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.

what is it you are accusing HH of having done somewhere exactly please?

"I'm just not clear why its so hard for people to accept that those involved with the NCCL in the 70s and early 80s fucked up massively"

Yes, in the 70's and 80's some people fucked up and were looking the other way when they should have been more careful.

It just doesn't affect my opinion of them now one way or the other.

TheHoneyBadger

That doesn't excuse it. No one with any functioning moral compass would a) preside over an organisation with a paedophile rights group as an affiliate b) would even answer a letter from them, let alone describe their views on the age of consent, of all things, as "helpful". These were people campaigning for the age of consent to be abolished altogether or lowered to age four. The more comes out, the more it becomes clear that (unsurprisingly) very many people within gay rights circles at the time found PIE vile. Hewitt doesn't come well out of this one.

Apart from a lifetime of campaigning for women and children's rights you mean, honey badger?

Harman will simply do what is best for her. She is a total hypocrite of the highest order. This has certainly reinforced one hundredfold my opinion of her. If her position becomes difficult she will apologise. Watch this space.

What is it you are accusing HH of having done somewhere exactly please?

The NCCL were incredibly stupid and morally skewed in tolerating PIE to the extent which they did, and it doesn't reflect well on the ethics and judgement of those involved. That's hardly a controversial statement given what's in the public domain. The current chief of the NCCL / Liberty responded to all this by described the organisation's former links with PIE as "a source of continuing disgust and horror", whereas Harman has played the victim card. She is a public figure. Public figures are meant to come under scrutiny regarding their political and professional activities. My heart just isn't bleeding.

'Hewitt doesn't come well out of this one.'

I agree and unfortunately nor does the NCCL. Hewitt is right when she says

"I should have urged the executive committee to take stronger measures to protect NCCL's integrity from the activities of PIE members and sympathisers and I deeply regret not having done so."

"There were clearly plenty of people in possession of a moral compass at the time - lots of people have said they spoke out against PIE"

There were - our 3 busy at the NCCL were not among them, it would seem. Their compasses were set on personal advancement, and tbe 3 monkeys sat on their shoulders, so there was no evil as far as they were concerned. Even "we were following orders" is a better defence.

Hewitt can apologise because she is no longer in politics and therefore past errors of judgement don't have any effect on today.

My guess is Labour luvvies will be wheeled out on TV to attack the Mail for supporting Hitler in the 1930s in order to create a diversion from the real issue, and that it will be hoped that Hewitt's apology will draw a line under it.

Look, it's very very simple. We are talking about politicians.
Politicians - of any party colour - are not synonymous with moral compasses.

No sane, normal person who can see where to sensibly draw the line between protecting civil liberties and policing depravity would go into the world of Westminster. It's generally the domain of sociopaths. The decent people with a political fervour tend to get stuck at councillor level when they realise just how much of a blind eye they will have to turn in order to further their careers.
Harman has always been very careful to not take the blame for anything. Probably gets on very well with Sharon Shoesmith.

It's all just horrible though, and although it irks one to thank the Daily Mail for pursuing this story, it is commendable regardless.

Martorana

You've got me. I just hate women's and children's rights. I'm a fully-paid up member of an evil conspiracy to undermine children's rights by suggesting that...mmmmm....legitimising an organisation dedicated to hurting children was maybe not a bright idea. Of course. Yes. And of course I hate Labour....because I am, you know, a third generation Labour voter, so I must be out to get them! [rolls eyes...loses will to live]

For those of you who don't believe the past is a foreign country don't you think the evidence that PIE could openly call itself PIE speaks volumes about how they did things differently there?

What is it you want from HH?

It wasn't different. this is from Wikipedia

"Paedophile Action for Liberation had developed as a breakaway group from South London Gay Liberation Front. It was the subject of an article in the Sunday People, which dedicated its front page and centre-spread to the story. The result was intimidation of, and loss of employment for, some of those who were exposed . It later merged with PIE.[1]

This exposé on PAL had a chilling effect on PIE members' willingness for activism . In the PIE Chairperson's Annual Report for 1975-6, Keith Hose wrote that 'The only way for PIE to survive, was to seek out as much publicity for the organization as possible .... If we got bad publicity we would not run into a corner but stand and fight. We felt that the only way to get more paedophiles joining PIE... was to seek out and try to get all kinds of publications to print our organization's name and address and to make paedophilia a real public issue .'

A campaign to attract media attention was not effective at that time, but Hose's attendance at the 1975 annual conference of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE) in Sheffield, where he made a speech on paedophilia, was covered at length in The Guardian.

