In the late 1980s, as I and Brown came under increasing attack from the paedophiles’ friends and some of those known to me in Somerset found themselves in receipt of friendship and generosity from the friends and relatives of the idle rich who had for some reason begun to frequent the Cottage Inn at Fiddington and other locations in the Bridgwater area (eg. see posts ‘Those Who Are Ready To Serve’ and ‘Upper Class Twit Of The Year – Shooting Themselves’), I noticed something rather inexplicable happening to my father where his employment was concerned.
When younger, my father worked in agriculture but in middle age he went to work in a small ailing factory in Bridgwater owned by a company called Redland Quilting. Redland was a company set up years previously by a man called Bill Cockhill, who had been a business associate of my grandpa’s from years previously. After my grandpa died I suspect that Bill began ripping off my father, because from what I remember it was then that things became very difficult. I have no idea how well grandpa knew Bill Cockhill. Bill was chatty and charming but I have been told that he was very unscrupulous.
I don’t think that Bill’s background was quite what Bill liked people to believe that it might have been. Although by the late 1970s Bill was living in a grand house near Bristol, driving Aston Martin cars and had sent his two daughters to expensive schools, Bill had little education and had been to a secondary modern school. My father used to notice that although Bill could do the socialising bit needed for business very well, Bill was not that sharp and not that knowledgeable.
When father went to work at Redland – I think that Bill had persuaded grandpa that this would be a great opportunity, only for it to be a really bum deal – the business side of the company was managed by a man called Ken Dewar and his wife Doreen assisted. Ken and Doreen were big names in the Bridgwater Tories and were also involved with charidee – they helped set up the Bridgwater Samaritans. So imagine everyone’s surprise when in the mid-1970s Bill found that Ken had embezzled thousands of quid from Redland, had stolen an expensive machine and had set up his own business on the back of everything that he’d nicked from Bill. The dosh that had been stolen were the bonuses that were due to my father. Ken Dewar pocketed the lot. Doreen was in on the swindle.
Bill confronted the Dewars and they fessed up. I don’t know why Bill didn’t prosecute them – did they have knowledge of wrongdoing on Bill’s part perhaps? – but Bill cut them out of his life and business, photocopied all the evidence that he’d gathered on them and sent it to all Ken Dewar’s business associates. Dewar’s business plans came to an end, but the Dewars still seemed to enjoy an affluent existence and were not frozen out of polite society in Bridgwater. They established the Samaritans AFTER Bill had exposed the Dewars as crooks…
The Dewars had a son called Neil who was quite a bit older than me whom I never met, who I think might be the Dr Neil Dewar who works as an environmental scientist at the University of Capetown. The Dewars also had a daughter, Fiona, who was about two years older than me with whom I sometimes played before her parents robbed my father. When I was a young adult, Fiona Dewar appeared in the media constructed as a Plucky Young Woman after she beat up a thief who tried to steal her car. Fiona would have been able to do that, when she was a teenager she was noted for being very tall, she was about six foot. I did note the irony of the Dewars being interviewed by the press as crime fighters…
I was always of the opinion that father should have confronted the Dewars, but he didn’t. Bill saw them off and I suspect that father thought that the Dewars would then keep a discreetly low profile. Of course they didn’t, they played a leading light in Bridgwater which I suspected left father in a difficult position. A bit like all those in north Wales who had been stuffed over by Dafydd et al but who didn’t feel able to say anything.
Many years ago, it was suggested to me that the Freemasons in Somerset targeted my father after my grandfather had died as a revenge attack, not being able to get at grandpa himself, who loathed the Masons and openly took the piss out of them. I dismissed this out of hand at the time, but then when I began investigating Dafydd et al who were definitely protected by Freemasonry, I received messages telling me to look into what happened to my father because Masonic corruption was almost certainly involved. In a town like Bridgwater, Freemasonry would have been very influential in the 1960s and 70s, so for a while I thought, well it might have been possible. Since I began the blog, the information has been coming in…
After the departure of the Dewars, Redland carried on as a near sweat-shop. I worked there in the summer holidays after my O levels and there were a few things which were quite surreal. The workers were Bridgwater people who lived nearby, most of them were young women with no qualifications who were desperate to get married and have kids to escape the drudgery of their jobs. There were three older women who worked much harder and who were very chatty. One of them was lovely, a mother of two who’s son had been at school with me. She knew much of what I have written about on this blog with regard to Bridgwater, the dreadful conduct of some professional people and their corruption, but she took the view that people like her and her husband would never have been listened to if they had ever raised concerns. One of the other older women was later found to be stealing from the business in quite a big way – although not on the sort of scale that the Dewars did – and Bill sacked her.
Bill’s daughter Sheena worked at Redland that summer with me. Sheena was training to be a riding instructor and was an incredibly hard worker. I became quite friendly with Sheena throughout those weeks, although I never saw her again afterwards.
Bill himself would turn up at Redland for two or three days a week. He would work alongside everyone and chat, but the style that Bill lived in was certainly noted by the workers who really were paid a pittance, even by the standards of unskilled work, so there was resentment towards him.
There was another visitor to Redland as well, someone who was not the sort of man one would trip over in Bridgwater that often. Michael Biggs, or as he was always called with a degree of sarcasm, Mr Biggs. Mr Biggs was posh. Really posh, not just a GP in Bridgwater and a County Councillor. Mr Biggs had been to Eton and had been an officer in the Guards. He was a ‘businessman’ who lived in Godalming, Surrey.
Michael Biggs was one of Redland’s customers. For a few years, Redland manufactured things that were referred to as ‘freezer bags’. They were the forerunners of cold storage boxes. I always thought that the freezer bags were really naff, but they were designed to enable frozen food to be stored in them without it melting. There were no other similar products on the market at the time, so there was a demand for them. It was Michael Biggs who sold the freezer bags, from his base in Godalming.
Living in Somerset and knowing many small businessmen and farmers I was well-versed regarding the sins of the ‘middle man’. The bloke who did nothing but sell a product at vast profit which had been farmed or made by someone else who was paid bugger all. Michael Biggs was a middle man par excellence. He purchased the freezer bags from Redland for something like £1 each. Michael flogged them for nearly £9. Biggs didn’t even pack the bags – Redland did absolutely everything, made the freezer bags and packed them, even putting the instruction leaflets in before sealing the packaging. Michael Biggs would arrive in Bridgwater once a week with a trailer and Range Rover and the Redland workers would load Biggs’s trailer with the freezer bags and he’d drive back to Godalming with them. Biggs would watch us load the trailer, he didn’t put one bag in himself. Neither did Mr Biggs splash out on advertising more than he had to. The rather boring looking lady holding the freezer bag who appeared on the leaflets and in the adverts was Biggs’s daughter. As far as I can work out, all Biggs did was store the freezer bags in Surrey, place a few small ads in cheap n cheerful publications and then dispatch the freezer bags. The customers had to pay postage and packing.
I cannot fathom why Bill entered into this arrangement with Biggs. Bill was a sharp and greedy man, he knew that Biggs was making a killing because he used to talk about it. Biggs ordered Bill about as well. It was Biggs who insisted that Redland should pack the freezer bags as well as manufacture them and yet Bill did not say piss off, you’re already doing really well out of all of this. When we were loading Biggs’s trailer, Sheena and Bill would help with the grafting, but not Biggs.
I didn’t visit Redland again after the summer of 1979 but obviously I heard about what went on there. I was reminded of Mr Biggs again in 1988, because I found myself living near him when I worked in the Cancer Research Campaign team at Surrey University. In my post ‘Oh Lordy, It’s CR UK’ I detailed how my work at Surrey was plagiarised and given to Professor Nicola Curtin of Newcastle-upon-Tyne University, who published it with her name on it. I was made redundant after a year on the grounds that there was no further funding for me, while my work was used to secure further funding which was given to other researchers.
My post ‘Reports Of Death Were Greatly Exaggerated’ describes a big research fraud that was perpetrated by those associated with my colleagues at Surrey which resulted in a scandal in 1990, causing one member of the team to kill himself when the fraud was exposed. One person involved was Dr Peter Macguire, a former colleague of Dr Tony Francis. Macguire was a psychiatrist who suddenly decided that he was going to become a cancer researcher, just at the time that I entered cancer research.
By the time that I was working in Surrey, Dafydd et al were in full pursuit of me, as documents in my possession demonstrate. They were also using unlawful means to trace my home addresses.
It was when I lived in Surrey that a serial rapist targeted me. I got away, but he raped the woman who was the next person along the footpath after me.
