The Paedophile MP: How Cyril Smith Got Away With It

Cyril Smith

Dispatches, Channel 4's award-winning investigative current affairs programme, is to broadcast a programme entitled 'The Paedophile MP: How Cyril Smith Got Away with It' next Thursday.

The programme guide says: 'Liberal MP Cyril Smith was knighted in life and celebrated in death. Behind this public face, Dispatches reporter Liz MacKean investigates Smith's paedophilia and uncovers the inaction by police officers, Security Services, politicians and the Crown Prosecution Service, which allowed Smith to abuse for decades.

'MacKean speaks to victims, police officers and colleagues, and unearths previously hidden investigation files to reveal why Smith's crimes were ignored and how one of Britain's most famous politicians was protected by the establishment.'

Twelve men, including current Rossendale councillor Alan Neal, have accused the late Liberal Democrat MP for Rochdale, who died in 2010, of abusing them at a hostel and a school in the 1960s.

In November 2012, Greater Manchester Police acknowledged Smith was a sex abuser of boys in the late 1960s.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has admitted Smith should have been charged with sex crimes more than 40 years ago.

Lawyer Alan Collins, of Pannone law firm, said the abused had been vindicated "40 or 50 years too late".

Rochdale's current MP Simon Danczuk called for an inquiry into the role of MI5 in a potential "cover-up" of abuse by Smith in the 1960s.

Mr Danczuk also said: "There is no doubt that Cyril Smith seriously sexually abused young boys: why the CPS didn't prosecute more recently is puzzling.

"There are questions to be asked about why the prosecutions didn't take place, not just in the 60s, but in the 80s and the early 90s."

Smith stood down as the Liberal Democrat for Rochdale in 1992. He had been a Labour councillor in the town in the 1950s and 60s.

The programme will be aired on Channel 4 at 11.05pm, Thursday 12 September.