but won Macmillan round. Banda was released in April 1960 and almost immediately invited to London for talks aimed at bringing about independence. During a visit to Nyasaland in 1960, Macleod is described as having been 'gratuitously and grossly offensive, extremely rude and downright unpleasant at a meeting with the Governor, the provincial commissioners and senior police officers'. During Hastings Banda's time as President it is estimated that 18,000 people were killed as a result of human rights abuses. Banda also retained links with apartheid South Africa.
Macleod described his own policy over North Rhodesia (modern Zambia) as 'incredibly devious and tortuous' but 'easily the one I am most proud of'.
In 1961 Macleod published a sympathetic biography of former PM Neville Chamberlain, whose reputation then stood at a very low ebb. The book was largely ghostwritten and had been intended as a potboiler to earn money for Macleod's daughter's social season. Macleod used Gov't papers in breach of the 'fifty year rule' then in operation. The PM demanded amendments to conceal the degree of Cabinet involvement in the abdication of King Edward VIII (who was still alive in 1961) and the degree to which two civil servants had demanded that the former King 'reorder his private life' afterwards. Macleod later said 'It was a bad book. I made a great mistake in writing it. It made me no money and it has done me a lot of harm'.
Macleod became Editor of 'The Spectator' and in Jan 1964 published a candid account of the 1963 Tory Party leadership contest, claiming that it was a stitch-up by an Etonian 'magic circle.' In his posthumously published book The Art of Memory (April 1982) Rab Butler wrote that 'every word' of 'The Spectator' article 'is true'. Colleagues 'cut' Macleod in the Commons after the article and the affair permanently damaged his chances of becoming leader.
Macleod also became a non-executive Director of Lombards Bank, which allowed him a chauffeur-driven car.
As Shadow Chancellor in 1967 Iain Macleod helped to found the homeless charity Crisis. Crisis has spent decades not being quite as frank as it could be regarding the numbers of homeless people who were/are kids in care fleeing abuse or the serious neglect shown towards homeless people by the NHS.
Heath appointed Macleod Chancellor in June 1970, but Macleod died the following month. He left behind him an outline budget which included the infamous abolition of free school milk, which became the first significant Ministerial act of the new Education Secretary, Margaret Thatcher. Macleod's seat was succeeded by Cecil Parkinson.
Macleod coined the term 'nanny state'.
During his time as Health Minister, Iain Macleod was considered to have consolidated rather than reformed the NHS and defended it against Treasury attacks on its budget.
In addition to Macleod's old tutor Guillebaud, the Committee included J.W. Cook, Professor of Chemistry at Glasgow University; Anne Godwin, Assistant General Secretary of the Clerical and Administrative Workers' Union; Sir John Maude, past Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health and Sir Geoffrey Vickers of the National Coal Board.
The Clerical and Administrative Worker's Union became the Association of Professional, Executive, Clerical and Computer Staff (APEX) in 1972. APEX was one of the most right wing unions and was at the centre of the Grunwick dispute in the 1970s. APEX advised some immigrant female workers who were being treated appallingly very badly. In the end APEX walked away from them, leaving those workers to be completely shafted. See post 'A Study In Tyranny'.
Sir Geoffrey Vickers was a soldier, lawyer, administrator and writer. From 1946-48 he was the first Legal Adviser to the NCB. Then Vickers became a member of NCB in charge of manpower, training, education, health and welfare, 1948–55.
Vickers was a member of the Council of the Law Society, 1938-50, a member of the MRC, 1952-60 and Chairman of the Research Committee of the Mental Health Research Fund, 1951-67. During WW II Vickers served as Deputy Director General at the Ministry of Economic Warfare in charge of economic intelligence and as a member of the Joint Intelligence Committee.
For statistical background, the Guillebraud Committee used a memorandum published by Cambridge University Press: 'The Cost of the National Health Service in England and Wales' written by one Brian Abel-Smith and Richard Titmuss.
Professor Richard Titmuss was Abel-Smith's senior colleague at the LSE who was as committed to demonstrating that the NHS was a Good Thing as Abel-Smith was. It's not that I would have preferred Abel-Smith and Titmuss to have completely opposed the NHS, but they colluded with an enormous degree of deceit by perpetrating the myth that the Poor got a really good deal out of the NHS. They didn't, the very poorest were getting a very raw deal and the organised abuse of vulnerable people was being facilitated by parts of the NHS from its establishment. The necessity of continuing the lie that the NHS was all about equity and caring for those at the bottom of the heap ensured that the Top Docs and the BMA called all the shots and demanded very high salaries entirely on their own terms in tandem with virtually no accountability. Furthermore, the cost of running the NHS was systematically and deliberately underestimated in order to overcome the substantial opposition that there was to it on the part of the BMA.
No Gov't has been able to reign the BMA in or indeed reign in the cost of the NHS. Privately, every PM and Health Minister acknowledges that the BMA are an absolute nightmare. Even Tony Blair didn't satisfy the Top Docs, although he threw money at them and concealed extensive patient harm and death by fiddling statistics and ignoring the gunning down of whistleblowers, even in the case of Mid-Staffs. Only one Health Minister has ever pleased the Top Docs and that was Sir Kenneth Robinson, Health Minister under Harold Wilson. Robinson colluded with the most serious wrongdoing on the part of Top Docs, including the trafficking of vulnerable people and indulged in sleights of hand to give the impression that he was thrashing out fair deals in an uncompromising manner, when in reality he took orders from the Top Docs. See posts 'The White Heat Of This Revolution' and 'Heart of Darkness'. .
The Guillebraud Committee's Report was published in early 1956. As Abel-Smith explains in his HMSO publication, the Report concluded that the early estimates of the cost of the NHS were far too low. The estimates had been 'made before the levels of pay of those working in the NHS had been settled'. That is a reference to the Top Docs who famously had their mouths stuffed with gold by Nye Bevan. Angels at that time were badly paid and the ancillary staff were near-slaves.
There was also an 'unforeseen demand' for spectacles and dentures. Except that it wasn't unforeseen, it was known that a high proportion of the adult population did not have teeth, it was entirely predictable that there'd be a run on dentures. During the first 12 yrs of the NHS, 'new' 'expensive' drugs became available, including psychotropics ie. those which Gwynne and Dafydd used to drug their victims senseless. The drugs were 'expensive' because of the profits that the drug companies knew that they could make from flogging their wares to the NHS. So measures were introduced to limit prescribing, rather than enter meaningful negotiations with drug companies with a view to making drugs available to the NHS at lower cost.
The Minister for Health under Anthony Eden, Robin Turton, told Parliament that the Government 'broadly accepted' the conclusions of Guillebraud's Report. An editorial in 'The Times' said the Report might superficially seem to be 'a bluebook full of hogwash' but that in fact the Committee had 'argued their case with considerable thoroughness.' The Report might have indeed been hogwash but no-one was going to dare say that, it was the nation's pride and joy, the NHS, at stake…
Like Iain Macleod, Robin Turton was a barrister who came from Yorkshire. Turton was the Tory MP for Thirsk and Malton, 1929-74. Turton was given a peerage in 1974.
Abel-Smith tells us that in 1955, the Gov't embarked upon some major hospital building schemes and that Health Minister Iain Macleod 'gave priority' to relieving over-crowding in hospitals for the mentally ill and mentally handicapped. In the year 1956-57, nearly one third of the total capital expenditure of Regional Hospital Boards was devoted to such institutions and by 1960, the capital expenditure was 80% greater in real terms than in 1949. So enormous sums of money were being spent on keeping people locked up in appalling conditions in institutions like the North Wales Hospital Denbigh and Bryn-y-Neuadd. The conditions in these places were no secret, although throughout the 1960s and 70s there were a series of scandals in which it was 'revealed' that people were being neglected and abused. Of course people in Gov't and running the NHS knew what was going on, those institutions consumed nearly a third of the budget, no-one would have waved good-bye to that sort of money with no idea of what was being done with it.
In the 1950s there were fears 'in medical circles' that Britain was training too many Top Docs, so medical schools reduced their intake. In Feb 1955 a Committee was appointed to estimate the long term demand for Top Docs and it concluded that 'reduction of student intake by about one tenth' was needed 'from as early a date as is practicable'. But whoops, the Committee failed to identify the extent of migration of British trained Top Docs to North America, Australasia and elsewhere, which led to problems with the supply and distribution of GPs and a reliance on immigrant Top Docs.
My how things haven't changed. One thing that Top Docs forget to mention when the Shortage Of Top Doctors is discussed in the media and the BMA are fuming about Irresponsible Gov'ts allowing this to happen, is that the numbers entering medical schools are controlled by the Top Docs themselves. The different branches of the medical establishment are entirely in control of how many Top Docs are trained in the UK. One reason why the Top Docs are keen to ensure that not too many Top Docs are coming off the conveyor belt is that the Top Docs want to keep their market value. A modest supply of Top Docs means that salaries remain high. It also means that if the Top Docs want to behave like complete turds and throw hissy fits instead of entering into negotiations with Gov't, it is far easier to do so if there is not a large pool of Top Docs for the Gov't to draw upon to get the work done if some of their colleagues get arsey.
Abel-Smith referred to problems regarding the shortage of accommodation for the mentally ill and mentally handicapped being aggravated by persistent under-staffing. He stated that over 5000 additional beds was provided for these patients between 1954 and 1960, but that it made no difference to waiting lists.
This does not add up. Statistics tells us that the population of the long-stay psychiatric institutions reached a peak in 1954 at a time of near mass incarceration and then gradually started declining. 'New forms' of treatment were cutting lengths of stay. From the early 1950s certain hospitals greatly reduced restrictions and encouraged 'new attitudes' to the care of patients. By 1954, new drugs had made it 'easier to control and relieve symptoms'. And 'new non-physical and social ways of treating patients' were spreading. Increasingly the functions of the hospitals were seen to be treatment and rehabilitation rather than care and control. More patients were treated without admission and it became less common for patients to stay in hospital for long periods. Psychiatric units began to be established to treat the mentally ill in general hospitals near their own homes instead of at large distant specialist hospitals.
I don't think that any of this was true of north Wales. Patients in Denbigh were locked up, lobotomised, electro-shocked and drugged for decades after it was claimed that the 'new attitude' and 'social treatment' were changing attitudes to patients.
As for the rest of the UK, even if they weren't blessed with Gwynne and Dafydd, if 5000 extra beds were made available, if the population of psychiatric institutions was falling, why were waiting lists not decreasing? I am wondering if it was true that the numbers incarcerated in Denbigh and similar places really were falling to the extent that had been claimed.
Between 1954 and 1957 a Royal Commission Chaired by Lord Percy re-examined the laws governing patients with mental illness or handicap. It was on the basis of this Commission's Report that the Mental Health Act 1959 was written. It is always stressed that the 1959 Act led to the vast majority of patients 'being admitted to whatever hospital was appropriate without any legal formality'. Moreover where compulsory powers had to be used, the decisions to use them was taken by Top Docs and social workers, magistrates no longer being involved in such matters.
Dafydd qualified as a Top Doctor shortly before the Mental Health Act 1959 came into being and he did great damage to numerous people under this Act. Psychiatry was by 1959 well-established as a speciality with which no competent doctor would wish to concern themselves and by that time it was most definitely being used to silence bothersome people, including the victims of the crimes of people who's lives and careers would have been destroyed if their offending had been made public. Social workers – or almoners as they were known back then – had no power and simply did what Top Doctors asked them to do.
Welsh speaking Dafydd along with the Welsh speaking social worker who joined him in the 1960s (see post 'The Village') used the Mental Health Act 1959 to wreak havoc in north Wales in the name of helping their fellow countrymen. It wasn't only the North Wales Hospital Denbigh which was used to conceal organised abuse, the Maudsley was as well, as I expect was nearly every psychiatric hospital in the UK.
