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 I have discovered is that this information was being saved for the election campaign-hard- and has been released early because of the damage caused to Cameron's acting prime ministership by the incompetent flood management.

The Daily Fail isn't that outraged. They've been sitting on this for ages.

I know I keep saying this- but it is incredibly important to distinguish between supporting PIE and allowing them a platform to speak. At the time, the whole idea of freedom to speak openly on sexual matters was incredibly new. And the idea of "I do not support what you say but I defend to the death your right to say it" was key. And the age of consent was a massively important topic for discussion and legislation. So it was perfectly possible, to be utterly opposed to paedophilia and to believe that PIE had a right to a platform. Just as it possible now to be utterly opposed to racism and believe that the BNP has a right to a platform.

Given that everybody knew about this but no one mentioned it, then that is possible.

But is it the fact that

"On Sunday, the Home Office announced that it had ordered a ‘thorough, independent investigation’ into shocking allegations that the Paedophile Information Exchange received public funds while James Callaghan was in Downing Street.

It will examine whether tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money was funnelled to it via the Voluntary Services Unit [VSU], a department of the Home Office that gave annual grants to charities and non-profit-making lobby groups.

The probe comes after a whistle-blower had claimed the payments were signed off, over several years, by a senior civil servant who worked under Labour’s then Home Secretary, Merlyn Rees."

this is going on that has led to this story?

Excellent point Martorana

Martorana, I think that allowing PIE to be affiliated0 to the NCCL goes far further than what you are saying?

Did the NCCL allow far right racist organisations to be affiliated to it?
I doubt it, but I don't know.

I am sure that the NCCL would draw the line at some organisations being affiliated to them. I can't see left wing lawyers etc joining an organisation that allowed far right groups to be affiliated

And yet the NCCL did not draw the line at a paedophile supporting group. Why?

No boat rocking will be tolerated. And if this is investigated other things might come to light. That's my take on probablilities.

I wonder what was actually required to gain affiliaition to the NCCL 30-40 years ago. Was it a rubber stamp job or did it involve careful investigation into the aims and nature of an organisation seeking affiliation?

I agree with Martorama.

Harriet Harman et al weren't going around being paedophiles as the Mail implies, they were supporting the idea of open discussion about sexual mores. We might now know that actually paedophilia is one bit of the free love 60s message that didn't wash with ordinary people longer term, but I think in the 70s people were still questioning all boundaries and redefining them.

On this one boundary, we're now far LESS liberal then then. But I suspect that then sex with children seemed as open to rational debate as sex before marriage, cohabitation, gay sex, pornography etc.

Supporting open debate is not the same thing as supporting child sex.

'No boat rocking will be tolerated.'

I think you are right unfortunately, Viviennemary.
But the Daily Mail was prepared to rock the boat for 3 or 4 days. It depends how much rocking of the boat the Mail will do as to whether it will all go away again.

Is anyone prepared to say openly and clearly what they think Harriet Harman did?

The Mail has said what it thinks about the whole thing

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2567098/Not-one-hint-remorse-Harriet-Harman-Jack-Dromeys-statements-Mails-replies.html

I actually don't believe for one second that sex with children was open to rational debate in the way that sex before marriage, cohabitation, gay sex or pornography was.

The significant difference, of course, is that the above were at least between consenting adults.

Why are people making out that people in the 1970s were idiots or something? Idiots that didn't know the difference between the actions of consenting adults and children?

It's like saying that just because people then were 'meat and two veg'* kind of people they might be open to persuasion to eating a bowl of spag bol or mussels (spag bol=cohabitation).

What the PIE debate was doing was asking people to consider eating maggots.

I honestly think most people would have dismissed it out of hand without any second thought.

And I don't believe that a left-wing organisation would allow far-right groups to have their say, either. They're not the 'let everybody have their say' egalatarians people are making them out to be.

You criticise the Harriet Harman's of this world about stuff like gay marriage and you'll be soon shut down and called a 'bigot' . Sex with kids, though? Oh yeah, that sort of person will hear you out on that one.

I am very meh about the whole thing, TBH, and agree with tryingreallytrying's post.

