The probe into an alleged paedophile network at the heart of the British Establishment took an explosive turn last night with the revelation that Enoch Powell’s name has been passed to police.

The Mail on Sunday can reveal that the late Tory MP, one of the most prominent and divisive politicians of the 20th Century, has been named to Scotland Yard by the Bishop of Durham. The claims relate to ‘ritual satanic abuse’.

And in a further development to the sex-ring investigations, police are to be given access to secret files held on MPs in the House of Commons archives as they hunt for evidence on suspected abusers, including former Liberal MP Cyril Smith.

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Historic: Enoch Powell's name was first linked to sex abuse claims in the 1980s

The Bishop of Durham, Paul Butler, contacted police after Powell’s name was passed to him by a former Bishop of Monmouth, Dominic Walker, who first heard the allegation when he was a vicar counselling young adults in the 1980s.

The claim is being examined by Operation Fenbridge, one of a number of police probes into ‘Establishment paedophile rings’ – including an investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission into claims that officers dropped their inquiries under pressure from powerful individuals.

A Church of England spokesman said: ‘The name of Enoch Powell was passed to Operation Fenbridge by one of our safeguarding team on the instruction of Bishop Paul Butler.'

Mr Walker is believed to have warned the Right Rev Butler that at the time he was told of the claims against Powell, unsubstantiated allegations of satanic rituals – often involving the abuse of children – were widespread.

In 1994, an investigation by the London School of Economics into 84 alleged cases of ‘satanic abuse’ in the UK between 1987 and 1992, including notorious cases in Rochdale and the Orkneys that involved social workers and police forcibly removing children from their homes in dawn raids, found no convincing corroborative evidence.

Report: Paul Butler, the Bishop of Durham, passed the name to Scotland Yard after hearing it from the former Bishop of Monmouth

However, the ongoing scandal over how serial paedophile Jimmy Savile was able to evade detection for decades has led institutions to take a safety-first approach, so the Church felt it had no option but to pass on the information to police.

Enoch Powell’s frontline political career ended abruptly in 1968 after he made his infamous ‘rivers of blood’ speech warning about the dangers of uncontrolled immigration.

Tory leader Edward Heath sacked him from the Shadow Cabinet the following day, although Powell remained an MP until 1974.

Shortly after he died in 1998, aged 85, it was revealed he had admitted to a friend, Canon Eric James, that love poetry he had written as a youth had been intended for a man – but that he did not want the fact revealed while he was alive.

Although Powell became a hero of the Right, his intellectual and oratorical skills earned him admirers on both sides of the political divide. A devout member of the Church of England, he had two daughters with his wife Pamela.

Sources close to one of Scotland Yard’s sex-ring investigations say officers contacted Lawrence Ward, the Commons Serjeant at Arms – the Commons’ most senior security official – earlier this month to ask him to search the files kept on all MPs. It is understood that no information was uncovered implicating MPs in abuse, sparking fears at Scotland Yard that some of the evidence might have been shredded.

Now Mr Ward is believed to have told officers that, if they produce a warrant, they can enter the Commons to investigate the files themselves on a ‘case by case basis’.