LORD JANNER – A PROFILE

At the peak of his powers, Greville Janner was an energetic and crusading campaigner who had an eye for creating a newspaper headline.

But years after his death, he has yet to shed the rumours that dogged the latter stages of his life and undermined an impressive career.

Lord Janner’s death in December 2015 was met with deep sadness from his proud family, and also from those who accused him of sexually abusing vulnerable boys. His loved ones were left to mourn the death of an eccentric and cherished public servant, who they wholeheartedly believed was innocent of any wrongdoing.

For those who said their childhoods were blighted by his abuse, it left them without the prospect of justice – for shortly after and as a result of his death, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced the criminal investigation into the Labour peer had been dropped.

The latest strand of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse will, however, “not (be) an investigation into Lord Janner’s guilt or innocence”, inquiry chairwoman Professor Alexis Jay has said. Indeed, none of Lord Janner’s alleged victims will give live evidence.

Greville Ewan Janner was born in Cardiff on July 11, 1928.

Raised for a time in Canada and London, he read law at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, before becoming a barrister and then a QC.

He went on to describe himself as an author, journalist and broadcaster, capable of speaking multiple languages including Hebrew.

But it was as a politician – following in his father Barnett Janner’s footsteps as Labour MP for Leicester North West, as was, in 1970 – that he made his name.

A distinguished career in Westminster followed, including as the champion of Jewish causes such as a campaign to prosecute alleged Nazi war criminals living in the UK. His departure from the Commons at the rise of New Labour in 1997 coincided with his appointment to the Lords as Baron Janner of Braunstone.

But by this time his name had been tarnished. It was in summer 1990 that Leicestershire Police received an allegation that Lord Janner abused a youngster at a children’s home in his constituency many years before.

The following year, children’s home carer Frank Beck shouted Greville Janner’s name during his own trial over abuse allegations. The Labour MP dismissed the accusations and police dropped any investigation into him, the first of three clear opportunities to investigate and charge him, an independent report later claimed.

Lord Janner had been living with Alzheimer’s for five years by the time he took a leave of absence from the House in 2014. The extent of his mental degeneration was laid bare during a 59-second appearance at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in August 2015.

It was only after he was threatened with arrest that, after months of legal to-ing and fro-ing over whether the ageing peer should be spared the ordeal – and perceived humiliation – of appearing in court to answer 22 historic child sex abuse charges, Lord Janner was brought before the court.

Dressed in a soiled bottle green cardigan, blue T-shirt and navy trousers, and using a walking stick, he entered the hushed courtroom saying: “Oooh, this is wonderful.”

It was his last appearance in public. He died on December 19, 2015, nearly a fortnight after a High Court judge ruled a so-called “trial of the facts” be held the following year due to Lord Janner being too unwell to stand trial.