Paul Malpas

It must have been in the early 1970s, possibly the winter of 1972 when an extra special case of mistaken identity took place in the suburbs of South Manchester.  As I was witness to this particular incident and saw what happened, I will never ever give credence to charges brought against a person accused of a crime and picked out at an identity parade by an acceptable witness to such a crime.

The players in this particularly unfortunate incident were:-

Alan Malpas, my father, in his prime at this time, 54 years old, mild mannered in ladies’ company, surly and unapproachable in male circles, with a sharp temper kept under control but liable to break out unexpectedly in moments of stress, a Conservative councillor for Longsight, in Manchester. married to a Justice of the Peace, deputy chief apparitor of St. Robert’s Church in Longsight, a pillar of the community and a big fish in a small pond, who had a name to look after.

Howard Skelton, a fine upstanding Longsight man who had served his time as a printer and at 6’2″ tall and about 17 stone weight, was  not a man to mess with.  Captain of  East Levenshulme cricket team, he doubled as a very competent opening batsman and wicketkeeper.  He decided at about 30 years of age to join the Greater Manchester Police force.  He was a man of the streets, feared nobody and these particular traits soon brought him to the attention of his superiors and at this time, having been recently promoted to Sergeant, had taken over the desk  at Didsbury Police Station in South Manchester.  At 35 years old, he was a man on his way up and liked by everyone who had no reason to fear him.

Paul Malpas, myself, a humble sub-contractor in the civil engineering industry, carrying out drainage works on motorways all over England, returning often to Manchester when the work enabled and joining up with old friends like Howard, to enjoy a couple of pints and also to further his betrothal to Helen Towey, the love of his life.  Howard and Paul had a long acquaintance from East Levenshulme Cricket Club and we both enjoyed a few off duty drinks at Longsight Conservative Club.

Kevin Malpas, my younger brother by 16 months, who was another man to fear, 6′ 0″ tall and 16 stone weight, with a nose to prove more than a passing interest in a clenched fist.  At one time training to be a missionary priest, he had passed his vocation up when he realized he would have to leave Manchester to carry out his duties.  With drink taken, his anger would surface very quickly and his change of personality was not nice to watch.  However on more than one occasion Howard had steered him from danger by using a more superior force than Kevin could muster.

Brian Cain, a diminutive taxi-driver, having to work night shifts at his precarious occupation, driving round the wilds of drug and drink laced Manchester, faced with increasing costs he could not control from a supposedly regulated industry which in fact was one out of control, with rogue drivers paying service to a gangster culture that was slowly gaining command of the streets of the town.  Brian, an Englishman with Dublin connections, was a man at the end of his tether.

Helen Towey, an unassuming, honest-to-goodness type of girl and the prospective wife of Paul Malpas, hoping shortly to marry her intended in the following March, on St. Patrick’s Day.  Helen was a quiet and kind girl whose Mayo parents had come to Manchester 35 years previously to escape the poverty of De Valera’s Ireland of the 1930s and obviously knew how to keep their heads below the parapet.

A.N. Other, a man about town, of lower working class extraction, who, although a good and honest worker during the week, followed the habits of his stock by dressing up on Saturdays and spending the day and night drinking in the many legal and illegal drinking clubs of South Manchester, eventually regaining his doorstep and sleeping off his excesses on the Sunday, penniless until the following Thursday.

Scene 1.

Howard Skelton, the desk sergeant at Didsbury Police Station is halfway through his Saturday night shift.  It had been a busy one, with a stabbing outside a pub 100 yards from the station, a couple of loons full of something or other who thought they were Bruce Lee, three or four drunks who did not know where they lived and a local whore who had tried to steal a few quid off a customer who she thought was sleeping off his excesses at the local hotel.  The six cells were overflowing, Howard had had enough and he was thirsty, he was managing the station and could not get out like the beat bobbies, to enjoy a pint after time in one of the local hostelries.

A stuttering fart of a taxi-driver enters the station, effing and blinding.

Brian Cain. I’ve been shuttling this fellah round Didsbury for half an hour, he is that drunk he does not know where he is, never mind where he wants to go to and I want my fare.

