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Reconstructing The Spanner Operation 1983 to 1990

Comment

If Hames had reportedly been appointed as Head of Obscene Publications in 1983, but Ian Donaldson had in fact remained in that post until 1989, had his work actually been more related to the historical appointment of Witchfinder General (as chosen in 1983 by the General Synod of the Church of England) between 1983 and 1989 when it is claimed he took over the reins of the OPB from Donaldson?

If Hames did not fill the post of Head of OPB until 1989, and claims that he had no part in the OPB until that date, then his role was to undertake the Christian Family Values campaign from 1983 to 1989, (which covers the whole of Operation Spanner)

If both Donaldson and Hames were at the OPB from 1983 to 1989, with Donaldson as Head, then it would suggest that Donaldson had been appointed by the Met and not the Church, as the Church are only allowed the one appointment at a time, and that Hames’s role in addition to his appointment by the Synod until 1989 was as Witchfinder General and not Head of OPB;
And if so,
That would mean that the Church had specifically appointed a Witchfinder to undertake the Family Values campaign AKA Operation Spanner.

Why would the position then have to be filled by a General Synod appointment and not a Met one?

What special qualities related to “obscene publications” would have been used in the campaign by a policeman (placed in the role of a rookie Witchfinder General) that could not have been fulfilled by the experienced Head of the Obscene Publications Squad, nor his experienced teams?
Or was there another agenda with over 640 raids?

What intent, if any, on the part of the Church of England does this signify?

The traditional appointment of “Witchfinder General” would have essentially demanded an extraordinary level of satanic/ occult knowledge and practice that would have necessitated a very high level of masonic abilities and standing of any individual applying for the role.

Would there have been some special quality, talent or ability related to those secret occult practices, (or some special secret ability from Michael Hames’s past) that may have been therefore relied upon for the Christian Family Values campaign, a.k.a. Operation Spanner, and put into effect before, during or after the 640+ raids, that would thus indicate the Church of England’s requirement: that could only be enacted by a Witchfinder General rather than the OPB; and would indicate as to why both a Witchfinder General, and possibly also Michael Hames, had been chosen by the General Synod for the task?

Or did some sort of exemption come with the role and appointment?

Or had both of these factors been incumbent with the Office of Witchfinder?

For what reasons had these qualities. powers, abilities or exemptions (and not the Obscene Publications Squad) been specifically required for either part of the operation. and what were they?

Comment

“People said to me: ‘DON’T YOU WANT TO KILL THEM?’”

Would anyone really ask this question of a policeman?

Why would they think a supposed “public servant” would have considered killing?

““People always said to me, ‘Don’t you want to kill them?’ But you had to remain objective,” he says. Videos in which children were terrorised and tortured were seized by what was known colloquially as “the Dirty Squad”.”

https://spotlightonabuse.wordpress.c…them-4-4-2000/

( Yet he was, presumably, not interested in the makers, traffickers, suppliers, murderers, torturers, profiteering, nor elite users from/related to those videos?)
https://forum.davidicke.com/showpost…8&postcount=73
https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/…pplement/10308
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/c…es-pkqnhjbrv8b
https://forum.davidicke.com/showpost…1&postcount=16
http://google-law.blogspot.co.uk/201…lpine-and.html

Comment

However it is entirely possible that Donaldson remained with the OPB for some time in order for Hames to be “sat next to Nelly” as he had no experience of the specialist unit, (having been appointed by the General Synod).
It is therefore feasible that both were at the helm for the earlier part (late 1983-86) although the intelligence gathering with Gay Galaxy (at the very least) was already under way when he was appointed. Nevertheless, by the time of the bulk of Spannermen raids, commencing in Spring 1987, Hames was in control of the operation and personally carried out these raids with his teams, charging the men under Common Law.
It is not known if Manchester police or others were also involved in any way with the earlier raids during the first part of the operation.

Comment

Michael Hames had been appointed Head of Obscene Publications specifically to forefront the new “Christian Family Values” campaign commencing in 1983, when Thatcher and Hames were both members of the House of Laity. So why are Hames and his predecessor, Ian Donaldson both claiming (falsely) that Hames only joined the OPB in 1989?
Why would Hames not wish to be associated with his own campaign?
http://timtate.co.uk/blog/of-generals-and-child-abuse/ (This is mostly propaganda)
https://cathyfox.files.wordpress.com…3/spanner1.jpg

Comment

Whether by design or not, Operation Spanner had in effect been a cull of gay men by Church and State under the banner of “Christian Family Values”, using the camouflage and later addition of the Spannermen case and the cover of the false official story surrounding their arrests, which signalled the end of the official Operation, in 1987 (except for the charging).

