To wonder why no one seems bothered by links to labour MPs + paedophile rights organisation?

[starlady]

The Mail has published new claims about Harriet Harman, Jack Dromey and Patricia Hewitt supporting The paedophile information exchange. Thought it was a rehash of an old story, but I've looked at the evidence published, and it looks as if harriet etc do have some explaining to do. I won't link to the Mail, but the Guardian gives a more nuanced point of view here

www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/feb/20/dailymail-harrietharman
What I'm finding puzzling is twitter is not bothered! And I haven't seen anything on mumsnet. Isn't anyone bothered? No wonder jimmy Saville et al got away with their actions. I am a labour voter myself, so I'm not trying to be partisan and stir up trouble, but the silence on this disturbs me.

bemybebe - she was not a paedophile. She worked for an organisation to which a paedophile-supporting organisation had paid to be affiliated. Along with 1000 other organisations. She wasn't in charge of the organisation. She was a legal officer. If you imagine that legal officers know every single one of the 1000 organisations their company has minor connections with and gets to vet them, you're living in cloud-cuckoo land.

And LadyRabbit, as discussed above, the definition of "children" was an awful lot more flexible than it would be now, in practice. As was the definition of "consent". This is why paedophiles got away with mass assaults at children's homes etc. Because people didn't regard teens who had sex as being worth bothering about and just thought they were "bad" kids. That's why it took until last year, for numerous historic sex crimes to be followed up.

If our attitudes in the 70s were the same as now concerning paedophilia, how on earth do you explain how Jimmy Saville got away with it for so long? Why all the celeb sex trials have only just started dealing with historic offences from 40+ years ago? Of course our attitudes now are stricter.

All of the media are now looking into this. This is from the Guardian

"The members' hotline for the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) rang, of all places, inside the Home Office . The phone would be picked up by Steven Smith, a paedophile and member of the group who worked in security in Whitehall, from where he would tell callers where to go for the next meeting to discuss issues including decriminalising sex with children as young as four."

...

"But evidence of links between the NCCL and PIE continued to emerge. Archive documents appear to show how the paedophile group managed to influence policy at the civil liberties group despite being run by people who believed in their right to have sex with young children.

According to archives held at Hull University, in December 1975 Keith Hose, chairman of PIE, wrote to Patricia Hewitt, then general secretary of NCCL and later a Labour health secretary, asking her to consider PIE's views in its policy on ages of consent. The letter was on PIE notepaper which features a logo of two bare-legged children sitting on a rock. Hewitt wrote back saying: "We have found your evidence ... most helpful and I think it has certainly been taken into account by the people preparing our evidence."

Hewitt did not respond to requests for comment and has yet to issue any response to the growing evidence of links between the organisations."

www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/26/lobbying-paedophile-campaign-revealed-hewitt

bemybebe - can't believe you said re the DM

"The way they conduct their business is a separate matter and in no way should be brought into the discussion about how senior politicians of whatever colour and ideological persuasion is allowed to get away with furthering the agenda of Paedophile Information Exchange."

How do you expect attitudes towards paedophilia to change if mainstream publishers like the DM are allowed to get away with printing scantily-clad pictures of under-aged children, clearly designed to titillate, when they are read by millions more people than PIE magazine ever was??

If you agree with the DM that the magazine was "sick" then how do you justify them printing pictures from it FFS?

That is NOT a diversion. That is someone very concerned about paedophilia NOW - and who cares a lot more about than than muck-raking about Labour politicians with barely any connection to paedophiles operating 40 years ago.

claig. And I'm sure there'a lot more info where that came from. And that's what matters.

On the subject of diversions, BeMyBebe, it's clear that this is a diversion - from who the PIE members actually were.

And from what else Cameron & co are trying to hide this week.

I think it is a SEPARATE matter trying. What you are proposing here when trying to bring a debate about moral purity of DM here is take away the attention from people who make decisions about the rules we are going to live in this country. I can make my own faces at you.

And about me leaving in "cloud-cuckoo" land. Well, I don't know what king of background do YOU have, but I worked for organisations for 12 years, where every single person or company we engaged with had to stand a Compliance Committee, where reports have been obtained and discussed in order to just do business with. Not take money, just to be able to engage ffs.

It's not a diversion from who the PIE members were - most of them were convicted and locked up, back in the 70s and 80s.

The question is: why did the people who govern us collude with them and even support them?

If the press don't stop looking into this, then we will find out who the members were.

It's not a diversion. It's about time that, after the Savile affair, where some people say that Savile was a member of PIE, that this is all looked into because

"how on earth do you explain how Jimmy Saville got away with it for so long?"