It was under the Mental Health Act 1959 that Dafydd illegally imprisoned Mary Wynch in 1979. After the scandal surrounding Mary's case, the Mental Health Act was updated and the Mental Health Act 1983 was passed. The 1983 Act was written by Professor Robert Bluglass, Dafydd's mate. The code of practice which accompanied the 1983 Act was written by William Bingley, who for decades both in his capacity as Legal Director of MIND and as Chief Exec of the Mental Health Act Commission, concealed the crimes of Dafydd and the gang, as did William's mother, Lady Juliet Bingley, in her years of service to MIND (see post 'MIND Are Out For Mental Health – Never For Themselves Of Course…').
Bluglass was appointed to 'investigate' my complaint about Dafydd et al illegally imprisoning me by breaching the 1983 Act (see post 'Enter Professor Robert Bluglass CBE'). There was no action taken against anyone. I know of at least one other person who was illegally imprisoned in Ysbyty Gwynedd under a breach of the 1983 Act by Gwynedd social worker Jackie Brandt, who was involved in one of my unlawful detentions. When I was in Bryn Golau Ward, North Wales Hospital Denbigh, as far as I could work out everyone else that I became very friendly with – some five people – were also held illegally. I suspect that had I known the circumstances of the detention of everyone on the ward, I'd have found that they were all there illegally. Every law was flouted and no-one was held to account. 'Improved' Mental Health Acts were irrelevant.
So who was Lord Percy, the genius who took the remit for banging people up for decades away from Magistrates – where it was at least publicly visible – and gave it to a totally corrupt medical profession and a bunch of craven social workers, ensuring that abuses of the law were then conducted under the cloak of medical confidentiality, allowing Dafydd et al to break the law in complete secrecy, making it spectacularly easy for an abusive family to dispose of one of their members?
Eustace Sutherland Campbell Percy, 1st Baron Percy of Newcastle was born in 1887. Lord Percy had died by the time the Act which his Commission recommended had been passed. Percy was a diplomat and Conservative politician. He most notably served as President of the Board of Education under Stanley Baldwin, 1924-29.
It is possible that Lord Percy knew the people who occupied senior positions in the education service in north Wales at that time. One of those was the schools inspector, J.E. Daniel, who's son Huw Daniel is the corrupt judge who was so looking forward to imprisoning me in 2004 on the basis of the perjury of NHS staff (see post 'Interesting Happenings In The Legal System'). Dafydd knows Huw Daniel and knew J.E. Daniel as well. J.E. Daniel was an early member of Plaid, along with Saunders Lewis, with whom Dafydd was mates when Dafydd was young (see post 'A Network Stretching Back Decades…'). J.E. Daniel was a Professor at the Bala Theological College, an institution with which the father of Dafydd Iwan and Alun Ffred Jones was associated. Dafydd Iwan is the former Leader of Gwynedd County Council and folk singer who wrote a 'tribute song' to Dafydd. Alun Ffred was the AM for Caernarfon, 2003-07 and for Arfon, 2007-16. Before he was elected as an AM, Alun Ffred, like his brother, was the Leader of Gwynedd County Council. He worked as a school teacher and subsequently a journo with HTV and a TV Director and Producer with S4C. Alun Ffred is a graduate of UCNW.
Like Huw Daniel, Dafydd Iwan and Alun Ffred, Lord Percy was born into a noble family, as opposed to Dafydd who is of peasant stock. Lord Percy was the seventh son of Henry Percy, 7th Duke of Northumberland and Lady Edith, daughter of George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll. Henry Percy, Earl Percy and Alan Percy, 8th Duke of Northumberland, were his elder brothers. His uncle, the 9th Duke of Argyll, was married to HRH Princess Louise, daughter of Queen Victoria. He was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford.
My knowledge of the ancestry of the very posh is seriously weak, but I presume that Lord Percy of the Banging Up Of The Inconvenient Witnesses is some sort of descendant of a branch of the family which contains the Earls of Northumberland. The 1st Earl of Northumberland was Henry Percy, father of the famous Harry Hotspur. Henry Percy and Hotspur were given the task of subduing the rebellion of Owain Glyndwr, but their attempts to make peace with the Welsh rebels did not meet with the King's approval.
Lord Eustace Percy served in the Diplomatic Service, 1911-19. He was MP for Hastings, 1921-37. In March 1923 he was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education by Bonar Law. When Stanley Baldwin became PM in May 1923, Percy became Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health, where he remained until the fall of the Gov't in Jan 1924. When the Conservatives returned to power in November 1924, Percy was appointed President of the Board of Education. He remained in post until the Gov't fell in June 1929. Percy subsequently served as Minister without Portfolio under Baldwin, 1935-36. In 1945, Percy chaired the Committee on Higher Technological Education that resulted in the Percy Report. He was Rector of King's College, Durham (now Newcastle University), 1937-51, in which role he also alternated in the post of VC of Durham University. In 1953 Eustace Percy was given a peerage.
There was a paedophile/trafficking ring based in the North East of England with direct links to Dafydd's gang based in north Wales, which, like Dafydd's gang, had its origins at least as long ago as the 1950s. The gang in the North East was concealed by the Universities of Durham and Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Gwynne and Dafydd's umbrella Lord John Walton, who was President of the BMA, 1980-82, of the GMC, 1982-89 and of the Royal Society of Medicine, 1984-86, qualified at Durham/Newcastle and spent his entire medical career there (see post 'Little Things Hitting Each Other').
Here's Walton, brimming over with charming bedside manner:
Walton will have qualified and worked as a junior doctor when Eustace Percy was Rector/VC of Durham. The well-camouflaged paedophiles' friend Professor Eric Sunderland who arrived as Principal of UCNW in 1984 as the paedophiles sent up a distress flare had previously held a senior role at Durham University, where he had spent many years. Eric was originally from west Wales. Where there was a paedophile gang with links to Dafydd's gang in north Wales. Eric's wife was from a family in the North East of England.
Abel-Smith noted that the 1959 Mental Health Act imposed a statutory duty on local authorities to provide accommodation, training and day centres to care for the mentally ill and mentally handicapped outside hospital. Not only was this so obviously completely ignored in north Wales – such services were only just being developed in 1989 – but Abel-Smith admits in his publication that many local authorities did indeed simply not bother to develop the services as ordered by the Act.
During the second half of the 1950s, relationships between Gov't and the Top Docs became strained over Top Docs pay. Never mind the scandal of mass incarceration, there's the Top Docs pay to think about. In early 1956, the Top Docs demanded more dosh – despite Nye Bevan having stuffed their mouths with gold less than 10 years earlier. In July the Gov't stated that they were not willing to look at the Top Docs' pay claim. The Gov't finally conceded to an interim payment and set up a Royal Commission in early 1957 to examine Top Docs and dentists pay. The Royal Commission reported in early 1960 and recommended a considerable increase in remuneration, which was paid retrospectively. A review body reporting direct to the PM was established to advise on Top Docs pay in the future, as recommended by the Royal Commission. The Royal Commission was Chaired by Sir Harry Pilkington.
William Henry Pilkington was a glass manufacturer and former President of the Federation of British Industries. He was Chairman of the Pilkington Committee on Broadcasting that produced the controversial Pilkington Report of 1962. Sir Harry was Chancellor of Loughborough University, 1966-80.
Pilkington was educated at Rugby, followed by Magdalene College, Cambridge. He joined the board of the family business, Pilkington Brothers Ltd in 1934 and served as Chairman, 1949-73. The Pilkington business – later known as Pilkington Glass – was based in St Helen's and for years was the biggest employer in the town. By the 1970s, Dafydd had built up a substantial empire on Merseyside (see post 'These Sharks Are Crap As Well').
Canon Chris Pilkington, who was involved with the Bristol Cancer Help Centre which was at the middle of a research fraud in 1990 (see post 'Reports Of Death Were Greatly Exaggerated'), was a member of the Pilkington Glass dynasty and for many years was Rector of the City Parish of St Stephen's in Bristol. Dafydd's partner in crime Dr D.G.E. Wood came from a family of Top Doctors in Bristol and had a stronghold in that area.
Sir Alastair Pilkington was Chairman of Pilkington, 1973-80 and Sir Antony Pilkington – a distant cousin of Sir Alastair – was Chairman, 1980-95. Sir Antony's uncle, Sir Richard Pilkington, was Tory MP for Widnes, 1935-45 and then Poole, 1951-64. Sir Richard was born on Merseyside and his father Arthur Pilkington was Chairman of Pilkington.
In response to the industrial recession of the early 1980s, Pilkington's had reduced its workforce from 11,500 to 6,700. But they did so on generous terms and much effort – through the pioneering community of St Helen's Trust, of which Antony Pilkington was founder Chairman in 1978 – to create small-business opportunities for those made redundant. Antony Pilkington was also a Director of GKN, National Westminster Bank and ICI. He was a Governor of Liverpool John Moores University, a member of the Court of Manchester University, a Deputy Lieutenant for Merseyside and High Sheriff of Cheshire in 1996-97.
So Sir Antony was in the midst of many of those previously named on this blog as being involved with or concealing the paedophile ring in north Wales and the north west of England. He was Chairing a company facing serious difficulties on Merseyside in the 1980s. Sir Antony had the disastrous effects of Thatcher's policies on Merseyside – and then the aftermath – to contend with and he was at the centre of the Liverpool branch of the empire of Dr Dafydd Alun Jones and the paedophiles' friends. He was a Governor of Liverpool John Moores – another Governor was John Hamilton, a very close friend of the paedophiles indeed. Cherie Booth was Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores. Then there was Eric Heffer, Derek Hatton and others on Sir Antony's doorstep. The whole lot of them were at each others throats and concealing the serious criminality of Dafydd and co (see post 'These Sharks Are Crap As Well').
Sir Antony would have been in a very difficult position indeed.
A senior manager who spent many years with Pilkington's optronics subsidiary in north Wales, Pilkington PE – which later became Thales Optics Ltd and was then divested from Thales in 2005 as Qioptiq Ltd – knew a great deal about serious organised crime and the abuse of children in north Wales. That is Trevor Jones, the Chancellor of Glyndwr University. Trevor Jones has alighted at every notorious stop during his journey as a paedophiles' friend – including membership of Clwyd Health Authority whilst Dafydd illegally imprisoned the victims of the paedophile gang in the dungeon there. For full details of Trevor and his criminal associates, see post 'A Vampire At Glyndwr University!'
William Henry Pilkington was created a life peer in 1968.
The pit of crap is so deep and touches so many people that the Top Docs get their dosh whenever they ask for it.
Chapter 3 of Brian Abel-Smith's book, is entitled 'Growth and Development – 1960-74'. There is a reference to Enoch Powell's 'The Hospital Plan' of 1962, which Powell produced when he was Health Minister. Abel-Smith does not mention Powell's VIP visit to the North Wales Hospital Denbigh, which resulted in Powell being so horrified by what he saw that he told the reception committee 'I will not allow you to do this to people', returned to London, made his famous 'Water Towers' speech and announced the asylum closure programme. Yet Powell never returned to this subject again and I was told by the archivist responsible for the Powell papers that there are no other references to asylums in his papers apart from the Water Towers speech.
Someone ensured that Powell left well alone, but I have no idea who. I'm sure that it will have been because of the role of Dafydd et al in the Westminster Paedophile Ring. Powell's own name is in circulation as someone who may have been involved in the abuse of youngsters. Powell was known to have difficulties in his relationships with women and as a young man he fell in love with other men, but I have been given no evidence that he was an abuser. But someone definitely told him to leave Dafydd and Gwynne alone.
In 1966 the paedophiles' friend Health Minister Sir Kenneth Robinson published a revised version of Powell's Hospital Plan. It was a more modest plan, but more costly. No wonder the Top Docs loved Sir Kenneth.
It was while Sir Kenneth was Health Minister that Dafydd was given a job as a consultant at Denbigh.
Abel-Smith explained that by 1974, there was a plan for a network of District General hospitals across Wales, which Abel-Smith stated – he was writing in 1978 – 'should be largely completed in the 1980s'.
A Royal Commission on Medical Education was appointed in 1965. It issued an internal memo in 1966 stating the urgent need to increase the number of medical students. The final Report of the Commission appeared in 1968 and following this, Harold Wilson's Gov't announced plans to nearly double the number of medical students by 1980. The Royal Commission was set up under Kenneth Robinson and was Chaired by Lord Alexander Todd.