It is believed that suicide notes, where applicable, may have been either written by another hand to some degree, or written under duress.

The fact there had been a blanket cover-up of the figures alone raises further questions, without even looking at the (possibly abundant) contradictory evidence.

— What had the police hoped to achieve by raiding over 640 gay men after covertly soliciting or seizing correspondence relating to their confidential sexual preferences and fantasies?

— What had happened to that confidential information collected from hundreds of gay men?

— Why had there been over 100 early deaths of those raided?

— In what way were the raids intended to further the cause of the Church of England General Synod campaign for “Christian Family Values”?

— What other actions had been mounted under the “Christian Family Values” Campaign, if any?

— Had the Campaign leader (Michael Hames) been equally concerned with the confidential sexual preferences and fantasies of heterosexual men?

— Why had search warrants been issued for over 640 gay men stating mostly “child pornography” and “snuff movies” when over the course of the four year investigation, no such discoveries had apparently been made, nor charged?

— Whom had been responsible for providing that false information?

(Well to answer both the above questions, we now know as of 2021 that it is most probable that nobody had supplied false information, and that is was more likely the search warrants were false instead.)

— Why had a multi-million pound investigation been undertaken whilst based on false information?

— Why had the operation not been terminated in it’s early stages in 1983/84 once the information had been found to be false?

— Why had the sources and trafficking of such material, whilst known by the Home Office, (with examples [featuring politicians] seized at Dover in 1982) not been targeted during the operation?
https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/…pplement/10308

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/c…es-pkqnhjbrv8b

— Under whose authority had the operation been mounted?

— Under whose authority had the costs been sanctioned?

— Why had the first part of the operation been carried out in full secrecy, and the second part with front page splashes in the mainstream media which contained mostly false and misleading information?

I will not insult the intelligence of any reader by providing the rather obvious answers to some of the above questions.

Comment

Why had the alleged suicides of over 60 men (after police raids) been withheld from public release from the 1990’s?

When and by whom had they been raided?,………. and when and under what circumstances had they met their deaths?

What had they been accused of?,……… and which Gay Galaxy advert numbers were they linked to?

What had been confiscated from them?……….and what correspondence had been sent and received by them?

Why had a businessman attending a drinks party at the Harford address been targeted (in December 1983- whilst on the ground surveillance and trespassing by identified third parties around 1am in the morning had been discovered/in operation) and was later found suicided at his own home in the Home Counties (following a police raid in early 1984)?

Manchester Police had become actively involved with the Spannermen following a threat of unspecified physical harm on behalf of third parties, made personally against the Bryn Alyn whistleblower, by the Assistant Principal Director of Manchester Children’s Services on 7th November 1983, whom had been acting both as child procurer (one of many) for John Allen, (possibly for many years), and as a middleman for other authorities.

The corruption was later reported by Williams to the Prime Minister and both leading Opposition Party leaders in May 1985, but why had there been no acknowledgement or reply from the Home Office following the matter being passed to them by No.10?

It is believed the authorities have a copy of the complete recording from November 1983, which includes the threat.
(Ref: Lost In Care, 21.115). – No action to be taken by North Wales police against Greenwood, “as he is now retired”,(decision taken 1992). Copy of recording including threats still with NCA police as of 2014.

Comment

Had the historical and traditional role and appointment of / to the Office of the Witchfinder General carried with it historical and traditional powers by royal letters close?
And, if so;
Through the solicitation of requested correspondence (and any such evidence perceived as repugnant by the church) by agents acting covertly on behalf of the Church of England, had those historical and traditional royal powers been summarily exercised against gay men?

Comment

So, as we can see from the above, the Spanner case was more heavily influenced by religion over matters of law, and the law was thus used in an inappropriate manner in order to convict the men. However the Church of England has the power to amend by way of “measure” Common Law where, for instance religious matters (in this case religious morality or influence) may be perceived to be under threat.

The purpose of the Spannermen case (from 1987 on) was to criminalise and incarcerate the men,

And therefore the questions as to why should these actions have been so required arise, (unless of course you are aware of the related facts).

The end result had been a demanded requirement in 1987 prior to the raids and arrests.

The case had thus been “reverse engineered”, thereby leading to inevitable conflicts with other case law.

