Operation Midland

Operation Midland was the Metropolitan Police investigation, from 2014 to 2016, of allegations by Carl Beech, a former NHS pediatric nurse and hospital inspector for the Care Quality Commission, identified to the public only as "Nick." In 2012 Beech had approached the Met's Operation Yewtree, which referred him to Wiltshire Police; he claimed that between the ages of seven and sixteen he had been abused by a ring that included Jimmy Savile, and later named two former heads of the armed forces, Lord Bramall and Sir Roland Gibbs, General Sir Hugh Beach, the former heads of MI5 and MI6 Sir Michael Hanley and Sir Maurice Oldfield, former Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath, former Home Secretary Lord Brittan, and the former MPs Harvey Proctor and Lord Janner, and said he had witnessed three murders of children by the group. One of the boys he claimed had been killed was Martin Allen, a 15-year-old who disappeared in 1979; he identified a Pimlico flat where he said Allen was held only after the Exaro reporter Mark Conrad had shown him a picture of it. His claims appeared on BBC News, in a national newspaper and on the Exaro website, and he was taken to Parliament to meet the Labour MP Tom Watson.²

The homes of those accused were raided, and Proctor lost his home and his job. The operation cost about 2.5 million pounds and ended without a single arrest. A review by the retired judge Sir Richard Henriques listed 43 serious errors, found that the operation should have been ended much earlier and could have been completed without the accused learning of it, and criticized journalists who had shown Beech pictures of suspects, locations and missing boys. The Met apologized and paid compensation to Bramall and to Brittan's family. Beech, who had received more than 20,000 pounds in compensation for injuries he never suffered, was found guilty at Newcastle Crown Court of twelve counts of perverting the course of justice and one of fraud, having pleaded guilty to child sexual offenses, and was sentenced on July 26, 2019, to 18 years.²

Stoke Lodge and the Missing Boys

The writer S. Dovey wrote that the investigation followed Operation Fairbank and Operation Fernbridge, which concerned the Elm Guest House, and examined the 1979 disappearance of Martin Allen, son of the chief chauffeur to the Australian High Commissioner, Sir Gordon Freeth, and the 1981 disappearance of Vishal Mehrotra, eight, who vanished returning from the Royal Wedding procession, both within a mile of the Elm Guest House. The Allen family lived at Stoke Lodge, the High Commissioner's residence, where civic functions were attended by Margaret Thatcher, Peter Morrison, Peter Hayman and Brittan. Dovey also wrote that the chauffeur company used by the High Commission employed Sidney Cooke and David Smith, both later convicted of child abuse and murder. According to Dovey, a Daily Express report of 1982 said Scotland Yard expected to reopen files on child murders in its investigation of a VIP vice network.¹