Should Harriet Harman apologise?

She must be preparing for St David' Day jingls. Would you like a Welsh cake? Can we have a welsh cake smiley please?

If HH does now "apologise" (for what?), will people be satisfied? I think not. They'll just carry on criticising her for not apologising sooner or they'll find something else she 'should' be apologising for.

What good has Hewitt's apology done to anyone or anything? How has it improved things for people atrisk from paedophiles? It hasn't.

Attitudes have changed and people's understanding has increased during the last forty years because of an improvement in ethical standards (achieved through education; NB: education, not schooling), not apologies.

Not so much the apology now - it would be disingenuous at this late stage, but more an acknowledgement that not speaking out to distance herself from PIE when the association was proved years ago. As Patricia Hewitt says, it was naive at the time - PIE was being exposed regularly, yet allowed to stay with NCCL. Harriet Harman and the rest of the executive committee didn't act when they could have done.

In the same way the bishops did not act to expose and remove abusing priests........? The bishops did not cause direct harm to children, but by not acting, it was perpetuated.

Speclally for Jingle ,
daffodil]
laugh &

Do you mind, nonu? We're in the middle of a debate about politicians taking responsibility regarding child abusers!

Good point, when, but I'm not sure the two are really parallel. I accept the ressemblance but in the case of the bishops (and the pope), the problem was that actual abuse to children was not reported. The link between the PIE and NCCL was not like that. PIE was, naively, seen as a group fighting for civil liberties. We now see that this was the wrong way to view it and we now know that some of its members have been convicted of being paedophiles.

What the bishops did was (is) criminal. What HH and other officers of NCCL was not criminal. This is a huge difference.

missed out a 'did'

But, bags members of PIE were busy abusing children and gaining a platform to try to legitimise the harm they were doing, at the time HH was on the exec of NCCL. They weren't hidden like priests - they were abusing and taking to the streets to advertise it, albeit calling it 'boy love.' Paedophile rings with offenders like Sidney Cooke, involved in the murder of Jason Swift, were active members of PIE and close to Tom O'Carroll. Politicians who are now expecting that knock on the door were active membersof PIE - the same politicians alleged to be involved with North Wales care homes and the Elm Guest House abuse of children. It was known in the 70s and early 80s, publicised in newspapers and the NCCL was being dragged through the mud. I don't think for a moment that HH was complicit in the harm done to children, but by refusing to take a stand or acknowledge when asked throughout the following years, she's dug herself a bloody big hole.

If successive popes and bishops can be called to account for not acting on information that was readily available to them, and known to the public, I don't think it's too much to expect HH and co to have taken a stand then and now, especially when they have the advantage of legal training. I now wonder whether her loyalty to other politicians, or anxiety about her future in a Labour cabinet, is compromising her preparedness to speak like Shami Chakrabati and Patricia Hewitt.

By the way, this doesn't mean I endorse the way that the Daily Mail has gone about it. I find them hypocritical and agree with HH - who would take lessons from them?

That was a mean thing to say to nonu whenim64.

Unnecessary.

jingle x

Mean? I was being polite.

I'm just surprised that anyone feels an apology would be adequate, if they really think HH is a person to tolerate and condone paedophiles. Why not go the whole hog and demand she be shown the door of the House?

Apologising implies that something has been done that was wrong. The obsession of PIE with young children was not as obvious then as it is with hindsight. They were thought to be resisting heavyhanded officialdom at that time.

Yes, she could have made more noise about disapproval, but she did not approve of their involvement with child abuse - they did not publicise that, naturally.

PIE was never a benign organisation that went unrecognised as the dangerous collection of paedophiles that we know it to be today - it was known then. The 70s wasn't the Wild West where anything goes - we had sturdy child protection legislation and agencies that have become more effective over the years, but were in place then. Investigative journalists, criminologists, police, probation, social services were all up and running with the attempts to expose, prosecute, imprison and treat sex offenders. Not at the level we do now, but in terms of putting this issue in the public domain, PIE and its sinister attempts to groom NCCL was noticed and protested about. HH must have been going around with her eyes and ears closed if she wasn't aware of it then. Her judgement is questionable if she can't bring herself to acknowledge what others have done. What else will she struggle with if called to account?

whenim well said! I hate being lectured on right-on-ness by individuals like HH whose grasp of ethical principle is rather less than a haddock's.

HH's husband is one of the people who recognised the problem for what is was and did something about PIE.

I'm with Jingle and Mary Beard on this. I think HH, like many other people at the time, did not realise the truth about PIE back then. Members of PIE had clearly not been charged with sex crimes against children. This suggests that people really were not aware. HH has expressed regret already. Regret means that she accepts, now, that perhaps she should have done something back then. At least, I think it does.

@wmarybeard: PIE obviously (as we now see) was awful; but the 1970s debate about the age of consent was complicated, silly, difficult, bold, etc, etc

It isn't as simple as the DM and some GNers seem to be suggesting.

"jingle and Mary Beard" I like that.

(still wish she'd get a haircut)

Sorry when im64 as you were!

No, not simple, bags but not difficult to comprehend, either.

Well, I think it must have been difficult to comprehend at the time or all this would never have happened. Harman, Hewitt, and Coggins are not thick. Nor are they wicked. That's what it boils down to.

Of course WE were never naive, were we? WE always understood everything and always knew the proper way to proceed in all our endeavours

Did anyone know just how huge a problem paedophilia was back in the seventies? Maybe, when you are just starting out out on a political career, you can be forgiven for not noticing, or giving enough credence to, everything that is going on. Especially when it is on the very outer reaches of your organisation.

Yes, they did. In the USA there was a lot of pioneering work which came here in the second half of the 70s, and by the late 70s was being developed into treatment programmes for individual sex offenders, followed by groupwork programmes in the early 80s. Ray Wyre, first a probation officer and later a criminologist initiated treatment for catholic priests from Ireland, and collaborated with many other psychologists, prison governors, police, probation, social services and NSPCC in spreading knowledge and expertise about paedophiles. This was in parallel with development of legislation around child protection, age of consent, management of paedophiles in the community, and investigations into allegations of widespread child abuse by paedophile rings. Much of this whilst HH was in post at NCCL.

As someone who was a social worker in the late 70s I think there was still a lot of confusion around sexual abise. I remember incidents being referred to as 'incest' when they involved father and daughter, and a widespread belief that adolescent girls were somehow implicit in their abuse. It was not until the 1980's that proper training began to take off and new ways of investigating allegations were developed. Some of them were additionally harmful such as the use of 'anatomical dolls' which came with the message that only children who had been abused would know how to fit the relevant parts together. I saw that proved wrong on more than one occasion. Thankfully they were discredited as a regular tool for investigation and I often wonder how many of them are languishing in some dusty cupboard in social work offices across the land.

Maybe the USA was ahead of us when, as in so many things, particularly in treatment of offenders, but victims definitely got a raw deal in those days.

None of this is an apology for HH's involvement or support of such an organisation and I do think she needs to consider being a lot clearer in condemning the group/ distancing herself now.

Yes, training came after the development of the pioneering work that was going on in some parts of the country, nightowl. The USA was ahead of us but generous with support and in Rochdale the work began with family therapy type treatment.