Simon Danczuk hits back at Nick Clegg over Cyril Smith attack

Simon Danczuk

Simon Danczuk, Rochdale’s Labour candidate, has hit back at Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg after he used an LBC Radio interview to cast doubt on the motivation behind Mr Danczuk’s work on historic child abuse.

Responding to a caller on his ‘Call Clegg’ show the Liberal Democrat leader implied that Mr Danczuk’s public campaign to expose the child abuse committed by former Rochdale MP Cyril Smith had been motivated by party politics.

Mr Clegg said: “Simon Danczuk is a Labour politician who chooses to airbrush out the fact that actually Cyril Smith was a Labour politician when he started abusing young children.”

The caller had challenged Mr Clegg on his failure to instigate an internal investigation into how Smith was allowed to get away with his abuse for so long and accused the Lib Dem leader of washing his hands of the matter.

Mr Danczuk has been one of the leading campaigners on the Westminster child abuse ring and co-authored a book on Cyril Smith which revealed his history of abuse, including his time as a local Labour politician in Rochdale.

Mr Clegg later admitted that he has not actually read Mr Danczuk’s writing about Smith but continued to resist calls for the Lib Dems to hold an investigation, claiming that asking the party to take responsibility for Smith was “an unreasonable thing to suggest”.

Mr Danczuk quickly hit back, labelling Mr Clegg’s interview embarrassing and refuting the attacks on his motives.

Mr Danczuk said: “The claims made by Nick Clegg over my exposure of Cyril Smith are untrue and really disappointing. I have always been clear in my campaign on Westminster child abuse that party politics simply does not come into it.

"If Nick Clegg had bothered to check the facts before making these statements then he would know that it was my campaign that exposed Smith’s abuse in the first place and that my book clearly talks about Smith’s time in the Labour Party.

"The truth is that I was the one who exposed Smith and it is Nick Clegg who is trying to airbrush out his party’s role in all of this. His attempt to claim that Smith was not associated with the Lib Dems was embarrassing and won’t have fooled anyone. When Smith died Nick Clegg was one of the first to pay tribute to him and on Smith’s 80th birthday he said he owed him a ‘debt of gratitude’ for helping to keep the Liberals going. Now he is trying to disown him, it won’t wash with the public and it is time Clegg confronted this issue head on.”