Should Harriet Harman apologise?

She said on the radio that PIE had left by the time she joined the civil liberties thing.

It is totally ridiculous! Quite really. So unfair.

I don't think she did,jingle as that wasn't true and is a matter of record. There are a number of documents circulating in the press (not just DM!) that show her dealings with PIE. I remember it at the time.

She said it on the World at One today. I heard her!

Newsnight interview first item.

Maybe she was being economical with the truth , has been known to happen with politicians !!

I don't think for a minute that she supported PIE but it can't be denied that her name is on a document from NCCL seeking to water down a Bill regarding Child Protection.

I think this would have blown over if Harriet Harman had just apologised long ago when this story first came to light. Shami Chakrabarti joined the organisation in 2001 but even she has apologised.

Copied from Monday 24th, Guardian.

The NCCL, which was created 80 years ago has been known as Liberty since 1989, is the oldest human rights group in the UK. Shami Chakrabarti, the current director of Liberty, who joined the organisation in 2001, has previously issued an apology about the links between the NCCL and PIE.

In December, she said in a statement: "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 most important lesson learned by Liberty over the subsequent 30 years was to become a well-governed modern human rights movement in which protecting the vulnerable, especially children, will always come first."

Listened to the interview, thanks anno. What HH said was that PIE had already been 'pushed away'. In other words, representatives weren't allowed to speak at NCCL events but the organisation remained affiliated, paying membership, for some years after HH joined. What she didn't say was that with hindsight, their membership fee should have been returned and NCCL should have publicly dissociated itself from PIE. And she wrote a paper commenting on the Children Act suggesting that people who took or distributed dubious photographs of children should only be prosecuted if it could be shown that the child had been harmed.

Just because it was in the DM does not mean it was necessarily untrue.
Just because people may think she has done good as an MP does not mean anything that happened previously that could be judged unsavoury should be disregarded - if so, there should be an amnesty for all the DJs and celebrities who have been charged with actual offences.
With a bit of luck Hewitt has gone back to where she came from but I doubt if they would want her.
The DT report made me feel sick, I wish I hadn't read it.

Shami Chakrabart i has been like a breath of fresh air after that lot.

Yes thank you from me too anno. Ms Harman really dug herself into a deep hole during that interview.

She just needs to admit that she made some serious errors of judgment in her youth.

I agree that HH, JD and PH should have addressed this issue much earlier. It has been the subject of endless debate on internet forums for years. It seems to me to have been a time bomb waiting to go off. I'm surprised that such experienced politicians weren't aware of the need to open discussion about that period and their work at the NCCL before the DM had the opportunity to use it to attack them, and the Labour Party.
Like other posters, I remember PIE and attempts to argue that sex with children was not damaging, as long as the child consented. I was concerned then about its links with the NCCL and I find it hard to believe it isn't something HH hasn't pondered on at various points in her career. It's a great pity she hasn't at any point acknowledged regret about putting in writing the possibility that this was a reasonable discussion for anyone to be having. It so wasn't!

I don't think that I have ever heard Harriet Harman apologise for anything at all in all her time as an MP.She is one MP who consistently seeks to justify anything that she or the Labour party has done [or not done] for years and years, and that includes the mess that Gordon Brown left the country in.Quite how PIE managed to 'affiliate' itself in the way it did is questionable in itself, who [and why] allowed that?

Harriet Harman irritates me because it seems she always has to be right. I don't think associating her with PIE because she joined Civil Liberties is anything to worry about - they joined because they could, before she came on the scene, like a thousand other organisations. PIE was ousted in due course, and should have been booted out a lot faster. Her mistake was to appear to collude because she didn't speak out and disassociate herself when opportunities arose. She should apologise for that.

She was the legal officer but tried to make out that, as there were over 1, 000 organisations affiliated to NCCL, she could not know about all of them. So is she in denial or was she not on top of the job?

Hewitt was chief Executive, have not seen much of her, it seems to be Hattie taking the flak.

Thinking back to that time, people, even well educated ones, were very unaware of paedophilia and child abuse. These days we hear about it all the time. I think when this story hit the news originally the majority of the population were unaware of the meaning of the word. Before that it would have only been found in psychiatric text books etc. There was a case some years later when a paediatrician was targeted by people who thought she was a paedophile.
I don't think it is appropriate for us (or the DM) to judge the actions or inactions that people took in such a different climate. Any more than it was appropriate for the DM to try to undermine the reputation Ed Milliband by distorting the truth about his late father.

PIE were completely open about their message at the time so there was no unawareness about it. It was the educated people at the time who were so passionate about freedom of speech they were prepared for that to apply to all. Even groups such as PIE.
It's a huge error but if the 3 of them had just taken the same path as Shami this story would already be forgotten.
There is a huge dislike, disdain for The Daily Mail amongst Labour and the Left but it is a popular paper. And it's readers are not all loony right wing nutters. People are getting tired of being somehow tarnished if they dare to admit to reading it.

Good post , pENGUIN

Zoe Williams has written an intersting piece in the Guardian.

Gives a bit of historical balance to the whole caboodle.

I think Mamie's link of 13.45 was rather more balanced. Only my opinion, of course.

Thank you Nonu.
It is an interesting article by Zoe Williams but her trying to pigeonhole the Daily Mail, "if you were a suffragette....." leaves her just as guilty of daft assumptions as anything the Daily Mail puts out.

Yes, that's also an interesting article. White seems to be agreeing with Williams quite a lot of the time, especially about the Daily Mail's smear tactics.

X post, ppb.

We have the run up to the general election to look forward to soon.