Cyril Smith

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Smith, 1987

Sir Cyril Smith (born June 28, 1928 in Rochdale , Lancashire , † September 3, 2010 ibid) was a British politician.

Smith was a member of the House of Commons ( MP ) for Rochdale from the Rochdale by-election, 1972 to the 1992 general election . 1976/77 he acted as the highest ( English chief ) Whip of the Liberal Party . He is considered a political maverick and changed his party membership several times.

He remains in the collective mind of his posterity because of his corpulence, his role in an asbestos scandal and allegations of child abuse .

Life

Smith was born out of wedlock in Rochdale, Lancashire with no publicly known father. He described himself as socially disadvantaged . He grew up in a small house with his mother - a maid for a local textile factory family - a half-brother and half-sister, also illegitimate, and his grandmother.

Career

Smith was active from 1945 as a member of the Liberal Party in local politics in Rochdale. In 1950 he joined the Labor Party and sat on the Rochdale Council for them. In 1966 he became Mayor of Rochdale. In 1967 he returned to the Liberal Party . After he had been defeated by the Labor candidate Jack McCann in the 1970 general election, after his death he won the by-election on October 26, 1972 with almost a dozen percentage points of the vote. On November 2, 1988 he was ennobled as a Knight Bachelor and in December 1998 accepted as a member of the Order of the British Empire .

Afterlife

In November 2012, Smith's successor in the Rochdale seat Simon Danczuk ( Labor ) called for a commission of inquiry into the allegations against Smith.

Following Smith's death, several allegations of child sexual abuse were made public, leading the Greater Manchester Metropolitan Police to believe he was a serial sexual offender.

bibliography

  • Cyril Smith: Big Cyril: Autobiography 1977, ISBN 0-491-02261-1 .
  • Reflections from Rochdale: As I Saw it and as I See it (1997) ISBN 1-85187-340-6 .
  • "Cyril Smith", entry by Tim Farron in Brack et al. (eds.) Dictionary of Liberal Biography (Politico's, 1998)
  • Simon Danczuk , Matthew Baker: Smile for the Camera: The Double Life of Cyril Smith . Biteback, 2014, ISBN 978-1-84954-644-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sir Cyril Smith . In: The Daily Telegraph , Telegraph Media Group, September 3, 2010. 
  2. ^ Smith, Cyril: Big Cyril: Autobiography . WH Allen, London 1977, ISBN 0-491-02261-1 , pp. 18 .
  3. ^ Martin Wainwright: Cyril Smith dies, 82 . In: The Guardian . September 3, 2010. Retrieved February 19, 2018.
  4. ↑ Knights and Dames at Leigh Rayment's Peerage
  5. ↑ London Gazette . No. 51558, HMSO, London, 13 December 1988, p. 13986 ( PDF , English).
  6. ^ Rochdale MP calls for Cyril Smith 'indecent assault' inquiry . In: BBC News , November 13, 2012. 
  7. ↑ Sir Cyril Smith: Former MP sexually abused boys, police say . BBC News. November 27, 2012.
personal data
SURNAME Smith, Cyril
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British politician
DATE OF BIRTH June 28, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Rochdale , Lancashire
DATE OF DEATH September 3, 2010
Place of death Rochdale , Lancashire