BBC Ignores Labour MPs Support for Paedophile Group

[Teddy Bear]

The fact that this story is completely ignored by the BBC shows just how heinous they are with their reporting.

Here's an article just run by the Daily Mail

The truth about Labour's apologists for paedophilia: Police probe child sex campaign group linked to three top party officials in wake of Savile scandal

• Harriet Harman, Jack Dromey and Patricia Hewitt linked to vile group
• They were key figures at National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL)
• The NCCL was an 'affiliate' of the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE)
• PIE members may have abused children on an 'industrial scale'

A further outline is here covered by the new Breitbart UK website.

REPORT: SENIOR LABOUR FIGURES

by RAHEEM KASSAM

The Daily Mail has today reported what it calls the "full extent of the shocking links between three senior Labour figures and vile group that tried to legalise sex with children".

The story, which first appeared in December last year, alleges links between senior members of Britain's Labour Party and an organisation called the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE), which the Mail described as a "far-Left lobby group which spent much of the Seventies and early Eighties publicly calling for the legalisation of child sex -- and the age of consent to be lowered to four."

In December, the Mail revealed that Harriet Harman -- who is Ed Miliband's Deputy Leader of the Labour Party -- were organisationally linked to the PIE group while serving as young officials for a Left-wing organisation called the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL -- now known as Liberty).
The NCCL granted PIE 'affiliate' status, and police are now investigating decades' old documents with the fear of uncovering what one source called the abuse of children on "an industrial scale".


Other Labour party figures, such as Tony Blair's former health secretary Patricia Hewitt, and Labour's current shadow minister for policing Jack Dromey, are reported as being involved with the NCCL at the crucial point where it affiliated with PIE.

The Mail alleges that during the 1970s and 80s, "Miss Hewitt described PIE in glowing terms as 'a campaigning/counselling group for adults attracted to children'". The NCCL is also reported to have lobbied Parliament for the age of consent to be dropped to ten years old, and for incest to be legalised.
One ‘information’ leaflet distributed by PIE claimed that, "Homosexuals are now widely regarded as ordinary, healthy people — a minority, but no more “ill” than the minority who are left-handed... There is no reason why paedophilia should not win similar acceptance."

Some details of the story were first reported by the Daily Telegraph in 2009, when a spokesperson on Ms. Harman's behalf said that that despite her employment by the NCCL during PIE's formal affiliation, "She has always opposed child pornography and has never supported PIE and to suggest that she did is untrue and misleading."

No explanation was offered as to Harman's response to the Protection of Children Bill which sought to ban child pornography in 1978. She stated: "Our amendment [to the proposed law] places the onus of proof on the prosecution to show that the child was actually harmed".
Jack Dromey, now 65, told the Birmingham Mail "that he opposed the activities of PIE and a more radical group PAL, the Paedophile Action for Liberation".

He said: “My view then, and my view now, is that there is no place in a civilised society for any individual, or organisation, who promotes the abuse of children.

“Quite simply, I was throughout that time an implacable opponent of PAL and PIE, as they were called.”

But investigations are continuing into the group's links to the NCCL, and as to whether the organisation received any public money during James Callaghan's Labour government in the late Seventies.
The Metropolitian Police's Operation Fernbridge investigation is looking into allegations of child abuse at a children's home in Richmond, West London. It is believed that the now defunct PIE group is being researched as a part of the investigation.

But the Breitbart has also noticed that nothing about this story is being covered by the BBC.

IS THE BBC REVEALING A PARTISAN BIAS OVER TODAY'S DAILY MAIL HEADLINE?

by RAHEEM KASSAM

I hope there's a better reason for the BBC ignoring the Daily Mail's careful and well-sourced story about senior Labour figures and their "links" to the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) group today. But it doesn't look like there is.

The BBC has refused to acknowledge the Mail's front page today, hiding it away from their Twitter feeds, their newspaper reviews, and even their website's newspapers section. This was obviously a conscious and concerted effort, and willingly or not, it is shielding the accused.

Nick Sutton, the Editor of the BBC's World At One programme, told me it was a matter of legality. Perhaps over-cautiousness on the part of the BBC?
I asked him, "Any idea why the BBC paper review and website don't show the Mail front page?" He tweeted back: "I think it was on the basis of legal advice that was received last night".

But this is rather spurious, since the Telegraph reported the story in 2009 and 2012, and the Mail hit it again in December 2013 as well as today. It's probably safe to assume that they all did their legal duties.

So what other reason, besides nervous lawyers, could there be behind the BBC trying to put a lid on these explosive claims?

Well, since the BBC itself was a home for the likes of Jimmy Savile, there may be some sensitivity in and around the ongoing police investigations into child abuse and paedophilia. But given the plethora of coverage that the BBC has afforded itself on the matter, this argument doesn't stack up either.

The BBC has been publicly licking its wounds over the Savile affair -- so why not report that the Mail's story about PIE, Harriet Harman, Jack Dromey, and Patricia Hewitt today?