The fact that the offences were initially related to “morality” , and were not at the time viewed as criminal offences, would indicate the Church of England influence over the Courts –
with both matters being criminalised under the OAPA, and the eventual judgements. That the case was also investigated and arrests/charges brought by the General Synod’s “Witchfinder General” leaves nothing to doubt. They had not been concerned so much with Obscene Publications, but more with personal sexual activities between consenting adults.
The claims of “Satanic Paedophile Sex Ring making Snuff Movies” plastered all over the msm front pages in big letters during the trial had been their failed attempt to gain public sympathy and support that became an obvious misnomer to anyone who had actually been witness to any of the hearings; their numerous false justifications for both the intended and eventual incarcerations could not withstand scrutiny of any depth at all.

Of course, the fact that most actions in the Operation had been made to satisfy the requirements of a Crown sacrificial ritual throws another light on the evidence altogether.

Comment

Lord Mustill’s dissenting objections to the charges brought against the Spannermen.

R v Brown [1993] 2 All ER 75 House of Lords

“The issue before the House is not whether the appellants’ conduct is morally right, but whether it is properly charged under the Act of 1861. When proposing that the conduct is not rightly so charged I do not invite your Lordships’ House to endorse it as morally acceptable. Nor do I pronounce in favour of a libertarian doctrine specifically related to sexual matters. Nor in the least do I suggest that ethical pronouncements are meaningless, that there is no difference between right and wrong, that sadism is praiseworthy, or that new opinions on sexual morality are necessarily superior to the old, or anything else of the same kind. What I do say is that these are questions of private morality; that the standards by which they fall to be judged are not those of the criminal law; and that if these standards are to be upheld the individual must enforce them upon himself according to his own moral standards, or have them enforced against him by moral pressures exerted by whatever religious or other community to whose ethical ideals he responds. The point from which I invite your Lordships to depart is simply this, that the state should interfere with the rights of an individual to live his or her life as he or she may choose no more than is necessary to ensure a proper balance between the special interests of the individual and the general interests of the individuals who together comprise the populace at large. Thus, whilst acknowledging that very many people, if asked whether the appellants’ conduct was wrong, would reply “Yes, repulsively wrong”, I would at the same time assert that this does not in itself mean that the prosecution of the appellants under sections 20 and 47 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861 is well founded.”

http://www.e-lawresources.co.uk/case…Brown-1993.php

Comment

When they (the Spannermen) were arrested the crimes did not actually exist. Under British law it had always been accepted that consent was a defence against charges of assault in consenting sex
http://www.qrd.org/qrd/world/europe/…ration.spanner

Comment

“stitch up”
1. phrasal verb
To stitch someone up means to trick them so that they are put in a difficult or unpleasant situation, especially one where they are blamed for something they have not done.
[British, informal]
He claimed that a police officer had threatened to stitch him up and send him to prison. [VERB noun PARTICLE]
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/di…lish/stitch-up

Comment

It can now be confirmed that at least one of the regular advertisements placed by the OPB in the gay contact magazine “Gay Galaxy” (and mentioned on page 1) in 1983/84 was additionally offering to swap extreme videos “with cash adjustment either way”.

Although some would possibly argue that this is acceptable behaviour on the part of the police – it has to be emphasised that it was not criminal behaviour per se that was being targeted, but rather;

(a) gay men and their practices were the intended targets of the dragnet sting

(b) The “potential defendants” arising from the first part were never given a chance to defend themselves

(c) Disdain was not limited to specific groups or sections; nor law breaking – anyone not following a Puritanical mindset was considered “fair game”. (This can be checked with James Anderton’s track record alone)

– However, in order to curry favour with the public at large, this was carefully marketed and sold as hatred of paedophiles (hence the constant references to “child protection” even in the spanner case – which proved to be false).
In reality, the purpose was to divert attention AWAY FROM elite paedophilia and the very real snuff movies being mass-produced. If Andrea Davison was so easily able to find evidence of this trade in North Wales alone,without assistance, it would have been common knowledge amongst those tasked with “prevention”, whether shared with team members or not.
Similarly, It would appear that simple research into matters at Bryn Alyn, rendered Scallywag magazine full of intricate detail about John Allen’s porn empire and contacts.
The Office of the Witchfinder General would have been privy to much, much more than Scallywag could ever hope to come across by journalistic means.
– Even the local Welsh Council were well aware of John Allen’s activities in North Wales (and elsewhere).
Children were regularly moved from home to home to hinder traceability.
The private airstrip provided discreet and unhindered access both to and from the 50+ acre part-wooded site, ( the site in itself was later claimed by Land Registry as “non-existent)
Generally speaking, if something is classed by the authorities as “non existent” then it is owned by the Intelligence Services.

Comment 33

If the Police really (and wrongly) had indeed believed the Spannermen videotape to be depicting torture and murder, then why had the police shelved the matter for three years until late 1986 before investigating and raiding the men?