The CRC team at Surrey was led by Prof Vincent Marks, who’s brother Dr John Marks was President of the BMA. When I worked for Vincent Marks, his brother was in full battle with Health Secretary Ken Clarke. They loathed each other. No-one won the battle because they were both concealing the wrongdoing of Dafydd et al.
In Surrey I was unable to get effective NHS care. Professor Marks recommended a truly appalling psychiatrist called Michael Browne, telling me that he was ‘very good’. He wasn’t. Browne’s base, Brookwood Hospital, had been named and shamed repeatedly for neglecting patients so badly that they killed themselves. A few years after I left Surrey, Michael Browne was named in a scandal involving the gross clinical negligence of a young man who died in Wormwood Scrubs. See post ‘The BMA At The Root Of Another Mystery?’.
I registered with the GP nearest to where I lived, a man called Michael Hudson. On my first visit he was rude and hostile and refused to assist me. Hudson was later struck off but I don’t know why. I didn’t return to Hudson, but instead went to another surgery, where I met a much nicer GP, Nigel Baldock. Dr Baldock made it clear that he had no opinion of psychiatrists. But guess what happened after my first consultation with Dr Baldock? He received a phone call from ever such a helpful man from north Wales who was so worried about me and just wanted to help, Dr D.G.E. Wood (see post ‘The BMA At The Root Of Another Mystery?’). That’s the D.G.E. Wood who came from Bristol, who’s father was a Top Doc in Bristol and who still lived there, the D.G.E. Wood who had a whole corrupt network in Bristol, linked with David Hunt’s corrupt network in Bristol. The Lord David Hunt who spent so many years in the Welsh Office concealing the crimes of Dafydd, Francis, Wood et al, as detailed in previous posts.
Bill Cockhill lived in Bristol, his network was there and Redland was a company which originated in Bristol.
When I lived in Surrey, I was walking in the Devil’s Punch-Bowl when I had a fall and sustained quite a nasty injury. I didn’t break anything, but I tore ligaments. I went to the hospital in Guildford who told me that there was nothing that they could do about this, I just had to go home and rest my ankle. I was able to walk again after a couple of weeks but the injury never healed properly and I still have a weakness in my ankle. I was later told that there was a lot more that the hospital could have done and that they knew this.
Then there was the time in Surrey that I sliced my finger open and rang the GP on call to ask for advice as to how to treat the injury because the adipose tissue was falling out which was worrying. He told me that there was nothing that he could do and rang off.
When I worked for Vincent Marks, I lived in a village called Thursley. It was just down the road from Godalming. Mr Biggs lived in Godalming. Biggs lived at The Mill, Mill Lane. Biggs is listed as being a Director of M.R.B. Holdings, a Director of M.R.B. Properties, a Director of Hatch Mill Properties Ltd and a Director of Eusalink Ltd. Biggs certainly built an empire on the back of those freezer bags and the badly paid workers of Redland Quilting.
I shared the cottage at Thursley with two young people, Guy and Beth, who were the offspring of well-heeled Surrey professionals but who seemed to be at a rather loose end. Beth’s mother was an educational psychologist and I have been told that she might have been nobbled by Dafydd’s network. Beth’s mum lived in Godalming. For a while, a midwife called Ann shared the house with us. I became quite friendly with Ann, she knew what had happened to me in north Wales and was worried for my safety. She told me that she had witnessed patient harm in hospitals and Top Doctors destroying medical records to conceal it, which was why she left midwifery. Ann was working in a private school for children with difficulties but resigned after just a few months and left Surrey. She discovered more and more out about the school which made her increasingly unhappy and I now suspect that she discovered that there was abuse of the children there. She didn’t ever tell me that, but the euphemisms that Ann used I now know to be those used when people are getting the hell out of somewhere because there is abuse of vulnerable people happening. It has also been suggested to me that Ann was either a member of the security services who was sent to befriend me or she was terrified of what was unravelling in north Wales and fled. See post ‘BMA Calling, BMA Calling’.
It was when I was working at Surrey University in 1988 that upheavals occurred at Redland Quilting. Redland was located off the Bristol Road in Bridgwater. There was a big new development planned and a load of old properties, including some houses and the building which Redland occupied, were going to be demolished. I don’t know whether it was a case of a compulsory purchase order, but as far as I knew, there was no choice, the buildings were going to be demolished. So Redland had to find new premises if it were to continue in business. Bill Cockhill then announced that he had found someone who wanted to buy Redland, which came as quite a surprise to me, it was not the sort of business that would be snapped up. Even more surprisingly, the new owner was a businessman from Nottingham no less, a man called Richard Tennant.
I had worked at Nottingham until Dec 1987, it was where I witnessed the huge research fraud carried out at the Cancer Research Campaign laboratories at Nottingham University, by Prof Robert Baldwin and his merry men and a few women as well (see post ‘Oh Lordy, It’s CR UK’). Nottingham was where I made friends with the two medical students who also witnessed neglect and research fraud who later left medicine. One of those medical students had a father who was a civil service mandarin. I have found out who he was and there is a blog post coming soon about him. His daughter was lovely, but Baldwin’s henchmen did not like her and she was under fire from them.
Not only had Richard Tennant from Nottingham bought Redland from Bill Cockhill, but Richard explained that Redland would be relocating to Nottingham, so obviously the local Bridgwater workers would all be made redundant. My father was about 60. The ‘redundancy packages’ offered were derisory. Father knew that although he’d worked all his life, he would never get another job again at his age. He was also the sort of person who would never have considered claiming benefits, except for the old age pension which he wasn’t due for another five years.
So Richard Tennant offered father a job in Nottingham, although he knew that father had spent virtually his entire life in Somerset and owned his house there. Richard acknowledged that father couldn’t be expected to sell up and relocate to Nottingham, so after a lot of wriggling around on Tennant’s part, Tennant made an alternative offer to father instead. He offered father a job in Nottingham from Monday to Thursday, along with father being put up in a B&B from Monday to Thursday paid for by Tennant, so that father could commute from Somerset. The pay was higher than father’s previous salary, but wasn’t actually high enough for most people to have said yes to such an arrangement. A younger person beginning a career might have agreed to this, but not a sixty year old man who was physically strong still but who’s health was beginning to decline. But being father he said yes, because, as he said to me, I’ll never get another job and I am not going on the dole.
So father started the long distance commuting. He commented to me that he was surprised to find that the other guests in the ‘B&B’ were young families on the dole with children. I guessed what sort of ‘B&B’ Richard Tennant had chosen in which to house his employee. This arrangement went on for a while, with father getting increasingly knackered and realising that the ‘B&B’ was quite insalubrious really. It transpired that Tennant owned a little flat in Nottingham, so father started using that.
I heard from most other people that Richard Tennant was a charming, pleasant man who wasn’t an unscrupulous old bugger like Bill Cockhill. But father seemed less enamoured of Richard Tennant. It was fairly clear that father was exhausted and was being exploited but did not feel able to do anything about this. I think that he might have tried to raise the subject with Tennant once, because when a relative told father that this was an unacceptable arrangement, father snapped ‘well he’s made it very clear to me that I’m already costing him a fortune’.
The bizarre arrangement continued for a number of years, until father did retire. Father’s life was undoubtedly at risk during those years. His health began failing and the commuting to Nottingham was so exhausting that he was falling asleep at the wheel. Richard Tennant knew about this. Father had what I know damn well was a heart attack. For once father actually allowed a Top Doctor to be called, who told father than one thing that he hadn’t had was a heart attack. Dr fucking Matthews of Nether Stowey knew as well as I did that father had indeed had a heart attack, but not only had Matthews already killed the dad of a girl with whom I went to school by gross neglect, but I have been told that Matthews knew that father had a daughter who would not shut up about the criminal activity that she had witnessed in north Wales.
Richard Tennant stepped in with his generous offer of employment to my father in 1988. I have found a website on which someone but I’m not sure who describes the evolution of Richard’s business. This is Richard’s Story:
The more observant amongst you will have noticed the addition of a new logo onto our website. Well – it’s been going on for a while now – but we’ve created an alliance with Tennant Varipack in Nottingham. And I think we know them well enough now to introduce you….
Established back 1955 by William Cockhill, as Redland Quilting, the Company was a successful supplier of PVC products to the furniture industry.
