Ian Pace – March 3, 2014
Clifford Hindley: Pederasty and Scholarship
[UPDATE: @murunbuch, who runs the fantastic Spotlight blog, has tweeted to indicate his guess that the Home Office employee mentioned in this 1983 report in the Daily Express, who had pornographic photographs of children sent to his departmental address, was Hindley]
Smith shared Commons office with Deputy Chairman of the Liberal Party Lord Michael Whistanley and wrote his obituary in 1993.
Michael Platt Winstanley, politician, broadcaster, physician and writer: born Nantwich, Cheshire 27 August 1918; Resident Surgical Officer, Wigan Infirmary 1945; Surgical Specialist, RAMC 1946; general practitioner, Umston, Manchester 1948-66; Medical Officer, Royal Ordnance Factory, Patricroft 1950-66; Treasury Medical Officer and Admiralty Surgeon and Agent 1953-66; television and radio broadcaster 1957-93; cricket columnist, Manchester Evening News 1964-65, weekly column 1970-76; MP (Liberal) for Cheadle 1966-70, for Hazel Grove 1974; created 1975 Baron Winstanley; Chairman, Countryside Commission 1978-80; married 1945 Nancy Penney (one son, marriage dissolved 1952), 1955 Joyce Woodhouse (one son, one daughter); died 18 July 1993.
MICHAEL WINSTANLEY not only had his eye on the ball as a politician but also had an eye for the ball in sport.
I first met him some 40 years ago when I told him he would never win a seat in parliament as a Liberal, and he often boasted that while I tried in those days to convert him to Labour it was he that won the conversion tussle. He was determined to be a member of parliament and he was. He was determined to be a Liberal member of parliament and he was.
In the House of Commons, in the late Sixties, he was the Liberal party’s ‘nightwatchman’, for Mike Winstanley was one of those people who could manage with but two or three hours sleep, so whilst the rest of our small band of MPs were at home in bed Winstanley would be on the Commons benches, keeping the flag of Liberalism flying. Indeed he kept that flag flying for most of his life.
He was probably the only MP that had a bill passed to allow him to serve as one. For it was discovered after his 1974 election that he held some remote office of profit under the crown which legally disqualified him from being elected. Parliament retrospectively legislated to remove the obstacle. He was a medical practitioner and so quite naturally spoke on health matters in both houses, but his interests and knowledge were far wider than that. He had a brain and an intelligence well above average and he used them both.
I shared an office with him at the House of Commons, and I witnessed at first hand his very hard work, his diligence and his total devotion to his constituency of Cheadle as it then was, Hazel Grove as it now is. He polled an absolutely massive vote, winning with it at one time (in 1966 and February 1974), losing with it at another (September 1974). He lost with three times the vote that most MPs win with.
Winstanley was a very talented man. He was a very good cricketer and indeed he captained a local team in Rochdale (Castleton Moor) and often turned out with a celebrity XI for charity matches. He was a very able table tennis and tennis player, and a good golfer.
He also had musical talent, I even heard him play the bagpipes, though not appreciating it at the time. He was a writer as well as a reader and in his day he was a considerable influence in the Liberal party not least on the issue of who should be the leader.
A very capable speaker and broadcaster for many years, he was extremely proud of his This is your Right programme with Granada Television. He had, in that role, probably the finest consumer television programme ever made. From 1986 he was a Deptuy Pro-Chancellor of Lancaster University. By any measurement he was extremely talented and a real ‘all- rounder’. He was always loyal to his party and a great campaigner, extremely polite, but intolerant of incompetence. He had a great sense of humour and was a man who could and did easily identify with people. He had a capacity for hard work and a determination to succeed. His conversion of people to the habit of voting Liberal is still evident in Hazel Grove to this day. His service, both as an MP and as a peer, made a great contribution to the political life of Britain, and his death is a loss in real terms. Yet he would not have wanted people to mourn and grieve. He would have been pleased that they noticed, but he was so very down to earth that he would then want them to get on with living.
