It was another Lord McAlpine!

The boss of the BBC resigned yesterday several days after its premier current affairs program “Newsnight”, although not naming him, wrongly pointed to Lord McAlpine, close adviser to Margaret Thatcher when she was the British Prime Minister, as the sexual abuser of Steve Meesham and other children during the 1970s. When he was originally questioned by the police, Steve said that they had shown him a photo of a man whom he recognized as his abuser. He said that the police told him that it was "Lord McAlpine". Newsnight accepted his claim without checking whether it was the current Lord McAlpine before the story was broadcast. Then Steve was shown a photo of Lord McAlpine and he was horrified to realize that it was not the man who had abused him more than a dozen times as a child, and he quickly issued an apology to him. Now, some of the BBC staff are facing the sack over their sloppy journalism and the BBC is facing its biggest crisis for many years.

People have been perplexed by this retraction because it implied that the police had either misidentified the man or had deliberately given Steve the wrong name in order to discredit his claim as unreliable when the mistake eventually came exposed. The former possibility seems highly unlikely, whilst the latter took the general level of paedophile conspiracy to a new level that most people other than conspiracy theorists would find hard to believe. Others took his retraction to mean that he had been threatened to withdraw his accusation.

I now propose a more plausible explanation of what happened. There was a second Lord McAlpine – in fact, there were several. Besides the man in the middle of the current controversy -the life peer, created in 1984, Alistair McAlpine, Baron McAlpine of West Green, there was also a McAlpine baronetage:
[link to www.leighrayment.com]
Sir Thomas George Bishop McAlpine, was the 4th Baronet (1901-1983). Alistair McAlpine
[link to en.wikipedia.org]
second son of the fifth Baronet and the man misnamed by Steve Meesham, was created a life peer as Baron McAlpine of West Green in 1984. I cannot find on the internet a photo of Sir Thomas, who was the older brother of Alistair McAlpine’s father, Robert Edwin McAlpine. People on Icke’s forum are misidentifying the abuser as Robert Edwin McAlpine, Alistair McAlpine’s father,
[link to www.npg.org.uk]
who was for four years vice-president of the National Children’s Home until his death – witness this photo with his posing with Thatcher and children in connection with a missing children campaign:
[link to www.gettyimages.co.uk]
I say “misidentifying” because this is inconsistent with the fact that, when a Times reporter put Lord McAlpine’s name to Meesham in 1996, he said his abuser was in fact called “Tom”. However, it is consistent with his abuser being Sir Thomas McAlpine, the current Lord McAlpine's deceased uncle. However, Meesham said originally that his abuser died in the 1990s. But Sir Thomas McAlpine died in 1983, whilst Robert Edwin McAlpine died in 1990
[link to www.leighrayment.com]
Of course, Steve might be confused about the time, but the discrepancy does leave some uncertainty in the identification. However, in my opinion it does not trump the vital information that, surely, clinches the identification, namely. his remembering his abuser’s name as "Tom".

Did, therefore, bloggers and journalists, hearing the name “Lord McAlpine”, automatically assume that it was Thatcher’s advisor, when it was really his uncle Sir Thomas with the very name that Steve had heard? Steve did not make a mistake. Nor did the police. Nor did they try to mislead him. It was just another Lord McAlpine.

I reckon you've cracked what seemed to be a very puzzling turn of events. I can see easily how this confusion might have come about.
What I think needs to be done now if for someone to get Steve Messham to go through pics of all the MacAlpines and see if he does recognise one of them. I'm surprised that the tabloids etc haven't thought of this, but then again, perhaps they've all been told to roll with the mistake story to try and take some of the heat out of the whole thing and make it easier to get that cover-up in place.

peace
J

There doesn't need to be another Lord MacAlpine. The name Lord MacAlpine was given to the photograph of a man selected as being the paedophile in question to Messham when coming forward to the police. Messham was apparently shown a collection of photographs and he chose the one he recognised.

The 'Lord' part isn't important here, it's the family name and the 'look'. It's been suggested - and more likely a scenario than another Lord MacAlpine - that a family member with a strong family resemblance who also shared a large car collection with the Lord MacAlpine. The cars are important as paedophiles and victims alike seem to have spent a good deal of time being ferried about in cars.

Such a man did exist but has now died.

I'd really like it to have been Lord MacAlpine himself, simply because the more Tories that suffer a dramatic public downfall the better, in my opinion. But it's hard to pin this on him definitively. A family member makes more sense and fits better than the 'inflationary conspiracy model' where more and more things/people have to be included to make sense of a particular theory.

Originally posted by Merriman Weir
There doesn't need to be another Lord MacAlpine. The name Lord MacAlpine was given to the photograph of a man selected as being the paedophile in question to Messham when coming forward to the police. Messham was apparently shown a collection of photographs and he chose the one he recognised.

The 'Lord' part isn't important here, it's the family name and the 'look'. It's been suggested - and more likely a scenario than another Lord MacAlpine - that a family member with a strong family resemblance who also shared a large car collection with the Lord MacAlpine. The cars are important as paedophiles and victims alike seem to have spent a good deal of time being ferried about in cars.

Such a man did exist but has now died.

I'd really like it to have been Lord MacAlpine himself, simply because the more Tories that suffer a dramatic public downfall the better, in my opinion. But it's hard to pin this on him definitively. A family member makes more sense and fits better than the 'inflationary conspiracy model' where more and more things/people have to be included to make sense of a particular theory.

When I suggested that it was another Lord MacAlpine, I meant - as you propose - that it was a certain member of his family, now deceased.