Cyril Smith, English politician (d. 2010)
Sir Cyril Richard Smith (28 June 1928 – 3 September 2010) was a prominent British politician who after his death was revealed to have been a prolific serial sex offender against children. A member of the Liberal Party, he was Member of Parliament (MP) for Rochdale from 1972 to 1992. After his death, numerous allegations of child sexual abuse by Smith—including many made during his lifetime—emerged, leading law enforcement officials to believe he had been guilty of sex offences.
Smith was first active in local politics as a Liberal in 1945 before switching to Labour in 1950; he served as a Labour councillor in Rochdale, Lancashire, from 1950 and became mayor in 1966. He subsequently switched parties again and entered Parliament as a Liberal in 1972, winning his Rochdale seat on five further occasions. Smith was appointed the Liberal Chief Whip in June 1975 but later resigned on health grounds. In his later years as an MP, Smith opposed an alliance with the Social Democratic Party and did not stand for re-election in 1992; however, he remained loyal to the Liberal Democrats upon the parties' merger. Throughout much of his career, he maintained a high profile in the media and became a well-known public figure.
In later years, Smith's public esteem was considerably marred by the allegation that he had been involved in a cover-up of a health risk at a local asbestos factory. In 2008, there were calls for Smith to be stripped of his knighthood after it was revealed that he had asked the asbestos company Turner & Newall to prepare a speech for him in 1981 in which he declared: "the public at large are not at risk from asbestos". It was later revealed that Smith owned 1,300 shares in the company. In 2008, Smith said that 4,000 asbestos-related deaths a year in the UK was "relatively low".
In 2012, following allegations of child sexual abuse, the Crown Prosecution Service formally admitted that Smith should have been charged with such abuse during his lifetime. In November 2012, Greater Manchester Police (GMP) Assistant Chief Constable Steve Heywood said there was "overwhelming evidence" that young boys were sexually and physically abused by Smith.
In April 2014, it was reported that there had been 144 complaints against Smith from victims as young as eight years of age. Attempts to prosecute Smith had been blocked. Public authorities--including Rochdale Borough Council, the police, and intelligence services--have been implicated in covering up Smith's alleged crimes. In 2015, it emerged that Smith had been arrested in the early 1980s in relation to some of these offences; however, a high-level cover-up reportedly led to destruction of evidence, Smith's rapid release within hours, and the invocation of the Official Secrets Act to prevent the investigating officers from discussing the matter.