Alexander Robertus Todd was a Nobel winning biochemist. Todd graduated from Glasgow University in 1928 and received his PhD from Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt am Mein in 1931. Todd gained another doctorate in 1933 after studying at Oriel College, Oxford. After that, Todd held posts with the Lister Institute, Edinburgh University and the University of London. He spent six months as a visiting Professor at California Institute of Technology and became the Sir Samuel Hall Chair of Chemistry and Director of the Chemical Laboratories of Manchester University in 1938. In 1944, Todd was appointed to the Chair of Chemistry at Cambridge University, which he held until his retirement in 1971. Todd served as a visiting Professor at the University of Chicago in 1948 and University of Sydney in 1950.
Among much other work, Todd studied alkaloids found in hashish and as Dafydd would say, mari-jew-ana. He served as Chairman of the Gov'ts advisory committee on scientific policy, 1952-64.
Todd was appointed Chancellor of the University of Strathclyde in 1975 and a visiting Professor at Hatfield Poly, 1978–86. Neil Hamilton, the former Tory MP for Tatton who left his seat after public disgrace as a result of allegations of cash for questions and attended social functions with Sir Peter Morrison – Thatcher's personal friend who was abusing children in care in north Wales, Cheshire and elsewhere – worked as a lecturer at Hatfield Poly while Todd was a visiting Professor there.
Todd was President of the Royal Society, 1975-80. In 1981, Todd became a founding member of the World Cultural Council. Todd was honoured as a Nieuwland Lecturer at the University of Notre Dame in 1948, an Arthur D. Little Visiting Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1954 and a Hitchcock Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1957.
In 1937 Lord Todd married Alison Sarah, daughter of Nobel Prize winner Sir Henry Dale, who like Todd served as President of the Royal Society. They had a son, Alexander Henry, and two daughters, Helen Jean and Hilary Alison. Alison predeceased Lord Todd in 1987.
Sir Henry Dale was a pharmacologist and physiologist who, when he was a medical student, was at the centre of an early 20th century vivisection scandal, the Brown Dog Affair. Dale was educated at the Leys School – Trumpers's husband was Headmaster there years later (see post '95 Glorious Years!') and the Leys is so proud of Henry Dale that one of the school's houses is named after him – and Trinity College, Cambridge. During WWII he served on the Scientific Advisory Panel to the Cabinet. Dale was Chairman of the Wellcome Trust, 1938-60.
In Feb 1903, William Bayliss of the Department of Physiology at UCL performed an illegal vivisection, before an audience of 60 medical students, on a brown terrier dog. Bayliss was an enthusiastic vivisectionist, even by the standards of the time.
The Brown Dog was first used in a vivisection in Dec 1902 by Bayliss's brother-in-law Ernest Starling, who was Professor of Physiology at UCL. Starling cut open the Brown Dog's abdomen and ligated the pancreatic duct. For the next two months the Brown Dog lived in a cage, until Starling and Bayliss used him again for two procedures on 2 Feb 1903. Outside the lecture room before the students arrived, Starling cut the Brown Dog open again to inspect the results of the previous surgery, after which he clamped the wound with forceps and handed the dog over to Bayliss. Bayliss cut a new opening in the dog's neck to expose the lingual nerves of the salivary glands, to which he attached electrodes. The aim was to stimulate the nerves with electricity to demonstrate that salivary pressure was independent of blood pressure. The Brown Dog was then carried to the lecture theatre, stretched on his back on an operating board, with his legs tied to the board, his head clamped and his mouth muzzled.
According to Bayliss, the dog had received morphine, then was anaesthetised during the procedure. Some Swedish feminist students who were anti-vivisectionists had infiltrated the lecture and they disputed that the Brown Dog had been adequately anaesthetised. They said that the dog had appeared conscious during the procedure, had tried to lift himself off the board and that there was no smell of anaesthesia or the usual hissing sound of the apparatus. Other students said the Brown Dog had not struggled, but had merely twitched.
In front of around 60 students, Bayliss stimulated the nerves with electricity for half an hour, but was unable to demonstrate his point. The dog was then handed to Henry Dale, then a research student, who removed the dog's pancreas, then killed him with a knife through the heart. Dale did not have an animal license and throughout the experimentation upon and the subsequent killing of the Brown Dog, the audience of students had laughed and joked.
Barrister and Secretary of the National Anti-Vivisection Society Stephen Coleridge was given extensive notes which the Swedish students had taken while watching the vivisection of the Brown Dog. Stephen Coleridge was the son of John Duke Coleridge, former Lord Chief Justice of England and great-grandson of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Stephen Coleridge gave an angry speech about the Brown Dog on 1 May 1903 to the annual meeting of the National Anti-Vivisection Society in Piccadilly, attended by 2,000-3,000 people and accused the scientists of torture. Details of the speech were published the next day by the radical 'Daily News'. Questions were subsequently raised in the House. Bayliss demanded a public apology and when by 12 May it had failed to materialise he issued a writ for libel. Ernest Starling decided not to sue. 'The Lancet' wrote that 'it may be contended that Professor Starling … committed a technical infringement of the Act.' (The law had actually been flouted in a number of ways.)
The libel trial opened at the Old Bailey on 11 Nov 1903 before Lord Alverstone, the Lord Chief Justice and lasted four days. There were queues 30 yards long outside the courthouse. The British Medical Journal called it 'a test case of the utmost gravity'. Lord Alverstone advised the jury not to be swayed by arguments about the validity of vivisection. The jury unanimously found that Bayliss had been defamed, to the applause of Top Doctors in the public gallery. Bayliss was awarded £2,000 with £3,000 costs; Coleridge gave him a cheque the next day.
The Daily News asked for donations and raised £5,700 within four months to cover Coleridge's costs. Bayliss donated his damages to UCL for use in research; Bayliss ignored the Daily Mail's suggestion that he call it the 'Stephen Coleridge Vivisection Fund'. It was suggested in 2004 that the fund may still have been in use then to buy animals. The Times declared itself satisfied with the verdict, although it criticised the rowdy behaviour of medical students during the trial, accusing them of 'medical hooliganism'. The Sun, Star and Daily News backed Coleridge, calling the decision a miscarriage of justice. The Brown Dog Affair led to a Gov't appointed Second Royal Commission on Vivisection in 1906.
After the trial, Anna Louisa Woodward, founder of the World League Against Vivisection, raised money for a public memorial and a bronze statue of the Brown Dog was commissioned. Battersea Council agreed to locate the statue in its Latchmere Recreation Ground. Battersea was considered to be a hotbed of radicalism and was closely associated with anti-vivisection. The statue was unveiled in Sept 1906 in front of a large crowd with speakers which included George Bernard Shaw.
The statue was accompanied by a plaque which was inscribed with the words:
In Memory of the Brown Terrier Dog Done to Death in the Laboratories of University College in February 1903 after having endured Vivisection extending over more than Two Months and having been handed over from one Vivisector to Another Till Death came to his Release. Also in Memory of the 232 dogs Vivisected at the same place during the year 1902. Men and Women of England how long shall these Things be?
Medical students in London's teaching hospitals were enraged by the inscription and UCL sought advice as to whether they could take legal action over it. Meanwhile, London medical students rioted. On 20 Nov 1907 a group of students attacked the statue with a crowbar and sledgehammer. Ten of them were arrested by just two police officers. A local Top Doctor told the South Western Star that this signalled the 'utter degeneration' of junior doctors: 'I can remember the time when it was more than 10 policemen could do to take one student. The Anglo-Saxon race is played out.' They just weren't making junior medics like they used to.
Several students were fined ₤5 by the magistrate, Paul Taylor. This triggered another protest two days later, when 1,000 medical students from UCL, King's, Guy's and the West Middlesex hospitals marched along the Strand, waving miniature brown dogs on sticks and a life-sized effigy of the magistrate, and singing, 'Let's hang Paul Taylor on a sour apple tree / As we go marching on'. The Times reported that they tried to burn the effigy but, unable to light it, threw it in the Thames instead. Women's suffrage meetings were invaded, although the students knew that not all suffragettes were anti-vivisectionists. A meeting organised by Millicent Fawcett on 5 Dec 1907 was left with chairs and tables smashed and one steward with a torn ear. The Daily Express reported it as 'Medical Students Gallant Fight with Women.'
Here's a feminist with a sense of history who gives the Top Doctors her unstinting support under all circumstances:
The rioting reached its height five days later, on 10 Dec, when 100 medical students tried to pull the memorial down. The protest had been organised to coincide with the annual Oxford-Cambridge rugby match at Queen's Club, West Kensington. The protesters hoped (in vain, as it turned out) that some of the thousands of Oxbridge students would swell their numbers. The intention was that, after toppling the statue and throwing it in the Thames, 2,000–3,000 students would meet at 11:30 pm in Trafalgar Square. Street vendors sold handkerchiefs stamped with the date of the protest and the words, 'Brown Dog's inscription is a lie, and the statuette an insult to the London University.'
In the afternoon protesters headed for the statue, but were driven off by locals. The students proceeded down Battersea Park Road instead, intending to attack the Anti-Vivisection Hospital, but were again forced back. When one student fell from the top of a tram the workers shouted that it was 'the brown dog's revenge' and refused to take him to hospital. A second group of students headed for central London, waving effigies of the brown dog, joined by a police escort and, briefly, a busker with bagpipes. As the marchers reached Trafalgar Square, they were 1,000 strong, facing 400 police officers, 15 of them on horseback. The students gathered around Nelson's Column, where the ringleaders climbed onto its base to make speeches.
While students fought with police on the ground, mounted police charged the crowd, scattering them into smaller groups and arresting the stragglers, including one Cambridge undergraduate, who was arrested for 'barking like a dog'. The fighting continued for hours before the police gained control. At Bow Street Magistrate's Court the next day, ten students were bound over to keep the peace; several were fined 40 shillings, or £3 if they had fought with police.
'As we go walking after dark,
We turn our steps to Latchmere Park,
And there we see, to our surprise,
A little brown dog that stands and lies.
Ha, ha, ha! Hee, hee, hee!
Little brown dog how we hate thee.'
Sung by rioters to the tune of 'Little Brown Jug'
Rioting broke out elsewhere over the following days and months, as medical and veterinary students united. When Lizzy Lind-af-Hageby arranged a meeting of the Ealing and Acton Anti-Vivisection Society at Acton Central Hall on 11 Dec 1906, over 100 students disrupted it, throwing chairs and stink bombs when she tried to speak. The Daily Chronicle reported: 'The rest of Miss Lind-af-Hageby's indignation was lost in a beautiful 'eggy' atmosphere that was now rolling heavily across the hall'. Furniture was smashed and clothing torn. The riots saw trade unionists, socialists, Marxists, liberals and suffragettes descend upon Battersea to fight the medical students, even though the suffragettes were not a group toward whom male workers felt any warmth. The 'Brown Terrier Dog Done to Death' by the male scientific establishment united them all.
According to Coral Lansbury, the fight for women's suffrage became closely linked with the anti-vivisection movement. Lansbury argues that the Brown Dog Affair became a matter of opposing symbols, the iconography of vivisection striking a chord with women. The vivisected dog on the operating board blurred into images of suffragettes force-fed in Brixton Prison, or women strapped down for childbirth or forced to have their ovaries and uteri removed as a cure for 'mania'.
However, life is not simply a matter of Two Ovaries Good, Two Testicles Bad. Here's Dafydd's accomplice sporting what Brown described as 'an ill-advised wig':
Miss Hughes joined Caernarfonshire County Council as a Social Worker in the Children's Department in September 1958. She was Children's Officer in Anglesey from 1966-1969, returning to Caernarfonshire as Children's Officer until 1974 when she was appointed Principal Assistant Director in the new Social Services Department following Local Government Reorganisation. Miss Hughes subsequently held the posts of Deputy Director and Director of Social Services. Miss Hughes was a member of the Citizens Advice Bureau for 20 years, and nowadays she is a National Trust steward at Penrhyn Castle and also works for her church. She enjoys attending music concerts, and is also an art lover. She has been a member of Bangor & District Soroptimists for over 40 years. Within CAIS, Miss Hughes is particularly committed to supporting training and high standards of professional service. She is also especially interested in CAIS's approach to its service users, and proud that respect, collaboration and partnership have become CAIS values and that the Board, management, staff and service users are working on these together. Miss Hughes facilitated a vicious paedophile gang for decades.