I submit to you that if there was a story about the Conservative Party and paedophilia links, the BBC would cover it in full. And indeed it did, when David Cameron went on national television and was foolishly handed a list of Conservative Party officers who were "being mentioned online as paedophiles".
The BBC will happily report on unsubstantiated claims and foolhardy television talk show hosts, but when it comes to reporting from the Mail or the Telegraph, about senior Labour MPs, it appears that MiniTruth is sending it straight down the memory hole.

[Teddy Bear]

Quesntin Letts with a tongue in cheek look at this story.

Surprise, surprise, the BBC has ignored our expose of Labour's links to a child sex scandal. QUENTIN LETTS imagines its reaction if those involved were Tory

By Quentin Letts

For three days the Mail has published shocking details about how leading Labour politicians once supported a vile group that campaigned to legalise child sex. They include Labour’s current deputy leader, Harriet Harman. Yet, astonishingly, the BBC has not touched the story — presumably because those involved are from the Left. But what if the three politicians had been Tories? QUENTIN LETTS imagines how things would have been so very different.

PIP PIP PIP . . .
'We will be covering this major breaking story throughout the programme, but first we go live to Jim Naughtie who is outside the London home of the couple involved'

'We will be covering this major breaking story throughout the programme, but first we go live to Jim Naughtie who is outside the London home of the couple involved'

‘Good morning, it’s six o’clock and this is the Today Programme on Radio 4 with Evan Davis and Mishal Husain.’

‘And the main news: Three leading Conservative politicians are accused of links to a group which campaigned to legalise sex with children.

'Those involved include the deputy leader of the party, her spouse and a former Cabinet minister.

‘We will be covering this major breaking story throughout the programme, but first we go live to Jim Naughtie who is outside the London home of the couple involved.

‘Jim, any comment from them or indeed from the Conservative Party? Or have they gone into hiding?’

6.10am: The Today programme takes its first look at the morning’s national newspapers and ‘there’s really only one story — that of the child-sex allegations being made against three leading Tories — with The Guardian breaking the story in its first edition last night. Another remarkable scoop for the paper’.

6.30: The BBC website swiftly clears the decks. Its usual news-page format is replaced by a banner screaming ‘Sex crisis for Cameron — can the Tories survive?’ Lower down, a box asks: ‘Were you a victim of paedophilia in the 1970s and 1980s? Tell us what you think.’

7.15: The Labour Party announces its ‘disquiet, concern, sorrow, dismay’ at the allegations. Ed Miliband’s office says that he will hold a press conference later in the morning.

7.30: Radio Five Live ‘doorsteps’ the chairman of the Conservative Party as he leaves home for work. Camera crews from BBC TV News, ITN and Sky News shove him against his chauffeur-driven car and ask if he condones his senior colleagues’ past endorsement of the Paedophile Information Exchange.

7.55: Evan Davis tweets: ‘Having problems finding Tory MP prepared to be interviewed. Any takers, please?’ The actor Stephen Fry tweets back: ‘Evan, I thought you’d never ask!’

8.05: John Prescott is awake. Or at least, his Twitter feed (said to be written by one of his sons) has burst into life. It cracks a joke of dubious taste. Soon, various followers of @johnprescott respond with jokes of their own.

Commons Speaker’s wife Sally Bercow has not yet stirred, but that may be because she was out on the toot last night.

Meanwhile, the top-of-the-hour bulletins on Radios 1, 2, 3 and 6, and all BBC local stations put the Tory child-sex story at the top of their news lists. Radio Five Live announces it will conduct a phone-in entitled ‘Is it ever right to go easy on paedophiles?’

8.35: A BBC Breakfast interview with the Conservative Minister for Roads, who thought he was going to be discussing potholes, ends with him storming out of the studio after presenter Bill Turnbull ‘does a Paxman’ and asks the minister ten times if he thinks the deputy leader of his party should resign.

9.20: Russell Brand tweets that ‘ooh, missus, I never knew the dirty Tories had it in ’em’. Labour tough guy Alastair Campbell has erupted! During a spittle-flecked, finger-pointing interview with the BBC’s Nick Robinson, he accuses the Tories of ‘serial immorality’ and a ‘fatal disconnect from British values’. Quite unlike himself!

9.40: The Speaker of the House, John Bercow, grants an Urgent Question in the Commons, to ensure that the issue is raised in Parliament. The National Union of Teachers calls for an immediate review of child-protection laws. The National Union of Journalists praises the reporter who broke the story.

10.45: Ed Miliband holds his press conference. His tone is sombre, his tie black. Around him stand several of his party’s female MPs wearing expressions of pursed-lipped concern. Rev Paul Flowers, disgraced ex-chairman of the Labour-supporting Co-op Bank, who was questioned by police over alleged drugs offences and who was accused of paying for sex with rent boys, is not invited.

