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Original poster

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

954 replies

starlady · 20/02/2014 22:54

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.

OP posts:
merrymouse · 28/02/2014 20:40

If it was all so so clear cut, why wait 30 years to ask for an apology?. The NCCL were a high profile organisation who must have rubbed plenty of powerful people up the wrong way. If there was really a fear that Hewitt et al supported the PIE, why wait till after they have had ministerial positions?

FloraFox · 28/02/2014 21:05

merrymouse I think part of the problem has always been that there is a level of tolerance of paedophilia among the establishment that is out of step with the views of ordinary people. There is a perspective of "well I was buggered at Eton and it did me no harm" that can be seen in the book I linked to up thread. I highly doubt there was any significant degree of establishment disapproval over PIE's links to NCCL.

I'm annoyed that by not dealing with this properly, HH is allowing the DM to characterise this as a problem of the loony left when nothing could be further from the truth.

hoppingElephant · 28/02/2014 21:14

Flora I think your post is very offensive. It may be in some book you're read that quote about Eton, but I know a man who was sexually abused by male teachers in boarding school in the 50s and it continues to ruin his life in his seventies.

How could you judge whether being anally raped as a child does you no harm? Do you think that because the children come from privileged backgrounds they deserve less sympathy for their sexual abuse than those from poorer backgrounds.

hoppingElephant · 28/02/2014 21:16

The man I know wwould not say 'i was buggered at Eton and it did me no harm'. His entire life was ruined by paedophiles in his childhood.

FloraFox · 28/02/2014 21:29

hopping you misunderstand my post. I did not say I think it is no big deal (which I most certainly don't) but that there is a perspective in among some in the establishment that it is not a big deal. This is plainly true otherwise fathers wouldn't have sent their sons to the same schools they went to where they knew this was happening.

TheHoneyBadger · 28/02/2014 21:34

shall we all apologise? i'm happy to start. i am very british and very catholic in my willingness to take the blame for other people's actions and feel guilty about them.

perhaps i could apologise on ehalf of all the people who worked in all the organisations who PIE infiltrated for a short while during a very fucked up and very brief identity politics obsessed era?

i won't apologise for the actual paedophiles or the cabinet offices that covered their crimes, or the judges who still let the off the hook, or the newspapers who present child abuse victims as lolita figures etc though as clearly their crimes aren't half as bad.

Martorana · 28/02/2014 21:41

"You're deliberately minimising it. These people hold high public offices and were possibly supporting a pedophile organisation"

I don't think anyone sane is suggesting that they "supported" a paedophile organization.

nennypops · 28/02/2014 22:50

AllMimsy: Nennypops, I really don't think it will wash that HH knew nothing about PIE and what they stood for.

Not what I said. I was quoting someone else, who wasn't actually saying that either.

nennypops · 28/02/2014 22:52

Claig: The shadow police minister, Jack Dromey, has insisted he did not give his approval to a call for the age of sexual consent to be reduced to as low as 10, made by the National Council of Civil Liberties (NCCL) during his chairmanship of the group in the 1970s.

The Sun reported on the minutes of a meeting of the executive committee of the NCCL in 1976 , attended by Dromey, which agreed that the body should propose lowering the minimum age for sex to 14, or 10 in certain circumstances .'

Doesn't mean that he agreed to it, though, does it? It looks like he was overruled by the others.

Lazyjaney · 28/02/2014 23:16

"I don't think anyone sane is suggesting that they "supported" a paedophile organization"

its more sane to believe that if this lot opposed it at the time there wouldn't be all this furore.

Martorana · 28/02/2014 23:17

"Nennypops, I really don't think it will wash that HH knew nothing about PIE and what they stood for."

nobody has said that.

TheFabulousIdiot · 28/02/2014 23:30

Committing the sin of not reading the thread to say...

The problem was that in the 60s, when PIE found ways to infiltrate the civil liberties groups, there was

A. A strong legislative anti-homosexual feeling

B. a strongly held belief that homosexuality and pedophilia were linked.

This meant that PIE were able to wheedle their way in under the banner of civil rights and freedom.

It's very obvious that there was strong objection to this at the time.

As an aside, the man who abused me as a child (and who was prosecuted and found not guilty) was working with the civil liberties group but even I don't believe tha the national council for civil liberties supported pedophilia.

SelectAUserName · 01/03/2014 05:51

I would love to think that the only reason the BBC is focussing on Harriet Harman, in particular, off the back of the DM story is purely over its concerns about her judgement given she is a current MP, in the interests of transparency and a quest for the truth in the best tradition of investigative journalism, but the cynical part of me can't help recalling that she was publicly critical of the organisation in the wake of the Savile investigations...

claig · 01/03/2014 09:41

"And indeed, Stephen Green, the Christian campaigner and author who conducted extensive research in the NCCL archives in the mid-Eighties, says that the initiative for affiliation actually came from the NCCL itself . According to his research, the NCCL officer Nettie Pollard, who worked in the organisation until the late Nineties, ‘wrote a letter inviting the Paedophile Information Exchange to affiliate in 1975’.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2570675/The-Lefts-web-shame-Its-not-just-Harman-Dromey-Hewitt-As-reveal-members-Britains-ruling-liberal-elite-held-senior-posts-NCCL-closely-linked-paedophiles.html

TheHoneyBadger · 01/03/2014 10:02

sorry can you remind me what year harman went to work there please?

claig · 01/03/2014 10:09

It is not about Harman. It is about PIE and how come it was affiliated to the NCCL.

Patricia Hewitt, a former General Secretary of the NCCL, has apologised and said

"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.

"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."

claig · 01/03/2014 10:11

'"I should have urged the executive committee to take stronger measures to protect NCCL's integrity from the activities of PIE members and sympathisers"

Why did the executive committee need any urging?

falaaalaaa · 01/03/2014 10:23

The implications of all this are massive.

Lazyjaney · 01/03/2014 10:38

"sorry can you remind me what year harman went to work there please?"

You are still missing the point spectacularly. Can you remind me what Harman said or did to object PIE while she was there?

nauticant · 01/03/2014 10:48

Yeah TheHoneyBadger, why bother with facts, what do they tell you?

Ignore the date, and instead go with your gut feeling of whether Harman is a saint or is the Devil.

[But if you recklessly insist in finding out what actually was going on, HH joined the NCCL in 1978.]

TheHoneyBadger · 01/03/2014 10:51

it was a genuine question! i was actually trying to place whether she would have been involved at that time. jesus.

thank you nauticant for supplying my lazy/busy arse with the answer to my question Grin i do insist on facts it's ridiculous i know! talk about anal and missing the point.

TheHoneyBadger · 01/03/2014 10:52

fuck your facts - they're irrelevent - coming round here waving your big facts around like you're something special!

you don't need facts when you've an unswerving moral compass goddammit. who wants to be ruled by people who actually weigh up facts? can you imagine?

nauticant · 01/03/2014 10:54

Facts make life complicated. There's a TOP FACT for you!

claig · 01/03/2014 11:02

If you like facts, read that Daily Mail article. There's a few in there.