Coral Lansbury wrote that the medical students saw themselves and their teachers as the 'New Priesthood' and the women and trade unionists as representatives of superstition and sentimentality.
Sir Henry Dale:
Anyone up for a vaginal mesh?
Questions were asked in the Commons about the cost of policing the statue, which required six constables a day. London's Police Commissioner wrote to Battersea Council to ask that they contribute to it. Councillor John Archer later Mayor of Battersea and the first black mayor in London, told the Daily Mail that Battersea was already paying £22,000 a year in police rates. The Canine Defence League wondered whether, if Battersea were to organizs raids on laboratories, the laboratories would be asked to pay the policing costs themselves. Suggestions were made through the letters pages of the Times and elsewhere that the statue be moved, perhaps to the grounds of the Anti-Vivisection Hospital. The British Medical Journal wrote in March 1910: 'May we suggest that the most appropriate resting place for the rejected work of art is the Home for Lost Dogs at Battersea, where it could be "done to death", as the inscription says, with a hammer in the presence of Miss Woodword, the Rev. Lionel S. Lewis, and other friends; if their feelings were too much for them, doubtless an anaesthetic could be administered'.
Here's Hippocrates, the Father Of Medicine:
Top Doctors of Gwynne and Dafydd's vintage swore the Hippocratic Oath, although tradition was later broken after abortion became legal. When Brown's brother was about 17, he observed that Gwynne was more Hypocritic Oaf than Hippocratic Oath. Someone tried to murder Brown's brother just a few years later.
A number of medical conditions bore Hippocrates' name. Risus sardonicus, a sustained spasming of the face muscles, is known as the Hippocratic Smile. The most severe form of hair loss and baldness is called the Hippocratic form.
The Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine was founded in 2009. The founders 'wished to draw together national and international perspectives on three major historical and contemporary themes uniting the disciplines of poetry and medicine: medicine as inspiration for the writings of poets; effects of poetic creativity on the experience of illness by patients, their families, friends, and carers; and poetry as therapy'. How about this for an entry:
Battersea Council grew tired of the controversy over the statue and a new Conservative Council was elected in Nov 1909 amid talk of removing the Brown Dog. There were protests in support of it and the 500-strong Brown Dog memorial defence committee was established. Twenty thousand people signed a petition, and 1,500 attended a rally in Feb 1910. There were more demonstrations in central London and speeches in Hyde Park, with supporters wearing masks of dogs.
The protests were to no avail. The statue was quietly removed before dawn on 10 March 1910 by four council workmen, accompanied by 120 police officers. Nine days later, 3,000 anti-vivisectionists gathered in Trafalgar Square to demand its return, but it was clear by then that Battersea Council had turned its back on the affair. The statue was at first hidden in the borough surveyor's bicycle shed, according to a letter his daughter wrote in 1956 to the British Medical Journal, then reportedly destroyed by a council blacksmith, who melted it down. Anti-vivisectionists filed a High Court petition demanding its return, but the case was dismissed in Jan 1911.
On 12 Dec 1985, a new memorial to the Brown Dog was unveiled by actress Geraldine James in Battersea Park. Created by sculptor Nicola Hicks and commissioned by the National Anti-Vivisection Society and the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection, the new dog is mounted on a 5-foot-high Portland stone plinth and based on Hicks's own terrier, Brock.
Echoing the fate of the previous memorial, the new dog was moved into storage in 1992 by Battersea Park's owners, the Conservative Borough of Wandsworth, they said as part of a park renovation scheme. Anti-vivisectionists campaigned for its return, suspicious of the explanation. It was reinstated in the park's Woodland Walk in 1994, near the Old English Garden, a more secluded spot than before.
In 1992 social workers employed by Wandsworth Borough Council were facilitating a paedophile gang in south London with links to Dafydd and Lucille's gang in north Wales (see post 'The Most Dangerous Man In The World – Part III'). The south London gang, as well as Dafydd's gang, was also being concealed by Top Docs at St George's Hospital Medical School, just down the road from Wandsworth and some of those concealing organised abuse lived in Wandsworth. As did Michael Mansfield QC, who was studiously ignoring the activities of those gangs. One member of staff at St George's who was colluding with the gangs in 1992 was Prof Geoffrey Chamberlain, some of who's colleagues were conducting animal experiments but denying what they were doing. Chamberlain himself, in the mid-1960s, experimented upon a living foetus of 7 months gestation which he had aborted. When Chamberlain finished the experiment, he killed the foetus. For further details, see post 'Now Then…'. When I worked for Chamberlain in 1991, there was a preserved, fully formed but very small foetus sitting in a jar in a shelf in one of the labs. Minding its own business but very casual like. I suspect that it shouldn't have been there because when I asked a benign question about that foetus I got my head bitten off.
Here's one of Chamberlain's personal friends who when she was on Desert Island Discs spoke of her heartbreak at losing a premature baby:
Abel-Smith explained that teaching hospitals were prioritised in the hospital building programme and he mentions that in 1971 the flagship first purpose built completely integrated teaching hospital and medical school in Britain was built at Cardiff. That is of course the University Hospital at Cardiff, known to locals as the Heath. The child molester George Thomas aka Lord Tonypandy seems to have had a very chummy relationship with the Heath and the bungalow in which he lived was on its doorstep. The Heath was choc full of all those Top Doctors who were concealing the crimes of Dafydd and the gang, as well as the crimes of one George Thomas and others in south Wales. George Thomas really loved medical charities and one big medical charity in Cardiff bore his name until the stream of revelations regarding his sex offending became so embarrassing that the charity changed its name.
Previous blog posts have discussed the experiences of a school friend of mine who was a medical student in Cardiff during the 1980s and found out that there were big problems at the Heath then. Cardiff medical students knew about malpractice and the dreadful conduct of certain people but felt unable to challenge it. The students also knew about even bigger problems in the NHS in north Wales, Cardiff students all dreaded being sent on placement to north Wales. The problems didn't go away and over the last few years the medical school in Cardiff has seen its reputation plummet, which is what happens when serious misconduct is ignored.
Abel-Smith explained that the hospital building programme was implemented by Regional Hospital Boards and by the Boards of Governors of teaching hospitals. Regional architects and engineers planned some hospitals but usually private architects were commissioned to work with them. According to Abel-Smith, so little hospital building had been done over previous 20 yrs that British architects and engineers lacked experience, so a visit was arranged to the US to study recent developments. The Dept of Health produced guidelines on design and also launched a major research and development programme in hospital planning.
I'm a bit surprised by this. Surely it would have not been beyond the wit of architects and engineers to sit down and have a good think about what would be needed to build a hospital? However the fuckwittery to which Abel-Smith referred might explain the constant problems that were discovered after Ysbyty Glan Clwyd and Ysbyty Gwynedd were built in the 1980s. I remember being told that the same person designed both hospitals and there were serious design faults. Some of the faults were only discovered after the hospitals were in operation when bits of them started falling apart, but there were some real howlers as well, such as the mortuary being sited in a totally inappropriate part of the building, I think it was next to the kitchens or something equally crazy. In the 1980s Welsh TV news regularly featured items regarding yet another bit of one of those two hospitals which was having to be rebuilt or redesigned. Knowing the way in which the NHS in north Wales conducts business I presume that the contracts for building those hospitals would have gone to the mate of a Top Doc or senior manager who will have been clueless and out of their depth.
Abel-Smith explains that 'Wales was advantaged' in the distribution of the dosh for the hospital building programme and that larger shares of dosh were given to the authorities whose needs seemed to be greatest need. It is obvious that in Wales this could not have happened. Facilities in rural Wales were still lacking even after the new hospitals were built. There was however the one massive, flagship envy-of-the-UK institution in Wales – the University Hospital in Cardiff, which must have taken up the greater part of the hospital building programme budget allocated to Wales. The University Hospital which employed all the big wigs who were concealing all the crap, who also had a very cosy relationship with George Thomas.
George Thomas was Secretary of State for Wales, 1968-70. Responsibility for Health in Wales was assumed by the Welsh Office in 1969. Before George Thomas was Secretary of State for Wales, he was a Minister in the Welsh Office, under Cledwyn Hughes aka Lord Cledwyn. Lord Cledwyn was the Labour MP for Anglesey and was considered so influential in the Labour Party in Wales that when the Windbag was a whippersnapper, Glenys's parents, who were mates of Lord Cledwyn, made a point of ensuring that the Windbag got to know him because that would be the route to success for the Windbag. So Cledwyn Hughes and George Thomas were in the Welsh Office when decisions were being made regarding which hospitals would be built in Wales and where.
Does the Windbag know if that ridiculous bungalow in which George Thomas and his mother lived which was on the doorstep of the Health was funded by the NHS as well? After all, it was George Thomas who did that dodgy deal with a firm of builders which resulted in them bagging the lucrative contract to build an estate of houses in Cardiff…
Brian Abel-Smith noted that although more psychiatric units were developed in the general hospitals, 'the adequacy and suitability' 'varied considerably'. Indeed the ones in north Wales were completely inadequate, so more were built, which were also inadequate. Although the biggest problem, as I always stress, was not the buildings, it was the staff.
Abel-Smith fessed up that it was difficult to attract staff to work in the mental handicap hospitals because they were old and isolated. The staff were often also abusing the patients, which is never a magnet for people who want to do a good job. Of course in Bryn-y-Neuadd in Llanfairfechan, although that too was an old isolated hospital, those two forward thinkers Ann and Michael Craft rocked up there to carry out 'research' into the sexual histories of the patients, 'research' with which Dafydd was involved. Being a pioneer of Empowerment, Ann also supported patients to explore their sexuality and supported them in their choice to conduct sexual relationships (see post 'The Old Devils'). Those patients were given absolutely no choice over any other area of their lives, but they were given choice regarding with whom they had sex. Although as many of the Bryn-y-Neuadd patients had difficulties communicating, it would have been not been easy for a layperson to know if the patient was desperate to have sex with them, but with Ann Craft there to support them, I'm sure that communication difficulties would have presented no problems.
Dafyd and Lucille's friend, Trustee and Vice-Chair of CAIS, Cledwyn Williams, spent many happy years running the mental handicap service in north Wales:
From 1983 to 1996 Cledwyn was Assistant Director of Social Services, responsible for mentally handicapped services and for the all-Wales strategy for people with learning disabilities. He was responsible for developing services for people with learning disabilities for the education, health & social services group. After this, he became Director of Social Services for Conwy.
In the late 1960s, there were so many scandals involving neglect and abuse in long stay hospitals that Secretary of State for the DHSS Richard Crossman initiated a re-examination of the standards of care in hospitals for the mentally ill and mentally handicapped. Among the many scandals and Committees of Inquiry, there were none involving Denbigh, although it was admitted after the Ely Hospital Scandal that conditions at the North Wales Hospital Denbigh were worse. The Ely Scandal remains one of the most shocking scandals that there has been in the UK. George Thomas described the 'nursing' at Ely as 'old-fashioned'. Patients were kicked, beaten and doused with cold water.
Dick Crossman was Secretary of State for Health and Social Services, 1968 to 1970, after which he became Editor of the 'New Statesman'. Crossman was an Oxford graduate who during WWII served in the Special Operations Executive making anti-Nazi propaganda material. Such experience would have been put to good use at the DHSS, dealing with those old fashioned Angels.
In 1969 Crossman established the Hospital Advisory Service, which employed teams to visit long stay hospitals and give advice locally regarding improving patient care. The Director of the HAS also reported to the Secretary of State regarding conditions in particular hospitals. Crossman knew what was happening in north Wales.
