He was always one of my admirers." I took his word for it, and there the matter rested until July 1968 when, in a series of dawn raids across London, a great policeman, Commander Leonard "Nipper" Read, arrested the Krays and their henchmen in their beds. Author Smith explains: “Boothby was the one everyone thought would have a stellar career, but when this affair began everything reversed. Other newspapers did little about the story, and Scotland Yard denied it, but the Home Office and the Prime Minister's office were taking it seriously. The Profumo scandal had similarly simmered beneath the surface for months before exploding.

They were the enforcers of the underworld, "Percentage Men", whose reputation was so fearsome that hardened criminals obeyed them. Much of the Krays' money came from the arsonists, gamblers and fraudsters they saved from trouble. Police raided the flat and found 45 volumes of obscene diaries in which Hayman described paedophile fantasies. They discovered that he was a member of the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE), which promoted sex with children.It is not too late to save the situation if only we learn the lessons of the past. The British Empire still stands for the things those men died to win - freedom and peace. But I would not care to share the responsibility of those who today are exposing us to mortal peril. to the absence of any political philosophy, or theme, or policy, adequate to the needs of the time; and

A Conservative party agent for Westminster “had informed a member of MI5 about the allegations,” he says. The next day the Sunday Mirror splashed again on the story, saying it had a picture of the peer and the gangster sitting on a sofa. Her cousin Nicholas Knatchbull, 14, and 15-year-old Paul Maxwell, who worked on the boat, were killed in the explosion. They weren’t, but the truth was far more damaging. MI5 papers released in 2015 revealed they frequented West End gambling dens and clubs owned by Ronnie and his gangster twin Reggie to “hunt” for young men. In 1973, the DPP’s office informed MI5 of rumours that Christopher Chataway engaged in sexual activities with children. ”Certainly their inside knowledge was uncanny. Some thought Ronnie Kray was psychic but I suspected more prosaic sources of protection.