The life and reputation of the long-serving former Labour MP and barrister Greville Janner, Lord Janner of Braunstone, who has died aged 87, were overshadowed and ultimately discredited by credible allegations that he had been a serial sexual predator and abuser of young boys in his Leicester constituency for more than 20 years.

Last April, Alison Saunders, the director of public prosecutions, announced that Janner would not be prosecuted only because he had Alzheimer’s disease and was not in a fit state to instruct lawyers or enter a plea, so that a trial would not be in the public interest.

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He would have been charged, had he been fit to stand trial, with 16 indecent assaults on males under 16 and six counts of buggery on male minors, at dates between 1969 and 1988. He had been investigated by police three times over more than 20 years, following allegations, but on each occasion there had been a decision not to prosecute him, apparently after pressure from senior sources, presumably at Westminster.

After the allegations were voiced publicly in court in 1991, during the trial of Frank Beck, a Leicestershire care worker and child abuser, Janner was cheered in the Commons when he roundly denounced the allegations, but following the DPP’s announcement in April, Roger Bannister, the assistant chief constable of Leicestershire, said: “There is credible evidence that this man carried out some of the most serious sex crimes imaginable over three decades against children who were highly vulnerable and the majority of whom were in care.”

The decision not to prosecute him led to complaints by both police and victims of child abuse, amid suggestions that Janner’s activities had been covered up because of his position in the establishment.

An independent review overturned the DPP’s ruling, in favour of a rare form of hearing known as a trial of the facts, aimed at establishing whether the offences were committed as charged, but without the possibility of a conviction. Janner made a brief appearance at a magistrates court in August, but was not required to appear in court after that. This month, in a hearing at the Old Bailey, he was formally found unfit to stand trial in person, and the trial of the facts was scheduled to start next April.

The allegations, denied by Janner’s family, undermined what had been a distinguished career, not only as a politician but, at least equally important to him, for decades a leading member of Britain’s Jewish community.



He had succeeded his father, Barnett Janner, to what became almost the family constituency in the suburbs of Leicester, held successively by father and son for more than 50 years. The story went that Barnett’s late decision to stand down came so soon before the 1970 general election that the Vote Janner posters had already been printed, and Barnett suggested his son might replace him, to save reprinting costs.

Greville did not deny the tale and went on to hold Leicester North West, then, under redrawn boundaries, Leicester West, for 27 years. Both father and son eventually became members of the peerage, Greville ennobled by Tony Blair when he stood down from the Commons in 1997.

It was said that Barnett’s shadow haunted Greville for much of his life. Barnett’s parents had escaped Lithuania in the 1890s to settle in Cardiff, and their son made his way up through the law, as a solicitor and in politics, marrying Elsie Cohen, whose father owned a furniture shop in London. Greville was born in the year after their marriage and had a comfortable middle-class upbringing in London, where his father became briefly a Liberal MP before the second world war and, in 1945, Labour member for North Leicester. Greville was evacuated to Canada during the early part of the war and returned to study at St Paul’s school before going to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, to read law, becoming president of the Cambridge Union and chair of the university Labour Club. He subsequently became a barrister and, in 1971, a QC.

Janner never became a minister, perhaps because he was not sufficiently clubbable, although rumours circulated privately in parliamentary circles, headed off by threats of legal action. He chaired a number of all-party international friendship groups and was a long-time member, through the 1980s and 90s, of the select committee on employment. He chaired that committee between 1992 and 1996, before a putsch by Tory members forced him out because of one of his many lucrative extra-parliamentary interests, advising well-paid industrial executives of precisely the sort the committee was investigating.

Short, dapper in dress and manner, and inclined to waspishness, Janner never notably under-promoted himself. He claimed authorship of 66 books – many with his name in the title – mostly standard textbooks concerned with employment and industrial relations law, but also manuals on public speaking and presentational skills for would-be MPs, businessmen and trade unionists. He was a life member of the National Union of Journalists, a long-time director of the Jewish Chronicle and, for many years, a member of the Magic Circle. As an assiduous self-publicist, he once appeared at BBC Radio Leicester unannounced, demanding to be interviewed. When told that there was no journalist available to ask him questions, he simply asserted that he would interview himself and his questions could then be edited out and revoiced by a staff reporter later – which was done.

Janner’s later career was dogged by the accusation, originally made by Beck during his trial in 1991, that the MP had sexually abused a youth, Paul Winston, whom Janner admitted having once tried to help. Winston supported the claim, but in the Commons Janner vehemently denounced the allegation as an attempt to frame him and he received all-party support, including that of the Labour party’s then leader, Neil Kinnock. He unsuccessfully pressed the Conservative government to amend the law of contempt of court, to prevent the media reporting “disgraceful, contemptible and totally untrue allegations” made under the cover of legal privilege. In late 2013, Leicestershire police conducted a two-day search of his London flat as part of an investigation into historic child sexual abuse cases, but the peer was not arrested.

Janner devoted much of his time to supporting Jewish organisations. Like his father, he became a member and then president (1979-85) of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. He was a firm defender of the state of Israel and vocal opponent of antisemitism in his party, in Britain and abroad. He spoke nine languages. For many years he was a vice-president of the World Jewish Congress and chairman of the Holocaust Educational Trust. He had been a junior war crimes investigator after the war during his national service, was a member of the Commons all-party war crimes group for 10 years, and played a major part in fostering the annual day of remembrance for genocide victims in Britain in January. He was also a promoter of legislation to allow Britain to prosecute war criminals whose crimes occurred outside British jurisdiction.

Janner married Myra Sheink in 1955, and they had a son, Daniel, a QC who was briefly a Labour candidate but later joined the Tories, and two daughters, Laura, a rabbi of the Jewish Reform movement and a regular broadcaster, and Marion, director of the social justice charity Bright. Myra died in 1996, and Janner is survived by his children.