It must have been covered up and he must have had help and I wouldn't be surprised if it was from people high up in society.

I would love to see PIE member list. For me it is not about DM or Labour, it is about people who are currently in power and who were holding certain views they are currently not apologising for. Red, blue, yellow, purple or any other colour of the rainbow.

Indeed I wonder if there are any members of PIE who haven't been convicted?

bemybebe - please understand that those talking about "different times" aren't necessarily saying it is ok.

I think it is really important to point out that whole cultures can be wrong. And whole cultures need to change.

I am a feminist and I feel very not-in-tune with prevailing attitudes on many things. I am fine with that and I am also fine with acknowledging that sniggering while eying up or feeling up 14 year olds was very much the thing to do. And kind of enjoying how uncomfortable it made them - that was part of the point I think

(This is not technically paedophilia btw there is another word for fancying young teenagers)

A lot of the PIE activists would have been friends with pervs who felt up children and young teenagers all the time, ever since public school, but had never felt the need or the inclination to go public with it or campaign about it - would never have expected to be challenged or prosecuted for it either (it wasn't till the 80s that any of these cases were brought out into the open in any great numbers)

I completely agree with what FloraFox said: This is not an issue of the left, not even remotely. This is an issue of liberalism / libertarianism together with an establishment where child sex abuse was common in public schools.

PIE was affiliated to NCCL (a terrible mistake) before HH joined. So she was not responsible for the decision to permit it. So what is she being criticised for? Failing to end it? I imagine that was beyond her as legal officer and would have needed a decision of the NCCL's executive body. By all means have a go at her for not lobbying to get rid of all links with PIE, but that's not the strongest story is it? And quite clearly others should be more centrally in the frame than her.

Sure there's a story here, but the way HH is being singled out for such vaguely expressed criticism is nakedly political. Jack Dromey was NCCL Chair during part of this time, as I think was Hewitt, and even they aren't coming in for as much flack as HH. Why?

So, please correct me if I am wrong thats... we are discussing "culture" and not the fact that some people found it is acceptable to have illegal sex with minors and others agreed to push for their cause, here to lower the age of consent from 16/17 to 10...

I think that's what we need, AngelaDavies - clarity about how NCCL functioned, who was responsible for what. If they wanted to, Harman, Dromey and Hewitt could provide all that info. They won't.

i would love to see it all properly looked into - i don't seem how the dm targeting it all in their latest round of HH witch hunt helps that.

really - of all the politicians implicated and involved in these child abuse scandals does a young lawyer who worked for an organisation that was affiliated to by PIE before she even worked there seem a prime target to go after? and of course the fact that it is a paedophilic publication that is going after her is relevant because it totally undermines their credibility and makes obnoxiously clear their true agenda and their disgusting cynical use of real issues for base motives.

Harriet H worked for NCCL when they were lobbying for reduction in the age of consent. She is a senior politician and an MP, so yeah, it is more significant than a story about someone in retirement. She is still shaping policies... I am surprised it is such a shock the focus is on her...

And WTF with quoting Tom O'Carroll of PIE all willy nilly in the media as if he is a respectable unimpeachable source. I know what he says is relevant, but he's the most revolting man, all this featuring of him is giving him a kind of spurious respectability/credibility that I really don't like. As if he's almost seen as better than HH.

Honey HH's signature of the reduction of the age of consent. She was not a nobody at NCCL.

Not that the story focuses on her, but that it attributes to her a higher degree of culpability than it fixes on anyone else.

PIE was affiliated to NCCL (a terrible mistake) before HH joined. So she was not responsible for the decision to permit it. So what is she being criticised for? Failing to end it? I imagine that was beyond her as legal officer and would have needed a decision of the NCCL's executive body. By all means have a go at her for not lobbying to get rid of all links with PIE, but that's not the strongest story is it? And quite clearly others should be more centrally in the frame than her.

I would have agreed with that until the papers announced the NCCL only had 12 employees.

You could discuss things around a dining room table with that amount of employees.

He's the only one so far who was actually involved who is prepared to talk about it!

oops, sorry, HH's signed the report advocating the reduction of the age of consent to 10

12!!!!!!!

x post, sorry - 12 employees running the whole of the NCCL.

10 advocated as the age of consent.

I think the suggestion was that sexual activity between children aged over 10 should not be criminalised, not that adults should be able to have any sexual contact with children of 10 or over.

I think everyone is under the impression that the NCCL was a huge organisation so things could easily be overlooked or missed.

Apparently not.....

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10661251/New-evidence-casts-doubt-on-Harriet-Harmans-defence-over-paedophile-links.html