In 1957 Crossman joined Nye Bevan and Morgan Phillips in a controversial lawsuit for libel against 'The Spectator'. Crossman and co won the case and bagged damages. Years later, Crossman's posthumously published diaries revealed that the allegations made by 'The Spectator' had indeed been true and that Crossman, Bevan and Phillips had perjured themselves. Strong Woman Gwyneth Dunwoody, Labour MP for Exeter, 1966-70 and Crewe and Nantwich, 1974-2008, attempted to pass legislation that would have concealed the truth regarding the perjury of Crossman et al. Gwyneth Dunwoody was the daughter of Morgan Phillips. Gwyneth's husband John Dunwoody was a Top Doctor and Labour MP for Falmouth and Cambourne. John Dunwoody was a junior Minister in the DHSS under Dick Crossman. The Labour Party had their eye on John Dunwoody as a future Secretary of State for the DHSS and he was talked up in much the same way that Dr Death always was, but it all went pear shaped and Dunwoody left politics and returned to being a Top Doctor running huge swathes of London's NHS. The Dunwoodys had a truly dreadful daughter, Tamsin, who rocked up as an AM in Wales until things finally fell apart for her as well. The Dunwoody clan were all involved in concealing the crimes of Dafydd and the gang. See previous posts for further details regarding the sordid activities of the Dunwoodys.
In 1971 a White Paper was published regarding better services for the mentally handicapped. A 20 yr plan was envisaged, with greatly increased local authority residential places and day centre places. This led to the nearly halving of the numbers of long stay patients in mental handicap hospitals and a major extension in community care facilities. Although not in Wales. Those who were exploring their sexuality in Bryn-y-Neuadd did not even begin to be resettled in community care facilities until the late 1980/early 1990s.
When the resettlement began, many found themselves living in homes provided by a company called Cartrefi Cymru. I knew someone who worked as a support worker for Cartrefi Cymru and she maintained that it was complete chaos. Turnover of staff was incredibly high because of the terrible pay and inadequate facilities and there was completely inadequate support for 'clients'. One male resident developed mental health problems as a result of spending months living in a house with a female client who was highly sexually aggressive of whom he was terrified. I expect that she'd been taught to explore her sexual needs by Ann and Michael Craft. My friend made repeated representation to the managers of Cartrefi Cymru about the problems but was simply told 'it has to work, they're in the community now'. The male resident eventually had a breakdown. Dafydd's colleague Tony Francis refused to treat him on the grounds that he was mentally handicapped and Francis Didn't Do Them.
My friend's observations to her senior colleagues that no-one else would be expected to share a house with a sexually aggressive person of whom they were petrified and that people with learning disabilities should not be refused NHS care for mental health problems were ignored.
One of the Directors of Cartrefi Cymru is Dr Peter Higson, a former clinical psychologist in, and the former manager of, the North Wales Hospital Denbigh. Higson's sister Dr Ruth Hussey is a Role Model For Wimmin, being a Top Doctor who is the former Chief Medical Officer for Wales. Here's Ruth, picking up her honorary fellowship from Bangor University:
Here's her brother, who when Ruth was honoured by Bangor University, was sitting on the governing body of Bangor University:
Dr Peter Higson grew up in the Conwy Valley. Peter studied psychology at Bangor University and then went on to complete a PhD. Peter started working in the NHS in 1977 at the former North Wales Psychiatric Hospital in Denbigh first as a research psychologist and then a clinical psychologist. In the mid 1980s Peter changed career direction into health service management. In 1993 Peter became a Director of the former Clwydian Community Care NHS Trust until moving in 1998 to become a Director of the former North Wales Health Authority. In 2002 Peter secured a secondment to ELWa and was its interim Chief Executive in 2003-4. Peter was then appointed as the first Chief Executive of Healthcare Inspectorate Wales in 2004 and remained in this post until he retired at the end of 2012. Peter was appointed as Chair of Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board in October 2013.
Peter Higson has been embroiled in scandal in every post which he has held, but it certainly hasn't held him back. If any readers know who his parents were, please do let me know. Like Huw Daniel, Dafydd Iwan and Alun Ffred, I expect that Peter and Ruth are of Noble Birth. However I suspect that Peter's career from the early 1980s onward owes much to his knowing where the bodies are buried at Denbigh. Literally.
Abel-Smith observed that although local authorities had been given community care duties from 1959, by 1974, only half the places needed for training and occupation for mentally handicapped adults were provided and only about one third of the places needed for residential facilities. Some local authorities had made no provision at all. I wonder which LAs that might have been?
Abel-Smith explained that 'provision for the mentally ill was still more deficient'. In 1974, only approximately one sixth of the day centre places and one third of the residential care facilities estimated to be needed were available and 'community social work and other community services were seriously under-developed'.
How did it all happen, what with the plans being announced in 1959?
I'm glad to say that those at the heart of Gov't may have been a little slow in providing accommodation and other basics for vulnerable people but there was one need which was prioritised. In 1966, the paedophiles' friend Kenneth Robinson asked LAs to provide family planning services on medical grounds free of charge and from 1967, LAs were given the power to provide family planning services free of charge 'for those who needed them' for non-medical as well as medical reasons. The only people I know who ever availed themselves of the infamous NHS free condoms (which I was told were grossly inferior to the ones which are purchased over the counter from Boots) were various people having a massively hard time, who were in the clutches of the Top Docs and social workers after having grown up in care, become pregnant when they were still at school etc. Advice, or rather direct orders regarding 'family planning', rains down upon the head of these folk like there is no tomorrow, as do instructions to get themselves sterilised. It is all accompanied by 'it's for their own good or they'll get pregnant'.
Unplanned pregnancies, particularly among people who would have trouble looking after the resultant babies, do of course lead to difficulties. However I have watched what has been going on for nearly 40 years now and the story in Somerset and north Wales was the same. Vulnerable people who were being sexually used, often by those caring for them, were in some cases being actively prepared for sex and in other cases were being kitted out to ensure that those sexually exploiting them did not have to face the consequences of making them pregnant. One group of NHS workers who know damn well when people are being sexually abused are those dishing out the contraceptives, performing the abortions and treating the STIs. It was one such Angel who blew the whistle on one of the big trafficking rings in the north of England. No-one else has. Everyone involved in 'family planning' in north Wales knew that kids in care and residents of the North Wales Hospital Denbigh and Bryn-y-Neuadd were becoming pregnant. Yes those people do have consenting relationships with each other, but the rate at which they were becoming pregnant (or infected) was such that it was not the result of mutually consenting relationships. Furthermore Top Doctors and Angels were being told by the children/patients what had happened. No-one said a word.
People like Kenneth Robinson knew exactly who were in receipt of 'family planning for non-medical reasons' and it wasn't usually women in happy relationships who were just waiting for a while before they started a family.
As a result of the 1966 Salmon Report, Chief Nursing Officers were appointed who were responsible for nursing services in each group of hospitals. Parallel to this were the Directors of Nursing Services who were responsible to the local authority. People who occupied these positions knew precisely how patients in north Wales were being abused and mistreated. Some people with these job titles were still in place in the 1980s and their names appear on my documents. They were the Angels at the top of the tree who were attending meetings about the problem that was me while failing to respond to my letters which detailed serious criminal activity on the part of their colleagues.
Here's some pigs in blankets, there's a lot of them:
Brian Abel-Smith notes that although Angels were still badly paid, between 1948 and 1974 the pay for a consultant Top Doc at the top of the pay scale had multiplied by more than four times.
Professor Abel-Smith noted that the League of Hospital Friends had rapidly expanded by 1974 and were involved with 'supporting' long stay patients. The League of Friends in north Wales were always busy and because they had direct contact with the patients they could hardly have not noticed the state that some of them were in or the conditions in Denbigh. The League of Friends were usually elderly insiders, often retired Angels or the wives of the Top Doctors and administrators.
Chapter 4 of Abel-Smith's book is concerned with the reorganisation of NHS. In 1962 a 'non-Governmental Committee' established by Top Doctors and Chaired by Top Doctor Sir Arthur Porritt produced recommendations with regard to the reorganisation of the NHS.
Col Arthur Porritt was born in New Zealand, the son of a Top Doctor. Porritt himself studied medicine at Magdalen College, Oxford. Porritt represented New Zealand at the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris. It was this race against Harold Abrahams that was later immortalised in the film 'Chariots Of Fire'. Porritt was New Zealand's team manager at the 1934 British Empire Games in London and 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. Porritt was the New Zealand member of the International Olympic Committee, 1934-67 and he was the first President of the IOC Medical Commission, serving from 1961-67. So Arthur Porritt had something to do with the laughable and discredited 'sex tests' which were supposedly designed to ensure that female athletes were actually female, on the grounds that the gender of some of those Russian shot putters was open to question. Women athletes themselves maintained that the 'sex tests' were no more than a grope fest.
Porritt served as Chairman of the British Empire and Commonwealth Games Federation from the 1950 Auckland games to the 1966 Kingston games.
Porritt became a house surgeon at St Mary's Hospital Paddington and later that year was appointed surgeon to the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VIII.
I think I understand why the Top Docs ensured that Porritt Chaired their 'non-Governmental Committee' to advise on the reorganisation of the NHS.
During WWII Porritt served with the Royal Army Medical Corps and was involved in the D Day landings. He ended his military career in September 1956, with the honorary rank of Colonel in the TA. Porritt was King's Surgeon to George VI, 1946-52, and was Serjeant Surgeon to Lilibet until 1967.
In 1955 Porritt was asked by the suspected serial killer Top Doc John Bodkin Adams to operate on his patient Jack Hullett for colon cancer. The death of Hullett under Adams' supervision a few months later followed soon after by the death of his wife, led to Adams being put on trial for Bobby's murder in 1957. He was acquitted but is suspected in up to 163 deaths. Harriet Harman's dad Dr John Harman gave evidence for the defence at Adams's trial. See previous posts for details of the Bodkin Adams case.
Porritt became President in 1960 of both the BMA and the Royal College of Surgeons of England and retained the presidency of the RCS until 1963. In 1966 he was elected President for two years of the Royal Society of Medicine, but served only one year before leaving for New Zealand.
In 1967 Porritt returned to New Zealand to be appointed by the Queen on the advice of PM Keith Holyoake as the 11th Governor-General of New Zealand.
Prior to the 1969 General Election Porritt argued in a speech to the Southern Cross Medical Care Society that the welfare state was 'uneconomic'. Porritt's wife created controversy, when she replied to a question on equal pay for women by stating 'Perhaps when New Zealand, like India and Israel, produces a woman prime minister it will be time to call a halt to the emancipation movement'.
These feminists are only Women's Libbers because they're too fat and ugly to get a man.
The Baroness Thatcher
At his last Waitangi Day speech in 1972, Arthur Porritt caused yet more offence by stating that: 'Maori-Pakeha relationships are being dealt with adequately through the biological process of intermarriage'.
I'm not going to comment.
At the end of his term as Governor-General of New Zealand in Sept 1972 England got Porritt back again.
Sir Arthur was an enthusiastic Freemason. He was initiated in Oxford University's Apollo University Lodge No 357 on 13 June 1925 and later joined other English Constitution lodges, including Sancta Maria Lodge No. 2682 (a Top Doctors' lodge), Prince of Wales's Lodge No. 259 (a so-called 'red apron' lodge as it nominates one of the 19 Grand Stewards each year, who wear red aprons), and Royal Alpha Lodge No. 16 (membership of which is at the personal invitation of the Grand Master).
During his term as Governor-General (1968–1971), Porritt served as Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of New Zealand.
Sir Ronnie Waterhouse emphasised that he found not a scrap of evidence to suggest that Freemasonry had played any part at all in the North Wales Child Abuse Scandal. But then Ronnie missed the biggest parts of the whole scandal, so it was hardly surprising that he didn't notice the involvement of a great many Masons, even the Masons with whom he was personally friendly.
Lord Porritt – as Sir Arthur became – was the father of Jonathan Porritt, the environmental activist who caused confusion among some other activists because he was rather posher than the rest of them.
