Keith Harding

Keith Harding had a musical box repair shop and workshop at 93 Hornsey Road from the early 70s.  He died in 2014 age 82 years in Gloucestershire.

The BBC journalist Tom Bateman in an article on 17.11.2014, referred to a document held by police in the mid-80s which had listed Harding as member number 329 of the Paedophile Information Exchange whilst living at his north london address. However, Bateman adds that in the ’90s Harding is said to have denied his membership of the group.

Harding is alleged to have held regular meetings of the Paedophile Information Exchange above his shop in Hornsey Road. The Sunday Express journalist James Fielding, spoke to one of the former staff who had worked in the shop between 1980 and 1987 who named some of the regular visitors he said he had seen come to meetings. Fielding cited these in an article on 10.05.2015

Harding had been convicted of indecent assault against four children aged eight and nine in 1958 when he was a teacher and yet was later given the Freedom of the City of London. Harding had also been the chairman of the British Horological Association. He moved to Gloucester in 1987, setting up Keith Harding’s World of Mechanical Music, a museum in Northleach, near Cheltenham. Bateman wrote that in 1987 when Harding moved to Gloucester, social services were aware of his criminal convictions.

Harding interestingly appeared alongside Jimmy Savile in a Christmas edition of the BBC’s Jim’ll Fix It. He had repaired a music box belonging to a 13 year old girl at his Islington workshop. The girl’s brother, who was also on the show, later told the BBC’s Tom Bateman, that the feature was a set up by the BBC production team who approached the family and asked for the letter to Savile to be written.

‘Paedophile group linked to Savile show guest’, BBC News, 17.11.2014

In 2015 the Sunday Express published an article stating that Harding was a Freemason who was the Worshipful Master of the Mercurius Lodge in Gloucestershire which, the article says, was known as the ‘Spies Lodge’ because it was set up by the GCHQ and over the years many intelligence officers were members.

Articles about Harding by James Fielding of the Express in 2015 can be found here and here .

Daily Mail 2014 article here .

Harding’s convictions for offences against children were known to social services and police as was his involvement in the Paedophile Information Exchange yet he had many social positions of influence and was allowed to go about his activities unmonitored.

There are no known links to the Islington abuse networks and survivors who lived close by the shop said, although it was situated in a run-down part of the Borough. it was not a place local children went to as it was visited by a lot of ‘posh’ people.