In the same year Hose also attended a conference organized by Mind, the national mental health organization, where it was suggested that PIE should submit evidence to the Home Office Criminal Law Revision Committee on the age of consent. PIE submitted a 17-page document in which it proposed that there should be no age of consent, and that the criminal law should concern itself only with sexual activities to which consent is not given, or which continue after prohibition by a civil court."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paedophile_Information_Exchange

was to seek out and try to get all kinds of publications to print our organization's name

They affiliated to the NCCL in order to try and get some sort of legitimacy and publicity and the NCCL damaged its own integrity by allowing them to be affiliated to itself. Huge error of judgement.

i'm still not clear what it is you think she has done - you answered about nccl and that she hadn't reacted to/apologised well enough for your liking but what is it you think she did that she should be apologising for exactly?

She worked for an organisation that had a group called the Paedophile Information Exchange affiliated to it.

I don't want her to do anything. It is up to her what she does. I personally don't think she can apologise for anything because that would reflect badly on her judgement and she is Deputy Leader of the Labour Party.

She has expressed regret that PIE was affiliated to the NCCL. I don't think she can say anymore than that.

Hewitt has apologised and since she is no longer in politics, it does not affect her badly that she made an error of judgement, so she can say

"As general secretary then, I take responsibility for the mistakes we made. I got it wrong on PIE and I apologise for having done so "

Caitlin17 Thu 27-Feb-14 20:38:21
For those of you who don't believe the past is a foreign country don't you think the evidence that PIE could openly call itself PIE speaks volumes about how they did things differently there?

Bullshit

I grew up during the 70s, and the vast majority of people outside of the radical left wing clique of the times simply didn't understand about paedophilia. It had to be explained to them.

Most people were still quite conservative; there was very little permissiveness that I saw. Sex was then something that wasn't really discussed, and certainly not with the casualness of today. There was still a massive innocence about the darker sides of sexual behaviour.

Once people began to understand what PIE was really about, attitudes began to harden towards them.

Paedophilia has never really been acceptable, certainly in this country, and even back in the 70s most people would have been disgusted with PIE.

I still don't get what people are banging on about. Harriet Harman is a woman in her 60s. When she was in her late 20s she made an error of judgement in a professional capacity. So what? Why would anyone care about that now? If it turned out that at the age of 28 she had committed a crime that had gone undetected and unpunished, then you might be on to something, but an error of judgement like this? What exactly are people expecting from her?

From what I can make out, Hewitt was the one with most to apologise for. She was the General Secretary and the buck would therefore have stopped with her.

Given that there were fewer than 12 employees, I'm assuming the whole thing was run on a shoestring. Based on my experience with voluntary groups, I would surmise that there were lots of volunteers coming and going and doing a lot of the grunge work like processing membership applications. Volunteers are free labour but often more trouble than they are worth because it's difficult to control what they do and the procedures for getting taken on as a volunteer are often very loose, far looser than for somebody who is actually going to get paid. Many of these people will have been keen but clueless and others will have had their own axe to grind. If there were no sensible systems in place to vet membership and affiliate applications in the first instance, goodness knows how many dodgy groups/people got through because of sheer incompetence and naivete.

Having said all that, the NCCL appears to have lost the plot on this issue in a big way. I don't blame Harriet Harman for that, although I would have more respect for her now if she had come forward with chapter and verse on how she had worked from within the NCCL to cut the ties with PIE. Kudos to Peter Hain for doing that from within the Young Liberals. That BBC magazine article linked upthread is an eye-opener.

'she made an error of judgement in a professional capacity. So what? Why would anyone care about that now? If it turned out that at the age of 28 she had committed a crime that had gone undetected and unpunished, then you might be on to something, but an error of judgement like this? '

I think she is in a difficult position. For a politician, an error of judgement is very important.

'From what I can make out, Hewitt was the one with most to apologise for. She was the General Secretary and the buck would therefore have stopped with her.'

I agree, and she has apologised. I think it has been easier for her to admit she got it wrong and made an error of judgement because she is no longer in politics.

"I grew up during the 70s, and the vast majority of people outside of the radical left wing clique of the times simply didn't understand about paedophilia"

Which is perhaps why they were able to call themselves the PIE and still slip under the radar.

Yes, FryOneFatManic is right.

This is from the BBC article that AllMimsyWereTheBorogroves mentions.

"In a Guardian piece from 1975 it's clear "paedophile" was still not a widely used term and the opening line explains it - "one who is sexually attracted to children".

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

I think the publicity that PIE grabbed in the seventies really backfired on them. I think people thought of paedophiles as reasonably harmless, slightly odd characters. But once they actually made their agenda public, people realised how dangerous they were. I can remember stuff about abusing young children and babies being spelt out really graphically in the newspapers, really horrible stuff about how even babies enjoyed it. And yes, we were all more innocent. It was very shocking.

It's interesting that they used MIND, the National Association for Mental Health, to gain credibility as well. Larry Gostin, who now advises Obama, worked for both MIND and NCCL iirc.

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1060641