It's the Daily Mail who are the paedophile enablers, and the other tabloid press, who regularly objectify girls who are only just 16. A quick search of their website and you can find reporting of Mandy Smith and Bill Wyman, who all the tabloids branded a 'Wild Child' at 13. Also pictures of her in a bikini as a 16 year old.

but it is incredibly important to distinguish between supporting PIE and allowing them a platform to speak

sorry but has the world gone fucking crazy? why on earth should these people have a voice or a platform??? Put another way even considering giving them a platform is reprehensible

I can see a situation in which the PIE became affiliates because the NCCL was about a platform to discuss liberties and rights - and that affiliation did not imply any condining of the practices they wished to discuss.

But I don't know, I haven't seen the T&C of the NCCL at the time, nor a deed of affiliation.

I don't know why HH and co don't just say 'it was a discussion process of the time, the PIE were an abhorrent organisation and the interest of theier memebrs was abhorrent. Times were differnt, we have similiar issues now in defending the right to discuss practices and allegiances which many find abhorent and an affront to liberty. If there was any time that PIE discussions led to harm taking place or a support of their activities then we must apologise, and sincerely so'. Or something.

In those days it was routine to beat children with canes in schools. (legally, unlike paediphilia which of course was not legal) Michael Wishaw was in the paper talking about his regret for having beaten children with a cane and saying he now thinks it wrong, counter productive and ineffective.

People should engage the benefit of hindsight and be open "what the hell were we thinking?".

Sallymanda, of course there was no debate about whether it was right to have sex with babies, toddlers and other pre-pubescent children. Where the water gets muddied in these debates is what to do about young teenagers, who are sexually mature and often sexually active but below the age of consent.

We've all known teenagers who can't be told about anything - they know they are right and adults are old fogeys who just want to stop them having fun. How far do we as a society stand back and let them make their own mistakes and when do we intervene and say 'Too bad, the law says no'? We're a lot clearer about that now than we were in the 70s, not least because from the 80s onwards sexual abuse of children was taken a lot more seriously by the police, social services and courts and got a great deal of publicity.

The problem back in the 70s was that a lot of libertarians had moved a long way towards believing that children and especially adolescents should do what they liked. Look at what was going on in schools - at its most extreme in William Tyndale primary school in Islington - where many teachers saw themselves as facilitators, not instructors, and children were left to work on their own projects without much actual teaching going on. We've drawn back from that a lot too in the last 30 years because the results were disastrous.

What are the allegations against Harman? That she worked for an organisation who had a paedophile group as one of hundreds of affiliated groups?

How much do YOU look into what your employer does before you join them? How much would you have been able to find out in pre-internet days? I'm a solicitor and certainly don't know the names and dealings of all the clients of the firm I work for.

I'm no Harman fan, though I agree with the equality agenda. I just think this is tenuous, but all it takes is the press to bandy about the word 'paedophile' to create a huge shit-storm (largely in media circles in any event) and the DM hope that some shit will stick.

Exactly Katnip

The Mail and its employees are engaged in the promulgation of misogyny and racism every day. They invite the male gaze and evaluation of young girls in an occult, less than overt manner staying just within the parameters of legality but not moral decency.

To pontificate on the rights or wrongs of what others do whilst promoting a paedophiliac gaze on young girls such as Mandy Smith is abhorrent.

I'd be fucking ashamed if my child worked there.

As in adult child.

Blu, the question is why did they join and remain in the NCCL when it was affiliated to PIE?

Read the Mail's replies to see what the PIE campaigned and lobbied for. How could any organisation allow such a group to be affiliated to it?

'I'm a solicitor and certainly don't know the names and dealings of all the clients of the firm I work for.'

They have not said that they didn't know that PIE was affiliated to the NCCL as far as I understand it.

I wish someone would turn this on its head a publish a compilation of the worst examples of the DM's voyeuristic and misogynistic stories about girls and young women they have written over the years. Harman should get together with Mandy Smith and Charlotte Church, for starters.

They have not said that they didn't know that PIE was affiliated to the NCCL as far as I understand it

AFAIC, unless Harman or Dromey did work to directly and knowingly promote the aims of the PIE then there is no case to answer.

KatnipEvergreen , don't you understand that "the worst examples of the DM's voyeuristic and misogynistic stories about girls and young women they have written over the years" are nowhere near in the same league as what PIE openly lobbied for and yet this group was affiliated the NCCL?