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.

It's not really a matter of 70s attitudes to paedophilia- it's about 70s attitudes to free speech. It is insane to suggest that people who allowed PIE to affiliate to NCCL were sympathetic to paedophiles. They weren't. Any more than the BBC was sympathetic to the BNP because it let Nick Griffin appear on Question Time.

Roy Greenslade in the Guardian said

"Incidentally, Hewitt, a former Labour minister who stood down as an MP in 2010, has yet to comment. Her silence is also unwise."

Some people would like to dismiss this as just a smear by the Daily Mail, but there are clearly questions to be asked about this and some of them may be about judgement.

'Any more than the BBC was sympathetic to the BNP because it let Nick Griffin appear on Question Time.'

The BBC has a duty to allow Nick Griffin to appear on Question Time as he represents a lawful political party and had two MEPS and approx 5% of the vote. I think the BNP got a higher percentage of votes than the Greens. So it is not the same. That is about democracy and the BBC is a taxpayer funded body and BNP voters pay taxes too. In the same way the BNP are allowed to make election broadcasts.

The NCCL has no duty to allow a paedophile supporting group to be affiliated to them and in fact should never have done so. That is a huge error of judgement, and that is why this is such a big issue.

really though should politicians have to jump every time the tabloids demand it? can you imagine? how to sell papers: make up shit about politicians, stamp your feet and demand they have to make a response, cue a zillion more clicks to your hatefilled website as everyone else is forced to report on your false report in order to report on the politicians response.

can you imagine if HH spent her life responding to hate campaigns against her? she'd get very little else done.

I don't agree with Greenslade that Harman has handled this badly. I think whatever she did would have been represented by the Mail and others as the wrong thing.

She could have ignored it and hoped it went away (her initial approach). She could have gone on the attack (her second tactic). Or she could have offered a full apology (but to whom exactly?) for having once worked for an organisation that allowed an affiliation to PIE. Presumably that is what Greenslade thinks she should have done. But doing that would have admitted culpability and would have allowed the Mail to carry on pursuing her, demanding she resign or be sacked etc.

There was no point at which the Mail were going to say, "Fair enough, boys - we've been a bit harsh on Harman. Let's call off the attack."

Who allowed PIE to affiliate to the NCCL? Who said that it was OK?

If it was a defensible position to allow PIE to affiliate to the NCCL, why aren't the people responsible for adopting that position now explaining their thinking?

claig who let joe bloggs of somerset who later turned out to be an axe murderer join the conservative party?

anyone who paid a fee was affiliated.

if we were going to look at whether all givers of monies should be investigated and seen as fit first i'd want to start with current political parties taking donations from massively dubious donors first.

"I think whatever she did would have been represented by the Mail and others as the wrong thing."

Why? She has done nothing wrong, she said. We know she joined in 1978, after PIE was affiliated and we know that she did not support them. So how could the Mail have said she did anything wrong?

Greenslade for example, is a git

if you really want to go down this track then you're going to have to haul all of the gay rights group that initially allowed PIE to affiliate with them too. are you ready to do that? are you saying the gay rights groups of the time should be massively investigated and answerable as well? or is it that your outrage is for a) just people who later went on to be politicians having worked for an organisation that did something wrong and b) just those who ended up in a particular party?

'claig who let joe bloggs of somerset who later turned out to be an axe murderer join the conservative party?'

That is different. This was an openly paedophile supporting group called the Paedophile Information Exchange. How can anyone allow them to affiliate to anything? That is the question? What sort of judgement would allow them to affiliate?

"The NCCL has no duty to allow a paedophile supporting group to be affiliated to them and in fact should never have done so. That is a huge error of judgement, and that is why this is such a big issue."

Not at the time. The NCCL was committed to free speech. It did not vet organizations that applied for affiliation. That was not what it was for.

Being gay has nothing whatsoever to do with paedophiles.

Peter Hain did the right thing and challenged and Toynbee was against them, and Dromey challenged them within the NCCL. They should not have been allowed to affiliate to the NCCL and they should have been challenged and the press is right to ask questions about them. It is not a matter of parties.

"There were divisions within progressive circles. In 1977 the Campaign for Homosexual Equality passed by a large majority a resolution condemning "the harassment of the Paedophile Information Exchange by the press".

When Peter Hain, then president of the Young Liberals, described paedophilia as "a wholly undesirable abnormality", a fellow activist hit back. "It is sad that Peter has joined the hang 'em and flog 'em brigade. His views are not the views of most Young Liberals."

And when a columnist supported Hain in the Guardian he was inundated with mail from people - many willing to give their name - who defended sex with children.

A Guardian article in 1977 noted with dismay how the group was growing. By its second birthday in October 1976, it had 200 members. There was a London group, a Middlesex group being planned, and with regional branches to follow. The article speaks of PIE's hopes to widen the membership to include women and heterosexual men.

Toynbee talked of her "disgust, aversion and anger" at the group but added that she had a sinking feeling that in another five years or so, their aims would eventually be incorporated into the general liberal credo , and we would all find them acceptable".

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26352378

MsCuddy asked what the building was where mothers were protesting against PIE, as shown on the BBC TV programme. It was at Conway Hall and a picture is shown in the following BBC article.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26352378

I think some posters here are looking for absolutes where none exist: EITHER paedophilia was considered ok in the 70s OR everyone abhorred it; EITHER HH supported PIE OR she didn't.

Then, as now, it was all much more complex. Of course most people in the 70s, as now, would have said they were against paedophilia (though then they would probably need the term explained). Most people would have called PIE a disgusting organisation. But then, most people would have called the Campaign for Homosexual Equality a disgusting organisation.

