Dunblane cover- up needs investigating

FINALLY, after a 27- year cover- up, it looks as if justice may at last have come to the survivors and bereaved families of the Hillsborough footballing disaster in which 96 Liverpool fans died, crushed to death in steel- framed spectator pens. The long- delayed judgment of the coroner’s court last week came about only because the pressure for a real investigation into what went wrong, why and who was really responsible never let up.

I have to accept that I am a lone voice but I remain convinced there is another cover- up, just as nasty, that remains uninvestigated and unexposed and it concerns what really lies behind the massacre of children at Dunblane infants’ school seven years later in 1996 in Scotland.

There was a supposed investigation and report by Lord Cullen, a Scottish lawyer, but for me it evoked more questions than it answered. The killer was one Thomas Hamilton and using his own personal armoury he shot dead 16 children and one teacher before blowing his own brains out.

It became clear that Hamilton was a known and practising homosexual who was possibly in a relationship with a senior police officer.

It was also known that he was a child- fancier who acted as a sort of warden at summer camps for disadvantaged children where he could order small boys to bathe naked while he ogled them. Constant complaints by parents finally caused him to be removed from this post and it is assumed the terrible massacre of innocents was his revenge – not on the children but on their parents who had complained about him.

But a score of unanswered questions were not even touched upon by Lord Cullen. Why was this horrible man allowed for years to indulge his voyeurism with children? Why did he apparently have the run of a nearby school for troubled boys? Why was he allowed to keep his personal armoury of handguns?

Why did police HQ at Stirling ignore the protests of the village bobby who knew Hamilton and was convinced his licences should be withdrawn? Why, after the massacre, was the village policeman transferred to the ultimate north of Scotland, out of sight and out of mind?

Was it true that there existed a ring of child- fanciers including lawyers, police officers and politicians which then ran Scotland with a rod of iron? Was it true that a thread of Freemasonry ran through all these professions? If not, why were these persistent rumours not disproved and laid to rest?

WHY did Lord Cullen feel bound to decree that the 10 witnesses he heard in secret should be bound to secrecy and their statements be buried for 100 years? Is it true that investigative reporters were summoned by their editors and told to drop their enquiries? Had the editors been so instructed by their proprietors?

After a disaster there will always be rumours but that is why they have to be chased down and proved or disproved, not just ignored.

It may be that Dunblane will never be accorded the investigation that has finally brought the truth to Hillsborough but I remain convinced there is rotten fish in there somewhere. Too many odd and unanswered questions and too many witnesses told to shut up.