In 1980, the company diversified into the stationery market, producing ring binders and media packs. This was followed a few years later by a change of location and name as Redland Quilting became Redland PVC Products and moved from Bristol to Nottingham. The company changed hands in 1988 when William Cockhill retired and sold the business to Richard Tennant. After the acquisition of Varipack Ltd, the name changed yet again to Tennant Varipack.
Richard is long-time friend of Duraweld and, with an eye to the future, he looked to us to carry on the business, delivering high quality vinyl stationery and packaging products to a national market.
We are thrilled to have Tennant Varipack as part of the Duraweld group and will continue to supply Tennant’s customers under the Tennant Varipack name for many years to come. It is our ambition to grow the market for customised vinyl stationery and promotional packaging from the Nottingham site as well as introduce the many loyal customers of Tennant Varipack to Duraweld’s range of paper-over-board and polypropylene products.
Mark Darby has re-joined the Company in a sales development role, operating out of our Nottingham Sales Office; he is available to visit customers of both Duraweld and Tennant Varipack.
This reminded me of one great mystery regarding Richard Tennant’s purchase of Redland – how did Tennant ever hear about Redland and why did he ever buy it? Tennant’s company was of a very different nature to Redland, it made completely different products. Why did a man in Nottingham with a completely different business purchase an ailing little company in Bridgwater which occupied a building which Tennant knew was being demolished and make all the workers redundant except for father, whom he then worked nearly to death? Tennant had never done business with Cockhill and Bill Cockhill didn’t know him. No-one in Somerset had even heard of Richard Tennant before he declared his interest in buying Redland.
It is mentioned in the website’s spiel that Bill ‘retired’. No, Bill only sold Redland because the building was being demolished. Bill I’m fairly sure continued to be a very busy bee with business interests. Not that Bill was a busy bee for very long after he flogged Redland to Richard Tennant. Because Bill died. Father was upset and deeply shocked because he went to see Bill in Bristol one day, only to find Bill and his wife Marion in bits because Bill had just been told by his Top Doctor that he was ‘riddled with cancer’, nothing could be done and Bill had only weeks to live. Days later Bill died.
Bill was an affluent man who unlike father didn’t loathe Top Docs and keep away from them. Bill probably played golf with them. However Bill did not have any medical education. If Bill was showing signs of cancer, Bill would not have known. Neither would Marion or his daughters. Bill would have been entirely dependent upon the opinion of the Top Doc. Who of course could have been trusted to always do the best for his patients. As Dr ‘you haven’t had a heart attack’ Matthews, Dr Dafydd Alun Jones and my boss’s brother Dr John Marks, President of the BMA will confirm.
In 1988 Dafydd, Tony Francis et al were CC’ing letters regarding ‘evidence’ of my crimes that they were intending to use to have me imprisoned to Tony Chadwick, the BMA’s representative in Wales. Chadwick was even popping up to Bangor to discuss the problem that was me. Chadwick knew that the ‘evidence’ being presented to him was untrue (see eg. ‘THE BLOG POST WHICH WAS HACKED CAN NOW BE READ’ and ‘Gwlad y Menig Gwynion’). Professor Robert Owen was colluding with Dafydd et al to ensure that the crimes of Dafydd et al would be concealed when my complaint was finally ‘investigated’ (see post ‘Enter Professor Robert Bluglass CBE’).
Mary Wynch had made legal history by winning her case against Dafydd et al. Alison Taylor had blown the whistle on the abuse of children in north Wales as loud as she could had written to Thatcher and Tony Newton the Secretary of State for Social Security and had been sacked from her job as a social worker by Gwynedd County Council.
Richard Tennant stepped in with his generous offer of employment to my father in the year that I was living just down the road from Michael Biggs and year that Ken Clarke was in an all out war with the brother of my boss Vincent Marks at Surrey University.
Ken Clarke, the Health Secretary during July 1998-Nov 1990, was the Tory MP for Rushcliffe in Nottingham. Before Ken Clarke entered politics, he was a barrister in Nottingham. Ken Clarke remained friendly with barristers and others in Nottingham throughout his years in Parliament. They were on such good terms that at one point Ken’s old Chambers asked him to return as a partner. Ken said no, but he did offer his old mates ‘advice’. Ken Clarke had many business interests throughout his career.
How are you getting on with your One Nation Conservatism and curries then Ken? Fancy a pint? Go on, have another me old mate, it’s amazing what downing a few with the lads can lead to. You hear all sorts of things when people are half-pissed.
Richard Tennant had a famous nephew, Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys! Father knew that Richard’s nephew was in something called the Pet Shop Boys, but I’m not sure that father knew that Neil Tennant was a gay idol among rent boys as well as other gays. Neil Tennant’s wiki tells us that he revealed that he was gay in 1994. Well how did I know that Neil was gay years before then? I wasn’t an active gay male teenager moving in Neil’s circle but I was under no illusions and I don’t think that many other people were either.
Neil Tennant was born and brought up in Newcastle-upon-Tyne as a Catholic. There was a paedophile gang operating in the Newcastle area with direct links to Dafydd’s gang in north Wales/Cheshire.
Neil Tennant moved to London to study at the North London Poly – now London Metropolitan University – and graduated in 1975. He worked for two years as the London Editor for Marvel Comic and gradually moved into music journalism. Tennant ended up editing TV tie-in books for ITV books moved to ITV Books and in 1982 he was appointed News Editor of Smash Hits. In 1983 he became Assistant Editor. Tennant edited the 1982, 1983 and 1984 editions of The Smash Hits Yearbook.
Buring the 1970s and 80s, John Allen and Dafydd were grooming and trafficking teenaged boys from children’s homes in north Wales to work as rent boys in London and Brighton on a massive scale. Neil Tennant almost certainly heard something about it.
Neil is a Patron of the Elton John AIDS Foundation. He maintains a house in London and a house in County Durham. Up there in Blair’s political stronghold.
In 1998, Tennant was named in a list of the biggest private financial donors to the Labour Party. However, in the 2005 General Election, he voted Lib Dem.
Neil Tennant’s hits include ‘It’s A Sin’ and ‘Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots Of Money)’.
The Chancellor of Surrey University is and was when I worked there Lilibet’s cousin, Edward, the Duke of Kent. His mother, Princess Marina of Greece, was a cousin of Phil the Greek. Since 1967 the Duke of Kent has been Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England and in December 2013, he celebrated 50 years as a Freemason.
The Duke of Kent went to Eton and enjoyed a long career in the British Army, reaching the rank of Field Marshal. Purely on the basis of his talent of course. The Duke was for many years Vice-Chairman of British Trade International, formerly known as the British Overseas Trade Board, and later as the UK’s Special Representative for International Trade and Investment. He was also the Vice-Chairman of the British Overseas Trade Board, in which capacity he became the first member of the Royal family to visit China in 1979 with his focus being on the British Energy Exhibition in Beijing.
From 1971 to 2000, the Duke of Kent was President of English football’s governing body, The Football Association. The Duke has served as the President of The Scout Association since 1975. He also serves as the president of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, a position in which he succeeded his late mother, Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent. His other roles include President of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the RAF Benevolent Fund, the RNLI, the Stroke Institution, the Royal United Services Institute, the Royal Institution, the British Racing Drivers’ Club and Patron of Royal West Norfolk Golf Club, Kent County Cricket Club, Opera North, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and St Mungo’s Broadway, benefiting the homeless. The Duke is on the advisory panel for the Mountbatten Medal and presents the medal once the decision has been made. The Duke of Kent is one of the Royal Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering. For almost 29 years, the Duke has been the Patron of Endeavour, a national youth organisation. He has also served as Royal Patron of The Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn since 2001, a position previously occupied by his father. In 2015, the Duke received the Dresden Peace Prize for ‘his contribution to British-German reconciliation’.
The Duke of Kent married Katharine Worsley. Katharine was born at Hovingham Hall, Yorkshire, the only daughter of Sir William Arthington, 4th Baronet and his wife, Joyce Morgan Brunner. Her mother was the daughter of Sir John Brunner, 2nd Baronet and granddaughter of Sir John Brunner, 1st Baronet, the founder of Brunner Mond,which later became ICI. She is a descendant of Oliver Cromwell. Worsley was christened at All Saints’ Church, Hovingham, on 2 April 1933. Her godparents were her maternal uncle Sir Felix Brunner, 3rd Baronet, Major Sir Digby Lawson, 2nd Baronet, her paternal aunt Winifred Colegate and Margaret Fife of Nunnington Hall.