Howard goes out to the taxi and immediately recognizes the drunk as Kevin Malpas and gives him a playful tap on the jaw to waken him.

Howard’s playful taps normally knocked out offenders and this was no exception, the man was now prostrate in the back of the cab.  He turned to the surprised driver and told him to follow him back into the station.

Howard. OK taximan, I know this fucker, the best and easiest way to get your money is to take him to this address, 2 Birchfields Road in Longsight.  I will ring them now and tell them you are coming.  They will pay you.  They are alright OK.

Brian.  Fuck me, OK then

Scene 2

It was after midnight on a Saturday night/Sunday morning, Paul Malpas and Helen Towey after enjoying a couple of pints and a game of cards in the bar at Longsight Conservative Club, nothing too grand for this serious courting couple who were saving like mad for their forthcoming nuptials. They had decided to call in to see Alan’s wife Margaret and chew the cud for half an hour.  The phone rang at this late hour and Alan picked up the phone with some trepidation.

Alan. Hello

Howard. Is that you, Alan?

Alan. Yes

Howard. I have that dickhead son of yours outside the station in a taxi, he’s as pissed as arseholes.  I am telling the taxi-driver to take him to your house, you pay the driver and knock some kind of sense into that prick son of yours.  It is either that or I am locking him up and he will be in front of a special magistrates court in the morning.

Alan. Thanks Howard, send him round and I will deal with him and the driver.

Scene 3

Alan Malpas, his eldest son Paul and his very concerned future wife, Helen Towey are stood on the pavement outside  2 Birchfields Road waiting for the taxi to turn up.  Lights approach, a taxi is recognized and Alan puts out his hand for the cab to stop.

Brian. I’ve been told to bring this fellah round to you.  Can I have my fare please.

Alan. Hang on a minute while I get this bollocks out

He opens the back door and the Kevin is just coming round from Howard’s playful tap when he gets an humdinger from his father who, I know from painful experience, packs a fair punch. Alan skuldrags Kevin out of the taxi by his legs and drags him to the hedge.

Alan. Sorry about this driver, how much do I owe you?  He is my son and I will take care of him now.

Brian. I’ve been driving him around for ages  and he could not tell me where he lived.  That will be £5 10 shillings please.

Alan.  Bloody hell, you must have been driving around all day.  Here’s your money now fuck off.

Turning round he gives Kevin’s now supine body a few kicks and attempts to pull him up, Paul observantly exclaims.

Paul.  Hang on a minute, that’s not Kevin.

Alan. Course it is Howard said……….

Gathering our thoughts and leaving the drunk lying against the gatepost Alan and Paul, followed by the distressed Helen return to the house to phone up Howard.

Howard. Didsbury Police Station here.

Paul. What the fuck is going on. This taxi pulls up with a drunk in the back, you told us it was Kevin, my dad as given him a few wallops and we find out it is not him.

Howard. Well it was Kevin in the back of the fucking taxi here. You must have signalled the wrong one to stop.

The three witnesses slowly walk back out to the battered victim to apologize for their mistake only to see him staggering off along Birchfields Road, rubbing his jaw with one hand and soothing the pain from the kicks he had received with the other and no doubt ruminating on whether a Saturday night out on the town was worth it.  They also wondered what kind of hooch the Desk Sergeant at Didsbury Police Station was on during a very busy Saturday night shift.

It was the spring of 1967, the wage freeze brought in by the Labour Government was at its height, which was no good to a thrusting young man like myself and Barbara Castle, the Transport Minister, had brought in the Road Traffic Act that introduced us all to the breathalyser.  I was working for John Laing Construction and I took the chance on a transfer to North Tees General Hospital in Stockton on Tees, which was in its construction phase, hoping the lodge (money given for working away from home) and a few other little financial rewards would see me through this lean spell.  This move was another step up the ladder, for which I doubt that my immature self was ready for, but as they say money talks.

