Pro-paedophile group leader 'routinely stored campaign material at Home Office'

Steven Adrian Smith worked as electrical contractor at Westminster building



He was employed by Home Office between 1979 and 1982 to monitor alarms



This was at same time as he chaired the Paedophile Information Exchange

Group campaigned for abolition of age of consent and acceptance of abuse



He allegedly used lockers at the Home Office to store details of child abusers

Later said scandal did not come to light as 'ruling class had to be protected'



Smith jailed indefinitely in 2011 for possessing indecent images of children



Sickening: Steven Adrian Smith is said to have hid details of child abuse in a room at the Home Office

The fo rmer head of a pro-paedophile activist group routinely stored campaign material at the Home Office, it has been claimed.

Steven Adrian Smith was working as an electrical contractor at the Westminster building between 1979 and 1982 - and allegedly used locked cabinets in his office to hide details of child abusers known to the Paedophile Information Exchange.

The information comes as extraordinary new claims pointing to an Establishment cover-up of child sex abuse by senior politicians emerged last night.

Smith, who was jailed indefinitely in 2011 for possessing indecent images of children, became head of the Paedophile Information Exchange in 1979 - arguing for the abolition of the legal age of consent.

While chairing the pro-paedophile group, security cleared him for employment monitoring alarm systems at the Home Office's then headquarters at Queen Anne's Gate in Westminster.

Now the BBC claims to have seen a first-hand account of his time at the Home Office - published in a 1986 book which is now in a restricted area of the British Library - in which he allegedly admits to storing information on paedophiles in the building.

The BBC quotes Smith as saying: ' I had a furnished office completely to myself seven days a week on a rotating shift basis.'

'Much of PIE's less sensitive file material was stored in locked cabinets there, where no police raid would ever have found them,' it says he added.

The Home Office declined to comment on the allegations, but said an inquiry into whether the Paedophile Information Exchange received public funds is ongoing.

The BBC says Smith's alleged claims are corroborated by witness statements at two later trial involving members of the Paedophile Information exhange.

In 1984 a jury heard Smith had used a Home Office telephone as the main contact number for his group, while in 1991 it was claimed a sickening magazine detailing accounts of sexual experiences with children was probably 'published' inside the Home Office building.

Smith eventually left his Home Office job when his security clearance was cancelled after an anti-child abuse campaigner infiltrated the Paedophile Information Exchange and revealed him to be chairman.

Another member of the Paedophile Information Exchange was also said to be working at the Home Office alongside Smith when the scandal came to light.

As the details emerged, a Home Office spokesman said it was 'unlikely' Smith ever met the then Home Secretary Willie Whitelaw, and also denied he had ever worked in the security department.

Outrage: Members of the Paedophile Information Exchange were hit with eggs, insults, stink-bombs and rotten fruit as they arrived for their first open meeting in London in 1977

THERESA MAY BOWS TO PRESSURE TO ORDER INQUIRY INTO ALLEGED WESTMINSTER CHILD ABUSE RING Theresa May is preparing to order a wide-ranging review into allegations of child abuse at the heart of the political establishment. The Home Secretary will use a statement in the Commons to announce a Hillsborough-style investigation by a board of experts. But she will stop short of the full judge-led public inquiry, such as Lord Leveson’s report into the press. Mrs May will tackle head on the Home Office’s apparent failure to properly investigate allegations of child abuse in the 1980s. In particular, she will face questions over 114 relevant files dating from 1979 to 1999 which have been destroyed or lost. Amazingly, four allegations of abuse made to the Home Office were not passed to the police for up to 35 years. Mrs May will also address ‘whether public bodies and other institutions have taken seriously their duty of care towards children’, the Home Office said. The inquiry is expected to take place at the same time as a QC-led review into how the Home Office lost more than 100 files alleging organised abuse. The government has come under pressure to offer a wide-ranging review, amid mounting claims of abuse.

But in his own account of the incident, Smith allegedly said he was surprised that the discovery went effectively unnoticed by the media as he felt it could have forced Whitelaw out of government.

'Obviously the 'ruling class' had to be protected,' he is said to have written.

Smith was eventually given an indeterminate jail sentence in 2011 for possessing indecent images of children.

The allegations emerged as current Home Secretary Theresa May faces questions from MPs over accusations that politicians, the police and even her own officials have suppressed allegations against powerful individuals for decades.

Some 114 files ‘potentially relevant’ to child abuse are now known to have been lost or destroyed by the Home Office.

And, incredibly, at least four specific allegations relating to child abuse in Home Office files were not passed to police for up to 35 years, officials have now admitted.



The claims have only been handed over in the past 12 months.

In an explosive intervention, former Tory Cabinet Minister Norman Tebbit said the evidence suggested there ‘may well have been’ an Establishment cover-up, beginning in the 1970s and 1980s and continuing to this day.

‘At that time I think most people would have thought that the Establishment, the system, was to be protected, and if a few things had gone wrong here and here, that it was more important to protect the system than to delve too far into it,’ Lord Tebbit said.

The peer, who served in the Cabinet in the early 1980s, added: ‘That view, I think, was wrong then and it has spectacularly shown to be wrong now because the abuses have grown.