Comment 23

3.19 Because the paedophile ring has such far reaching power, investigators like myself whistleblowers and survivors are at risk of persecution and even assassination. The paedophile ring could silence almost anyone using bribery, blackmail or intimidation or worse. The extent and success of the cover-up provides clear evidence of a powerful, influential, well organised criminal group. http://macurstatement.blogspot.com/2013_07_01_archive.html

Comment

That the whole of the operation and the prosecution was based on homophobic bias is evidenced by the targeting of gay men only through the pro-active use of a dragnet sting attack using a unique gay contact magazine with which to ensnare the raided men ; and the unusual step of charging the consentees with “aiding and abetting”.

No similar operation or prosecution had been undertaken targeting any other groups. To my knowledge, no other consentees have ever been charged with “aiding and abetting”.

It is no coincidence that the 1987 Higton Motion had originally sought to re-criminalise homosexuality.
The Church of England had demanded the incarcerations. It is believed that Thatcher and the Home Office had personally chosen the victims because of their connections.

Contrary to reports, there had never been any suspicion by the OPB that someone may have been murdered, as the original Spannermen tape was in their possession for three years prior to the raids.

The second part of Operation Spanner – the Spanner Case – initially targeting visitors to a Bryn Alyn whistleblower’s address – (together with surveillance) – had been the only response by the Home Office, to a letter to the Prime Minister of May 1985 (and also copied to opposition Party leaders of the House of Commons) , reporting corruption between Bryn Alyn Community and Manchester Children’s Services – having been notified as passed to the Home Office by 10 Downing Street on 4th June 1985, for their attention.

No other communication had ever been forthcoming from the intended recipients of that letter.

Neither had there ever been any action taken by anybody (other than an internal cover-up at Bryn Alyn, naturally) over the reported child abuse, nor the proposed recommendations in the mature student’s report of 1983, even after Downing Street had been informed of the situation in 1985.

The silence speaks volumes!

Comment

Illiberal Nonsense (excerpt)

“When it comes to SM devotees, the future hardly bears thinking about. Unless they can secure a video, the police will have to induce one of the partners to grass-up the other; and couples could easily fall prey to blackmailers. It is highly debatable, however, whether the law should interfere in questions of private morality at all. As Britain is in the process of becoming a pluralistic society, there is no justification for using the law to impose one social group’s morals on the others; and the state should abandon its irrational policing of citizens’ private morals.

As a criminologist, I am worried by the efforts of the police, high court judges and the tabloid press to stir up public fear about SM sex. Britain is wasting far too many resources supposedly earmarked for crime prevention and control on nothing more than witch-hunts so that some people can impose their public moral standards upon others in private rather than tackle real social issues and problems, which they constantly exploit for their own ends. If one is really concerned about eliminating violent sex crimes and inhibiting serial sex killers, to name just two, then one has to start by preventing the ideological exploitation of real crime and irrational fears; and we could all learn from the experience of the psychiatrist, the late Robert Stoller.

In 1991, having spent several months meeting and interviewing ‘sadomasochists’, Stoller had the guts to change his mind about SM sex. He then set out to warn his colleagues about the mistakes he had made, and suggested that their convictions, especially when based upon a belief-system like Freudianism, could deny them the opportunity to learn about the phenomena they claimed to be studying. His own explorations revealed that there was no sado-masochistic perversion, because there were over a hundred different kinds of sexual activity that could be classified as SM sex, and very few included pain. Like the sociologists before him, Stoller finally realized that consensual SM was play-acting, practised by perfectly ‘normal’ people, who just happened to prefer sexual excitement to other hobbies. Amongst the devotees he saw, he found no one who was psychotic, pre-psychotic or latently psychotic; but he did find far more understanding and compassion than one finds in many other kinds of relationships. Amongst the SM crowd the constant, high attention to one’s partner’s experience is more caring and safer than the blundering, ignorant, non- communicating obtuseness that governs so many ‘normal’ people’s erotic motions. So, though I find my informants’ games unappealing . . . I no longer extrapolate and think these people are freaks. We should distinguish those who harm from those who, in trying to undo the effects of harm inflicted on them early in life, play at harm. I believe it is immoral for psychoanalysts to hide their moralizing in jargon-soaked theory.

So if one of the world’s leading psychiatrists can find nothing wrong with SM once he decides to take a real look, no one, be they judges, policemen, moral crusaders or tabloid newspapers, have any grounds for condemnation. SM sex is merely the logical extension of the recreational sex made possible after the arrival of the birth control pill and economic affluence. For most people it amounts to little more than an extended form of foreplay which is directed towards heightening one’s partner’s sexual arousal before the digital stimulation of erogenous and genital zones, which ultimately lead to orgasm. Claiming anything else is an illiberal nonsense.