Katharine did not receive any formal education until the age of 10. She was educated at Queen Margaret’s School, York and at Runton Hill School in North Norfolk. At school she was was taught to play the piano, organ and violin. In her final year at Runton Hill, she was formally elected music secretary; in this role, she organized school recitals in Norwich. Katharine left school with a ‘pass’ in oral French and a ‘very good’ in English literature. There was never a category for ‘very good’ at O level, so what Katherine passed I cannot fathom.
Katharine worked for some time in a children’s home in York and worked at a nursery school in London. She failed to gain admission to the Royal Academy of Music, but followed her brothers to Oxford. They went to Oxford University, but Katharine studied at Miss Hubler’s Finishing School, 22 Merton Street, devoting much of her time to music. Perhaps because ‘very good’ at English lit wasn’t sufficient to get Katharine through the doors of Oxford. At Miss Hubler’s, Katherine was one of only eight pupils and was instructed by three different teachers: The Principal herself, Miss Hubler, taught French literature, painting, and history; a French woman taught cookery; and a Viennese lady taught music.
Katharine met Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, while he was based at Catterick Camp. Edward proposed to her with a ring consisting of ‘an oval sapphire with a round diamond on either side.’ On 8 June 1961, the couple married at York Minster, the first Royal marriage in that location in 633 years. The bride’s father escorted her and the best man was Prince Michael of Kent. Princess Anne was one of the bridesmaids. The Archbishop of York Michael Ramsey conducted the marriage service. Guests included actors Noel Coward as well as members of the British, Greek, Danish, Norwegian, Yugoslavian, Romanian and Spanish Royal families. 273 yards of fabric were used to make her white silk gauze dress which had ‘a high neckline and long sleeves and a commanding train,’ and was designed by John Cavanagh. The Kent Diamond and Pearl Fringe Tiara secured her veil.
Together, the couple have three children: George Windsor, Earl of St Andrews (born 26 June 1962); Lady Helen Taylor (born 28 April 1964); and Lord Nicholas Windsor (born 25 July 1970).
Katharine had an abortion in 1975 due to German measles and gave birth to a stillborn son, Patrick, in 1977, a loss that caused her to fall into a state of severe depression, about which she has spoken publicly.
The Duchess moved to the married quarters in Hong Kong and Germany while her husband was serving at the military. The couple later took numerous royal engagements on behalf of the Queen, including the Ugandan independence celebrations and the coronation of the King of Tonga.
The Duke and Duchess of Kent and some of their family caused a bit of a stir by concerting to Catholicism. It was stressed that because of the time at which they did this it would not affect their rights of succession to the throne. Not that it mattered, because there’s loads more in the queue in front of them.
The Duchess of Kent decided in 2002 not to use personally the style ‘Her Royal Highness’ and to reduce her Royal duties. Since then she has been informally known as Katharine Kent or Katharine, Duchess of Kent, although her formal style (e.g. in the Court Circular) remains HRH The Duchess of Kent. Despite her decision to stay away from public life, the Duchess continues to appear at major events.
In keeping with her withdrawal from full Royal duties in 1996, the Duchess took a position as a music teacher in Wansbeck Primary School in Kingston-upon-Hull. She also taught piano lessons in a rented studio flat near her official residence at Kensington Palace. The Duchess of Kent had served as the President of the Royal Northern College of Music and was the director of National Foundation for Youth Music, 1999-07. She is Patron of national charity, Making Music, the National Federation of Music Societies, an umbrella organisation for amateur and voluntary music groups. Katharine is among the co-founders of Future Talent, a charity that helps young children with low-income backgrounds pursue a career in music. In May 2016, she hosted a concert for young children at Buckingham Palace in her capacity as founder of Future Talent.
In August 2016, the Duchess became an ambassador for the Samaritans ‘after a volunteer at the Teesside branch reached out to her’. In the way that Ken and Doreen Dewar reached out into the coffers of Redland Quilting in a previous time perhaps. The Duchess had previously been Royal Patron of the Samaritans, 1971-99. So she was Royal Patron when the Dewars were busy reaching out in Bridgwater. The Duchess is also a supporter of UNICEF. Whether small time crooks from Bridgwater were involved with UNICEF I don’t know.
When I was working at Surrey University, there was much discussion of what was felt to be entrenched discrimination against women in university research. My female colleagues were acutely aware of this, because as was typical of most universities as the time, female staff tended to be on insecure research contracts and male staff in tenured posts. This was very noticeable in the Dept of Biochemistry at Surrey where I worked. There were hordes of very active women research fellows, some of them excellent, yet ‘the academics’ (as they called themselves) were a bunch of ridiculous moribund old men who were not up to much. The most illustrious ‘academic’ was Dr Keith Snell who walked around with a permanent sneer on his face, he must have worked really hard at that. Snell didn’t acknowledge my existence and he even snubbed senior research fellows if they spoke to him. It was daft – as someone remarked to me, ‘he really must be not quite adequate to behave like this’.
Those whom received much snottiness from Keith Snell and The Academics included Helen Henneberry, Sheila Hampton and Debra Skene. They were all very good researchers, much better than The Academics. However, Helen, Sheila and Debra did know about wrongdoing and corruption at Surrey and elsewhere. Debra is still at Surrey, she has a Chair there now. Helen was married to Steve, a police officer who was in the Met’s River Police section. Helen knew what was happening to me at the hands of those in north Wales.
At that time, Surrey University boasted of one Professor Daphne Jackson, a nuclear physicist, notable for being the first female professor of physics in the UK. Jackson went to Peterborough County Grammar for Girls, from where she went onto Imperial College in London, which by the time that I was working at Surrey listening to Daphne’s public lectures on the travails of Wimmin in Science, had supplied many of the biggest umbrellas for Dafydd and the gang (see previous posts).
Daphne Jackson moved to what became the University of Surrey at the invitation of Lewis Elton, I think to do her PhD, when he became Head of the Physics Department at Battersea College of Advanced Technology. Daphne became a lecturer and in 1971, Britain’s first female Professor of Physics when she was appointed by University of Surrey.
Lewis Elton is the dad of comedian Ben Elton. My post ‘The Rakes’ Progress’ discusses Lewis, Ben, their network and how much some of them knew about Dafydd et al.
Daphne became the Dean of Surrey University and sat on a range of bodies. She held a senior position at the Meteorological Office and was President of the Women’s Engineering Society and Vice-President of the Institute of Physics.
Jackson ‘campaigned for women’s rights and she was disappointed to see that talented women were lost in lowly jobs because they could not re-enter their career after a break’. In 1985 Jackson devised a plan to help these women by allowing them to work for two years where they could readjust to their discipline after taking a break to have a child, becoming a carer or just because they followed their husband’s career rather than their own. Jackson is reported as saying, ‘Imagine a society that would allow Marie Curie to stack shelves in a supermarket simply because she took a career break for family reasons.’
“Qualified women who are unemployed or under-employed following a career break for family commitments represent an appalling waste of talent and of investment in their initial education. Many such women are eager to return to their original careers or to a new field of activity for which their initial education is relevant, provided that retraining can be given and that they can, at least initially, work on a part-time basis.”
I certainly knew all about such circumstances. After my career in medical research was destroyed – Daphne and her colleagues assisted in this – because I had witnessed the serious crime of the Top Docs and their colleagues in north Wales, I spent years either not working or in jobs such as cleaning, indeed shelf-stacking and care work. I was well aware that my colleagues in those jobs wondered what the hell someone with my qualifications was doing in jobs like that, but I did explain to those with whom I became friends that what was going on in medical research was so bad that I did not regret not being there any more.
Professor Jackson the defender of working wimmin was diagnosed with cancer. Daphne’s obituary tells us that cancer ‘was a disease she was helping to fight through her work with the Institute for Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden Hospital’. So Daphne would have been party to that research fraud perpetrated by the staff of the Royal Marsden which involved Tony Francis’s friend Peter Macguire then (see post ‘Reports Of Death Were Greatly Exaggerated’). Daphne knew those colleagues of mine from Surrey who stole my work and used it to raise more funds to secure their own futures at the Institute of Cancer Research (see post ‘Oh Lordy, It’s CR UK’).
Daphne died in 1991 of cancer. Which doesn’t surprise me. Were there not such endemic research fraud in cancer research, the outcomes for people who develop cancer might well be very much better than they are.