Jonathan Porritt was educated at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford. He trained as a barrister but instead worked as a teacher at St Clement Davies Grammar School in Shepherd's Bush, 1974-84. In the late 1970s/early 80s, Porritt was involved with the Ecology Party (now known as the Green Party). Porritt Chaired the Ecology Party, 1979-80 and 1982-84. Porritt was Director of Friends of the Earth, 1984-90. Friends of the Earth in those days was based at 9 Poland Street, London, along with a number of organisations with varying reputations, including one with links to organisations campaigning for paedophiles' rights. The charity Release was also based at 9 Poland Street.
Release offered help to people arrested and/or imprisoned for/on drugs offences. I know someone who was unlawfully arrested and imprisoned by Dafydd et al for more than a year in the mid-1980s after the police planted class A drugs on him and his wife. This man had been violently assaulted by the North Wales Police when he objected to a Sergeant joining him in the loo. Before being transferred to Denbigh, he'd spent weeks in the 'hospital wing' of Risley Remand Centre, where he heard the screams of other inmates as they were beaten up by the screws. When in Denbigh, he rang Release and was most impressed when a man from Release came to visit him in Denbigh, all the way from London. The man explained that there was nothing that Release could do to help.
The man from Release knew of the circumstances of the Denbigh patient's arrest and imprisonment and he will have known how illegal it all was. He also will have noticed the conditions at Denbigh and probably realised that he was visiting someone who had been a witness to very serious crime. The man from Release returned to London and was never heard of again.
In the 1992 General Election, Jonathan Porritt backed Cynog Dafis, who stood in Ceredigion as the joint Plaid/Green Party candidate. Many people alleged that Dafis was involved with a very dirty deal but no-one would actually clarify what the deal was. The deal did however lead to an overwhelming victory for Cynog Dafis, who defeated Geraint Howells, the Lib Dem who had held the seat since 1974. Lord Geraint had been one of those who had supported Mary Wynch, before everyone was terrorised into pretending that they'd never heard of her.
In 1992 the North Wales Police investigation into the possibility of a VIP paedophile ring operating in north Wales/Cheshire was underway.
In 1994, the Green Party Regional Council suspended Porritt for supporting Dafis and demanded that Dafis should stop identifying himself as a Green.
Porritt Chaired the New Labour Gov'ts Sustainable Development Committee (SDC) which was set up by Blair, between 2000 and 2009. Porritt was also involved with the UN with regard to environmental matters.
Between 1996 and 2009 Porritt withdrew from active involvement in party politics. In 2009 he entered the arena again, reaffirming his support for the Green Party and explaining that he had never stopped supporting them.
Porritt was a Trustee of the World Wildlife Fund, 1991-05 and was on the Advisory Board of BBC Wildlife Magazine. In 2005 he was appointed a non-executive Director of Wessex Water and in 2008 he became a non-executive Director of the Willmott Dixon Group. Porritt is also on the Sustainable Retail Advisory Board for Marks & Spencer. M&S have links with the Royal College of Psychiatrists and for some unfathomable reason it was M&S who years ago stumped up an enormous loan on favourable conditions for the Royal College to move themselves into a palatial building in Belgravia, when the Royal College was nearly bankrupt.
Porritt is a Patron of Population Matters and has expressed his belief that families should have no more than two children. He has praised the one child per family policy that caused such havoc in China. Porritt is not daft, he must know that the Chinese Gov't enforced that policy so robustly that pregnant women were abducted from their homes, given abortions against their will and foetuses of 8 months gestation were chucked into buckets and left to die. Then there were the numerous dead bodies of babies which turned up in waterways etc in China.
Jonathan, would you happen to know how Chinese baby girls became available for adoption on Anglesey at the turn of the millennium? The adoption officer for Anglesey, a lady called Jean, was most helpful if someone wanted a Chinese baby, it didn't matter what age they were or whether they were married or single. The only criteria was that they had to have a lot of spare cash because those Chinese babies did not come cheap.
In 2012 Porritt became Chancellor of Keele University.
Porritt seems to be based in the West Country, he's certainly very busy down there.
Jonathan Porritt is of course the environmental adviser to Carlo.
Back in the 1980s, Porritt did wonders for the image of Friends of the Earth. They had previously been characterised as a bunch of old hippies, but after Jonathan arrived as Director, FoE began receiving much good PR in right-leaning publications, which stressed that Jonathan had been to Eton and Oxford so couldn't be all bad.
Porritt did ruffle feathers by maintaining that people should be happy with lower incomes and less consumer goodies. I never had a problem with this, but one of my friends who is involved with environmental activism himself explained that what was pissing people off was that Porritt is a very rich man, so he didn't need a high income. I had no idea that Porritt's dad was a Top Doc and umbrella par excellence for Dafydd et al…
With regard to the lack of development for community care, Abel-Smith explained in his publication that Regional Boards and Hospital Management Committees 'could do no more than try to persuade local authorities to give these services greater priority'. Couldn't Jonathan Porritt's dad have put a boot up their butts? He doesn't seem to have minced his words with regard to other matters.
In north Wales, the people running the local authorities who were failing to develop community services will have been either exactly the same people or the family and friends of those people who were sitting on NHS Regional Boards and Hospital Management Committees. Despite all the hot air, even in the 1990s, it was patently obvious that those who called the shots in north Wales did not want to see the North Wales Hospital Denbigh closed. A lot of people articulated this quite openly. Other people held the 'but the patients will never cope, there are no community services' conversations. Which was true, but there had been a deliberate refusal on the part of everyone to develop even the most rudimentary of those services. It was the usual story. 'We're the paedophiles' friends, we say what's going to happen and we run these 'services' for ourselves.'
In north Wales, the senior managers of the mental health services were still referring to the 'new ideas' and 'new attitude' to psychiatric patients in the late 1980s, although the 'new ideas' were actually new in the late 1950s. I had a conversation with Alun Davies in 1989 during which he made derogatory comments about the 'new ideas'. That lot were clueless, totally clueless.
Following Porritt's dad's Report, concerns about standards in the long stay hospitals grew…
In 1965, the Seebohm Commitee was established on the watch of the Health Minister and paedophiles' friend Kenneth Robinson. The Seebohm Committee reported on personal social services. The Committee sat from 1965 to 1968 and was Chaired by Frederic Seebohm. The Committee was appointed on 20 Dec 1965 to review the organisation and responsibilities of the social services functions of local authorities. It reported back in 1968, recommending the amalgamation of a number of functions to form a single Social Services Department. The single department would include services provided by children's departments, the home help service, mental health, social work services and other social care functions provided by other organisations. Harold Wilson's Gov't commissioned and received the Report, welcomed it and committed to carry out a consultation to review the recommendations made by Seebohm.
It was the recommendations of the Seebohm Committee which allowed Dafydd and the gang complete control over their victims' lives. I have mentioned in previous posts how the mental health services/learning disability services worked in tandem with the paedophile/sex trafficking gang. What I have not blogged so much about but which readers will already have grasped was happening was the control that the gang exerted over the whole families of victims/witnesses. If complaints were made about members of the gang, a favourite strategy was to maintain that the witness had been abused, but not by the member of the gang named. The finger was instead pointed at an innocent person known to the witness, usually a family member and it would be explained that the victim had named the wrong person because of 'transference' or 'projection'. People who had named Dafydd et al were subjected to hours of discussion by the Top Doctors of this sort where they were repeatedly told that it wasn't the gang who had abused them, it was someone else. I know of one young woman in Gwynedd who's father went to prison after two of her sisters were subjected to this 'counselling'. She maintained throughout that her father was innocent and that her sisters were bullied and pressurised into naming him. This young woman developed bulimia and a serious alcohol problem. She was told by the Hergest Unit that she had a personality disorder and that she was untreatable. She died a few years ago. Ysbyty Gwynedd's story was that her life support was switched off after a lethal boozing session. One of her friends is in possession of a suicide note that the dead young woman left behind. Not that 'the authorities' have ever seen this note, because the person who found it is a mental health patient themselves who has as little as possible to do with 'the services'.
Should a victim/witness have children themselves, they will find the gestapo right back in their lives even if they have done their best to wave good-bye to them. Their parenting skills will be questioned before they have got anywhere near giving birth. I know of young women who were forced into aborting babies which were very much wanted – one such young woman went into hiding from the mental health services after this experience – others have had children removed from them upon the flimsiest pretexts. The favourite technique however is to leave the child with the victim/witness, maintain to the world that the family are being 'supported' because they are 'chaotic and dysfunctional' and then make the whole family's life hell.
My post 'Cry, The Beloved Country' explained how the south Wales Labour MP Leo Abse, with the help of Jim Callaghan, Harold Wilson and Dr Death, developed and piloted the Children's Act 1975 – following a Report by the Houghton Committee, which was ruthlessly manipulated by Leo Abse – which resulted in so many children being handed over to Dafydd and the gang in north Wales. Abse was a bent lawyer and a close friend of fellow south Wales Labour MP the child molester George Thomas. Abse is suspected of having been a sex offender himself. Abse extracted George Thomas from trouble constantly, sometimes by threatening witnesses or paying them off. On one occasion in 1984, George Thomas summoned Abse to an unidentified hospital in the middle of the night after Thomas panicked and believed that he was about to be exposed. Thomas had been admitted to hospital as a result of the consequences of an STI and thought that the media would discover why he was in hospital. Abse made up a load of guff about Thomas having prostate trouble and fed the lies to the press.
No wonder George Thomas supported so many medical charidees and lived on the doorstep of the Heath Hospital.
The recommendations of the Seebohm Committee seem to have been as of much assistance to Dafydd and the paedophile gang as the Houghton Committee and the Children's Act 1975 was.
Frederic Seebohm was educated at Leighton Park School and Trinity College, Cambridge. After Cambridge he joined Barclays Bank, which had taken over the Hitchin Bank founded by his family. Seebohm served in the Royal Artillary. Seebohm was local director of the bank's branch office in Luton and Birmingham and then became Director of the main Board after WWII. In 1951, he was made a member of the bank's overseas Board and in 1965 Chairman of the renamed Barclays Bank International. Seebohm retired seven years later.
In December 1965 Seebohm was appointed, by Douglas Houghton MP, to Chair the Committee on Local Authority Personal Social Services. Seebohm was also Chairman of the Overseas Development Institute. In 1972, Seebohm was created a life peer.
Frederic Seebohm was President of the National Institute for Social Work. As a result of the infiltration of children's social services by paedophile gangs in the 1960s and 70s, there were many abusers involved with the National Institute for Social Work, the most high profile being Peter Righton.
Seebohm was President of the Royal African Society and of Age Concern; Chairman of the Joseph Rowntree Memorial Trust (now the Joseph Rowntree Foundation) for 15 years and one of the founders of the York Council of Voluntary Service. Seebohm was a governor of the LSE and of the Haileybury and Imperial Services College.
The names of many people who taught or studied at the LSE were linked with abuse scandals, including in north Wales. Jane Hutt, the former Health and Social Services Minister in the Welsh Gov't, who spent an entire career looking the other way as people screamed at her that a massive trafficking ring was in operation under her nose, is an LSE graduate. David Hurst, a 'social policy specialist' at Bangor University who wrote fiction with regard to the history of the mental health services in north Wales, is an LSE graduate. The Waterhouse Report again and again mentions managers and staff of the Social Services in north Wales who studied at the LSE. Of course there will be plenty of people associated with the LSE who have not been involved in these sort of scandals, but the point is that the ones who are will have used their LSE network to protect themselves. That will be a useful network to have, the LSE has a towering reputation in the social sciences.
Brian Abel-Smith held a Chair at the LSE, as did his mentor, Richard Titmuss.
Frederic Seebohm was Chairman of 3i, a private equity group.
Seebohm died in a road accident in 1990, just before the North Wales Police opened the first investigation into the abuse of children in care in north Wales/Cheshire. His wife, Evangeline, daughter of Sir Gerald Berkeley Hurst, died shortly after.