P262/263
Sadomasochism
Bill Thompson 1994
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sadomasochi…+bill+thompson

Comment

Spanner Case cost £19million by 1993

“The Spanner Case cost £19million” [prior to the ECHR hearing].

– Anthony Furlong

“It may be that I am putting too much emphasis on this passage. But I doubt this. The whole case might have been thought incredible only a few years ago, and is still astonishing to many. It cost, I am told on good authority, £19 million of public money – money that would not have been so freely lavished on a case that was not regarded as a worthwhile investment. It imposes a restraint previously unknown or ambiguous on certain kinds of sexual behaviour. I see no reason to doubt that it will be mined as a precedent for restraints on other kinds of sexual behaviour as and when the relevant authorities decide to move against them.

I could now launch into a polemical attack on the right of these unelected old men to alter the law, creating crimes where none existed before. I will not do this, however, since I believe that the Judges are on the whole far better at legislating than any Parliament than I can remember or imagine. Indeed, if the Judges had been left totally in control of the making and interpretation of laws since around 1870, we might today be living in something like a libertarian utopia, complete with flights to the stars and indefinite life extension.

However, there are instances where the Judges go wrong, usually on account of some defect in the common law caused by their predecessors’ having allowed their natural bigotry to intrude into their professional duties. This is one such instance. I accept that the Court of Appeal was probably required to follow the reasoning of the earlier cases. The House of Lords was not. Since 1966, it has been possible for the Lords to depart from a whole line of decided cases, and to establish a new principle more in keeping with common sense or justice or both.14

The Lords did not decide to depart from the established line of precedents. We must therefore hope that the European Court of Human Rights will reach a just decision, and will then prompt the British Government to do what is has so far shown no intention of doing – that is, to push a short Declaratory Bill through Parliament, to tell the Judges how the 1861 Act ought to be interpreted.

This is in every respect a saddening case. And we must not forget that it is most saddening because there are now men imprisoned in this country for acts that are regarded in almost no other Western jurisdiction as criminal.”

http://www.seangabb.co.uk/freelife/flhtm/fl18sado.htm

Comment

Just to add a little piece of context – necrophilia was perfectly legal in the UK until 2003. ( Presumably this had been deemed “appropriate” behaviour until 2003? )

It is also interesting to note that flagellation and mutilation by self or others for religious purposes in a public place is NOT against the law in England providing the participants are over16 years of age:

Morality? I hope someone is checking the religious flagellants and mutilators to make sure they are not sexually aroused, (in which case they would be breaking the law as it now stands).

Child circumcision is not against the law, but I have never heard of any child who had consented to it.

In Operation Spanner, the crimes were made to fit the punishment.

(The punishment was decided long before the crimes had been customised to fit)

and the fit was extremely poor, relying on a three year long”grasping at straws” by the CPS and the courts, (and downright lies by the police, with the full assistance of the media).

There are perhaps few actions in a civilised society that are more amoral and repugnant than punishment of the innocent on alleged and non-harmful differences relating to “morality”.

And only self-righteous politicians would wish to indirectly punish those who have exposed their sordid sleazy child-abusing control system, but then of course, the Church of England has always been a smokescreen for interests of the Crown.

However, the church has a long established tradition of such warrantless intervention and juxtaposition, and should no longer be allowed to abuse or use such unregulated legal powers.

Only self-righteousness and a false sense of superiority would allow some to judge and punish others by their own (alleged) self-imposed standards – standards which must remain personal amongst unique beings. Only by the acceptance of unique values in other beings may one attain real and valuable spiritual understanding. Rocket-science to the church, unfortunately.

Biased political and religious interference have never been civilised, nor have they ever been “moral”.
Suffering has always been the time-honoured product of such actions.

“Morality” of others has only ever been through the eyes of the uninformed, unfamiliar and self-righteous judgemental from afar, and thus exists only in the perceptions of the beholders.

Morality and goodness (or godliness) are two entirely different and perceived values that seldom coincide. Only one is real, and objectively benefits others.

If immorality were indeed a crime, then most bankers and politicians would already be behind bars.

The truth speaks volumes

Due to the upheld Spanner rulings by the courts ( and merely as one example), it is now a serious criminal offence to give or receive a lovebite.

A lovebite now constitutes an act of violence.

Female Fetishism By Lorraine Gamman, Merja Makinen
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=…panner&f=false

UK law does not recognise “love” as a mitigating factor; but rather that love incriminates the motivation of a lawful act. (e.g: cutting/tattoos/piercing)

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