VIP Sex Abuse Claims: Police Probe Probe Group That Threatened to Expose Ted Heath As Gay

The Times Diary, 24 June 1972, discusses a work called Discipline or Corruption, published in 1966 by a London based outfit called “Fact and Fiction”:

…Under her English pseudonym, Karen Cooper, Miss Kwiatkowski advises her readers that they must “either perpetuate corruption or encourage discipline and responsibility… either pull society downwards, or elevate man and contribute towards his evolution”.

To rub home her message (which seems to be that the whole British entertainment industry is based on practises generally associated with Sodom and Gomorrah) Miss Kwiatkowski describes her adventures in an English university town, at provincial drama school, in the glittering world of London’s showbiz people (“they all called one another ‘dear’ and ‘darling’ and other affectionate words”) and with a model agency where she was daily propositioned by men (“some of them are household names and they carry the crest of the British Royal Family on their business letter-paper”)

The book also has contributions from Miss Kwiatkowski’s associates, Susan Harris, George Martin and Anna Darl…

What has this got to do with anything? Marie-Louise Kwiatkowski (var. Marie-Luise Kwiatkowski-Brantenberg) had a few months before achieved overnight notoriety by tipping ink over Prime Minister Ted Heath; although it was not reported at the time, she had also denounced him as “a damn homosexual”, and letters were subsequently sent to Heath from Martin and Darl threatening to expose Heath’s alleged sexuality to the world.

In 1974, Kwiatkowski published a pamphlet called I Challenge Ted Heath (sometimes referred to as I Challenged Ted Heath), some of which has been made available by Malcolm Redfellow here. She stated that she was against homosexuals having influence over society, and she blamed “homosexual collusion” for a planning application problem she was having in central London. The work does not appear to refer to child abuse anywhere, and the author does not appear to have had access to any private information about Heath.

Kwiatkowski and her associates were in fact all part of dysfunctional cult-like group that called itself the Institute for Personal Development. Kwiatkowski was sentenced to six months in prison, and she killed herself a few years later.

But what has that got to do with anything? Today’s Sunday Times has the answer:

Police investigating Edward Heath on suspicion of child sex abuse have been accused of mounting a “fishing expedition” after it emerged they are questioning witnesses over a bizarre incident in 1972 with no apparent link to paedophilia.

The Wiltshire police team of 21 officers and staff is focusing on an altercation during which a cult member shouted “you damn homosexual” and threw printer ink over the late prime minister during a European summit in Brussels…

The article is paywalled, although the Mail has bashed out a derivative piece. Harvey Proctor’s complaint that he was subjected to a devastating police investigation due to “a homosexual witch hunt” does not fully explain his ordeal (I think other motives were involved), but this particular disclosure does tend to suggest that it is part of the story. Imagine the police approaching Kwiatkowski’s surviving associates and asking: “when you wrote those letters threatening to expose Ted Heath as gay, did you have any child sex abuse in mind?”

The existence of the letters to Heath came to light in February 2016; the Mail on Sunday reported that papers about the matter were “to be kept top-secret until 2042”, but had been obtained via a Freedom of Information Request. This was several months after Wiltshire Police had announced a police inquiry into allegations against Heath – despite the fact he had died 10 years before. One wonders if police were pondering this “Kwiatkowski” line of enquiry before the Mail on Sunday article came along at a convenient moment. I discussed various allegations against Ted Heath – and their many difficulties – here.

Footnotes

The work Discipline or Corruption was published under the name of Constantin Stanislavski, even though he had died several decades before. In Google Books I have found a reference to one other book supposedly published by Fact and Fiction, in 1982 – a work entitled Christopher Martin, Great Burstead, and the Mayflower – but this appears to be a referencing error.

The 1972 Times Diary item came to my attention via a website called From the Heart of Europe; the Martin Redfellow blog post via Powerbase.