He was a family man, proud of his children and dear wife, Joy. It was a privilege and an honour to know Michael Winstanley and to serve alongside him, and the world is most certainly a better place for his having been here.
…
[Page 63]
In the four final weeks of the campaign [1970] we had three or four village meetings every night, with audiences varying unpredictably from, quite literally, two men and a dog, to a packed village hall in quite a small community. Just about every presentable Conservative cabinet minister visited the constituency during the campaign, and we had regular visits from Jeremy Thorpe, John Pardoe, Cyril Smith and Clement Freud, with David Steel, who was the Party’s Chief Whip at the time, present at least once every week. A key link man was David Steel’s assistant, Archy Kirkwood, who was later to become my neighbour as MP for Berwickshire and Roxburghshire. Cyril Smith looked in amazement at the crowd assembled in a former Presbyterian church in Wooler which had become a public hall: all down one side were retired shepherds and farm workers, several with their dogs – he said he had never seen such a predominance of men at a big political meeting. Needless to say, his wit and storming speech delighted them.
…
[Page 71]
Chapter 8
BEING AN MP
In practice you work out your own way of doing the job. I was helped in my first year by sharing a very small Westminster office with Cyril Smith, Clement Freud and Dr Michael Winstanley, all of whom were very effective constituency MPs with quite different styles. In the days when letters were dictated and ’phone calls rather than e-mails were the means of immediate contact, I learned a great deal from my colleagues. Staff resources were meagre – the allowance was only sufficient for one part-time secretary, whether at Westminster or in the constituency, compared to the equivalent of two or three full-time posts which more recent allowances have permitted. The part-time or shared secretaries usually had desks in other buildings, so you had to meet once or twice a day to deal with and sign correspondence wherever you could find a space to do so.
…
[Page 93]
Chapter 9
RUNNING A PARTY: THE LIBERALS
Towards the end of 2002 I stepped down from the position of Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats to become Chairman of the Select Committee on the Lord Chancellor’s Department. Apart from a short break, it was the first time in 27 years that I had not been involved in the management of the Liberal or Liberal Democrat Party as Chief Whip or Deputy Leader. It was a very refreshing change, made much easier by the vastly increased size of the Parliamentary Party, which meant that there were so many more people to take on responsibility. I became Chief Whip in circumstances I would not have chosen. Early in 1976 the Norman Scott allegations began the process which led to Jeremy Thorpe’s resignation as leader. Cyril Smith was the Chief Whip, and he found himself under enormous pressure as he sought to defend the party leader, who totally denied all the allegations Scott had made; Jeremy was later to be acquitted of conspiracy and incitement to murder. Cyril describes in his book Big Cyril how he was pursued by the press about matters of which he knew nothing except the little that Jeremy had told him. As more stories appeared, and more journalists gathered outside Cyril’s home in Rochdale, he became ill with gallstones and was rushed to hospital. Heavily sedated, he took a call on the payphone at his hospital bedside from the Daily Mail, by whom he was quoted as saying ‘I am almost being made to carry the can for something that’s nothing to do with me’. Jeremy rang Cyril after midnight and said that he would ask me to take over, at least for the time being. I was in the City Hall, Liverpool, meeting Liberal councillors prior to a visit to the Wirral by-election, when Jeremy rang and asked me to take over temporarily as Chief Whip. I was keen to do so in order to re-establish order in the Parliamentary Party, but it had to be on my terms. I had seen my friend Cyril Smith shattered by his valiant attempts to handle a situation of whose truth or untruth he knew nothing. I was not prepared to play any role at all in defending Jeremy against these allegations. That was his business, and looking after the Parliamentary Party would be mine. On that basis we agreed, and one of my first tasks was to test the views of MPs on whether Jeremy should be asked to resign. Although 9 of the 12 thought he should resign because of the considerable damage the process was doing to the party, there was no majority to require him to do so. Liberals are not traditionally ruthless. When their leader protested his innocence, even of misleading them, particularly when that leader had at an earlier stage done so much for the party’s
success, most were reluctant to move against him. Clement Freud was particularly loyal to Jeremy, while Emlyn Hooson and Richard Wainwright, a good friend and fellow Methodist, were equally forthright in their opposition, which was in any case long-held. The following weekend I was on an official visit to Sweden, and returned hastily as Richard Wainwright made public his insistence that Jeremy should go. This finally tipped the scales for Jeremy, and by the time I got back he had notified David Steel of his resignation.
