Canbury Press to reprint forgotten book on disgraced MP Janner

London-based independent publisher Canbury Press is to publish a book examining the role of the former MP and peer Greville Janner in the alleged sexual abuse of boys during the 1980s.

Martin Hickman, managing director of Canbury Press, acquired world rights to Abuse of Trust by Mark D’Arcy and Paul Gosling from Bowerdean Publishing, which first published the book in 1998. According to the publisher, at the time of its publication, little could be reported about Janner, a prominent figure in the Labour Party who was made a peer by Tony Blair.

The book deals with a regime of sexual abuse of children at Leicestershire care homes in the 1980s by council manager and former marine Frank Beck. A chapter will deal with one of Beck’s alleged accomplices: Janner, an influential Labour politician who was MP for Leicester West between 1974 and 1997. The book contains new material about Janner’s behaviour and the decades-long campaign to unmask him as a paedophile.

Its publication coincides with the beginning of public testimony to the independent Goddard inquiry into institutional child abuse. One of the 12 cases to be investigated by judge Dame Lowell Goddard is the Leicestershire children’s home scandal.

Janner died Baron Janner of Braunstone in December 2015 aged 87, while charged with 22 counts of the historical abuse of boys. He had been ruled unfit to stand trial in a criminal trial because of dementia.

A review by the Crown Prosecution Service in 2015 found that police and prosecutors had missed at least three chances to prosecute him.

Last month, police watchdog the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) announced that it had gross misconduct notices on 11 individuals in an ongoing investigation by into the case.

Hickman said: “The paperback of Abuse of Trust has been out of print for years and the binding was falling apart. I am hoping this edition will ensure that the lessons of child protection failings are learnt for future generations. It will also fill in some of the background about what Leicestershire Police have described as highly credible allegations against Janner. Only a few hundred copies have been printed of this new edition.”

Gosling, who wrote the new chapter on the Labour MP, said: “The original Abuse of Trust book sold out several years ago. In recent years there has been a growing demand for the rare available copies of the book – to the extent that individual copies were being advertised at several hundred pounds. The serious child abuse allegations against Greville Janner meant there was substantial interest in the story around Frank Beck. But the demand for the book went far behind a desire to learn more about the proven evilness of Beck and the allegations against Janner, which this version of the book examines in detail."

He added: “Across the UK there has also been a recognition that it is only by examining the child abuse cases — and Beck's was one of the very worst, perhaps the very worst case of institutional abuse of children — that these perverse criminalities can be prevented in future. For that reason, there has been a significant demand for new copies from social work students and by social services authorities, some of which have wanted new staff to read the book.”