David W Anderton

[Matt Mackenzie]

Not the most important thing, but RDK can't resist mentioning his hobby horses in this can he.

(his deservedly failed 1986 FIDE presidential bid, the now pretty much discredited claims about how the 1984/85 WC match ended)

[Paul McKeown]

Keene's usual self-serving pompous twaddle whose main effect will be to innoculate many readers against wondering how Eley managed to work with young people in England for so long with a poor reputation and how he managed to live out his days in the Netherlands with an outstanding international arrest warrant against him.

[Chris Goodall]

Brian Eley is still evil, Ray Keene still has an acute case of Main Character Syndrome, David Anderton is still guilty of nothing more than trusting the police to have accurately appraised the evidence against Eley, and it sounds as though a lawyer for CHESS ought to have stepped in and pointed out the ratio of chess players to Dutch police officers among CHESS's readership.

[James Plaskett]

I told Anderton in no uncertain terms about Eley long before over 70 affadavits were sworn against him. He seemed not too bothered.
I then said "I think your concerns might increase if it was your 10 year old son he was buggering."
David Anderton, OBE, then looked at me in silence with a curious smile on his face.

The former Head of the Crown Prosecution Service, Sir Keir Starmer, has called for people in positions of authority who have been made aware of paedophile activities and yet hush those up to be prosecuted.

[John Upham]

James,

I suspect, but could be wrong, that DWA initiated an unofficial policy of denying everything embarrassing or inconvenient to the BCF and now ECF.

"Don't discuss it and it will eventually go away"

This policy (unwritten) remained for years.

I'd love to hear SRs take on this and it is big shame we cannot hear Paul Buswell's take on the Eley affair.

This reminds me of the current stance of the ECF toward this place.

Look where this approach got the FA regarding Barry Bennell: it bit them big time on the **** in the end.

[Roger Lancaster]

I told Anderton in no uncertain terms about Eley long before over 70 affadavits were sworn against him. He seemed not too bothered.
I then said "I think your concerns might increase if it was your 10 year old son he was buggering."
David Anderton, OBE, then looked at me in silence with a curious smile on his face.

The former Head of the Crown Prosecution Service, Sir Keir Starmer, has called for people in positions of authority who have been made aware of paedophile activities and yet hush those up to be prosecuted.

James. I don't disbelieve you but, bearing in mind how difficult it can be to get chess players to do anything, particularly something such as a sworn affidavit which involves spending time and money, I'm somewhat surprised there were as many as 70. Do you have actual evidence of the number?

[James Plaskett]

Officer Moon told me he arrested Eley by knocking on his door. Eley then said he was too busy and tried to close it. Officer Moon had to explain that he was not asking for his co-operation; he was arresting him. Moon later told me there were MORE than seventy affadavits.He also, in view of the number and gravity of the affadavits, wanted Eley kept on remand. But since he was of previous good character that proved impossible to arrange. In just a few months, Eley sold his house and vehicles (and I think business too) and fled to Amsterdam.

Apropos John Upham´s desire to hear Reuben´s take on it all, he told me he thought Anderton just didn´t want the scandal.

[Roger Lancaster]

James. Many thanks for the clarification. My only comment is that we're then relying on Moon's word. You're probably not going to thank me for saying this but the police have been known to get things wrong so I've still got a mental question mark there. And in that case, given "the number and gravity of the affidavits", why on earth weren't the Dutch prepared to extradite? [Apologies if you've been asked numerous times before!]

[Roger Lancaster]

What follows isn't any kind of attempt to contradict James but the reason for my puzzlement is that I'm an almost exact contemporary of Eley and was an active player at reasonably high level over the 1965-85 period. I was also one of a trio closely involved in running Kings Head when, twice national club champions, its membership included several leading English players. I won't list names (but they would be well-known to James) beyond saying that the trio included the late Andrew Whiteley, then FM and later IM, with whom I spoke on almost a daily basis. Yet I think I can say, hand on heart, that I never heard rumours about Eley. Maybe I was stone deaf because otherwise it's entirely possible that the rumours never got as far south as London. But how that failed to happen if 70+ people swore affidavits, and there were presumably other victims also, leaves me scratching my head.

[John Upham]

When I attended either Ayr 1978 or Chester 1979 I recall being shown BREs van that he travelled, slept and whatever else in and being warned never to enter the van despite being invited to do so by BRE.

I would have been 18/19 at that time.

It appeared to be general knowledge amongst the male juniors of the time to never go near BRE and that he was very dodgy indeed.

I was based in Yateley in Hampshire and he never ventured that far south but his reputation went far and wide.

Interestingly a club in Berkshire still has much of its equipment branded as being from BR Eley Chess Supplies (which morphed into Chess Direct).

[NickFaulks]

given "the number and gravity of the affidavits", why on earth weren't the Dutch prepared to extradite?

I have said this before, and lived in Amsterdam in the 1980s with many Dutch friends. I do not believe the police there would have considered anything of which Eley was accused to be worth bothering about.

[Chris Goodall]

I told Anderton in no uncertain terms about Eley long before over 70 affadavits were sworn against him. He seemed not too bothered.
I then said "I think your concerns might increase if it was your 10 year old son he was buggering."
David Anderton, OBE, then looked at me in silence with a curious smile on his face.

The former Head of the Crown Prosecution Service, Sir Keir Starmer, has called for people in positions of authority who have been made aware of paedophile activities and yet hush those up to be prosecuted.

It sounds like you were in an even better position than David Anderton to get something done about Eley, James.

[Ian Thompson]

It appeared to be general knowledge amongst the male juniors of the time to never go near BRE and that he was very dodgy indeed.

It wasn't known to me.

I was based in Yateley in Hampshire and he never ventured that far south but his reputation went far and wide.

He played at the Thanet congress regularly. One year between 1978 and 1981 I remember watching him promote a pawn to a bishop to mate a couple of moves later on a diagonal against an opponent who was rather slow to resign. The SCCU bulletin records him as being amongst the prize winners in 1979, 1980 and 1981, and the 1979 bulletin says that was his 7th appearance at the event.

I also noticed while looking at the SCCU bulletins from those years that he played at least three times at the Berks & Bucks congress, winning it in 1978.

[Neil Graham]

Carl Hibbard quite correctly locked the thread on Eley in May 2023.

We now have the unedifying spectacle of exactly the same debate taking place in the obituary thread for the late David Anderton.

I could, of course, just add more comment - but I won't. It's time to lock this one as well.

[Roger Lancaster]

I told Anderton in no uncertain terms about Eley long before over 70 affadavits were sworn against him. He seemed not too bothered.
I then said "I think your concerns might increase if it was your 10 year old son he was buggering."
David Anderton, OBE, then looked at me in silence with a curious smile on his face.

The former Head of the Crown Prosecution Service, Sir Keir Starmer, has called for people in positions of authority who have been made aware of paedophile activities and yet hush those up to be prosecuted.

It sounds like you were in an even better position than David Anderton to get something done about Eley, James.

Short answer is that David was in a responsible position on the ECF Board. James wasn't. An earlier discussion of Eley here was closed, as Neil points out, and the subject has reopened only as a result of an RDK piece - nothing new there - in what is frankly an obscure magazine. While I would have been interested to hear James's thoughts, I rather agree with Neil.