Harriet Harman, her husband Jack Dromey given a safe Labour sat on an all women shortlist, and Patricia Hewitt are the sort of ghastly career politician, New Labour figures who one cannot help but despise. The six day campaign by the Daily Mail to link them to those campaigning for organised paedophilia has thus found many on the right salivating and scenting blood. I am not so sure I want to join in this vengefest. And I note that many of the allegations made were known a long time ago. Much of this is not newsbreaking but instead an organised campaign.
In the 1970s the three ghastly New Labourites worked for the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL), the organisation now known as Liberty in senior roles. The NCCL had more than 1,000 affiliated groups who were clearly not vetted terribly carefully. Among them was the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) which wanted the law to be changed to allow adults to have sex with kids and many of whose leading lights have since been exposed and imprisoned as sickening nonces.
Harman clearly put her name to one or two documents from the NCCL pushing for changes in the law on, for instance, child pornography, which of one looks at them today are frankly disgusting.
Harman has after six days expressed “regrets” over certain matters but she has not issued an outright apology. She has in a very New Labour way bashed the Mail for stating things it did not actually say and thus claimed this is a “smear campaign.”
Hewitt has said nothing. The Daily Mail continues to push. The new media right scents blood although Tory High Command has said little. To its credit the organisation now known as Liberty has said that errors were made, has expressed its disgust and apologised. That should be what Harman, Hewitt and Dromey do to. But should they be utterly crucified?
Attitudes in the 1970s were very different to attitudes today. I do not for a moment condone paedophilia, quite the reverse, but among lefty liberal fools like Harman the struggle for gay equality sometimes got a bit confused. Those who judge her silliness in 1978 by todays post Saville standards act in the same way as those who condemn WW1 Generals for “using the wrong tactics.”
The Daily Mail campaign is clearly politically motivated. It knows as well as you and I the names of at least one very senior Tory politician (still alive) who was not campaigning to legalise paedophilia thirty five years ago, he was instead an active paedophile himself. Perhaps this knowledge, which is known throughout Westminster, Fleet Street and indeed all over the internet, explains why Tory High Command is not so keen on throwing stones on this issue.
The Labour trio should, for once, show humility and apologise. But that should be it. This is not a resignation matter – I say that as someone who truly despises all three of these folk who have never done a proper job in their life but have instead been career parasites. Perhaps, in the interests of balance, the Daily Mail should be really brave and expose the senior Tory nonce and demand that he faces justice and that those who have protected him should be forced to resign?