The Joy of Six 1451

"Almost a quarter of pupils say they 'never' feel safe or 'only on some days'. ... Half of all secondary school pupils say they 'only sometimes' or 'never' enjoy school, and parents aren’t always aware – they underestimate this figure by a factor of three." Cara Cinnamon on the Department for Education’s newly published pupil experience data.

Prem Sikka states the bleeding obvious – to tackle child poverty the government must deal with parental poverty – but isn't it rare to see it stated?

Is your car journey suspicious? Police forces are trialling AI technology that enables them to identify and track “suspicious” journeys by drivers on Britain’s road network. Mark Wilding and Charles Hymas have the story.

Kathryn Rix explains the legislation that bound MPs suffering with prolonged periods of mental illness from 1886 until legislative reform in 2013.

Starr Charles reports that the Twentieth Century Society has selected 10 UK buildings as part of its annual list highlighting 30-year-old buildings it says deserve to be nationally listed. The society says: "Given that around 30 years after construction is often the point at which buildings are likely to require their first major refurbishment, any listing designation at this point would provide a timely opportunity to ensure that such works recognise and respond to what makes a building significant." 

"Reading the poems now, it is the lyricism that stands out and still surprises. Sometimes it seems as though the subjects Larkin writes about are merely placeholders for the poet’s deeper fascination with poetry, and its relationship with the passing of time." Jeremy Wikeley looks at Philip Larkin's early collection of poems, The Less Deceived.

Derek Nimmo says "P… p… pick up a Penguin"

If you want an accurate picture of Britain in the Seventies, forget Dominic Sandbrook. Look instead for an archive of Nationwide or of TV commercials from the decade.

As everyone is so young these days, this post probably needs a link to something about Derek Nimmo. What this obituary doesn't say is that, along with Clement Freud and Nicholas Parsons, he was part of the Just a Minute cell of Liberal Party supporters.

Clement Freud documentary is on ITV tonight at 11.05

The ITV documentary that gave rise to the revelations about Clement Freud is on ITV tonight at 11.05.

You can find a full preview on the Radio Times site:

The programme is being broadcast in the Exposure strand, the ITV documentary series that first exposed the seriousness of the crimes of Jimmy Savile.

Clement Freud exposed as a child abuser

Embed from Getty Images

A shocking story has appeared on the Telegraph site this evening:

Sir Clement Freud, the former broadcaster and politician, was exposed last night as a paedophile who sexually abused girls as young as 10 for decades. 

Freud, who died in 2009, spent years abusing a girl who he brought up as a daughter, and violently raped a teenager while he was an MP. 

His widow, Lady Freud, has apologised to his victims, saying she is “shocked, deeply saddened and profoundly sorry” for what her husband of 58 years did to them.

It goes on to say:

Freud was unmasked as a child sex abuser after one of his victims contacted ITV’s Exposure documentary team, who also broke the story of Jimmy Savile’s paedophilia four years ago. 

Sylvia Woosley said Freud befriended her family in 1948, when he was working at a hotel in the South of France, and started abusing her when she was 10. 

Four years later, following a family crisis, her mother asked Freud and his wife Jill if they would look after Mrs Woosley, and she found herself living under the same roof as her abuser, being brought up as a daughter. The abuse continued until she managed to move away when she was 19. 

Another woman told ITV that Freud started abusing her in the 1970s, when she was 11, and eventually raped her when she was 18.

The story also makes links with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. I have read before that he befriended her parents in the aftermath, but in following these celebrity abuse stories I have formed the view that a reference to the McCann case is a reliable sign that the author is a member of tinfoil hat brigade.

The 1970s and the Liberal Party of that era seem an even stranger, sicker place tonight.

Later. This story is also on the front page of the Daily Mail.

Later still. Exposure: Abused and Betrayed – A Life Sentence airs on ITV at 11:05pm on tomorrow.

Lord Mackie of Benshie has flown his last mission

Sad news today. Lord Mackie of Benshie - farmer, war hero, Liberal MP and peer - has died at the age of 95.

As his Guardian obituary says:

The whole of his life had been coloured by the war, and like many other participants in that terrible conflict, the experience made him a passionate believer in European unity. 