As ye sow, so shall ye reap Daphne:
After Daphne The Wimmin’s Friend pegged out when her partners in crime the Top Docs found that they didn’t have a miracle cure after all – get your pink bras on and run a few more marathons ladies, CR UK needs a few more million to help YOU – the Daphne Jackson Trust was founded with a legacy, but I’m not sure where the legacy came from. The Trust is there to help Wimmin – although not wimmin who’ve blown the whistle on the Westminster Paedophile Ring or large scale research fraud obviously – and is based at the Physics Dept at the University of Surrey. The Patrons of the Daphne Jackson Trust are: Professor Dame Athene Donald, Ms Vivienne Parry and Ms Maggie Philbin.
One of the Daphne Jackson Trustees is this blog’s old pal Prof Hilary Lappin-Scott. Hilary spent a brief time as the PVC for Research at Bangor University when I worked there. Hilary was the most atrocious bully, she was nakedly racist towards Welsh people and she was so rude that someone who approached Bangor University offering a partnership – one of the biggest investors in north west Wales that there is – walked away and had to be tempted back by a rather more sane member of staff. My own problems with Hilary reached a pinnacle when she refused to reimburse me my fieldwork expenses. I had done a great deal of fieldwork and the expenses ran into hundreds. Hilary refused to pay me. No reason, she just didn’t feel like it. I had no petrol to get to work and no money for groceries. A variety of friends bought petrol and groceries for me. Hilary departed from Bangor a few months later after the most enormous row when she made an allegiance with Prof Fergus Lowe and tried to close down five Depts. One of the lecturers from one Dept which Hilary announced that she was going to close committed suicide. No official details of Hilary’s departure were ever released but leaks from the organs of government let it be known that Hilary was dismissed and escorted off the premises by security. As Hilary left the premises, the IT staff were ordered to remove all references to her from the Bangor University website and to change all passwords and secure everything because of the fear that Hilary would carry out a revenge attack on Bangor.
When the e mail was circulated by the senior management informing everyone that Hilary no longer was employed by the University, loud cheering could be heard from offices and a celebratory e mail title ‘The Wicked Witch Is Dead’ was sent out by one of Hilary’s victims. Hilary was known at Bangor as Hilary Satan-Scott.
Everyone presumed that Hilary would never work again, but Brown said ‘ooh no, she’ll be a valuable resource for someone’. Indeed she has been. Hilary was subsequently given a job as PVC at Swansea University. Hilary was put in charge of the Business School, although she is a biologist. There were allegations of dreadful workplace bullying, staff resigned, there were allegations that jobs were given to friends of friends of Hilary’s and the students held a public protest on the grounds that what was going on was so damaging to the University’s reputation that their degrees were being devalued. An inquiry Chaired by a barrister followed.
Hilary recently won an award for Inspirational Wimmin and was photographed with Princess Anne.
The spiel on the Daphne Jackson Trust website tells us that Hilary is responsible for Equality and Diversity at Swansea University.
One look at Hilary’s fellow Trustees on the Daphne Jackson Trust website will reassure readers that Daphne has left behind a valuable legacy.
The Daphne Jackson Medal and Prize was established in 2016 and named in Jackson’s honour, are awarded by the Institute of Physics ‘for exceptional early career contributions to physics education and to widening participation within it’.
In 1988, when I went to listen to Daphne speak about the struggles of wimmin who find themselves surrounded by those in possession of testicles, Daphne related an anecdote to illustrate the difficulties of being a High Achieving Woman. Daphne explained that her elderly mother was now frail and in need of care, so Daphne went to discuss the problem with a Top Doctor. The Top Doctor, who was a Top Doctor in possession of testicles, told Daphne that she’d have to give up work and look after her mother. Daphne explained that she was Professor Daphne Jackson The First Female Professor Of Physics In Britain, only to find that the Top Doctor repeated his suggestion that Daphne should give up her job and look after her mother. The other Wimmin in the room – including those who stole my data and used it to advance themselves – all tut tutted and agreed that No Man would have been spoken to like that. Certainly not Keith Snell.
I didn’t like to mention to the Wimmin that no, the Top Doc probably would not have told a man to give up work and look after his elderly mother. A Top Doc would have told a man to pay someone else to look after his elderly mother. A female Top Doc would have said the same. Furthermore, there was at that time and still are some male carers. Because although there is a gender dimension to the problem in that it is usually women who are unpaid carers, the biggest problem is that there is NO SOCIAL CARE for those who need it. So if you are a man who hasn’t got a wife to ask/tell to look after the relative and you haven’t got any money, you too will be told by Top Docs to give up your job to become a carer. Daphne did not campaign for improved social care. Daphne did not campaign for funding for low income citizens to have access to social care. Daphne campaigned for the rights of well-qualified professional women to have successful careers. I don’t have a problem with that, but Daphne and her colleagues’ conduct towards me demonstrated the cause closest to their hearts.
When Ken Clarke was Health Secretary, as well as doing battle with Dr John Marks and the BMA, Ken did battle with Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor aka the Duke of Westminster, Carlo’s friend. Grosvenor was demanding that Thatcher’s Gov’t give him the Hyde Park Corner building which was the former St George’s Hospital Medical School, St George’s having relocated to Tooting. Grosvenor’s rationale was that centuries previously, his ancestor had donated the Hyde Park Corner site and now he wanted it back. At that time Grosvenor was the richest man in the UK. The Hyde Park Corner site was worth a bomb, it is prime Knightbridge real estate worth millions and Gerald wanted to add to his collection of vast estates and much of Belgravia. Ken Clarke didn’t explain in his autobiography how the problem was resolved, he simply stated that he wanted to sell the Duke the Hyde Park Corner site at its market value and reinvest the money into the dear old NHS. What actually happened was that the Gov’t allowed the Duke to purchase the Hyde Park Corner site for £6k. It is now the very expensive Lanesborough Hotel:
I have expressed my puzzlement previously on this blog as to why Thatcher appointed Sir Peter Morrison, a man who’s openly gossiped about activities with children put the Gov’t and national security as risk, to such crucial sensitive Gov’t positions. The Gov’t was depending upon the talents of Dafydd to prevent a major scandal, it was ludicrous. No rational person would have given Morrison the jobs that Thatcher did. Morrison’s family were massively influential in the Tory Party and his sister was a courtier in Buck House, but even so, it still makes no sense for Thatcher to have kept Morrison in the Gov’t. In 1988, when people from Ken Clarke’s part of the world were sufficiently interested in the fate of a company housing a sweat-shop in a building scheduled for demolition in Bridgwater to purchase that company, Peter Morrison was Minister of State for Energy with responsibility for oil (see post ‘These Sharks Are Crap As Well’). Thatcher’s Gov’t depended upon oil to fund it’s insane policies of destroying industry and raising unemployment.
I have received an e mail suggesting why so many risks were taken with regard to Morrison. It contained the following information:
Sally
You asked the question what had you missed ?
May I suggest the following hypothesis that Peter had been abused as a child by a Duke of Westminster, Robert perhaps.
His birth place Fonthill in Wiltshire has a historical link with the 2nd Marquis of Westminster. So he was someone’s childhood bitch, a VIP paedophile, which would explain the subsequent geography of his seat and his political appointments. It would also explain the business generating cash through sex trafficking.
So Westminster ( North West) to Westminster(central).
Regards
Robert Grosvenor was the 5th Duke of Westminster, the father of Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor. I have blogged about him in previous posts. It is not unlikely that Peter Morrison was molested as a child himself. He went to Eton and was of the generation of men who as boys were often brutalised so badly at school that it wreaked havoc with their psycho-sexual development and he was of course surrounded by older men who had been similarly brutalised. Previous posts have discussed who may have been involved in the selection of Morrison, a known paedophile, to contend the safe Tory seat of Chester in 1974, a city that was the centre of a huge paedophile/sex trafficking ring, operated by Dafydd et al. The Duke of Westminster’s family seat was just down the road. Boys from Bryn Estyn were taken to the Duke’s estate for ‘work experience’ and were refusing to return but wouldn’t explain why.