…
[Page 103]
From the beginning of the SDP, the Liberal Party had a tactical challenge. Cyril Smith put it brutally by suggesting that we either had to take the new party over or ‘strangle it at birth’…
…
[Page 121]
The campaign, in which I was greatly indebted to Monroe Palmer for his organising support, was exhausting but enjoyable. It involved much travel and the opportunity to see old friends and new. I started it with a packed meeting in my old primary school in Poynton, Cheshire, a location which enabled me to bring together Cyril Smith, Alex Carlile and Emlyn Hooson, stalwart supporters who got the campaign off to a fine start. The school was in the first ward in which I ever campaigned successfully in a local election, and it was still represented by a Liberal. From Edinburgh and Cardiff to Cornwall and Hampshire, I travelled the country in glorious summer weather. I teased the press for making the two of us seem like a contrast between Oliver North (President Reagan’s buccaneering and law-breaking ex-marine supplier of arms to the Nicaragua contras) and John Wesley. It stuck, which taught me never to tease the press…
…
spotlight 
PIE member Stephen (Adrian) Smith was sacked by the …
inagist.com/all/419823344259989504/
5 Jan 2014 – PIE member Stephen (Adrian) Smith was sacked by the Home Office in 1984 – but a 2nd unnamed employee was also sacked at same time. by …
Clifford Hindley?
Ian Pace – March 3, 2014
Clifford Hindley: Pederasty and Scholarship
[UPDATE: @murunbuch, who runs the fantastic Spotlight blog, has tweeted to indicate his guess that the Home Office employee mentioned in this 1983 report in the Daily Express, who had pornographic photographs of children sent to his departmental address, was Hindley]
Smith shared Commons office with Deputy Chairman of the Liberal Party Lord Michael Whistanley and wrote his obituary in 1993.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-lord-winstanley-1485818.html
Obituary: Lord Whistanley
Cyril Smith Monday 19 July 1993
Michael Platt Winstanley, politician, broadcaster, physician and writer: born Nantwich, Cheshire 27 August 1918; Resident Surgical Officer, Wigan Infirmary 1945; Surgical Specialist, RAMC 1946; general practitioner, Umston, Manchester 1948-66; Medical Officer, Royal Ordnance Factory, Patricroft 1950-66; Treasury Medical Officer and Admiralty Surgeon and Agent 1953-66; television and radio broadcaster 1957-93; cricket columnist, Manchester Evening News 1964-65, weekly column 1970-76; MP (Liberal) for Cheadle 1966-70, for Hazel Grove 1974; created 1975 Baron Winstanley; Chairman, Countryside Commission 1978-80; married 1945 Nancy Penney (one son, marriage dissolved 1952), 1955 Joyce Woodhouse (one son, one daughter); died 18 July 1993.
MICHAEL WINSTANLEY not only had his eye on the ball as a politician but also had an eye for the ball in sport.
I first met him some 40 years ago when I told him he would never win a seat in parliament as a Liberal, and he often boasted that while I tried in those days to convert him to Labour it was he that won the conversion tussle. He was determined to be a member of parliament and he was. He was determined to be a Liberal member of parliament and he was.
