ANOTHER week goes by and another revelation about paedophiles operating with impunity comes along, with the British political Establishment right at the centre of the storm. 

The same pattern of events unfolds as the truth about their activities is unearthed years later with senior politicians suffering from the same selective amnesia about what they knew and why they did nothing at the time. 

Leon Brittan is the latest former MP who seems to be suffering from confusion regarding allegations of paedophile activity within the Westminster Parliament. 

As a former home secretary he recently first denied and then admitted to being given a large dossier by the MP Geoffrey Dickens in 1983 containing specific details of MPs who were linked to the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE). 

The dossier has since gone missing and Dickens’s demand for an investigation at the time got nowhere.

In the late ’70s PIE affiliated to the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL). At that time deputy Labour Party leader Harriet Harman was employed by the NCCL as an in-house solicitor and former Cabinet minister Patricia Hewitt was employed as NCCL chief executive.

PIE’s main policies were to decriminalise indecent photos of children and lower the age of consent in order to enable adults to have sex with very young children. 

Rolf Harris has just been jailed for nearly six years for sexual offences against children as young as eight. Yet the court was not told that police discovered a cache of indecent images of young children on his computer. 

And former senior Cameron aide Patrick Rock has now been charged with possession of indecent images of small children on his computer.

Now Simon Danczuk the Labour MP for Rochdale — the seat occupied by notorious predatory paedophile Cyril Smith — has taken up the issue of paedophile MPs on the back of publishing a book detailing Smith’s serial sexual abuse of vulnerable children in and around Rochdale. 

Smith was a Freemason and a local councillor in Rochdale. His work included a lot of contact with children. 

He was involved with Rochdale Youth Orchestra, Rochdale Youth Theatre Workshop, governorship of 29 Rochdale schools and chairmanship of the council’s youth committee, youth employment committee and the education committee.

On November 28 2012, an alleged victim of sexual abuse by Smith waived his right to anonymity in a television interview with Sky News to say that he was sexually abused at a council-run residential special school. 

Chris Marshall broke down in tears during his interview when describing the sexual abuse that he said took place at Knowl View school in Rochdale in the early 1980s. 

He said that as a nine-year-old boy he was taken to a room and made to perform oral sex on Smith and one other man. Smith was a governor at the school and allegedly had his own set of keys.

Also in November 2012, Tony Robinson, a former special branch officer with Lancashire Police in the 1970s, said that a dossier of sexual abuse allegations against Smith which police claimed was “lost” was actually seized by MI5. Robinson said that he was asked by MI5 to send to London a police dossier that had been kept in a safe in his office which he said was “thick” with allegations from boys claiming they had been abused by Smith. 

An investigation, Operation Fairbank, which was led by the Metropolitan Police, started in late 2012 into claims that MPs had visited the Elm Guest House in south-west London during the late 1970s where vulnerable young children had been lured, plied with alcohol and drugs and then sexually abused. 

A full criminal investigation, Operation Fernbridge, was launched in February 2013 as a result of allegations arising from Operation Fairbank. 

The allegations of an Establishment paedophile ring involving MPs, civil servants and MI5 are currently part of a complex ongoing multi-agency investigation. 

Prominent people who attended parties at Elm Guest House are reported to have included Smith and the Soviet spy Anthony Blunt. 

According to the Independent newspaper, other visitors to the guesthouse included the former British diplomat Sir Peter Hayman, a Sinn Fein politician, a Labour MP and several Conservative politicians. 

Hayman was a member of the Paedophile Information Exchange and worked for MI6 while serving as a career diplomat overseas. 

In 1981 Dickens named him in Parliament, complaining that despite holding evidence, the police had failed to prosecute Hayman.

Labour MP Tom Watson is still waiting for a reply to his request to David Cameron for a full inquiry into the increasing pile of evidence into paedophiles operating at the highest levels of the British Establishment. 

He has specifically referred to Peter Righton, a former consultant to the National Children’s Bureau who was convicted of importing and possessing illegal pornographic material in 1992. 

Hansard reported Watson saying that files on Righton contained: “Clear intelligence of a widespread paedophile ring in Westminster … One of its members boasts of a link to a senior aide of Margaret Thatcher, who says he could smuggle indecent images of children from abroad.” 

There are now several police investigations proceeding on the basis of old evidence and further new revelations by victims who, following high-profile recent cases, have had the courage to come forward. 

Many of these are former residents of special schools or local authority children’s homes placed there from disadvantaged, broken or vulnerable working-class families. 

The paedophiles targeted them because they were poor, frightened, powerless or disabled, without parental protection and could be threatened into silence. 

They proved attractive to powerful rich paedophiles operating in concert and knowing how to cover their tracks and ensure secrecy. 

MI5 and MI6 involvement in preventing criminal prosecutions confirms that these Establishment figures had to be protected in order to avoid blackmail which could be used to obtain state secrets. 

There are several paedophile suspects known to be Freemasons — a shadowy organisation full of men desperate for anonymity and forming a spider’s web of connections and mutual interests. 

The Duke of Kent is the 10th Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England, the governing body of Freemasonry in England and Wales. 

He has served in that office since 1967, thus being the longest-serving Grand Master. 

In December 2013 he celebrated 50 years as a Freemason. He is also president of the Scout Association and for almost 29 years has been the patron of Endeavour — a national youth organisation. 

Perhaps he could lead the way by calling for investigation of the extent of paedophile activity within the Freemasons? While he is at it maybe he could revisit some of the widespread allegations against suspected or convicted paedophiles who used to or might still be working for the Scout Association?

Steven Walker is co-author of Safeguarding Children and Young People: A Guide to Integrated Practice (Russell House Publishers).