Much of his political life was devoted to that idealistic concept, including membership of the Council of Europe and a brief spell in the European parliament before it became a directly elected body. He spent many years on House of Lords committees charged with examining EU legislation.

As George Mackie he sat for Caithness and Sutherland between 1964 and 1966. At the time of his death, he was the longest surviving former Liberal MP.

Who holds that crown today?

George Mackie held the crown even when I blogged about it back in 2009. And the silver and bronze medalists then - Clement Freud and Emlyn Hooson - have both died too.

So by my reckoning the three oldest former Liberal MPs are now

1. James Davidson (b. 10 January 1927)
2. Elizabeth Shields (b. 27 February 1928)
3. Eric Avebury (b. 29 September 1928)

James Davidson was MP for West Aberdeenshire between 1966 and 1970. Elizabeth Shields was MP for Ryedale between 1986 and 1987. Eric Avebury, as Eric Lubbock, was MP for Orpington between his famous by-election victory in 1962 and 1970.

Unless, of course, you know better.

Later. Thanks to Greg Stone for pointing me to Elizabeth Shields' date of birth.

An improbably young Clement Freud

#86000123 / gettyimages.com

Clement Freud, who died in 2009, was Liberal MP for the Isle of Ely between 1973 and 1987.

This photograph shows him in 1950 with his fiancee June Flewett, who is better known under her stage name Jill Raymond.

She also has a remarkable claim to literary fame, as Nigel Farndale revealed in the Telegraph a few years ago.

In a yawning, book-lined drawing room in Marylebone, central London, I am left to browse a file of letters written during the war years by CS Lewis to "My dear June". The "June" referred to is Jill Freud, the now 78-year-old wife of Sir Clement, who has disappeared into the kitchen to make a pot of tea. 

In 1944, she was June Flewett, a London convent girl who had been evacuated to Lewis's house in Oxford to escape the Blitz. She was also the inspiration for Lucy Pevensie, the girl who walks through the wardrobe full of fur coats and into the snowflakes of Narnia. 

The premiere of Hollywood's £75million The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was held in London on Wednesday, and Lady Freud had been asked to attend. She had also been asked to fly to America for the premiere there but, as she says in a crisp voice: "I was sure children wouldn't want to be told that this old lady is Lucy."

Lord Bonkers' Diary: The Liberal Detective Agency

Thursday

Little Steel, by contrast, has a lot of explaining to do, as he was informed long ago that Smith was far from being the clean potato. “We were a political party not a detective agency,” he has taken to whining about those years before we merged with the SDP Party. I am afraid conscience bids me explain why this is nonsense.

In the mid 1970s, when we were at something of a low ebb, I went to Steel and said: “As the politics is not going so well these days, we need a second string to our bow. What about all this crime you read about in the newspapers? We Liberals are intelligent fellows and should be able to help bring the bad hats to book.”

And so the Liberal Detective Agency was born. With Alan Beith’s sleuthing, Clement Freud’s pioneering work in psychological profiling and Nancy Seear’s willingness to play bad cop to David Alton’s good cop, we enjoyed no little success. The money the agency made was ploughed back into the party’s campaigning, with the result that we survived the 1979 general election in better shape than any commentator had dared predict.

I fear for Steel’s reputation when this comes out, and come out it will, as I am in advanced negotiations with an independent moving television production company about bringing the tale to the screen. I only hope he finds his missing locus before it is broadcast.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West 1906-10.

Previously in Lord Bonkers' Diary

The elves in my covert

An inflatable Julian Huppert

Spotting a wrong 'un

Liberal MPs in the movies

Make Mine Mink from 1960 is a pretty dire film, despite some nice Terry-Thomas moments and an interesting cast including Billie Whitelaw, Hattie Jacques, Kenneth Williams, Jack Hedley (the senior British officer in the Colditz television series) and a young Peter Vaughan.

But another bit player really grabs the Liberal viewer's attention. Because, yes, that is Clement Freud, later to be Liberal MP for the Isle of Ely from 1973 to 1987, behind the Bonkeresque moustache.

So did any other Liberal MPs appear on screen?

This blog has already recorded one other example from a far more distinguished film. Cecil Beresford Ramage, later to play the Crown Counsel in Kind Hearts and Coronets, was Liberal MP for Newcastle West between 1923 and 1924.

Over to you, readers...