In the House of Commons, in the late Sixties, he was the Liberal party’s ‘nightwatchman’, for Mike Winstanley was one of those people who could manage with but two or three hours sleep, so whilst the rest of our small band of MPs were at home in bed Winstanley would be on the Commons benches, keeping the flag of Liberalism flying. Indeed he kept that flag flying for most of his life.
He was probably the only MP that had a bill passed to allow him to serve as one. For it was discovered after his 1974 election that he held some remote office of profit under the crown which legally disqualified him from being elected. Parliament retrospectively legislated to remove the obstacle. He was a medical practitioner and so quite naturally spoke on health matters in both houses, but his interests and knowledge were far wider than that. He had a brain and an intelligence well above average and he used them both.
I shared an office with him at the House of Commons, and I witnessed at first hand his very hard work, his diligence and his total devotion to his constituency of Cheadle as it then was, Hazel Grove as it now is. He polled an absolutely massive vote, winning with it at one time (in 1966 and February 1974), losing with it at another (September 1974). He lost with three times the vote that most MPs win with.
Winstanley was a very talented man. He was a very good cricketer and indeed he captained a local team in Rochdale (Castleton Moor) and often turned out with a celebrity XI for charity matches. He was a very able table tennis and tennis player, and a good golfer.
He also had musical talent, I even heard him play the bagpipes, though not appreciating it at the time. He was a writer as well as a reader and in his day he was a considerable influence in the Liberal party not least on the issue of who should be the leader.
A very capable speaker and broadcaster for many years, he was extremely proud of his This is your Right programme with Granada Television. He had, in that role, probably the finest consumer television programme ever made. From 1986 he was a Deptuy Pro-Chancellor of Lancaster University. By any measurement he was extremely talented and a real ‘all- rounder’. He was always loyal to his party and a great campaigner, extremely polite, but intolerant of incompetence. He had a great sense of humour and was a man who could and did easily identify with people. He had a capacity for hard work and a determination to succeed. His conversion of people to the habit of voting Liberal is still evident in Hazel Grove to this day. His service, both as an MP and as a peer, made a great contribution to the political life of Britain, and his death is a loss in real terms. Yet he would not have wanted people to mourn and grieve. He would have been pleased that they noticed, but he was so very down to earth that he would then want them to get on with living.
He was a family man, proud of his children and dear wife, Joy. It was a privilege and an honour to know Michael Winstanley and to serve alongside him, and the world is most certainly a better place for his having been here.
…
http://f3.tiera.ru/1/genesis/570-574/571000/1760ff72743e258e04f9da5de1442592
Alan Beith: A View from the North – 2008
[Page 63]
In the four final weeks of the campaign [1970] we had three or four village meetings every night, with audiences varying unpredictably from, quite literally, two men and a dog, to a packed village hall in quite a small community. Just about every presentable Conservative cabinet minister visited the constituency during the campaign, and we had regular visits from Jeremy Thorpe, John Pardoe, Cyril Smith and Clement Freud, with David Steel, who was the Party’s Chief Whip at the time, present at least once every week. A key link man was David Steel’s assistant, Archy Kirkwood, who was later to become my neighbour as MP for Berwickshire and Roxburghshire. Cyril Smith looked in amazement at the crowd assembled in a former Presbyterian church in Wooler which had become a public hall: all down one side were retired shepherds and farm workers, several with their dogs – he said he had never seen such a predominance of men at a big political meeting. Needless to say, his wit and storming speech delighted them.
…
[Page 71]
Chapter 8
BEING AN MP
In practice you work out your own way of doing the job. I was helped in my first year by sharing a very small Westminster office with Cyril Smith, Clement Freud and Dr Michael Winstanley, all of whom were very effective constituency MPs with quite different styles. In the days when letters were dictated and ’phone calls rather than e-mails were the means of immediate contact, I learned a great deal from my colleagues. Staff resources were meagre – the allowance was only sufficient for one part-time secretary, whether at Westminster or in the constituency, compared to the equivalent of two or three full-time posts which more recent allowances have permitted. The part-time or shared secretaries usually had desks in other buildings, so you had to meet once or twice a day to deal with and sign correspondence wherever you could find a space to do so.