Mr Miliband urges the Tory Party to ‘put its house in order for the good of British politics’. The event is covered live on the BBC News Channel and Sky News.

11.15: Sally Bercow has surfaced, but she has not yet tweeted. Perhaps she left her phone in the back of a taxi last night. Or perhaps her libel lawyers have thrown it in the Thames.

Noon: The so-called ‘news narrative’ is now as much about ‘the Conservative Party in disarray’ as it is about the original allegations about the three politicians who once endorsed paedophiles’ demands to lower the age of sexual consent.

Every Tory MP and peer entering the Palace of Westminster is asked for a comment by TV ‘ambush’ teams. Some shield their faces with newspapers. Others tell the reporters to get stuffed. One knight of the shires even kicks a BBC reporter. All this is duly captured on screen and is run as an edited ‘package’ for the lunchtime news programmes on network channels.

2.10pm: Robert Peston bursts into the BBC newsroom with a hot scoop. Unfortunately no one can understand a word he is saying.

3.0: After a three-hour meeting of the Lib Dem high command, Nick Clegg says ‘this is no time to play politics’ and settles for thanking the media for ‘bringing these important matters to public attention’.

Surprise, surprise, no mention of the party’s former chief executive, Lord Rennard, who was recently investigated over claims he sexually pestered young female party members.

3.18: Live to New Scotland Yard where Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe announces the Metropolitan Police will investigate complaints from a Labour backbencher that senior Tories knowingly consorted with a paedophilia ring. ‘The allegation dates back 30 years, but, as we saw in the Jimmy Savile case, the passage of time does not buy you innocence,’ he says severely.

3.30: The Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal-designate Vincent Nichols, says he is ‘praying for all victims of paedophilia’.

5.07: An internet petition condemning ‘child sex sympathising political sleazeballs’ has been signed by thousands of people, many of them bored civil servants sitting in Whitehall offices.

Celebrity tweeters publicising the petition include comedian Eddie Izzard, Dr Who writer Russell T.

Davies, Green Wing actor Stephen Mangan, Labour-supporting Baldrick actor Sir Tony ‘Baldrick’ Robinson and Radio Five Live presenter Richard Bacon.

5.30: The New Statesman magazine says it has changed its front cover for this week’s issue to reflect this major political story. Labour MP Keith Vaz announces a Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry into civil liberties and sex policy.
'Ed Miliband holds his press conference. His tone is sombre, his tie black. Around him stand several of his party's female MPs wearing expressions of pursed-lipped concern'

'Ed Miliband holds his press conference. His tone is sombre, his tie black. Around him stand several of his party's female MPs wearing expressions of pursed-lipped concern'

Lawyers from the Leveson Inquiry into Press ethics are spotted with copies of the Guardian newspaper which first ran the disclosures.

Feminists at the equality campaign group the Fawcett Society go on hunger strike until the named politicians are expelled from the Tory Party.

6.0: The story is so important that BBC TV newscaster George Alagiah presents the Six O’Clock News from College Green, outside Parliament. Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper gives an inflammatory interview, even while managing to look as sad as a scolded spaniel. She says it is ‘time for an inquiry into the culture and practices of the Conservative Party’. Political websites talk of ‘the return of sleaze’ and predict a Blair-style landslide for Ed Miliband in 2015.

7.0: Jon Snow has flown back from some foreign war-zone to present a ‘special’ Channel 4 News devoted entirely to the sex scandal. Psychologists analyse why Right-wing politicians ‘have a problem with sex’, and a quick-turnaround opinion poll finds that 90 per cent of people think the Coalition has ‘mishandled’ the scandal.

Snow asks Tory grandee Ken Clarke: ‘Why has the PM not sacked the deputy leader of his party? Is it because he is too weak?’ Clarke, ever the loyalist, says: ‘Probably.’

10.30: Time for BBC2’s Newsnight — and editor Ian Katz, formerly of the Guardian, has excelled himself. Jeremy Paxman is dressed as Whack-O! actor Jimmy Edwards with a cane. Kirsty Wark is in a dominatrix costume. Reporter Emily Maitlis visits a brothel in Chelsea to interview vice girls, who tell her about clients who are ‘Tory types wanting them to wear school uniforms’.

Katz later wins a prize for his ‘no-holds barred’ reporting. No holds barred? If only that were true of the BBC and Britain’s Left-wing establishment when it came to the scandal that dare not speak its name: the true story of Harriet Harman and the Paedophile Information Exchange.

[Teddy Bear]

Still no mention from the BBC (Bad Behaviour Cover-up)
How blatant the BBC are when they don't want to see the elephant in the room.

The Mail has 3 stories today about it.
Harman wasn't so quiet on Savile scandal: Deputy Labour leader toured TV and radio stations
How much longer can paedophilia apologists stay silent? Even Left demands answers from senior Labour trio over links to child sex group

DAILY MAIL COMMENT: A silence that grows ever more deafening

By Daily Mail Comment

In a 2012 radio interview about the Jimmy Savile sex scandal, Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman stressed the vital importance of unearthing the whole truth.

