A Guardian report from 1975 about a Campaign for Homosexual Equality conference…the CHE has Labour peer Chris Smith as a vice president….the CHE was kicked out of ‘Liberty’ for its stance on child abuse…in 2009.
Cover-up has become part of the story of child abuse
From Nick Davies in the Guardian in 1998:
The sexual abuse of children is a special crime, not simply because of the damage it does to its victims, nor even because of the anger and fear it provokes in communities, but more particularly because it is so easy – easy to commit, easy to get away with.
We have seen the results of cover-up and concealment, occasionally of corruption, of whistleblowers who are punished for trying to expose the truth, of local authorities, churches and other organisations who have closed ranks to deny or conceal allegations against their staff.
Of course it’s especially easy to get away with when people in positions of power or influence turn a blind eye to what is happening.
‘Speaking to the Radio 4 Today Programme O’Carroll said: ‘At the time Harman and Hewitt couldn’t just kick us out, or they could but they didn’t try. The reason was their careers in the NCCL depended upon them not rocking the boat too much.’ ‘
And it still goes on.
‘Is the BBC biased”s Craig, notes that Newsnight has again done a decent job:
Perhaps a stint at ITV might be good for a few more BBC journo’s and might make them remember why they entered the job n the first place.
However, Newsnight apart, the BBC wanted to ignore this story and sweep it under the carpet. Even now as they ‘report’ it they downplay the story itself and concentrate on the politics or try to spread the ‘blame’.
Here is a Labour spokesperson trying to dodge the bullet:
“There’s an argument that the Daily Mail has got an agenda against certain senior figures in the Labour Party.”
And oddly enough here is Labour’s favourite BBC reporter, John Pienaar, giving us exactly the same line: (13:30)
Pienaar tells us that this story has plenty of mileage left in it especially for the Daily Mail which will keep digging away….‘objectively [?], this accounts for the deep hostility towards the paper from Harman’.
Really? I thought it was because they’d dragged up something that was extremely uncomfortable for her from her past that she didn’t want to deal with.
Sheila Fogarty feeds Pienaar a question….
‘Is this fight between the Daily Mail and Harriet Harman following a pattern such as when a paper tries to draw in an MP or politician?’
So dealing with the politics and not the substance of the issue.
Pienaar says….‘Not in this unpleasant form…..’
So now we know what he thinks…the Daily Mail raising the question is ‘unpleasant’….never mind the truth then.
Pienaar reduces it to a matter of a ‘feud and vendetta’ by the Daily Mail against Harman…..we must remember, he tells us, that it is important that the story is put against the background of not what Harriet Harman did but what she didn’t do…it’s crucial to reiterate that there’s no accusation that she acted in any way to support the paedophiles.…..the damage to her is by connecting the word paedophiles to her name in the same sentence…that’s what caused the outrage from Harriet Harman’.
So Harman didn’t work for an organisation that had close ties to PIE and she didn’t push for photos of naked children to be considered legal as long as the children weren’t ‘harmed’?
Pienaar goes on….‘The damage has been done and the war will continue but as far as this is concerned that context needs to be clear.’
So context is all…once again never mind the truth…or the actual context.
Pienaar portrays this as solely a political feud between a right wing paper and the Labour Party….downplaying the actual story itself.
But is it just a story cooked up by a right wing press to embarrass Labour?
Curious no mention of this from Labour’s Tom Watson only last year:
It was established in 1974 to campaign for the age of consent to be lowered to four years old
Did previous Tory and Labour governments fund the infamous Paedophile Information Exchange?
Or this from the Daily Mirror recently:
Everyone in the country is talking about perverts except people who have reasonable questions to answer about perverts
Deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman and her MP husband Jack Dromey waited three days until the scandal reached boiling point and then accused the newspaper which started it of being more pervy than they are and running a political smear campaign.
The Daily Mail is pretty pervy, but it’s not political for the simple reason that a Tory politician with the same provable, documented links to PIE would be front page too.
You can’t blame it on one newspaper because pretty much everyone’s done it, except the BBC which was conspicuous in its absence from reporting the allegations.
It’s undeniably a story.
And was the NCCL so innocent? Apparently not….Patricia Hewitt has surfaced and done Harman up like a kipper:
Did she have anything to apologise for? And did the NCCL sideline the ‘appalling PIE’ as claimed by Harman?
It seems not…….
From the Daily Mail in 1983:
And even the Guardian digs for more dirt:
Evidence continues to emerge of links between NCCL and PIE after denials by Harman and Dromey
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.
