Keith Harding, Leon Brittan, Cyril Smith and Jeremy Thorpe
Comment from Peter McKelvie:
“I am perplexed by the complete wall of silence in the media following the publication of this story.
The former Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe would also drop by along with key members of the vile Paedophile Information Exchange Steven Adrian Smith and Tom O’Carroll.
A PIE list seized in 1984 records Harding, who died from cancer last year aged 82, as member 329 and his address as Hornsey Road, Holloway, north London.
He is understood to have kept hidden a list of more than 1,000 PIE members with prominent names including top politicians from the Thatcher era.
“Then they would then either go up to his office for a private meeting or they’d go out for several hours.”
The former worker added: “The shop had many high profile customers, including the Royals, because we were one of the few antique dealers in the world that specialised in restoring clocks, music boxes and automatons.
“It’s only now, with what I know about Brittan and Smith, and of course Keith, that has made me wonder what they were doing. Jeremy Thorpe too was an occasional visitor.”
It later transpired that he had been convicted of indecent assault against four children aged eight and nine in 1958 when he was a teacher.
He apparently confessed to a friend he had the list of names kept in a safe.
Harding’s civil partner John Ferris, who now runs the museum, said yesterday: “I know nothing of any list. The safe is empty now. Keith never disclosed much about his life in London. I only met him in 1994 and I never knew he was a part of the Paedophile Information Exchange.”
Keith Harding’s shop closed just a year before I was working in Islington in my social work office in the same road. Another centre of PIE was also just a street away. Some of the children who were being sexually exploited in that area may have known about this shop but I had no idea about it at the time. They will now be in their 40s. Some of the social work staff must have known about the shop as Harding made a point of having a high profile locally. The Islington child abuse story reached a peak in 1992 and again in 2003 but it isn’t over as yet. If anyone has information which would assist survivors please contact me by email: l.davies@londonmet.ac.uk
Excellent. Hard to share blogs to Facebook or other forums or am I just old ??
Spies, Lords & Predators – 60 Minutes.