Labour group express further shock at Sir Cyril revelations

The site of the former T&N factory

Local Labour politicians have expressed shock and disbelief at the latest allegations to emerge about Sir Cyril Smith’s relationship with asbestos giant T&N after correspondence between Sir Cyril and T&N directors was revealed exclusively to Rochdale Online readers last week.

Rochdale's Labour group believes that an alarming picture of collusion has emerged, as the full extent of Sir Cyril’s working relationship with the asbestos giant is revealed.

Responding to the newly released cache of letters, one Labour councillor sounded a clear warning – that the scandal must be dealt with properly and should not descend into a political fight.

“Dealing with asbestos related diseases should never be a party political issue and the revelations concerning Cyril’s involvement with T&N should not be the trigger for a political dogfight,” cautioned Councillor Ibrar Khan, who was himself recently on the end of a stinging public attack from Sir Cyril. “Our position is that we simply want the truth to be told and mistakes to be accounted for. Sir Cyril’s legacy needs to be examined and all political parties must work together to ensure that similar mistakes do not happen again.”

He added that had been very disappointed in the constant denials about Sir Cyril’s involvement that had been issued from Paul Rowen’s office; a position that he understood the Liberal Democrats nationally did not support.

“The bald facts of this expose are very, very worrying,” he said. “The documents show that Sir Cyril went way above what a constituency MP should be doing and did not include any balance in the way he represented the concerns about asbestos. He wined and dined the directors of T&N, asked them to write his speeches, met up with them to refine his speech, promised to read it ‘ten times’ so he could commit it to memory, met up with them the night before this important debate and ensured they got the best seats in the public gallery. This is a clear case of political lobbying and I’m afraid this resulted in a lot of lives being lost because Sir Cyril ensured that the real debate about the dangers of asbestos was stifled.”

Rochdale’s Labour Parliamentary Candidate, Simon Danczuk, believes that the publication of the original speech that had been sent to Sir Cyril from T&N, showed that Sir Cyril’s claim that the speech he made in Parliament represented ‘his own words’, was simply untrue.

“When I looked at the two speeches – the T&N speech and the one Sir Cyril gave in Parliament, I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “There is incontrovertible evidence that Sir Cyril had words put into his mouth by T&N to promote their cause. No wonder he wrote to them and underlined his concern that his speech should not be sent to the Labour MP for Heywood at the time, Joel Barnett. I am sure he knew that what he was doing was unparliamentary and improper.”

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Article edited 24 September at the request of former Labour Councillor and T&N shop steward Tom Stott who informed Rochdale Online that comments attributed to him in the Labour Party release were not authorised by him.

Simon Danczuk told Rochdale Online that Mr Stott did agree for his comments to be included but said: "he has obviously changed his mind now".