Sir Gerald Berkeley Hurst was the Conservative MP for Manchester Moss Side, 1918-23 and 1924-35. He was born Gerald Berkeley Hertz in Bradford. His Jewish grandparents on both sides came from Germany in the mid-nineteenth century. Hurst was educated at Bradford Grammar School and Lincoln College, Oxford. Hertz changed the spelling of his surname to Hurst in 1916. He served in the British Army during WWI. Hurst married one of the daughters of Sir Alfred Hopkinson, VC of Manchester University and a Conservative MP. In 1938, Hurst was appointed to the County Court for Croydon and West Kent. Hurst stepped down from the county judgeship in 1952. From 1947 -55, he served as Commissioner of Divorce Cases. His younger brother was the Top Doctor Sir Arthur Hurst, a neurologist.
Frederic and Evangeline Seebohm's daughter is the broadcaster and writer Victoria Glendinning. Glendinning is an Honorary Vice-President of English PEN and Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature.
Glendinning grew up near York and after attending Millfield School in Somerset, went to Oxford University. In the second year of her degree, she married one of her lecturers, Professor Nigel Glendinning. They divorced in 1981. Her second husband Terence de Vere White died in 1994 and in 1996 Victoria married Kevin O'Sullivan (a previous husband of Shirley Conran). She had four sons, including sportswriter Matthew Glendinning and the mathematician Paul Glendinning. Another son, Simon Glendinning, lectures at the LSE and previously taught at the University of Kent at Canterbury. Another son, Hugo Glendinning, is a photographer and artist.
Glendinning has written about the experience of coming from a Quaker family. A number of Quakers were involved in the North Wales Child Abuse Scandal. Owain Gethin Evans, who was the Assistant Director of Gwynedd Social Services and Lucille Hughes's henchman while the paedophile gang ran riot, was a leading light in the Quakers in Gwynedd. Dr Paul Nickson, a GP from Bethesda, was a Quaker. Nickson ignored the abuse of mental health patients and the abuse of children as well as serious crime related to these matters. Dafydd subsequently appeared on a Quakers website sharing his wisdom. See previous posts for further details of the role of the Quakers in concealing the crimes of Dafydd et al.
Douglas Houghton, the man who appointed Frederic Seebohm to Chair the Committee, was the Labour MP for Sowerby in West Yorkshire.
Houghton was born in Long Eaton, Derbyshire, fought in WWI, survived the Battle of the Somme and subsequently joined the civil service. Houghton was 'a great believer in equality of opportunity' and campaigned for lower grade civil servants to have the chance of taking an examination that could lead to promotion. Houghton founded the Inland Revenue Staff Federation, leading it from 1922 to 1960. He served on the General Council of the TUC, 1952-60 and as Chairman of the Staff Side Civil Service National Whitley Council, 1955-57.
Houghton was a panel member of a BBC radio programme Can I Help You?, 1941-64. He was an Alderman of the London County Council, 1947-49. Jim Callaghan's wife Audrey, who did many favours for the paedophile gangs of Wales, was also a member of London County Council and an Alderman, although some years after Houghton held the role (see previous posts). Houghton knew the Callaghans.
Houghton was Chairman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, succeeding Harold Wilson in this post after Wilson was elected Leader of the Labour Party in 1963. Houghton became a Cabinet Minister in Wilson's first Gov't, as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, which gave him special responsibility for Social Services. Houghton was dropped from Gov't in 1967 and became Chairman of the PLP. He retired from the Commons in 1974 and was elevated to the Lords a few months later on 20 June.
Douglas Houghton was the Houghton of the Houghton Committee, to whom Leo Abse gave instructions in order to bring about the Children's Act of 1975.
Lord Houghton was passionate about the subject of animal welfare. The People's History Museum in Manchester holds the collection of Douglas Houghton, whose papers include those of animal charities and pressure groups.
In 1939, Douglas Houghton married Vera, who also worked at Association of Officers for Taxes, before becoming a campaigner for abortion law reform and free birth control. Vera is described as having been a 'women's health campaigner'. Vera was the Chair of the Abortion Law Association, 1963-70, whilst the organisation, lobbied, sponsored and steered the Abortion Act 1967 through Parliament. Following this, Vera continued to campaign for women's reproductive rights by founding the Birth Control Trust, which pushed for universally free contraceptives. She also became active in the Family Planning Association, becoming its Chair in 1973, with birth control becoming free available on the NHS in 1974. Vera also became Executive Secretary of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, 1953-59.
Vera served as Vice-President of the British Eugenics Society, 1964-66 and again in 1969 when it was reformed as the Galton Institute.
Vera died in 2013. 'The Guardian' published an admiring obituary of this Wimmin's Champ whom it claimed 'advanced' the women's movement. Vera maintained that she campaigned for abortion law reform – it was of course David Steel who sponsored the private member's bill which resulted in the 1967 Abortion Act and Steel greatly appreciated Vera's support – because she knew of cases of women 'bleeding to death' on bathroom floors. Vera was quite right about that, but the problem with Vera's brand of feminism was that it involved ignoring a great many other things which were equally as gross as women bleeding to death after botched abortions, because Vera et al needed to forge alliances with the people who were involved in those gross happenings.
David Steel knew about Jeremy Thorpe and he was told that Cyril Smith was molesting children. Steel ignored the lot. Vera ignored a great deal as well. Such as kids in care being abused by Dafydd and the gang, being kept in a dungeon in Denbigh and dying in Risley Remand Centre. Vera lived until she was 99. Many of the victims of Dafydd's gang died before they were 30.
Vera's obituary mentioned that NHS abortions were available before free NHS contraception was, so Vera then campaigned for NHS contraception. I'm curious as to why this situation ever arose. I'll do a bit of digging, because the answer will no doubt involve a sleazy deal between politicians and abusive people.
Vera kept her mouth shut about one thing that really should have concerned Vera which affected the well-being of numerous wimmin, but not wimmin like her. That was the fact that, until well into the late 1980s, a cartel of Top Doctors had made it virtually impossible for women to access NHS abortions in north Wales (see post 'The BMA And It's Ethics'). The Top Doctors were always happy to refer wimmin in north Wales with money to private clinics in Chester, those clinics did a roaring trade and I suspect that the Top Docs in north Wales were receiving backhanders for this service. Perhaps someone could ask Dafydd's mate Dr D.G.E. Wood what their cut was, Wood sent loads of women to Chester for a private abortion. So what happened to wimmin who didn't have the used fivers to hand over? Well, they were told that if they wanted an abortion on the NHS, they had to be 'assessed' by a Top Doctor. One Dr Dafydd Alun Jones to be precise. Who would then admit them as an inpatient to the North Wales Hospital Denbigh to be 'assessed'. Not that they would have been able to get an abortion on the NHS in north Wales after the 'assessment', because no-one could.
So what happened to those women and their babies then Dafydd? I think we should be told, because there were a great many of them.
Jane Hutt, the founder of Welsh Women's Aid and the 'wimmin's equality' charidee Chwarae Teg, was living in Wales by the 1970s. Jane was completely silent regarding the dreadful situation facing women with unplanned pregnancies in north Wales who had no money. As was Jane's mate Val Feld, another Wimmin's Champ. Val knew what was happening because Val was from Caernarfon. Val is remembered by a plaque on the wall of the Senedd because Jane was cross that all those being remembered were in possession of testicles. As for Julie Morgan, another Wimmin's Champ, Julie too kept quiet about the disappearing women and the missing babies.
Ah well, never mind, by keeping their mouths shut, Jane, Julie and Val ended up in the Senedd and Vera bagged herself a grand title.
Here's our Role Model:
The Lady Houghton of Sewerby
If one didn't think that Vera and her mates were up to much, here was the other Role Model for us ladies:
Of course, this Role Model would have been brought down along with her Gov't if Vera et al had gone public on what Dafydd was doing, because Dafydd was also supplying underaged boys for the above Role Model's close friend Sir Peter Morrison to have sex with. But Vera had her Championing Of Wimmin's Causes to think of…
The social workers' house magazine 'Community Care' published an article in 2005 which discussed the legacy of the Seebohm Report. 'Community Care' told us that Frederic Seebohm published the report 'that brought social services departments into being and decided the fate of social work'.
In 2005 'Community Care' explained that 'the Seebohm-inspired departments face extinction' and that 'By next year the split between children's trusts and adult social care will be nearly complete, the Seebohm committee's vision of unified social services departments as the final link in a comprehensive, generously funded welfare state having faded within 10 years of their creation in 1971. Under the successive blows of an economic downturn, child death scandals – starting with Maria Colwell in 1973 – and the rise of Margaret Thatcher, the sparkling new departments were, as one influential commentator put it, quickly "transformed from a first resort to the last ditch"'.
'Community Care' very wisely does not mention that the sparkling new departments were rotten from the moment of their creation and sprang from the ideas of some very rotten apples.
We are told that Richard Crossman, the Labour Secretary of State who oversaw the legislation which resulted from Seebohm (the Local Authority Social Services Act 1970), 'privately despised the report, considering it long on good intentions but short on realism about costs: the report ran to more than 300 pages, the legislation to a terse 22.'
'Community Care' remembered 'the wave of optimism that swept over social work in those early days'. 'Community Care' certainly quoted a few choice people regarding that wave of optimism:
John Rea Price, who became Social Services Director in the London Borough of Islington in 1973, remembers the 'huge idealism' among social workers.'I had no difficulties with recruitment then… ' Rea Price said. 'The unions were powerful and there were strikes but, generally, you couldn't stop them working even when it was for their own good – they were obsessed with the job.'
John Rea Price was Director of Islington Social Services when Islington children's homes were colonised by gangs of paedophiles. The situation was as bad as in north Wales. Some children were murdered and at least one social worker disappeared. Rea Price knew what was happening and ignored it. Rea Price is now seen as having been very guilty indeed. Rea Price had previously worked for the Probation Service.
Bob Hudson, who was in 2005 Professor of Partnership Studies at Durham University, was among the first members of Sunderland's Social Services Committee: 'Everyone on the committee felt they were on the brink of a new era; we were genuinely carried away by the sheer excitement of it all. There was money to spend and the economic optimism added to our sense of exhilaration.'
Sunderland Social Services had also been infiltrated by a gang of paedophiles and that gang had close links with Dafydd's gang in north Wales. Colin Smart was one senior manager in Sunderland who repeatedly raised concerns about the abuse of children in care. Colin's career was ruined, he was forced into expensive litigation in order to defend himself which was then used to force him into a corner and sign a gagging clause.
Durham University employed people who concealed organised sexual abuse, as did Newcastle-upon-Tyne University.
Mo Mowlam was a Labour MP in the North East who knew about the abuse of children in the region and who will also have found out what happened at the Kincora Boys' Home when Blair appointed her Secretary of State for N Ireland. Mo studied anthropology at Durham University. Prof Eric Sunderland, the well-camouflaged paedophiles' friend who in 1984 became Principal of UCNW, had spent most of his career as an anthropologist at Durham University. Mo also worked at Newcastle-upon-Tyne University, taking up an appointment there in 1979. Mo was a Wimmin's Champ as well.
'Community Care' tells us that 'For the first few years social services' spending increased by 10 per cent a year in real terms as Seebohm's ambition to do much more for the "neglected flotsam and jetsam of society" was put to the test'.
So that's why most of the Depts of Social Services in the UK by the mid-1970s had been infiltrated by paedophile gangs, many of which were linked! Dunno if the neglected flotsam and jetsam of society saw much of that dosh which was increased by 10% a year in real terms though.
Seebohm 'emphasised' 'Prevention, partnership, the role of the voluntary sector and the importance of harnessing the strengths of communities'. Which sounds strangely familiar. The Empowerment bit hadn't been invented when Seebohm wrote that Report.
Seebohm's 'new service would be family-centred rather than "symptom-centred". Since the aim of departments was to "meet all the social needs of the family or individual together and as a whole", the committee insisted these needs should be served as far as possible by a single social worker.'
You've got Lucille. She'll service your every need. If symptoms do insist on rearing their ugly head, Dafydd will deal with them. He'll share information with Lucille, it'll be easy enough, they were bedfellows for donkeys years.