The lives of many young people had been damaged, she said, and people must be held to account. The fact it all happened a long time ago was no excuse for silence.

‘Something terrible went on… and we need to learn the lessons,’ she told veteran BBC man John Humphrys. ‘We need to understand why it went on for so long and was not stopped.’

How strange then, that she is so reluctant to reveal the whole truth – or indeed anything at all – about her own past links with the Paedophile Information Exchange, a grotesque organisation dedicated to legalising sex between adults and children.

As leading lights in the National Council for Civil Liberties (the pressure group now known as Liberty) in the 1970s and 80s, Miss Harman, her husband the Labour MP Jack Dromey, and ex-Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt campaigned for the rights of paedophiles.

In the name of sexual liberation for all, they argued for the age of consent to be lowered to 10 and incest to be legalised.

After police decided to re-investigate the PIE in the wake of Savile, the Mail published a devastating series of articles detailing how the three Labour grandees helped legitimise this vile organisation – even giving it the respectability of ‘affiliate’ status with the NCCL.

Initially, we were on our own in demanding that they apologise for their shocking error in supporting the PIE – many of whose members were subsequently jailed for child abuse.

Leading lights: Jack Dromey and Patricia Hewitt have also remained silent over the allegations

But now the dam appears to be bursting. As well as Conservative-leaning newspapers and Tory MPs, even the liberal media have joined the cry, with commentators at the Guardian, Observer, and Mirror – Fleet Street’s most prominent Labour cheerleaders – all urging the three to come clean.

Only the BBC has failed – predictably and shamefully – to report any aspect of this hugely important story. Just imagine the feeding frenzy at Broadcasting House if the same charges had been levelled against three members of the Tory elite.

So how long do Miss Harman, Mr Dromey and Miss Hewitt think they can remain silent?

Miss Hewitt may have left the political stage, but the other two are in Labour’s vanguard. Does Ed Miliband really want this sordid affair hanging over his party as it prepares for a general election?

In the eloquent words of Sunday Mirror columnist Carole Malone: ‘How can they ever be taken seriously on ANY issue if they stay silent on this one?’

[Teddy Bear]

Well both the Labour MP's and the BBC have certainly had enough time to work out how they were going to deal with this story.
Finally Harman decided to appear on Newsnight and give.r her story.
The BBC finally have 2 articles following it, that pretty much diminish any guilt that should be attributed to her. Both headlines clearly present her as the victim.
Harriet Harman expresses 'regret' after Daily Mail claims
Harriet Harman condemns paper's 'smear campaign'
Unsurprisingly they didn't run the story until they could present her as innocent. Though Hewitt has still to respond and is probably waiting to see how it pans out for Harman.

Here's an article the Mail is running mostly concerning the bias of the BBC in how they had hitherto avoided this story BBC's censorship of paedophilia scandal 'reveals its left-wing bias': Corporation accused of refusing to report story to protect the Labour party

Here's what the Mail are still waiting for Harman to answer to. Worth looking at the article itself to see the proof of their assertions.

Labour's deputy leader Harriet Harman expresses 'regret' over links to paedophile lobby – but STILL won’t apologise

• Labour’s deputy leader Harriet Harman offers 'regret' but no full apology
• Mounting pressure to explain link to Paedophile Information Exchange
• Came while holding key role in the National Council for Civil Liberties
• Miss Harman said revelations were ‘politically-motivated smear campaign’
• An aide said this morning: 'She regrets the existence of PIE and of course she regrets any organisations' involvement with them including the NCCL'
• Her husband Jack Dromey and Patricia Hewitt also yet to apologise

By Michael Seamark and Guy Adams and Martin Robinson

Labour’s deputy leader Harriet Harman has today expressed 'regret' but refused to give an unreserved apology after six days of uncomfortable questions over her links with a paedophile group.

Miss Harman, her MP husband Jack Dromey and former Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt have been under mounting pressure to explain the connections to the Paedophile Information Exchange while holding key roles in the National Council for Civil Liberties.

The pressure group granted ‘affiliate’ status to PIE, a notorious group of predatory paedophiles but Miss Harman has dismissed the revelations as a ‘politically-motivated smear campaign’ and has offered no apology over the NCCL’s extraordinary relationship with the PIE.

'I’m not going to apologise because I’ve got nothing to apologise for. I very much regret that this vile organisation, PIE, ever existed and that it ever had anything to do with NCCL, but it did not affect my work at NCCL,' she said today.

'It was regrettable that they (PIE) even existed. It was regrettable that they had anything to do with NCCL ever,' she said.

'But it is not true that it influenced my work at the time I was at NCCL or that I ever apologised for or colluded with paedophilia because that is the smear.'

Her lack of a full apology came despite the fact that Shami Chakrabarti, current director of Liberty, has previously issued an apology for the links with PIE. Liberty's formal name still remains the National Council for Civil Liberties.