Going along with this was enormous tacit acceptance of the fact that Uncle Rodney liked to leer at and grope young girls aged 12+ and 'child molesters' were seen as rather tragic, laughable figures in beige raincoats (I seem to remember a cartoon strip in a mainstream soft porn magazine called 'Chester the Molester', all about a predatory paedophile - THAT would not happen now).

Feminism was just beginning to give a voice to those who found preying on young girls unacceptable. I think it's fair to say that most of the activists who originally raised the level of public concern about sexual abuse of children (before it went mainstream via Esther Rantzen) were radical feminists. Harriet Harman was in the socialist feminist camp so wouldn't have been so involved in those early debates - though she certainly got very involved later.

There was a fairly small libertarian fringe that gained column inches because it upset the bourgeoisie. I think that fringe was the epicentre of entertaining the idea that sexually 'liberating' children might be some part of the radical struggle. I can only repeat that many of those people were and are very decent people, who allowed themselves to be persuaded that adult-child sex could be consensual and beneficial for all. They were of course fantastically wrong (see also: apologists for Stalinist Russia) and it's right they shoudl be called to account for that. But they were NOT in any sense paedophiles and it is quite wrong to treat them as such now.

'It did not vet organizations that applied for affiliation'

Are you saying that the Ku Klux Klan woud have welcomed as an affiliate of the NCCL and would the NCCL have placed an advert for membership of the NCCL in the Ku Klux Klan weekly as they did in the Paedophile Information Exchange's magazine?

Hopefully, journalists will not drop this story and keep looking into who was responsible for approving the affiliate status of the Paedophile Information Exchange.

"What sort of judgement would allow them to affiliate?"

In retrospect bad judgement.

You could go back and vet and cross check the links between every 1970's political organisation and pressure group and you'd probably find something to make every politician over the age of 50 look a bit of an idiot.

Where would it get you though?

I do not believe Harriet Harman supported the PIE or that her actions endorsed it.

I wonder why no one is trying to drag any gay groups over the coals for having links to PIE 30 years ago?

Has anyone found a list of NCCL affiliates? I bet the are a lot of dodgy organisations on there.

And, I still think it's fucking outrageous that Tom O Carroll is being quoted in the media as a respectable witness and commentator and Harriet Harman, who has spent her life working for women and children's rights is being seen as an apologist for paedophilia.

'They were of course fantastically wrong (see also: apologists for Stalinist Russia) and it's right they shoudl be called to account for that. But they were NOT in any sense paedophiles and it is quite wrong to treat them as such now.'

But no one has said that. The Paedophiles were the members of the Paedophile Information Exchange.

It was fantastically wrong for the NCCL to have anything whatsoever to do with the Paedophile Information Exchange, let alone allow them to be affiliated to the NCCL and to place an advert for NCCL membership in one of their magazines.

Shami Chakrabarti said "It is a source of continuing disgust and horror that even the NCCL had to expel paedophiles from its ranks in 1983 after infiltration at some point in the 70s."

The same "disgust and horror" is felt by the public, and the press is asking how this could happen and how people who are or were senior politicians coud have worked for an organisation that had the Paedophile information Exchange affiliated to them.

And today we heard on the BBC that the Paedophile information Exchange asked Bryan Gould, who in 1992 stood in the leadership election for leader of the Labour Party, if he wanted to be their honorary vice president. He declined, but did write to them saying that had a good deal of sympathy for its objectives.

What next?

from wikipedia

"The white supremacy group Ku Klux Klan began fighting several court battles with the state of Missouri after the state disputed its right to sponsor a stretch of freeway in Saint Louis County and Jefferson County, near St. Louis. In March 2001, after a U.S. District Court judge found that blocking the Klan's sponsorship was unconstitutional, the Court of Appeals ruled that the state must erect signs announcing the group's sponsorship. However, the Missouri Legislature later voted to rename the stretch of I-55 the "Rosa Parks Freeway" in honor of the Montgomery civil rights hero who began the Montgomery bus boycott."

Rightly or wrongly some people think there is more than one way to skin a cat.

they represented the national front didn't they? i'm sure someone posted that on this thread? apologies if i've got it wrong but i thought that was rather the point - they didn't vet, they didn't agree with or disagree with but supported the right to speak and for the public to make their own minds up.

why are you assuming that a libertarian group of activists and lawyers probably mostly staffed by volunteers actually vetted anyone? a cheque came and your badge got sent out. i presume it was a way of raising funds. the idea that someone sat there and sorted through those cheques and investigaged each of their senders when it was probably a task done by someone volunteering a bit of admin support is over reaching i think.

given gay rights groups also allowed PIE under their umbrella to varying degrees until they too realised no way, feck off you child abusers, means the nccl was hardly alone in this. i would imagine PIE weedled into a load of groups at the time for a while should we investigate all of those groups who initially didn't quickly enough grasp what they were dealing with and it's implications or just those who ended up having had future mps on the staff?

or should we investigate the mps known to have frequented elm house, to have abused children in care with audacity, those who allowed paedophiles access to children and covered up what they did and those who are still propagating a pornagraphic gaze at children today?

'after a U.S. District Court judge found that blocking the Klan's sponsorship was unconstitutional'

Yes because it was unconstitutional, against the US Constitution, so the Ku Klux Klan's constitutional rights were breached.

But the NCCL can choose who it allows to be its members or affiliates. It can turn Charles manson down without breaking the law or constitution. But it chose to allow PIE to affiliate to it.

i want to see them go after that i've said above and i want to see them go after judges who currently show an audacious willingness to let off child abusers and who often seem to have very dubious sexual attitudes to children themselves in their summing up of crimes against them.

it IS a distraction imo from really bloody serious stuff that needs dealing with - it is pure cynical exploitation of an issue to have a pop at a female politician the DM loathes.

if they gave a fuck about paedophilia they'd stop printing sexualised images of children to titilate their 'readers'.