'Community Care' reported that 'Adrianne Jones, appointed social services controller in the London Borough of Harrow at the outset of the reforms before becoming director in Hillingdon and in Birmingham, says the changes asked too much of social workers. As a former member of the committee chaired by Peter Barclay, whose landmark report published after three years of the Thatcher government was the last, brave attempt to maintain social work in the Seebohm vein, she believes that local authorities chose an over-rigid interpretation of "single social worker". Generic teams, she thinks, would have been better than generic workers. Jones says: "The idea of generic, family-based departments was excellent; what went wrong was that we threw out the specialisms. We were expecting too much of individuals to be able to work with every age group and every need. It was a reaction against the fragmentation of the 1960s."
Where does this blog know Adrianne Jones from? Er, from her role as an adviser to the Waterhouse Inquiry. When a major child abuse scandal was uncovered in the 1990s at a residential school in Shropshire, an extraordinarily high number of children had been placed in the school by Harrow Social Services. When Adrianne was Director of City of Birmingham Social Services, that Dept was sending kids on placement to children's homes in north Wales. Adrianne's turf at Hillingdon was the site of the disaster which ended in the death of Heidi Koseda. See previous posts for details of Adrianne and her good works.
Adrianne had a few things to say about the restructuring taking place in the wake of the 40 yrs of organised trafficking which Seebohm made so easy though. Adrianne told 'Community Care' that 'She fears that the new services will be managerial in outlook, preoccupied with targets rather than good outcomes for service users and usurped by education and health, a risk that the Seebohm report itself mentioned.'
Don't worry Adrianne, the Top Docs are completely on board and some of the schools are as well.
Adrianne continued: 'Looking back, the nails were hammered into the coffin year by year as successive scandals unfolded and people became demoralised'.
Adrianne did notice the successive scandals. Of course she did, in the wake of every one of them and the dreadful publicity which followed she offered her services as a consultant and earned a packet.
Another member of the Barclay working party – the Barclay Report was concerned with the staffing of Social Services Depts and was pointedly ignored by Thatch's Gov't – along with Adrianne, was Robert Pinker, then Professor of Social Administration at the LSE. Pinker is a renowned 'scourge of political correctness' in social work but obviously not of gangsters. He agreed with Adrianne 'that generic teams would have been better but also blames the "tendency to over-bureaucratise" for the failings of social services departments, a tendency which, he says, today's obsession with targets has only made worse.'
Rea Price, whose own Dept employed more than 3,000 paedophiles/gangsters/abusers/fuckwits, told 'Community Care' that 'Probably the major failure of the Seebohm analysis was not to anticipate the scale of the huge departments that its recommendations were creating, and the scale of the administrative, financial and management issues they would present. There was also the excessive faith in the generic approach to social work, but the stream of child death inquiries, as well as the rapid extension of the understanding of child abuse, soon began to expose the weaknesses of the non-specialised approach.'
OK. We just need more of the experts that allowed all this to happen. Experts in sexual abuse. Dafydd and his mates all claimed expertise in sexual abuse. For female patients only, at least on the NHS there was no 'sex therapy' for male victims of sex crime in north Wales.
'Community Care' observed that 'social services departments had to contend with more than 30 child deaths which were examined by high-profile inquiries. Press coverage quickly grew shrill, social workers were publicly pilloried and the profession's image was so tarnished it has never fully recovered. It marked out child protection as an unwise career path, making social services more reliant on agency staff and probably heightening the risk of further tragedies.'
Yeh, it's because we've all been so rude when yet another child has died, it's our fault that the hopelessness and dishonesty escalated.
John Rea Price further illuminated the situation: 'In the early 1970s there was a great sense of optimism about prevention to the point where some of the specifics of child protection were neglected'. Such as the failure to dismiss and prosecute child abusers perhaps?
'The message from the death of Maria Colwell to that of Jasmine Beckford [in 1984] was that social workers were so focused on the family as a whole that they were forgetting about the child. In Jasmine's case the social worker had a good relationship with the parent but did not see the child – meanwhile, the child was starving in an upstairs room.'
Jasmine wasn't just starving, she had the living daylights battered out of her and was tied up in a bath full of turds. Didn't the social worker who was employed to 'protect' Jasmine – who was on the at risk register – wonder where perhaps she was on those visits to Jasmine's house?
'Community Care' reassures us that there 'were achievements which answered the critics…more attention was paid to adult clients: smaller, state-of-the-art residential homes replaced converted workhouses for older people, long-stay psychiatric hospitals and hospitals for "the mentally handicapped" were closed, and the Disabled Persons Act 1986 put disability rights on the map for the first time, even if much of the act was not implemented.'
So that's why the Empowered Service Users were threatened and assaulted by the 'care staff', trafficked into sex work, arrested and framed if they complained and left destitute.
'Community Care' mentioned that 'the Conservative government's fixation on the mixed economy of care…gave unprecedented opportunities to the private sector which flourished after funding was transferred to councils from the Department of Social Security in 1993.'
I'm happy to remind 'Community Care' that many of those who owned, managed and staffed the private sector facilities which flourished after 1993 were exactly the same caring people who had abused and trafficked their clients when those caring people were paid to provide 'care' via the state sector. As the new mixed economy grew, I watched exactly the same people populate the new sector, many raking the money in by styling themselves as 'consultants'. They weren't consultants, they were usually Angels and social workers and they were being commissioned by their former colleagues.
Welcome to the new mixed economy where choice has been introduced. The Empowered Service Users are free to choose from the pool of paedophiles and their friends who were allocated to them previously. Not that there'll even be any choice among that pool, because there's a cartel in operation and the Empowered Service Users find that the cartel will conspire to ensure that they decide who ends up receiving a 'service' from whom.
'Community Care' told us that Bob Hudson remembers how quickly thinking changed after 'bright new hostels and day centres' were built after Seebohm: 'We thought we were doing the right thing and it's easy to say with hindsight that we should have done it differently. There was no consultation with service users to speak of, there was a 'we know best' mentality about it. Then Thatcher took the view that professionals had disempowered 'consumers' and the remedy was to bring market forces to bear in social care. It was the most astonishing change. In 1970s Sunderland we couldn't have conceived of the local authority not being the service provider.'
Bob Hudson knew about the paedophile ring which operated in Sunderland and he'll have known that it had an arrangement with Dafydd and the gang in north Wales. If in 1970s Sunderland no-one could have conceived of the local authority not being the service provider, then why did so many senior managers of social services in the North East at that time send so many children to children's homes in north Wales, which were being run as private businesses by the trafficking gang? One Director of Social Services from the North East even turned up at Bryn Alyn near Wrexham to celebrate the opening of a new annexe. The kids maintained that he saw the dreadful conditions in which they were living.
According to 'Community Care', the Barclay Report boldly advocated a 'political' element of social work in which their role was to speak out about the impact of social policy on the lives of the poor and disadvantaged. Pinker was the Barclay's Committee's lone dissenter. 'Social workers are not there to change society, that's what politicians are for,' he says. 'I didn't think community social work was a good idea at all; it was so general it stretched social workers beyond their professional capacities.'
I have been exposed to discussions regarding whether social workers should be 'political' or not. I knew a nurse at the Hergest Unit who expressed the view that the Arfon Community Mental Health Team treated their clients appallingly because the training of social workers was 'political', whereas Angels were trained to place patients' needs first. This particular Angel did not abuse the patients in the way that the Arfon CMHT did and she was actually very well-liked by the patients. However, she did know that her immediate colleagues and that Dafydd and the Top Doctors were dangerous and abusive and she rushed to their defence in the wake of every complaint about them. Although she was a senior nurse, she was treated disrespectfully by the Top Docs and the Arfon CMHT alike. This Angel trained at a time when it was indeed stressed to Angels that the patients' needs should be prioritised. However, along with that, the Angels were also trained to be subservient in the face of hierarchies, even if this meant remaining silent when patients were being grossly abused. The Angel in question was very sharp regarding her observations in terms of her patients who were living in abusive relationships or working in jobs in which they were being exploited. She must have known how unhinged some of those with whom she worked were and she was repeatedly told by patients of the serious abuse that they had experienced at the hands of her colleagues.
I suspect that she knew exactly what would be coming her way if she ever raised one word of concern regarding Dafydd et al…
In contrast, I witnessed a social work tutor at Coleg Menai tell her students that they must never be 'political' and furthermore they must always blow the whistle on any client breaking the law, even if it was minor benefit fraud by someone who could not make ends meet. On the day that the Waterhouse Report was published, this tutor told the whole class that she had been one of the social workers who had taken children to the Ty'r Felin children's home and although she always thought that Nefyn Dodd was 'very uncaring' towards the children, she had no idea of the serious abuse to which the children were being subjected. The kids at Ty'r Felin were starved, beaten, kicked, made to work for no pay in the local businesses, forced to lick Nefyn Dodd's boots and were trafficked to local venues as well as to Dolphin Square for sex work. Hundreds of complaints were made about Nefyn Dodd and his wife June by children. That social work tutor missed a great deal.
Nefyn Dodd was a friend of Dafydd's.
I know one man who began social work training in north London in the early 1970s. He was on placement with Haringey Council and with Islington Council. This man remembered Margaret Hodge who was a leading light in Islington Council at the time. He and others on his course raised concerns with their tutors regarding the corruption within the Councils and also regarding the neglect that the clients were experiencing at the hands of the Social Services. His tutors told the students that they were not allowed to document any criticisms of the Councils employing those social workers. When he observed that the only problem that one 'problem family' actually had was their dreadful and unsafe accommodation he was told that he was being political and that was not a social worker's job. He subsequently withdrew from the social work course on the grounds that he would never be able to help clients working under these constraints.
Political or not political, the training of Angels and social workers ensures that everyone is trained to do one thing above everything else – to never, ever blow the whistle, even if a criminal gang is operating in the area and murdering witnesses.
In July 1968, when Kenneth Robinson was Health Minister, a Green Paper was issued, before the Seebohm Report was published. The Green Paper stated that Medical Officers of Health could extend their role as community physicians. Documents in my possession demonstrate that the Community Physicians of Gwynedd and Clwyd Health Authorities were the Top Doctors responsible for holding Dafydd to account. Both of them ignored my complaints about Dafydd. It was only after writing to them several times that they even bothered to reply. What they did when I persisted is to contact their mate Dafydd and have a friendly chat, then write back to me and tell me that my complaints were groundless. See previous posts for details.
In my post 'Feet In Chains' I detail part of Dafydd's early career as a Top Doc. Before being appointed as a consultant at Denbigh, Dafydd had carried out 'community research' on Anglesey with the Medical Officer of Health. Dafydd and those Medical Officers of Health who were later responsible for holding him to account went back decades…
Seebohm's recommendations that new personal Social Services Depts should be established within local gov't and take over children's services, as well as the care of the mentally ill and handicapped, that were despised by Dick Crossman but nonetheless accepted, were put into action from 1971 onward, by which time Ted Heath was PM.
One person who was really impressed by the Seebohm Report was Baroness Brooke of Ystradfellte. I need to double check, but I think that Baroness Brooke was a member of the Seebohm Committee. She stated that 'What the Seebohm Committee wants is a family service geared to meeting as many as possible of the needs of the family'. Yet it wasn't Baroness Brooke's family which would be destroyed by Dafydd et al.
Barbara Brooke was the daughter of a Welsh Minister. She was educated at the Gloucester Training College of Domestic Science. In 1933 she married fellow Conservative Henry Brooke, who was Home Secretary. They had four children: Peter Brooke, a Conservative politician; Sir Henry Brooke, a judge and Lord Justice of Appeal; Honor Brooke, who married Dr Thomas Miller; and Margaret Brooke, who married Dr James Pulfer.
Peter Brooke held a number of Cabinet posts. He was Chairman of the Conservative Party, 1987-89 and Secretary of State for N Ireland, 1989-92. Brooke knew about Dafydd's gang and he knew about Kincora in Belfast.
In 1948 Barbara Brooke became a member of Hampstead Council and held her seat until 1965. She was Joint Vice-Chairman of the Conservative Party, 1954-64 and was active in the NHS. Among other things Brooke was a member of the North West Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board, 1954-66; Chair of the Queen's Institute of District Nursing, 1961-71; and the North London Hospital Management Committee, 1963-66.
Barbara Brooke will have known about the abuse of childr