In a statement Miss Harman said yesterday: ‘They have accused me of being an apologist for child sex abuse, of supporting a vile paedophile organisation, of having a relaxed attitude to paedophilia and of watering down child pornography laws.

‘These are horrific allegations and I strongly deny all of them.’

Despite her partial climbdown today her spokesman added: 'She stands by the statement from yesterday and she is certainly not going to apologise to the Daily Mail.'

The Mail discovered that during the 1970s and 80s, the NCCL described PIE – granted formal ‘affiliate’ status from 1975 to the mid-Eighties – in glowing terms as ‘a campaigning/counselling group for adults attracted to children’.

NCCL archives showed how the pressure group lobbied Parliament for the age of sexual consent to be cut to ten if the child consented and ‘understood the nature of the act’. It also called for incest to be legalised in what one MP called a ‘Lolita’s charter’.

The NCCL – now the respected Liberty – filed a submission to Parliament claiming that ‘childhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in, with an adult, result in no identifiable damage’. Miss Harman, as NCCL legal officer, tried to water down child pornography laws. NCCL lawyers acted for PIE members who were questioned by police over their disgusting behaviour.

Miss Hewitt was general secretary of the NCCL from 1974-83, Miss Harman was a newly qualified solicitor when she became its legal officer in 1978 until 1982, when she entered Parliament. Mr Dromey sat on the NCCL executive committee from 1970 to 1979.

Police are investigating PIE as part of Operation Fernbridge, launched after the Jimmy Savile affair, with one source saying there is evidence that PIE members were abusing children ‘on an industrial scale’.

The Home Office is also carrying out a ‘thorough, independent investigation’ into shocking claims that the Labour government of the 1970s may have helped finance the notorious group.

Ever since December, when The Mail first investigated the NCCL’s links to the paedophile lobby, we have been sending detailed questions to Miss Harman, Miss Hewitt and Mr Dromey about their links to PIE and whether they now regret supporting such a group.

Miss Hewitt has still to respond but Miss Harman – after initially dismissing the story as ‘untrue and ridiculous’ – and her husband finally issued a statement via the Labour Party yesterday.

Miss Harman denied allegations that she supported lowering the age of consent to ten or opposed the law on incest – despite the Mail investigation never having made such a claim. Instead this newspaper stated that the NCCL, which she joined in 1978, had controversially lobbied on these issues two years earlier.

Miss Harman also denied having opposed the law on incest – again, an allegation the Mail did not make. This was, nevertheless, the NCCL’s position when she became its legal officer.

Miss Harman also said that an allegation that she sought in 1978 to water down a proposed ban on child pornography was untrue – although her name is on the NCCL’s four-page submission to MPs urging that ‘images of naked children should only be considered pornographic if it could be proven that the subject had suffered’.

Responding to the NCCL’s decision to grant ‘affiliate’ status to the notorious paedophile group, Miss Harman said: ‘The Mail have tried to make me guilty by way of guilt by association. When I was at NCCL there were around 6,000 members and nearly 1,000 affiliated organisations of which PIE was one. I was aware that because NCCL opposed censorship and supported gay rights, paedophiles had sought to exploit that and use NCCL as a vehicle to make their arguments.

‘But by the time I came to work for NCCL this vile organisation had already been vigorously challenged within the organisation.’

She added: ‘The reason I decided to go to work for NCCL was because I actively supported the work they had done and in particular the work of their women’s rights committee on the Equal Pay Act, on the introduction of the Sex Discrimination Act and for greater protection of victims of domestic violence and against race discrimination.’

Last night Miss Harman gave an interview to Newsnight on BBC2 but still repeatedly failed to apologise.

She refused eight times to accept that the connection with PIE was a mistake.

Mr Dromey said: ‘During my time on the NCCL executive, I was at the forefront of repeated public condemnations of PIE and their despicable views.

‘The accusations of the Daily Mail are untrue and beneath contempt.’ Labour leader Ed Miliband defended his deputy: ‘Harriet Harman is somebody of huge decency and integrity. I know she has a long and proud record of being on the right side of all of these issues.’

Last night the Mail said: ‘For ten weeks now the Mail has repeatedly asked three leading Labour figures to answer questions about the involvement of the NCCL, a body in which they played leading roles, with a vile paedophile group whose actions are currently being investigated by the police.

‘The belated statements today of Miss Harman and her husband – full of pedantry and obfuscation – fail to answer the Mail’s central points and deny allegations the Mail has not made.

‘More pertinently they have failed to utter a word of contrition or sorrow about the NCCL’s closeness to the notorious Paedophile Information Exchange, an organisation that validated the activities of a monster like Jimmy Savile. Nor do they utter a word of apology to the victims of PIE.

‘In stark contrast, Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, which took over the NCCL’s mantle, has condemned the historic links with PIE as a “source of continuing disgust and horror”. As for smears, it is a newspaper’s job to ask awkward and controversial questions – questions that in this instance are still awaiting a satisfactory answer.’