Although away from home and having to rely on one wage instead of my accustomed three with my part time jobs, I was enjoying myself.  For most of the time I lived in Durham Town, having spent the initial period in various digs in Stockton and Sedgefield.  The first night in Stockton I had been given the telephone number of lodgings on the A177 which I rang and put on a bit of a show, telling them of my advanced position on the staff of John Laings and were there any vacancies?  “Come along pet and we’ll fix you up” was the lady’s reply.

Imagine my shock after reporting to this house.  I was shown a bedroom with seven single beds in it and no vacant floor space.  I was pointed to one in the corner and told to make myself at home and to come down to dinner, immediately.  I went into the dining room where there was a large table with about 20 men sitting round it and they all looked as though they had not washed for a week.  They were employed as mechanical engineers, fitting out the expansion of ICI Billingham, a large chemical works up the road.  Beds were at such a premium, the kitchen had been converted into a bedroom and an open ended timber lean-to had been attached to the back of the house and cooking facilities installed.

The first sitting, of which I was one, were fed and we left the table leaving white circles on the tablecloth at every seat where a plate had sat.  The area around the plates had suffered grease and oil damage from the unwashed hands of these men.  It was not their fault, there was no washing facilities in the house, only beds.  Off to the pub they went returning at 11.oopm to bed, no wash and up at 6.00am for work.  The night’s drinking fluids was shot out the window as each man felt the need.  I did not sleep a wink with the toing and froing  and the snores out of every manjack of them.

I signed out next morning, never to return and spent the next few weeks in the comfort and security of a brand new YMCA hostel in Stockton.  Stockton was not the best of places and most of the lads I was working with lived north of the town, so up I moved to Sedgefield into fairly reasonable accommodation.  This place is now immortalized as being the parliamentary seat of Tony Blair, but then it was a sleepy little village with a laid-back socialist MP.  I became friendly with him having met him at the bar of a local pub.

He had been to Oxford before the war, a contemporary of Harold Wilson at Jesus College.  He often used to talk of Wilson pacing up and down his college rooms knowing that politics was his barrow but not knowing which party to join.  So much for left and right.  Wilson was the forerunner of centre politics so much enjoyed by Tony Blair and New Labour.  I presume Nick Clegg, the Liberal leader in this new coalition had the same dilemma.

After a month or so in Sedgefield the bright lights of Durham came beckoning.  Durham was a university town with a council set in the dark ages.  A local bylaw forbade the presence of launderettes, so we had to drive six miles to Chester le Street to wash our clothes.  Durham Town at that time was also the centre of a vast mining area and the aldermen of the town thought that the introduction of launderettes might make it too easy for the women.  We youngsters and students had no women round us, none that would wash clothes that is.

The Miner’s Gala was the high spot of the year.  It was a massive celebration of the political power of the mining unions.  There used to be a grand march with each colliery having a float flying their own banners, all fulminating in a fiery speech by the leader of the Labour Party.  Their day however was to be shortlived Ted Heath and Maggie Thatcher were on the horizon and Durham finally got its launderettes, but long after I left.

We used to drink Nimmo’s 4X, an explosive brew from Hartlepool, in a pub opposite Durham Jail, called The Dun Cow.  The prison officers going on and coming off duty regaled us with stories of the prisoners, one notable one being Ian Brady, the Moors Murderer.  Weekends were spent at and around the homes of a group of lads I got to know in Durham, who all lived out in the mining community of Ushaw Moor.  The two hours previous to the Sunday lunch were spent in Ushaw Moor Working Men’s Club sinking about 12 pints of Federation beer with the fathers of these lads and then it was off to one of the houses for a slap up feed from their mothers who had pity on me “awah frae yam”.  Which means “away from home” in Durhamese.  There was always three vegetables on the plate along with potatoes and lumps of roast meat, I had never eaten so well.  Of all the places I worked in and around England, this place impressed me the most for its kindness and generosity.