…
[Page 93]
Chapter 9
RUNNING A PARTY: THE LIBERALS
Towards the end of 2002 I stepped down from the position of Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats to become Chairman of the Select Committee on the Lord Chancellor’s Department. Apart from a short break, it was the first time in 27 years that I had not been involved in the management of the Liberal or Liberal Democrat Party as Chief Whip or Deputy Leader. It was a very refreshing change, made much easier by the vastly increased size of the Parliamentary Party, which meant that there were so many more people to take on responsibility. I became Chief Whip in circumstances I would not have chosen. Early in 1976 the Norman Scott allegations began the process which led to Jeremy Thorpe’s resignation as leader. Cyril Smith was the Chief Whip, and he found himself under enormous pressure as he sought to defend the party leader, who totally denied all the allegations Scott had made; Jeremy was later to be acquitted of conspiracy and incitement to murder. Cyril describes in his book Big Cyril how he was pursued by the press about matters of which he knew nothing except the little that Jeremy had told him. As more stories appeared, and more journalists gathered outside Cyril’s home in Rochdale, he became ill with gallstones and was rushed to hospital. Heavily sedated, he took a call on the payphone at his hospital bedside from the Daily Mail, by whom he was quoted as saying ‘I am almost being made to carry the can for something that’s nothing to do with me’. Jeremy rang Cyril after midnight and said that he would ask me to take over, at least for the time being. I was in the City Hall, Liverpool, meeting Liberal councillors prior to a visit to the Wirral by-election, when Jeremy rang and asked me to take over temporarily as Chief Whip. I was keen to do so in order to re-establish order in the Parliamentary Party, but it had to be on my terms. I had seen my friend Cyril Smith shattered by his valiant attempts to handle a situation of whose truth or untruth he knew nothing. I was not prepared to play any role at all in defending Jeremy against these allegations. That was his business, and looking after the Parliamentary Party would be mine. On that basis we agreed, and one of my first tasks was to test the views of MPs on whether Jeremy should be asked to resign. Although 9 of the 12 thought he should resign because of the considerable damage the process was doing to the party, there was no majority to require him to do so. Liberals are not traditionally ruthless. When their leader protested his innocence, even of misleading them, particularly when that leader had at an earlier stage done so much for the party’s
success, most were reluctant to move against him. Clement Freud was particularly loyal to Jeremy, while Emlyn Hooson and Richard Wainwright, a good friend and fellow Methodist, were equally forthright in their opposition, which was in any case long-held. The following weekend I was on an official visit to Sweden, and returned hastily as Richard Wainwright made public his insistence that Jeremy should go. This finally tipped the scales for Jeremy, and by the time I got back he had notified David Steel of his resignation.
…
[Page 103]
From the beginning of the SDP, the Liberal Party had a tactical challenge. Cyril Smith put it brutally by suggesting that we either had to take the new party over or ‘strangle it at birth’…
…
[Page 121]
The campaign, in which I was greatly indebted to Monroe Palmer for his organising support, was exhausting but enjoyable. It involved much travel and the opportunity to see old friends and new. I started it with a packed meeting in my old primary school in Poynton, Cheshire, a location which enabled me to bring together Cyril Smith, Alex Carlile and Emlyn Hooson, stalwart supporters who got the campaign off to a fine start. The school was in the first ward in which I ever campaigned successfully in a local election, and it was still represented by a Liberal. From Edinburgh and Cardiff to Cornwall and Hampshire, I travelled the country in glorious summer weather. I teased the press for making the two of us seem like a contrast between Oliver North (President Reagan’s buccaneering and law-breaking ex-marine supplier of arms to the Nicaragua contras) and John Wesley. It stuck, which taught me never to tease the press…
…
Reblogged this on Desiring Progress.
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