The Daily Mail reports that in 1979, one year after Harman joined, the NCCL advertised in a PIE publication for new members…..so obviously readers of that publication were welcome…and they were obviously paedophiles if they were reading such stuff…..
The BBC does come up with this…which proves once more that Harman’s claim that PIE was loathed and sidelined is bunk…as is Pienaar’s claim that it’s merely a trumped up political charge by the Mail:
The NCCL continued to defend having PIE as a member. As late as September 1983, an NCCL officer was quoted in the Daily Mail saying the group was campaigning to lower the age of consent to 14. “An offiliate [sic] group like the Paedophile Information Exchange would agree with our policy. That does not mean it’s a mutual thing and we have to agree with theirs.”
From the Mirror in 1977…sex is not for children…so the general atmosphere of the ‘times’ was not of acceptance of the likes of PIE:
The BBC is also digging…but you could interpret their effort as an attempt to tar a few others with the same brush and therefore limit the ‘damage’ that might accrue for Harman and Co:
The Paedophile Information Exchange was affiliated to the National Council for Civil Liberties – now Liberty – in the late 1970s and early 1980s. But how did pro-paedophile campaigners operate so openly?
It’s part of the story of how paedophiles tried to go mainstream in the 1970s. The group behind the attempt – the Paedophile Information Exchange – is back in the news because of a series of stories run by the Daily Mail about Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman.
PIE was formed in 1974. It campaigned for “children’s sexuality”. It wanted the government to axe or lower the age of consent. It offered support to adults “in legal difficulties concerning sexual acts with consenting ‘under age’ partners”. The real aim was to normalise sex with children.
It’s an ideology that seems chilling now. But PIE managed to gain support from some professional bodies and progressive groups. It received invitations from student unions, won sympathetic media coverage and found academics willing to push its message.
Peter Hain, then president of the Young Liberals, described paedophilia as “a wholly undesirable abnormality”
Reading the newspapers of the time there is a palpable anxiety that PIE was succeeding. ….A Guardian article in 1977 noted with dismay how the group was growing.
[Polly] Toynbee talked of her “disgust, aversion and anger” at the group.
Some, such as philosopher Roger Scruton, felt that freedom of speech had to be sacrificed when it came to groups like PIE. In a Times piece in September 1983 he wrote: “Paedophiles must be prevented from ‘coming out’.
Astonishing how many ‘lefties’ the BBC can squeeze in to one story and who all ‘opposed’ PIE fanatically….The Guardian, Hain, Toynbee and the BBC’s own Roger Scruton.
And then we have this highlighted by the BBC…..
If there was anything with the word ‘liberation’ in the name you were automatically in favour of it if you were young and cool in the 1970s. It seemed like PIE had slipped through the net” Matthew Parris, columnist
All just a mistake then….caught up in the excitement of the trendy 60’s and 70’s vibe.
Nothing to see here….child rape, child molestation…well you know…that’s progress for you…..
And there are many more questions to be asked….did a Labour government fund PIE?:
Or who is this?:
And who is this BBC presenter?:
PIE, which is now outlawed, also had links with another BBC presenter who was investigated over child sex allegations in the late 80s.
The charity was set up by a PIE member in the 80s, offering yachting classes to vulnerable and underprivileged children.
The BBC presenter was investigated after police became aware of allegations he was abusing boys during sailing trips.
No charges were ever brought against the star for reasons that remain unclear.
A child protection source said yesterday: “The presenter was going out on a boat with vulnerable children and a leading former member of PIE.
“The charity was being used as a way of taking indecent pictures of the boys and there was also physical abuse occurring.”
No such answers from this something and nothing from the BBC:
The BBC deftly avoids going into any details about the claims made about the NCCL’s connections to PIE….
What does the Daily Mail say?
The newspaper has repeatedly questioned the reasons for the link being established and the role of Harriet Harman, Jack Dromey and Patricia Hewitt in the relationship between the two organisations.
It claims that Ms Harman tried to “water down” child pornography legislation when offering the National Council for Civil Liberties’ views on the Protection of Children Bill in 1978.
All clear then?…you now know exactly what the ‘Harman-Mail’ row is all about?….and that is it from the world’s finest news broadcaster.
When the Leftwing Guardian and Mirror, and even a Labour MP, are asking questions and demanding answers, the BBC is left standing in the wings looking foolishly partisan in its attempt to ignore and now cover up and downplay the story.
As the Labour supporting blog ‘Labour Uncut’ says:
Of course to get the answers you need to ask the questions in the first place…take note BBC [Laura Kuennsberg aside].
Binyam blames UK for torture