Scene: Steven Adrian Smith worked at the Home Office's headquarters (right) at Queen Anne's Gate in Westminster. He later said the scandal could have brought down then Home Secretary Willie Whitelaw (left)

LORD BRITTAN RAPED ME, CLAIMS WOMAN: CONSERVATIVE PARTY GRANDEE DENIES ASSAULTING 19-YEAR-OLD STUDENT AFTER A BLIND DATE IN 1967 A woman has described how she was allegedly raped by former Cabinet Minister Leon Brittan after a blind date when she was a 19-year-old student. The woman claims Lord Brittan – then in his late 20s and a rising star in the Conservative Party – raped her at his London home after they went on a date in 1967. Lord Brittan, who went on to become Home Secretary under Margaret Thatcher, strenuously denies her allegations and has instructed Mishcon de Reya, the former lawyers of Diana, Princess of Wales, to defend him. Allegations: A woman has claimed she was raped by former Cabinet Minister Leon Brittan (pictured with his wife) after a blind date when she was a 19-year-old student The 74-year-old maintained his innocence when he was interviewed under caution by detectives last month – more than a year and half after she first made her bombshell allegations. His supporters claim that he is the victim of a politically motivated smear campaign and are confident he will clear his name. His questioning by officers happened weeks after his accuser told her story to a Sunday newspaper. The woman, now 66 and reported to be a Labour Party member, did not identify Lord Brittan in her interview. Instead the article referred to her alleged attacker as a future Tory Cabinet Minister who lured her to his flat on a pretence and led to his bedroom ‘like a lamb to the slaughter’. Lord Brittan, who went on to become Home Secretary under Margaret Thatcher, strenuously denies her allegations and has instructed Mishcon de Reya, the former lawyers for Diana, Princess of Wales to defend him The accuser, who was referred to in the interview only by the name Jane, said she was ‘struck dumb with terror’ as he attacked her. She claimed: ‘It lasted just a few minutes. But they were long moments in my life. ‘It was dark in the bedroom, and I could not see much. I remember him on top of me being very forceful.’ The woman reported the alleged attack to police in 2012 – 45 years after she claims it happened – when detectives opened an investigation into an alleged VIP paedophile ring involving politicians and dignitaries in the 1970s and 1980s. But after apparently consulting the Crown Prosecution Service, police told her they had no plans either to arrest or to interview Lord Brittan. However, campaigning Labour MP Tom Watson wrote a letter to the Director of Public Prosecutions, Alison Saunders, criticising the police’s decision not to question the peer. Legal sources said Mr Watson also complained to Met chiefs about the alleged inaction, prompting senior detectives to perform a U-turn and interview Lord Brittan after all.

The Paedophile Information Exchange was set up in 1976 and campaigned for the removal of age of consent laws. The group regularly prompted angry public protests (left) in the late 70s and early 1980s. Steven Adrian Smith was replaced as chairman of the group by prominent paedophile activist Tom O'Carroll (right)

PAEDOPHILE INFORMATION EXCHANGE ENCOURAGED ABUSERS TO WRITE TO EACH OTHER AND CALLED FOR PUBLIC ACCEPTANCE

The Paedophile Information Exchange was set up in October 1974 by Michael Hanson to campaign for the removal of age of consent laws.

Under the guise of 'alleviating the suffering of many adults and children' the group called for public acceptance of paedophilia and child abuse.

Through PIE's regular 'Contact Page' bulletin, paedophiles were able to write to one another anonymously and exchange information on their life stories and experiences of abusing children. PIE was affiliated with the National Council for Civil Liberties (now known as Liberty) with members attending meetings.

In March 2014 evidence emerged that PIE had received grants totalling £70,000 from the Home Office, after a whistle-blower told police he witnessed a successful three year grant renewal application for £35,000 in 1980, implying that a similar grant had been made in 1977.

A number of senior Labour Party politicians have also been linked to PIE due their involvement with NCCL. Current Labour party leader Harriet Harman met her husband - the MP Jack Dromey - while working for the NCCL during its affiliation with PIE. In addition, former Secretary of State for Health Patricia Hewitt was NCCL's general secretary for nine years. Harman later denied she had supported the work of PIE while employed by NCCL.



Lord Tebbit's intervention fuelled growing demands for a full Hillsborough-style public inquiry into a series of toxic allegations, including claims of abuse by the late Liberal MP Sir Cyril Smith and allegations of paedophile activity at parties attended by politicians and other prominent figures at the Elm Guest House in Barnes, southwest London.

Mrs May – who yesterday remained silent on the scandal engulfing her department – will face a storm of criticism from MPs as she gives a statement in the Commons today.

An 'explosive' dossier of evidence of historic child abuse allegations against at least eight public figures was compiled by campaigning Conservative MP Geoffrey Dickens, who died in 1995.

But the 114 files now known to have been either lost or destroyed, fueling fears of a cover-up at the heart of the establishment.

Previously two copies of the dossier were known to have existed - one kept by Mr Dickens and later destroyed by his wife, and the other handed to then recently appointed Home Secretary Lord Brittan.

But there were claims in The Independent today that a third copy of the dossier was created by Mr Dickens and sent to then Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Thomas Hetherington. What became of this third copy of the dossier is not yet known.



This follows fresh claims made in The Independent today that a copy of the missing paedophile dossier was also handed to the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Two copies of the file were thought to have existed: one which was handed to then Home Secretary Lord Brittan



In other developments it emerged that former Tory Home Secretary Lord Brittan has been questioned by police over an historic allegation of raping a woman and a Labour peer is under investigation after 12 men made allegations of ‘horrific’ child abuse dating back decades.

Today it emerged that a third copy of an 'explosive' dossier of child abuse allegations against at least eight public figures was sent to then Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Thomas Hetherington (right). Another copy, now known to have been either lost or destroyed was sent to then Home Secretary Lord Brittan (left)