The political chaos was getting worse and there was no let up in the wage freeze.  I applied for a job with Costain Civil Engineering and after an interview at Selby Power Station in North Yorkshire, I was accepted as an Assistant Quantity Surveyor on twice the money I was receiving from John Laing.£2,000 per annum or £40 per week, with the lodge I was loaded once more.  It shows you how long ago that was as I was reading somewhere recently that the Generating Board or whatever they call themselves these days were closing that power station down.  It was a brand new, state of the art, station then.

When I handed my notice in John Laing’s Chief Quantity Surveyor, John Renshaw, came up to see me, offering more money and ways round the political impasse.  He was a nice man  who played the trumpet in the Salvation Army band in Mersey Square in Stockport every Sunday morning and went on to become the managing director of the company a few years later, one of the very few bosses I ever had any time for.  However I thought his offer was too late.  If they had wanted to retain my services they should have thought of these detours round the laws before now.  I thanked him for his kind offer but still left.

The late 1960s and early 1970s was the decade in which most of our motorway system was built and Costain and the Fairclough/Alfred MacAlpine consortium were at the forefront of the firms vying for these lucrative contracts.  I was sent onto their Advanced Bridgeworks contract at Swinton, north of Manchester.  There were bridges over the River Irwell, at the Robin Hood interchange, over the A666 and a really complicated one over the A580 East Lancashire Road.  This was a contract let before the main motorway, the M62 came through.  The date was April 1968 and I was in my third job since leaving school in September 1963.  I was 22 years old and earning more than my father ever earned.

With some surprise, but not a lot, we learn that Sean Brady of Armagh is staying on as leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland, despite being instrumental in allowing the priest, Smyth, to continue in his priestly duties of sexually abusing children for nearly 20 years after he discovered this man’s predilections.  Instead of doing what he preached, he is saying that he is the best man for the job.  Why, oh why, is there not proper energy in the Church.

On cue and if as in echo of the last paragraph of my blog yesterday, John Morgan, a lawyer and Chairman of the National Board for Safeguarding Children says “clearly, a cultural correction is required in the Irish Church to deal with the problem of abuse” and Maeve Lewis, executive director of that exemplary One in Four victims support group says “Cardinal Brady states that he has consulted with survivors but he has certainly not listened to what they have said.  Survivors……..need senior Catholic churchmen to be accountable for what they have done and resign”.  Ms Lewis went on to say that if Brady was genuine about overseeing change, he should challenge the adversarial legalistic response that many survivors meet when they attempt to bring their experiences to the attention of the diocesan and congregational authorities.

However Brady, who I am sure thinks he is God says “I want to maintain the momentum towards better child safeguarding and renewal of faith, which is essential here and a big challenge”.  Not for you matey, your momentum stopped in 1975 when as a canon law lawyer you allowed Smyth to continue on his merry way.

Ian Elliott, Chief Executive of the National Board for Safeguarding Children and not a lawyer, but a good Presbyterian social worker, which is a massive improvement on the legal nannies which seem to massively overpopulate these boards, said Brady was wrong, his actions did not safeguard the children, he did not prioritise them.

In the Board’s second report published on Monday last, it disclosed that there were 197 new allegations of child physical, emotional but mostly sexual abuse that had been notified to the Board’s offices in the last year and Mr. Elliott wonders “how many more others are out there”.

Finally Brady ended his non-resignation statement with the biggest load of old cobblers I have ever heard, when he said “I know that this (decision) is painful, even if I am a lame duck cardinal, it is the right thing to do and that’s what I am prepared to do even if it costs me a great personal sacrifice”.  What sacrifice is he talking about, he has already sacrificed the children to 18 years of Smyth’s torment.  My guess is that he wants to stay there to attempt to ration the amount of information that he lets out to the Safeguarding Board and its officers and above all to try and keep his own name clean.

The last say on this matter rightly comes from Christine Buckley of the Aislinn Centre in Dublin, an abuse survivors self-help group, who has fought for 20 years to bring out the truth in this scandal, she said yesterday “The only strengths respected by the Catholic Church are power, prestige, secrecy and money.”

My thanks to John Cooney of the Independent and Patsy McGarry of the Irish Times for their and their newspapers in depth reporting of yesterday’s, once more, negative day for the Catholic Church in Ireland.

