1962: An MP on trial, the Solicitor-General his Defence Counsel and Macmillan’s timely Night of the Long Knives (13th July)
Horobin in 1934, National Portrait Gallery, http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw120053/Sir-Ian-Macdonald-HorobinA fly in the reshuffle
Sir Ian Horobin MP, Laurens Van Der Post
Will Black’s recent article for his Huffington Post blog here asks whether Cameron’s cabinet reshuffle wasn’t more window dressing designed to distract from the ongoing pressure on the Palace of Westminster to take itself seriously as just another institution under investigation for child abuse allegations?
52 years earlier on the same date, 13th July, Harold Macmillan, Conservative Prime Minister, culled one third of his Cabinet. Remarkably, at the time of the reshuffle, a resolutely unremorseful Sir Ian Horobin MP (Con. Oldham East) was due to stand trial five days later for a number of indecent assaults on teenage boys during 1958-1961 as reported in The Times on 16 May 1962.