Sir Edward Heath was British prime minister from 1970 to 1974 and died in 2005. (AFP)
Allegations linking former Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath to child sex abuse threatened fresh disgrace for Britain's political establishment today as claims of high-level historic paedophilia pile up.
Heath led Britain between 1970 and 1974, taking it into the European Economic Community in 1973, and was known as a dour bachelor who loved sailing and classical music. He died in 2005 at the age of 89.
Now he has become the most senior figure to join the ranks of prominent Westminster politicians accused, many of them posthumously, of sexually abusing children.
The story comes as Britain enters a crucial stage in its efforts to investigate claims that people in social elites repeatedly carried out and concealed child sex abuse in the second half of the 20th century.
"I'm in absolutely no doubt that there were a significant number of politicians and many others in high society... who were committing child sexual abuse and probably continue to do so," Simon Danczuk, an MP with the main opposition Labour party and a leading campaigner on the issue, told Sky News television.
Whether Heath was among them is now the subject of fierce debate.
Heath was drawn into the scandal yesterday when police watchdog the Independent Police Complaints Commission said it would investigate a retired policeman's claim that a prosecution was dropped in the 1990s when the accused threatened to expose the ex-premier.
Today's Daily Mirror newspaper carried an allegation from a man who said he was raped by Heath in 1961, aged 12.
Heath is being directly investigated by Scotland Yard over child sex abuse claims a BBC report.
Police on the Channel Island of Jersey also confirmed he features in Operation Whistle, their probe into alleged historic abuse.
Heath, who led the Conservative party now headed by Prime Minister David Cameron, is not the first politician accused of abuse.
Others include the late Leon Brittan, interior minister under prime minister Margaret Thatcher and then a European commissioner; Cyril Smith, a Liberal MP who died in 2010; and Greville Janner, an ex-Labour MP and member of the House of Lords.