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News and Comment August 2019

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5 August (Part 1) - The new Home Secretary has much to learn

Priti PatelWho would have seriously thought before Boris Johnson’s recent elevation that the President of the Erith & Thamesmead Conservative Association would be Home Secretary? I am not against her appointment, we have seen too many pink Tories and look where that has got us.

One of the very few times I have switched on the TV in recent years specially to watch a programme was when Priti Patel was on Question Time and spoke in favour of capital punishment. I thought she was extremely misguided, not because some people do not deserve the rope but because no one should contemplate such a thing in a country where the police are so corrupt as they are in the UK. The CPS too for that matter.

When the top management at BT was going off its head a few years after privatisation (except for a year after leaving school I was there all my working life) and recruiting managers from outside to the detriment of those with 30 years experience who had some inkling of how telecoms systems actually worked, I was saddled with a work colleague who had been a CPS prosecutor. We had to take her aside and tell her that regaling us with stories of how she worked with the police to stitch up criminals was not going down too well with the junior staff.

That was rather a long time ago but things have not got better.

In 2011 my extended family received a written acknowledgment from the Metropolitan Police that they had been bent beyond most people’s imagination.


Justice for Daniel

Daniel Morgan was a private investigator who studied police corruption in S.E. London. For planning to pass on the evidence he was killed with an axe through his skull. The £1,000 in his pocket was untouched.

It’s no better now. Except perhaps for one, every Met. Commissioner has done their best to protect their predecessors from the consequences of the extreme corruption that led to the murder of an innocent man who knew too much. Neither the Police Complaints Commission, its various successors and other investigating Constabularies have been any better and all the 1997 to 2010 Labour Home Secretaries refused to accept that the British Police can be corrupt from top to bottom - and then along came Theresa May, the only Home Secretary to be persuaded that something very serious was amiss.

Daily Telegraph Madam May set up an enquiry into just how deeply the police were implicated in the murder of private investigator Daniel Morgan who discovered that Met. officers were involved with serious organised crime. Drugs, robberies and ultimately murder.

Daniel Morgan was murdered after his intention to spill the beans to the newspapers was apparently leaked to Scotland Yard. After the murder investigation failed the senior investigating officer took Daniel’s place at the detective agency.

Mrs. May’s enquiry was scheduled to last a year but is now into its seventh. The Met. was obstructive from the start and still is. It would be naive to believe that everything is down to the mistakes of the past.

Over many years the Met. has carried out five separate enquiries into the murder but only the last of them was conducted in a way the family thought was acceptable. It was led by Detective Chief Superintendent David Cook who presented a BBC Crimewatch reconstruction of the murder. The Morgan family consider him to be the only honest cop appointed to the job.

For getting too close to the truth the Met. rewarded Cook with nothing but grief. They stood by while the News of the World put him under surveillance and damaged his reputation with an article reporting his clandestine affair with the regular Crimewatch presenter. They must have known that that lady was his wife but did nothing about it.

The Times fell for more of the Met’s denigration of DCS Cook with an article that claimed that he had been mentally ill for years. Stressed no doubt at being one of the few Met. officers to recognise the depths of corruption to which the Met. will stoop; but mentally ill?

David Cook is alleged to have coached a witness to the murder and so his case never came to trial but that doesn’t mean he does not fully understand the truth of the matter. As such the Met. are out to get him although so far they have not managed to stick anything on him.

Last week their 30 years of cover ups had expensive consequences. They had to pay out £414,000 to three men whose names have been closely linked to the crime. The new Home Secretary has much to learn.

The judge said that Cook’s behaviour was “shameful” when the truth is that he is the only Met. Officer to have seriously attempted to expose the extreme corruption that leads to murder and plots to murder any of their own who show signs of rocking their boats.

How I wish I could reveal more but for obvious reasons I can only mention what is already in the public domain.

After last Thursday’s news (see the Telegraph feature here) Daniel’s brother Alastair Morgan put out a statement in which he condemns the vilification of DCS Cook by a corrupt Met. It is hosted on the website of Bhatt Murphy solicitors.

Alastair has also written a book on the subject in which yours truly makes a brief appearance. £7.99 at Amazon.

Until Priti Patel stops being beguiled by the siren calls of a fundamentally bent organisation and recognises what her recent predecessor did I don’t think I can take her or the new government seriously.

I don’t think Boris Johnson is entirely clean when it comes to police corruption either.

While she is about it maybe Priti can put a stop to this nonsense too.

 

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