I discussed in an earlier post how someone who came under attack from Dafydd et al was ordered by a helpful community midwife to have the family dogs put down when his wife became pregnant on the grounds that they would constitute a ‘danger to the baby’. There was no evidence that the dogs would be any such thing, they were family pets and were used to being around the children that the family already had. The midwife insisted. The family were completely in the clutches of the Top Docs et al, were constantly being hectored and told that they didn’t know what they were doing, so eventually they rang the RSPCA and asked them to put the dogs to sleep. I was told that a rude aggressive ‘RSPCA inspector’ arrived at the house who had no knowledge of how to put dogs to sleep. Instead of an injection into a vein on the leg, preceded by a sedative to keep the dog relaxed, the RSPCA man ‘stabbed the dogs to death through the heart with a massive needle’. Several members of the family confirmed that this was what had happened. The first two dogs died screaming in agony and struggled to get away, such that by the time that the third dog was ready for slaughter, the mother of the family was crying, the children were crying and the father intervened, said that this could not happen to the third dog as well and told the RSPCA man to leave. The RSPCA man told the family that this would teach them not to be ‘irresponsible owners’ in future. There was someone else at the scene of the crime. The midwife who had demanded that this should be done. She was paying a home visit when it all kicked off. Did she stop the slaughter? No. She left the house after the first murder, saying that she couldn’t bear the noise of the dog screaming.
When I heard about this awful scene, I just thought that the family must have had terrible luck with a rogue RSPCA man. This happened in 1992. Over the next few years I heard further stories about what was obviously the same RSPCA man. The stories had a running theme: vulnerable people who had asked for help with their pets, only to be met with aggression accompanied by a lecture on the crimes of Irresponsible Owners and downright cruelty to the animals. A new trend subsequently emerged. That of people who were either elderly and not coping very well or mental health patients ‘in the community’ who had been reported to the RSPCA for ‘cruelty’ having animals removed from their care in a blaze of media coverage which involved the naming and shaming of the Irresponsible Owners. The Irresponsible Owners hadn’t actually been cruel to the animals, but they had lived among much filth and mess, because no-one was supporting them ‘in the community’.
So many of these cases were happening that I began to take an interest, particularly as a lot of the cases were in north Wales. In every case, the Irresponsible Owners had not been coping but their plight had been ignored by the ‘community teams’. The ‘community teams’ had been going into the chaos and had not responded in any way. Not until someone reported that the pets were not being looked after or were simply living in chaos and filth. The RSPCA would then remove the pets, invite the press to photograph ‘this disgusting squalor’ and everyone could marvel at the Irresponsible Owners. No-one asked what the community workers had been doing watching these situations develop over months. No-one reflected that there was concern shown for pets living in filth but not seriously ill people.
While such cases were being highlighted, I knew of a number of people who were being horrifically cruel to their animals. These people were not in the care of the welfare services and no-one denounced them as Irresponsible Owners. A farmer on Anglesey was known to have chucked his sheepdog over a cliff when it became too old to work. He did not receive a visit from the RSPCA. There was a dog in Bethesda who was chained up outside in the garden visibly starving and drenched in the bad weather. No-one said a word. There were various other dogs who were being beaten and kicked in public and my landlady’s grandson told me of a mass outbreak of the torture of other people’s cats that was happening in Caernarfon. Not a word from the RSPCA.
On one occasion a labrador was removed from two middle aged brothers on Anglesey and featured on the Welsh TV news. The owners were named and shamed and received a good bollocking from the RSPCA. Their crime? Their labrador was fat. Labradors do get fat because they eat everything in sight and admittedly this one was enormous. Yet surely someone could have given the brothers advice on slimming their labrador down? The brothers were interviewed and were very obviously not cruel. No-one had even tried to advise them. The RSPCA then revelled in telling the TV news that not only was this lab fat, but it had an ‘untreated tumour’ on it’s neck and the poor lab ‘must be in agony’. The untreated tumour was filmed. It was exactly the same condition that a dog of mine had experienced years ago. The tumour in question was benign and painless. As the RSPCA quietly admitted a few days later, after the lab had been removed and the brothers denounced as cruel gits. The brothers did not get their lab back. Did the RSPCA rehome the lab? No. They did what the RSPCA do a lot of, they put the dog down. For being fat.
What have we come to when a dog is abducted and killed for being fat and the dog’s owners are denounced on a national news bulletin for owning a fat dog?
I realised that something particularly odd was happening when the RSPCA started coming after me. Repeatedly. For ‘cruelty’ to my dogs. The cruelty in question being my dogs sleeping in my car when I was at work. On the first occasion that the RSPCA contacted me, I explained that yes my dogs were in the car, but they were not young dogs, they were comfortable and with a bowl of water, I checked on them regularly and I took them out for walks at intervals as well. They were in the car because I didn’t want to leave them at home all day, it was better for them to be in the car where I could go and visit them and walk them. The RSPCA went away happy with the explanation. Then they came back again, once more with allegations that I was cruel. Then the RSPCA told me that other people had told them that I was cruel. Perhaps they were the same people who were leaving abusive notes stuck to my car, telling me that I was cruel. I invited the RSPCA to come and meet me and my dogs to reassure themselves that my dogs were OK. The RSPCA didn’t take up my offer. A few weeks later I received another call from the RSPCA. Someone had told them that I was cruel.
The RSPCA must have known my extension number by now they were ringing me so often. I was never told who was making the allegations that I was cruel. The last conversation that I had with the RSPCA was even more surreal than the others. The RSPCA man spoke to me as though I was 10 yrs old. He told me that he knew that dogs get stressed when they are in a confined space because he had done an experiment. He had dressed up as a dog, sat in a small space and after 15 mins had felt stressed. I realised that I was talking to an idiot so I simply asked what he recommended. He told me to buy a new car and that if there was one more complaint about me the RSPCA would prosecute me.
There nearly was another complaint about me as well. I went to visit another Enemy Of The Paedophiles when he was in the Hergest Unit. I had only been with him about five minutes, when the door of the room flew open and an Angel yelled at me ‘those are your dogs in the car and it’s cruel for them to be there. If you don’t leave, we’ll call the RSPCA. It’s not me what’s doing this, I’ve been told. I’m just the messenger so don’t you have a go at me yeh’. The Angel – no uniform, no ID badge, so I had no idea who she was – then slammed the door shut again and disappeared.
The Hergest Unit staff knew my dogs and they knew my car. Because when I had been a patient previously, they had called the police on the grounds that they wanted to remove my dogs – to the care of the RSPCA! – but the police refused to break into my car lest they got bitten. No-one asked me to go outside and let the police into my car and introduce them to the dogs. Who would not have bitten them anyway. I only found out what was happening when the Hergest whistleblower came and told me not to worry about my dogs because he’d look after them while I was in hospital.
The Hergest whistleblower was as good as his word. One day though he came in terribly upset and told me that he thought that one of my dogs was going to die, he was very ill. The dog had been rushed to the vet who told the Hergest whistleblower that the dog had been poisoned. The Hergest whistleblower couldn’t understand it, he was an organic gardener and lived in an isolated cottage in a valley, there was nothing to poison a dog.
Except probably for a vicious bastard of a member of a paedophile gang who knew that the Hergest whistleblower was looking after my dogs, who knew that my Golden Lab was notorious for his appetite and who could throw the poisoned meat into the garden of the isolated cottage without being visible to anyone.
My dog didn’t die. He was paralysed for a few days but he didn’t die. My dog’s brush with death happened at the time that the paedophiles’ friends had yet another go at imprisoning me on the basis of their perjury and when my father’s death was imminent. I was told that if father died I would have to attend his funeral handcuffed to an Angel and a police officer. The charges against me were later withdrawn. On the first day of the trial.
Paedophile gang: Had my dog died I do hope that you realise that I would never have turned on the Hergest whistleblower, which I suspect was part of the plan.
Although it was obvious to me that in north Wales, the paedophiles’ friends had discovered a whole new way of making life unbearable for the people whom they so scandalously abused and neglected ie. now that we’ve made them unemployable, told everyone that they are dangerous nutters so no-one will speak to them, let’s put the final part of our dastardly plan into action – have them declared as IRRESPONSIBLE OWNERS and then remove their pets, the last thing on earth that they have left…, there seemed to be a problem across the whole of the UK with regard to the RSPCA mounting prosecutions against vulnerable people. It became so evident that people began raising concerns and leaving the RSPCA.
The enthusiasm for prosecuting vulnerable people often on the basis of very flimsy evidence culminated in a TV expose in which the finger was pointed at Gavin Grant, the CEO of the RSPCA, 2012-14. It was said that Gavin Grant was an ‘animal rights extremist’, that he wanted a whole new agenda for the RSPCA and a few people maintained that he was a vindictive git. When it was put to Gavin Grant on camera that some prosecutions had been ludicrous, such as one against an elderly lady for failing to take care of her budgie properly, Gavin snapped at the interviewer that ‘this poor old lady is a convicted animal abuser’. Well she was after Gavin’s inspector called at her house.