[Teddy Bear]

I want to include this article from the Mail as it best encapsulates the story to date.

DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Amid the obfuscation, one word is missing

Ten weeks have passed since this paper first highlighted the prominent roles of Labour's deputy leader and her husband in an organisation with disturbing links to a vile group that championed paedophiles

At every stage of our meticulous investigation, we repeatedly gave the couple the opportunity to reply to our allegations. But only now have they belatedly done so.

Yet to this day, one word is missing. In all their defensive, self-righteous protestations, Harriet Harman and her husband Jack Dromey still cannot bring themselves to say ‘sorry’.

Whether they liked it or not, the fact is that the couple were leading lights in an organisation, the National Council for Civil Liberties (now known as Liberty), which in the 1970s and 1980s gave spurious respectability to a network of child abusers, embracing as an affiliate member the notorious Paedophile Information Exchange.

So it was that they – and the NCCL’s general secretary, Labour grandee Patricia Hewitt (whose silence remains deafening) – were associated with a body that helped to validate the repulsive activities of monsters like Jimmy Savile.

Inevitably, the Mail has been accused of dredging up the long-dead past.

But at a time when hundreds of police are inquiring into sex crimes from that era – and PIE members are under renewed investigation for ‘industrial scale’ child abuse – the conduct of a group that gave moral underpinning to paedophiles could hardly be more relevant.

Shami Chakrabarti, the present director of Liberty, has had the decency to acknowledge this.

Though she was born in 1969, and had nothing to do with the NCCL’s disgrace, she has publicly expressed ‘disgust and horror’ over the group’s relationship with PIE during those dark years.

Yet in their carefully worded statement yesterday, Miss Harman and Mr Dromey offered not a hint of apology to the countless victims of abuse whose lives have been destroyed by paedophilia.

Indeed, it is telling that they have chosen to answer charges we have never laid against them, while obfuscating those that we have (and how typical and contemptible of the BBC to give generous coverage to their rebuttal, after totally ignoring our investigation).

For example, Miss Harman denies that she supported lowering the age of consent to ten. We didn’t say that she had.

We did say, however, that she joined the NCCL at a time when it was widely known to be committed to legalising sex with 14-year-olds – and even with children as young as ten if it could be shown that consent was ‘genuinely given’ and they ‘understood the nature of the act’.

Similarly, she denies ever having wanted to abolish the law against incest.

Yet she cannot deny serving as the legal officer of an organisation that wanted precisely that.

As for our accusation that she sought to water down a proposed ban on child pornography, she claims she was motivated only by fear that the planned law was too loosely drafted.

Yet there, in black and white, is her name on the NCCL’s four-page submission to MPs, arguing that ‘images of naked children should only be considered pornographic if it could be proven that the subject had suffered’.

What does this mean, if not seeking to water down the proposed legal crackdown on child pornography?

For his part, her husband Mr Dromey says he repeatedly condemned PIE and argued that paedophiles could have no place in the NCCL.

Yet the ineluctable truth is this loathsome group remained affiliated for more than six years after he became the NCCL’s chairman in 1976.

On one point alone can the Mail agree with Miss Harman. This is when she says we’ve suggested she is guilty by association.

Yes, we have – and she is.

She, her husband and Miss Hewitt should feel the most profound guilt about their association with an organisation that gave succour to paedophiles and helped create a moral climate in which they could flourish.

For that, the very least they owe is an apology.

As for smears, it’s a newspaper’s role to ask awkward and often controversial questions – questions that, in this instance, still await satisfactory answers.

[Teddy Bear]

Despite Harman's claims that she has nothing to apologise for, and her attempts, aided by the BBC to simply accuse the Mail of a smear campaign against here and her fellow Labour MPs also involved in this scandal, there remain real questions to answer.

Anybody can see the typewritten evidence in the Mail article below, signed by Harman at the time, that show the NCLL were promoting the aims of the paedophile group PIE. What I see it shows about the Labour mindset is that they would support any radical change under the umbrella of 'human rights' regardless of whether society is truly benefited by it. It is what we know has come to mean that certain subjects are not even able to be debated, as it falls outside the armour of 'political correctness'. If paedophilia wasn't an issue where the public has voiced such condemnation recently, and with just cause, I can well believe Harman and Co. actually congratulating themselves if they would have achieved success with their proposals of the 70's.

Harman and Hewitt 'never tried to kick me out - they didn't want to rock the boat to protect their careers' claims child abuser ex leader of Paedophile Information Exchange

• Convicted child abuser Tom O'Carroll led PIE and sat on gay rights committee of National Council of Civil Liberties
• He says Harriet Harman and Patricia Hewitt 'didn't even try' to remove him or others from NCCL
• 'They didn't want to rock the boat because their careers within NCCL depended on them not rocking the boat too much,' he told BBC
• O'Carroll says he never met Ms Harman or her husband Jack Dromey, but says he spoke to Ms Hewitt in a lift at a Sheffield conference
• Ms Harman has expressed regret at PIE's links to the NCCL but did not offer a full apology

By Martin Robinson

Fresh questions emerged today about how influential a despised paedophile group were in the civil liberties organisation that Harriet Harman helped run before she became an MP.

