My friend’s tormentors MUST be punished

LaST Friday, the solicitor to 92year-old Field Marshal Lord Bramall received the most mean-spirited imaginable communication from the Metropolitan police. More than ten months after one of Britain’s most distinguished soldiers was subjected to a mob-handed police raid followed by an interview under caution about allegations of historic sex abuse, he was told the investigation is being dropped.

There is insufficient evidence to justify a prosecution, says the letter. Having exhausted all possible lines of inquiry, no further action will be taken – and here is an odious sting in the tail – ‘unless new information is forthcoming’.

There is no smidgeon of expressed regret for subjecting edwin Bramall to a hideous ordeal on the basis of risible allegations by one unnamed individual.

The Commissioner of the Met, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, cannot bring himself to do the only decent thing in the circumstances: issue a statement declaring that after a full investigation, the charges against the Field Marshal have been found wholly without foundation.

I speak with passion about this case, partly because Dwin Bramall, as everybody knows him, is an old friend. I wrote here last March that it seemed inconceivable that the allegations against him were true. Beyond the personal issue, however, there is an important general principle at stake.

Since the exposure of Jimmy Savile, sex abuse allegations have been made against a range of high-profile people. Some charges are supported by credible and circumstantial evidence from a range of witnesses – for instance, those concerning former Liberal Mp Cyril Smith and ex-Labour Mp Lord Janner, both now dead. It is entirely right that several elderly showbusiness figures have been convicted and imprisoned for their criminal misconduct.

amid the rightful charges, however, some malicious people or fantasists have made claims against public figures – most prominently edward Heath, Leon Brittan and Lord Bramall – which seemed grossly implausible. Yet never did the police officers conducting the Operation Midland inquiries seem to acknowledge a duty of care towards those falsely accused, matching their responsibility to the victims of real abuse.

Consider the disgraceful conduct of Superintendent Kenny McDonald, who said in December 2014 that claims made by a man know only as ‘Nick’ – which appear to have embraced Lord Bramall – were ‘credible and true’.

He APPEALED for victims to come forward, making the reckless promise that they ‘would be believed’. McDonald should, of course, simply have said their claims would be ‘fully investigated’. He has since been moved off the case, but remains a serving officer.

Meanwhile, Wiltshire police held a press conference outside edward Heath’s old house in Salisbury cathedral close, following crazy allegations against the former prime minister which have since been comprehensively discredited. Leon Brittan, the ex-home secretary, went to his grave last January without vindication or apology from the police for the aggressive fashion in which they pursued the claims of a single accuser against him.

almost unimaginably worse, weeks after his death the police staged a raid on the home of Brittan’s grieving widow, seeking further evidence. The allegations have since been exposed as rubbish.

Twenty officers – 20! – spent the day searching the Hampshire home of Lord Bramall, while his wife avril was dying of alzheimer’s disease. He says she kept asking him during the search what all those people were doing in the house, and it should be a source of deep shame to the police that Lady Bramall died before his name was cleared.

So what did that ten-hour search produce? The officers left after removing the only evidence they thought relevant – a copy of a speech he made to young soldiers, in his role as head of the army.

When he was interviewed under caution a month later, specific allegations were made: the Field Marshal in the 1970s was said to have attended pool parties with Jimmy Savile; to have sexually assaulted ‘Nick’ in company with two other generals, Sir Roland Gibbs and Sir Hugh Beach; to have assaulted ‘Nick’ on several dates at which he was not even serving in Britain.

These charges merited only contemptuous laughter, but instead the police spent the ensuing nine months, no less, searching for corroborative evidence to sustain them. During that time, I heard some people who should know better say ‘the police must have got something serious on the old boy to keep the inquiry going’.

Much of the media repeatedly recycled the charges, and with a few honourable exceptions such as columnists Dominic Lawson, Charles Moore and Matthew parris, implicitly treated them as plausible. Dwin was haunted by fear that he would die – a scenario that would surely have suited the police, otherwise impaled on their own bungling – before his name was cleared.

Matters have turned out a little better than that, thank heavens; but not much better. The egregious Hogan-Howe and his subordinates are not men enough to apologise for the mess they have made of this case, following their Brittan fiasco. But they have a clear duty at least to initiate proceedings against ‘Nick’ and his kind.

If Lord Bramall – and probably others – are innocent, then their accusers must be either deranged or extremely wicked. It seems wrong that anyone should be able to make false allegations of such gravity, then escape scot-free. The charges have caused unimaginable misery to several families, and wasted large amounts of police time and thus public money. prosecutions seem essential, to deter others from doing likewise.

DuRING the past year, I have written and spoken about the monstrous nature of this case. a few people – BBC interviewers and one retired policeman – have challenged me, saying: ‘people like you are typical – demanding special treatment because of who your friends are.’ Not so. We want justice for all those falsely accused, but if the person in the case is famous, the charges against them hit the front pages. The tallest poppies have furthest to fall.

Dwin Bramall has seen his lifelong reputation, dating back to the days when he fought in Normandy in 1944, later winning a Military Cross on the road to the Rhine, grievously tarnished. He has been exposed to sniggering, suspicion and frantic anxiety, because of charges which a responsible investigation would have dismissed in an hour. He has needed more courage than he showed on the battlefield to endure the ordeal. Field Marshal Lord Guthrie, who has known Bramall even longer than I have, said at the outset: ‘I would sooner believe a sexual abuse charge against me or you, Max, than against Dwin.’

Think how you would feel, if accused as Bramall has been accused, then similarly treated. In my nightmares I can imagine somebody, who for some reason hated me, playing the same evil gambit if they supposed that the police would assist them in broadcasting calumny. even if my family and friends continued to support me, I would collapse in a heap if I found every drawer in my house being rifled by detectives, apparently willing to believe that I had assaulted a young man.

I spoke to Dwin yesterday. although vastly relieved that the case is being dropped, he is now considering what he should do next, and whether he should demand an apology from HoganHowe, which he surely deserves.

He also revealed that his legal fees for fighting to clear his name are £8,000, by no means an insubstantial sum for an elderly man who may not be poor, but is certainly not rich, either.

‘I’m looking for any way I can to get this back, and I feel the police ought to pay,’ he said. ‘Obviously, there’s a fat chance they will do so.’

None of us, amid all this, forgets the rights and human tragedies of the victims of genuine sex abuse by prominent people. But we diminish our society by allowing pursuit of the guilty to degenerate into a witch-hunt, in which the Met police has become deplorably complicit.