I don’t know what was driving Gavin Grant, but I very much doubt that he was an ‘animal rights extremist’. Because Gavin’s previous job had been as Chairman of PR firm Burson-Marsteller and many moons ago Gavin had been a fellow traveller of Dr Death! The Dr Death who was the research registrar for the lethal Top Doc at Tommy’s, William Sargant, who experimented upon and killed some of his patients (see post ‘Dr Death’). Gavin will know that Top Docs of Death’s generation also experimented en masse on animals. Dr Death was a psychiatrist and neurologist Gavin, they don’t just do rats, they do primates. Down at the Institute of Psychiatry – where Dafydd et al ‘trained’ – there have been generations of primates in cages with various horrible things done to their brains.
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Ah, your life in their hands! The doctors and Angels they were wonderful!
Grant was brought up on a south London council estate but had moved from the estate by the time he was attending secondary school. His mother was a needleshop-worker and his father was a cellophane salesman. Grant was educated at Roan Grammar School for Boys, 1966–1973 and the University of Reading, 1973–77.
Gavin was a member of the Young Liberals and became the University of Reading’s youngest SU President.
After graduating, Gavin joined an anti-racism campaign group and reported for the Thatcher Gov’t on community relations. From 1987-88 he was Campaigns Director at the Council for the Protection of Rural England. He worked as Director of Communications for the RSPCA from 1988-91. Which was when the RSPCA began to declare war on those who had spilt the paedophiles’ pints. In 1991, Gavin joined the Association of Unit Trusts and Investment Funds as Public Affairs Director. Gavin worked as Corporate Communications Manager at The Body Shop International, 1993-99, where he campaigned against the use of animal testing for cosmetics.
Gavin: you knew that despite the marketing, ingredients used in The Body Shop products HAD been tested on animals. It wasn’t The Body Shop’s fault, at the time it was illegal to use ingredients that had not been tested on animals. What The Body Shop did do was to only use ingredients that had already been tested, they did not use new ingredients because they did not want to be responsible for yet more animal testing. Which is sound rationale, but that is not what you told people was it? You let millions of girls and young women believe that they were buying products which had not been tested on animals when those products had been tested on animals.
But then Gavin told the world that vulnerable people being targeted by paedophile gangs were Animal Abusers.
When Gavin was Chairman of Burson-Marsteller, 2006-11, his corporate clients included Unilever and he helped establish its corporate social responsibility unit. That’s the Unilever which funded the massive expansion of the School of Psychology at Bangor University in the early 1990s, after Prof Fergus Lowe twisted the arms of so many who knew about Dafydd and the paedophile gang, including Philip Lever, aka Lord Leverhulme (see post ‘Feet In Chains’).
I know an Animal Abuser Gavin. I know quite a few, but I know one Animal Abuser who, like the brothers who were the proud owners of the enormous labrador on Anglesey, was actually a very nice person but who just didn’t know a few essentials. She was a lady who lived in Gwynedd and purchased a cat as a pet. It wasn’t just a moggy, it was quite an expensive cat and she loved it to bits. However because her house was located right next to a busy main road, she wouldn’t let the cat out lest he was run over. The poor bloody cat was going bonkers, he yowled and scratched and tried to escape all the time, he was desperate and furthermore he was bored out of its head in this expensive house with white carpets and no small creatures to catch. After about three months the poor sod gave up and just sat there with a glazed look in his eyes. The owner said ‘oh he’s given up now, he knows there’s no escape’. He certainly had and did, its called learned helplessness, Fergus Lowe could tell you all about it being a behavioural psychologist.
Who was the Animal Abuser in question? She was a mental health social worker, the former leader of the Dwyfor Community Mental Health Team. Her husband was the Head of a primary school on Anglesey. They were a very nice couple and she was one social worker who was not abusing clients. But she knew that many of the others were and she colluded with them. She also knew that the Hergest Unit was dangerous, she told me that she never referred patients there because of that. She admitted that she knew that the Arfon Community Mental Health Team were abusing patients and she knew that NHS staff had perjured themselves repeatedly in an attempt to have me imprisoned. We discussed it all. She is no longer living in Gwynedd. She is, I understand, in Australia. She and her husband, two Welsh speakers born and brought up in Gwynedd and who lived there all their lives decided that they were off to begin a new life in Australia, when it became clear that Operation Pallial would be re-opening the investigation into the North Wales Child Abuse Scandal. Rhian Angel and her husband joined the exodus from north Wales to the other side of the world, along with a few others who knew the identities of the guilty parties…
Gavin Grant stood unsuccessfully in the 1987 General Election as the Liberal Alliance candidate. He has been a lifelong member of the Liberal Party and its successor the Lib Dems and was its Chair of the Western Counties regional party in 2011.
Any West Country Lib Dems remember a man called Jeremy Thorpe?
Gavin Grant has advised successive Liberal Democrat leaders including Deputy PM Nick Clegg and in 2007 he was involved in Clegg’s campaign to become party leader. Grant was elected to Wiltshire Council in 2017. He lives in Wiltshire and rents a flat in Horsham, West Sussex.
Peter Morrison’s family seat is in Wiltshire. The family own vast estates in Wiltshire and have lived there for decades. Morrison’s brother Charles was the Tory MP for Devizes in Wiltshire, 1964-92. Morrison’s dad John Morrison aka Lord Margadale was MP for Salisbury, 1942-65. The Morrison family pretty much ran Wiltshire for years. They sat on the County Council, they held posts as Deputy Lieutenant and Lord Lieutenant of the county and they were hugely influential in the Tory Party. Peter Morrison was kept out of trouble for decades as a result of his family and their connections. Gavin Grant would never have dared to take them on, but he may well have lent a hand to a few of those who assisted them or were keeping schtum about Peter’s activities.
One thing that I do not believe about Gavin is that he is an ‘animal rights extremist’. To find out where Gavin’s heart truly lies, let’s take a brief look at the work of the company that he Chaired before becoming CEO of the RSPCA.
Burson-Marsteller is a global PR and communications firm headquartered in New York. Burson-Marsteller consists of 77 offices and 85 affiliate offices, together operating in 110 countries across six continents. The company was founded by Harold Burson and William Marsteller in 1953 and, by the early 1980s, had become one of the largest PR companies in the world. In 1979 it became a subsidiary of Young & Rubicam, which in turn is now owned by WPP Group PLC. In 2018, it merged with Cohn & Wolfe and was renamed Burson Cohn & Wolfe. The current CEO of Burson-Marsteller is Don Baer, former Communications Director for the Clinton administration, who joined the company in 2007.
The firm is primarily known for its crisis management services and political lobbying. It has won numerous awards from the PR industry over the years for its work in high-profile crisis management, including a 2002 extortion attempt against GlaxoSmithKline and a response described as the ‘gold standard’ for its crisis management of the 1982 Chicago Tylenol poisonings. Other high-profile crisis cases include the manufacturers of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station and Egypt following terrorist attacks on tourists in 1993. At times the company has also been the subject of protests and criticism for its use of smearing and doubt campaigns (to undermine concerns about passive smoking for Philip Morris in the 1990s and anti-Google smear campaigning for Facebook in 2011) and its work for regimes facing severe human rights criticisms (Argentina and Indonesia).
GSK and Philip Morris have been involved in animal research, some of it cruel. Ken Clarke has had business interests in the tobacco industry for years and he is a personal friend of a number of senior executives in that industry. He has close links with Philip Morris.
Gavin Grant would be the ideal man to employ to conduct aggressive smear campaigns against anyone who was witness to Dafydd’s wrongdoing, but an ‘animal rights extremist’? I don’t think so. Anyway, he’s been far too busy.
Now for a trip down memory lane to the early years of Tom King’s incumbency as the Tory MP for Bridgwater. King was elected in 1970, so during King’s first few years as an MP, Ted Heath was PM. It was under Thatcher that King’s career really took off, but then some of those who were not closely associated with the Thatcher project who had knowledge of events under Heath, particularly events that had been concealed, did find that their careers flourished under Thatcher. Thatcher herself paid a visit to Bridgwater, when she was Education Secretary in approx 1973. Thatch was the guest of honour at the Bridgwater Conservative Ladies Luncheon Club. She wowed them and I heard all about it…
Thatch might have waxed lyrical about the morality that was instilled into her by her Methodist upbringing above the grocers shop in Grantham, but her friendships with Jimmy Savile, Peter Morrison and George Thomas suggest that Thatch was in possession of some very mobile goalposts. I read an article recently in which a Tory argued that although it is now accepted that those three were abusing children on a substantial scale, he really did not believe that Thatcher knew about this. She definitely knew about Peter Morrison, she was told on a number of occasions, including by Barry Strevens a police bodyguard, that Morrison was holding sex parties with young boys. Thatch was also warned repeatedly that Jimmy Savile’s ‘private life’ made him unsuitable for the knighthood that Thatch was lobbying for him to have and that if ever he was given a knighthood, things could become very embarrassing if his ‘private life’ became public. Thatch’s response was to lobby even harder on Uncle Jim’s behalf.