The former leader of the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) said the Labour Deputy Leader and the National Council of Civil Liberties (NCCL) made 'no attempts' to 'kick out' his group.

Tom O'Carroll, who has been convicted of a number of child sex offences and was described as 'one of the most infamous perverts on Earth', sat on the NCCL's gay rights sub-committee in the late 1970s.

In the eight years PIE was given affiliate status, O'Carroll said he spoke at the NCCL's 1977 Spring conference, two years after he helped lead a campaign to cut the age of consent to as low as ten.

Today he told the BBC that Ms Harman and Patricia Hewitt, then general secretary of the NCCL, and later a Labour health secretary, 'didn't even try' to remove him or other members because they 'didn't want to rock the boat' to protect their own careers.

'Really they didn't do much to oppose PIE's presence in my view because there were these other liberal forces, or radical forces, within NCCL,' he told the Today Programme.

'The support didn't come from Harman and co but it was there. The gay liberation front was very radical and at that time Harman and Patricia Hewitt couldn't just kick out PIE, well they could both try but they didn't even try and the reason they didn't try is they didn't want to rock the boat because their careers within NCCL depended on them not rocking the boat too much.'

He told the programme he never met Ms Harman or her husband Jack Dromey, who was on the NCCL's executive, but he met Ms Hewitt briefly at a conference in Sheffield in 1978.

He said: 'I spoke to her when we were just going up a floor or two in a lift and she was somewhat frosty.

'I said something to her, I think as a pleasantry, and she didn't take it that way. She said that I'd been rude to her afterwards, which I hadn't been.

'My impression was that she simply had great distaste for being in the same lift as me.'

His comments were rubbished today by people including, Jack Dromey, who said the convicted paedophile has no credibility.

Mr Dromey said in a statement: 'Quite simply, no one will believe a man like Tom O'Carroll.'

Big players: Harriet Harman once legal officer of the NCCL, now Labour Deputy Leader and husband Jack Dromey, right, a Left-wing firebrand, now a shadow minister

O'Carroll was not the only prominent member to find themselves in court charged with appalling sex offences.

They included David Joy, a member of its governing committee, prosecuted for indecent assault, child rape and possession of 1,129 indecent images of children.

They also included Andrew Sadler, a prep school teacher and PIE organiser jailed in Romania for sexual corruption and sex with a minor; Charles Napier, who was convicted in the UK of child rape; Steven Smith, a former chairman, who was jailed for possessing indecent images ; and Morris Fraser, a co-founder.

Harriet Harman belatedly expressed ‘regret’ yesterday that the vile paedophile group was allowed to forge links with the National Council for Civil Liberties.

But she still refused to apologise over the NCCL’s extraordinary relationship with the notorious Paedophile Information Exchange.

Labour’s deputy leader has repeatedly resisted calls to comment on the Mail’s revelations that she, her MP husband Jack Dromey and former health secretary Patricia Hewitt held key roles in the pressure group that granted ‘affiliate’ status to PIE, a group of predatory paedophiles who openly campaigned to legalise child sex.

On Monday evening, Miss Harman dismissed the revelations as a ‘politically-motivated smear campaign’. But hours after a disastrous BBC Newsnight appearance she abruptly changed tack.

Faced with questions over why she found it so difficult in the interview to condemn the link with PIE – who wanted the age of consent to be four – Miss Harman issued a statement yesterday through her spokesman, who said: ‘She regrets the existence of PIE and she regrets their involvement with NCCL before she joined, although it was immaterial to her work.’

Former culture secretary Tessa Jowell has said Ms Harman had been a lifelong feminist and 'wasn't chasing wacky causes' during the 1970s.

She told Today: 'Harriet, Jack Dromey, were completely consistent in their opposition to the vile influence of the Paedophile Information Exchange.'

Ms Jowell said there was 'not one shred of evidence that they gave any comfort to this revolting organisation'.

She added: 'There's no question of post-hoc justification here. The evidence shows how vigorous Jack Dromey was in his attack on the Paedophile Information Exchange.

'Harriet's work at NCCL didn't bring her into contact with them at all.'

Recommendations: Miss Harman's briefing went on that the NCCL would argue that the Bill to protect children should be amended

Jack Dromey has spoken out for the first time and said he is 'proud' of his support for a controversial civil liberties organisation in the 1970s.

He also said that he led the fight to stop paedophiles having any influence in it.

Mr Dromey said he chose to stay within the civil liberties organisation and led the fight against paedophile attempts to infiltrate it.

He said: 'I took them on and defeated them. They published a leaflet denouncing me.'

Asked why he didn't simply resign from the NCCL when the Paedophile Information Exchange became involved, he said he believed it was important to stay and fight them.