Now that I am rid of delightful grandchildren, wife’s bad backs and volcanic dust clouds, I can get back into the groove again,  ie, the never ending quest for words to put into my blog.  Some days I sit looking at a blank page for hours then something clicks and I am off, other days I wake up with an idea in my head and then struggle for hours to put it into acceptable form.

This idea came to me at 6.00am this morning as I sat reading an article by Ali Bracken, the Sunday Tribune’s crime correspondent, about sexual abuse by five staff members of young boys in St. John’s National School in Sligo over a 30 year period.  Three were Marist brothers and two were lay teachers.  The Garda say there was no evidence of a paedophile ring but it is a remarkable coincidence that most of these men taught at the school at the same time.  To make matters worse after a very thorough 11 year garda investigation, one of the Marist brothers, eventually convicted of 35 counts of sexual abuse against four boys  between 1968 to 1977 wriggled that much it took four trials to eventually nail him.

What was surprising was the leniency of the sentencing in the five separate trials.  The victims felt themselves let down by the courts.

Peter White (Brother Agnellus) In 2005 he received three years on eight sample charges of indecent assault  for “unfathomable torture” on two boys after pleading guilty

Patrick Curran In 2005 he was found guilty and sentenced to 12 years reduced to nine years on appeal for assaulting nine boys between 1966 and 1984.  He originally denied 237 counts of indecent assault on ten boys in the same periopd.  He was still teaching at the school when these allegations came to light.

Michael Cunnane In 1999 he received a three year suspended sentence for 11 counts of indecent assault on three boys after pleading guilty

Martin Meaney (Brother Gregory) In 2008 he received a two year sentence for five sample counts of indecent assault against one seven year old boy after pleading guilty.

Christopher Cosgrave (BrotherChristopher) Convicted after four trials of 35 charges against four boys over a nine year period.  He walked free from court this month because of time already served.  He has never admitted his guilt.

Now I would suggest these specimen charges must have just been the tip of the iceberg in this Sligo school.  God knows how many occasions have gone unpunished, but even so the punishment is, just on these specimen charges, lenient.

Whilst Cosgrave was wriggling, I have been conducting my own inquiry into a priest who has remained unpunished.  Perhaps his premature death at 62 years old in 1968 saved him from his punishment on earth, but let us hope he has received it in the place he espoused.

Most of you supporters of my blog will already know of my search for truth in relation to Monsignor Thomas Duggan, late Rector of St. Bede’s College, Manchester and I will not bore you with a repeat of his sins.  Suffice it to say that I am gathering a portfolio of testimonies on the sexual conduct of this priest and things are moving apace, as the Safeguarding Commission of the Salford Diocese now want to interview me and discuss the evidence collected.

Today I am not about to reveal the statements made by these ex-pupils (now professional men, some retired, in their 60s and 70s) but I have become fascinated by the language used by the middle-aged men of Sligo and the diaspora of former pupils of St. Bede’s.

Phrases like “he picked out the weak boys” and “reign of complete terror”, “physically violent beyond belief”,  “I put it out of my mind and did not think of those days” and “how could you tell your parents” repeat themselves so often in both inquiries.  Those men were all working to a pattern  as though taught it at some third level campus.  If the Garda say there is no evidence of a paedophile ring, there seems to me to be evidence of a learnt paedophile mentality as though the position and learning attracts.

These Safeguarding Commissions set up on both sides of the Irish Sea by the various dioceses are riddled with lawyers who do not know how to show empathy and understanding, but are selected to form defensive bastions willing to shrug off all allegations.  I understand the argument about wheat and chaff but I do think empathy comes first.  a psychotherapist or some such person would be a better first port of call than a hardbitten legal man,  It does show you though that the Church is thinking more of pounds, shillings and pence, rather than the healing of tortured minds and bodies.

This corruption went on years ago, it went on last year, it is still going on today, these paedophiles have just reorganized their strategies and the future is bright for them.  The Church and the Government need to understand this and get the right pegs in the correct holes and forget the retribution from sins passed.  Get positive.