Thatch might not have known about this, but some Tories in Somerset were having a high old time back in the early 1970s. There is a weird house in the Polden Hills near Cossington called Moon Cottage. Adults in Somerset always said the same thing when anyone drove past Moon Cottage – ‘that’s the house that Mandy Rice-Davies bought after the Profumo Affair’. I was told that Mandy Rice-Davies never actually lived at Moon Cottage but everyone knew that she had bought it. So what Mandy did there I do not know. I knew the man who later bought Moon Cottage and he definitely did live there. He was called Dan Lewis, he was married to a lady called Sarah and they must have acquired Moon Cottage in the late 1960s. They were involved with the Bridgwater Conservatives and were small business people in Bridgwater. Dan was the eldest son of another Dan Lewis, known as ‘old Dan Lewis’, who was a self-made man. Old Dan Lewis was a railwayman who had made a great deal of money by questionable means. Old Dan Lewis was spoken about by some in tones of disgust, because of his fondness for prostitutes, gambling and other associated pursuits. Young Dan had a brother, Richard, who was married to Rosemary. Richard and Rosemary were in the Bridgwater Conservatives as well.
Young Dan seemed to have quite a lot of misfortunes. No-one had a good word to say for him. Not because he ever did anything criminal and he didn’t have the reputation that his father did, but people were just generally rude about him, making allegations that he was incompetent and neurotic etc. I was far too young to ever draw any conclusions about Dan Lewis, but as an adult I wonder if he might have simply been adversely affected by having a father like Old Dan.
After young Dan moved into Moon Cottage he was repeatedly burgled. He actually lost a great deal of money and valuables as a result of those burglaries. I got so used to hearing about Dan Lewis being burgled that it didn’t strike me as at all odd. Dan Lewis got burgled, it was a fact of life. Dan Lewis was getting burgled at a time when getting burgled was rather more unusual than it is now. Particularly in Somerset. Moon Cottage was a bit spooky looking and there were trees next to it, but Moon Cottage was on the main road across the Poldens, between Bridgwater and Glastonbury, it shouldn’t have been that vulnerable to burglars. The burglars would have been visible to passing vehicles and surely the police should have taken a bit more interest in Dan being targeted in this manner. Dan’s marriage also didn’t last as long as people expected marriages to in the 1970s, Sarah left him but I have no idea of the circumstances. Dan died years ago when he was not that old. I think that he may have killed himself or died in unfortunate circumstances, I remember it being a rather sad untimely end to a difficult life.
At the same time as Dan was being burgled, there were rumours of excess among the Tories living in the Polden Hills. Excess in terms of orgies and swinging sessions. There were a few people in Somerset who had taken the Tories at face value, joined them and had been so shocked at what was going on that they quietly retreated from the scene but didn’t dare publicise what was happening. I don’t mind if Tories hold swingers parties if everyone is consenting adults, but in the light of what is now being revealed about the sexual tastes of some Tories of that generation, I am wondering if the swinging parties might have catered to even more specialised tastes.
The reason why I wondered what was going on was that it was alleged that someone was killed at one of the parties in the Poldens. Not a Satanic abuse inspired ritual killing of a child, but a good old fashioned murder of someone whom it was decided had to be disposed of. The allegations were that the victim was plied with drink until completely drunk and incapable, shoved in the swimming pool and left to drown. I have no idea why, people were so frightened after it got round that this had happened that there were scant details given.
These were members of your constituency party Lord King, do you know anything about it? I only ask because of what you and your associates did to me many years later.
In 1988 when businessmen in Ken Clarke’s part of the world became interested in my father’s employment prospects, Tom King was the Secretary of State for N Ireland. It was in 1988 when a group of young Irish people were jailed for a substantial term for plotting to kill Tom King. I followed the case at the time, there was barely any evidence that they had plotted to kill Tom King, the evidence against them reminded me very much of the sort of evidence that Dafydd produced against me. One of the young men jailed had a mother who was a well-known psychiatrist in either Eire or N Ireland. I can find no references to this case on any internet archive. What’s going on King? That case attracted massive publicity as a potential miscarriage of justice, why have all references to disappeared?
As N Ireland Secretary, King will have been involved in concealing events at Kincora Boys’ Home.
Someone else who might well have known about events in the Polden Hills was Margaret Rees, the high profile Somerset County Councillor who lived next door to Bridgwater Arts Centre and was so outraged at the thought of young people attending music gigs at the Arts Centre that she gate-crashed one such event, in her Marks & Sparks dressing gown, accompanied by the police and shut the event down. Margaret Rees then used her position as a Councillor to stop all such events at the Arts Centre. These events were just young people attending rock gigs, it’s not as if they were drowning people in swimming pools.
Margaret Rees was married to a Top Doctor. Who was an alcoholic. Not a functioning one either, Dr Rees was completely bladdered on a routine basis and it was a real laugh because Margaret Rees could often be seen holding the old boy up to prevent him keeling over.
One of the contingent who was busy in the Bridgwater Tories during the years of excess in the Polden Hills had a celeb daughter. Her daughter was a dancer in the 1960s dance troupe The Young Generation and could be spotted strutting her stuff on prime time TV.
They look like Young Conservatives don’t they. The one in the middle looking heavenwards doing the ‘I’m having one hell of a time’ face is Lesley Judd, who found fame on ‘Blue Peter’ when Val had enough and left the show. It wasn’t the same after Val left.
Years later it was revealed that ‘Blue Peter’ was a bit of a shag fest. Val admitted to having an affair with Pete and at one point she had a secret abortion. That was one story that John Nettleton never told on ‘Blue Peter’, he just confined himself to the Life Of Mozart. Val has angrily denied a lesbian affair with Joan Armatrading.
After ‘Blue Peter’, Val became a Serious Presenter, rather than one who had to pretend that she was concerned with Petra and Patch. Val presented ‘Nationwide’ in the 1970s. Perhaps Val could tell me why Frank Bough was kicked out of the BBC after he admitted enjoying the company of prostitutes and taking cocaine yet Savile, Rolf and Stuart Hall remained fully protected when doing far worse. Was Frank threatening to blow the gaffe on them?
Another member of The Young Generation was Nigel Lythgoe, he’s one of the Young Conservatives pictured above with Lesley Judd. Nigel went into TV production and became Head of Entertainment and Comedy at LWT. It was Nigel who commissioned and produced Blind Date. Which starred Cilla. Blind Date was the show which turned around LWT’s fortunes in the 1990s and made the company so profitable. Cilla was a good friend of Prof Geoffrey Chamberlain of St George’s Hospital Medical School. I worked for Chamberlain when dear old Cilla was the Famous Friend of St George’s. Chamberlain had, when he was younger, experimented upon and then killed a foetus of seven months gestation. At St George’s he was concealing the crimes of Dafydd and the gang in north Wales/Cheshire as well as a linked trafficking gang in south London (see post ‘Now Then…’).
Chamberlain lived in a huge house right next to the All England Tennis Club at Wimbledon. The All England Club of which the Duke of Kent was President. Chamberlain won’t have missed an opportunity to rub noses with him.
Nigel Lythgoe subsequently worked on Popstars, Pop Idol and American Idol. When Nigel was a judge on Popstars, he became known as Nasty Nigel on account of his harsh comments regarding the hopefuls who appeared before him.
Nigel spent his youth and early career in Liverpool, when Dafydd’s gang were running the city and supplying underaged sex workers to VIPs and celebs…
Nigel’s wealth is estimated at $110 million.
Jennifer’s Diary will be bringing the readers of this blog more stories from an insider soon. You’ll read it here first, not in Tatler.
| Sir Peter Morrison | |
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| Robert Grosvenor, The 5th Duke of Westminster | |
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| Gerald Grosvenor, The 6th Duke of Westminster | |
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| Ken Clarke, the Father of the House | |
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Lord Tom King
Lilibet, Shotgun Ronnie and Thatch
This was the foundation stone upon which the regime was built. Unbelievable isn’t it.
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