'I stayed and took them on.

'I'm proud of the stand that I took. They are loathsome. And I'm proud of the stand that I took taking them on.

'So the idea that we should allow these sinister men, and they were sinister, to infiltrate the NCCL and then we should walk away - that was not appropriate.

'NCCL did outstanding work. That includes the early foundations of work on children's rights. On women's rights. On gay rights. On trade union rights.'

The Mail revealed that during the 1970s and 80s, the NCCL described PIE – granted formal ‘affiliate’ status from 1975 to the mid-Eighties – in glowing terms as ‘a campaigning/counselling group for adults attracted to children’.

The NCCL – now the respected Liberty – filed a submission to Parliament claiming that ‘childhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in, with an adult, result in no identifiable damage’.

NCCL lawyers also acted for PIE members who were questioned by police over their disgusting behaviour.

Ms Hewitt was general secretary of the NCCL from 1974-83. Miss Harman was a newly qualified solicitor when she became its legal officer in 1978 until 1982, when she entered Parliament. Mr Dromey sat on the NCCL executive committee from 1970 to 1979.

Police are investigating PIE as part of Operation Fernbridge, launched after the Jimmy Savile affair, with one source saying there is evidence that PIE members were abusing children ‘on an industrial scale’.

The Home Office is also carrying out a ‘thorough, independent investigation’ into shocking claims that the Labour government of the 1970s may have helped finance the notorious group.

Ever since December, when The Mail first investigated the NCCL’s links to the paedophile lobby, we have been sending detailed questions to Miss Harman, Miss Hewitt and Mr Dromey about their links to PIE and whether they now regret supporting such a group.

[Teddy Bear]

Clearly the BBC see nothing wrong with those proponents of making paedophilia acceptable in our society, despite it being a crime - and rightly so.
That people can be criminalised for not paying to support the BBC is another crime, that so far the government is willing to condone.

Victims' fury as BBC refuses to axe show by paedophile supporter which calls for age of consent to be lowered

• BBC bosses have sparked outrage by broadcasting documentary film
• Historic film is presented by notorious child sex campaigner Ian Dunn
  
• One of 30 archive films on website telling history of gay rights movement
• Portrays Dunn as a legitimate gay rights activist and makes no reference to his role in setting up the reviled Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE)
• BBC say film is ‘significant’ and refused to remove it from their website
• Campaigners say decision is 'horrifying' and shows contempt for victims

By MARC HORNE and MARTIN BECKFORD FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY

BBC bosses have sparked outrage by broadcasting a historic film presented by a notorious child sex campaigner – and have refused requests to remove it from the internet.

The documentary is presented by Ian Dunn, one of the founders of the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE), which campaigned to legalise sex with children.

It is one of 30 archive films on the BBC’s website telling the history of the gay rights movement.

The 30-minute documentary – Glad To Be Gay? – portrays Dunn as a legitimate gay rights activist and makes no reference to his role in setting up the reviled group.

Victims of child abuse described as ‘horrifying’ the decision to upload the film.

When The Mail on Sunday contacted the BBC to point out the documentary was causing offence, the broadcaster refused to take it down – on the grounds that it is a ‘significant’ work on the history of gay rights.

The documentary, first shown on the BBC in 1976, shows the lives of gay people at a time when homosexuality was still illegal in Scotland, and featured interviews with future Foreign Secretaries Robin Cook and Malcolm Rifkind.

It was an episode of a public access TV series called Open Door, and the BBC website states it was made by the Scottish Minorities Group and credits Ian Dunn as a presenter.

Dunn, who died in 1998, is shown describing the work of the group in Edinburgh, while Mr Cook and Mr Rifkind were interviewed about their opinions on gay rights.

The footage includes Dunn calling for the age of consent to be lowered, stating: ‘We think a boy considered old enough to take responsibility of bringing up a family is surely old enough to make up his own mind.’

But there is no mention in either the original documentary or on the BBC website of Dunn’s role in campaigning for adults to be allowed to have sex with children.

In October 1974, Dunn had co-founded PIE as an offshoot of SMG, and wrote that its goals were to campaign ‘for the legal and social acceptance of paedophilic love’.

Last night representatives of victims of child abuse said the BBC’s decision was at odds with refusing to show repeats of Top Of The Pops featuring disgraced DJs Jimmy Savile and Dave Lee Travis.

Catherine Allen, of sexual abuse victims’ charity One In Four, said: ‘This is horrifying and shows complete contempt for those who suffered at the hands of Ian Dunn and other members of PIE.

‘I believed the BBC had learned lessons from the Savile saga but they still aren’t taking sexual abuse seriously.’

Dr Jon Bird, of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood, called on the BBC to remove the film or amend it to make viewers aware of Dunn’s warped views.

The BBC said: ‘This video – which doesn’t involve or discuss any children – was considered a significant programme on gay rights and has been online for many years.’