XPost: ba.politics, dc.media, soc.penpals   
   XPost: alt.burningman   
   From: dthomas@zazzle.com   
      
   Harriet Harman has embarked on an abrupt change of tack and   
   expressed regret that her former employers at the National   
   Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL) granted affiliate status to a   
   paedophile lobbying group in the 1970s.   
      
   Less than 12 hours after the Labour party's deputy leader told   
   BBC's Newsnight that she was the victim of a smear campaign by   
   the Daily Mail over the NCCL's links to the Paedophile   
   Information Exchange (PIE), Harman's office issued a statement   
   expressing regret about the links.   
      
   But Harman insisted that the affiliate status, granted in 1975,   
   three years before she joined the NCCL as legal officer, was   
   "immaterial" to her work.   
      
   An aide to Harman told the BBC's deputy political editor, James   
   Landale: "She regrets the existence of PIE and of course she   
   regrets any organisation's involvement with them, including the   
   National Council for Civil Liberties. But they were immaterial   
   to her work. She does not regret joining the NCCL. By the time   
   she arrived [PIE] were very much under the radar."   
      
   The statement from Harman's office came after she was widely   
   criticised for an interview on BBC2's Newsnight on Monday night   
   in which she declined to express any regret and instead attacked   
   the Daily Mail for publishing "titivating" pictures of young   
   girls in bikinis.   
      
   Harman appeared on Newsnight after the Daily Mail ran a series   
   of front-page stories highlighting the way in which the NCCL   
   granted the PIE affiliate status in 1975. Harman joined the NCCL   
   as legal officer in 1978. But her husband, Jack Dromey, now   
   shadow police minister, was on its executive at the time and   
   Harman's close ally the former Labour cabinet minister Patricia   
   Hewitt was the NCCL chief executive.   
      
   Shami Chakrabarti, the director of the NCCL's successor   
   organisation Liberty, responded to the Daily Mail allegations by   
   apologising for its links with the PIE. But Harman told   
   Newsnight: "It is not the case that my work, when I was at NCCL,   
   was influenced by PIE, was apologising for paedophilia or   
   colluding with paedophilia. That is an unfair inference and a   
   smear."   
      
   Sources close to Harman insisted she would not be apologising to   
   the Daily Mail, whose campaign has prompted hate mail from far   
   right groups.   
      
   The sources also pointed out that Dromey confronted the PIE   
   after he became executive chair of the NCCL in March 1976. He   
   moved against the group at the NCCL AGM the following month and   
   ensured the heavy defeat of a "bonkers" motion that would have   
   condemned the harassment of paedophile campaign groups.   
      
   The PIE was then largely marginalised in the NCCL, leaving   
   Harman to focus on her work on bans on marches, CND, Peter Hain   
   and the anti-apartheid campaign and the royal commission on   
   policing. A PIE supporter did have a letter published in NCCL   
   magazine in 1981. But this was critical of the NCCL.   
      
   On Monday Harman said that while "the editor and proprietor of   
   the Daily Mail are entitled to their political views and they   
   are of course entitled to oppose what I stand for", they were   
   "not entitled to use their newspaper to smear me with innuendo   
   because they disagree with me politically and hate my values".   
      
   After calls from the tabloid for the Labour leadership to speak   
   out on the issue, Harman was backed by Ed Miliband, who praised   
   her "huge decency and integrity" and said he did not "set any   
   store by these allegations".   
      
   Harman's attack on the Daily Mail echoes Miliband's decision to   
   publicly tackle claims made by the newspaper last year when it   
   branded his Marxist academic father, Ralph Miliband, the "man   
   who hated Britain".   
      
   In a series of articles, the Mail had accused the three senior   
   Labour figures of working for an organisation with a relaxed   
   attitude to paedophilia, as it claimed the NCCL proposed   
   legalising incest and wanted to lower the age of consent to as   
   low as 10 in a 1976 submission to MPs. The Mail accused Harman   
   of signing a document in favour of watering down child   
   pornography legislation in 1978.   
      
   Harman said the Mail was trying to make her "guilty by way of   
   association", while Dromey, also a Labour MP, said the paper's   
   allegations were "beneath contempt" as he had been at the   
   forefront of public condemnations of the PIE and their   
   "despicable views".   
      
   Harman said she had supported the equalisation of the age of   
   consent for gay sex, but never campaigned for the age of consent   
   to be lowered to 10. She also rejected the idea that she opposed   
   the law on incest, saying the document referred to by the Mail   
   was written before she started to work at the organisation.   
      
   On the allegation that she was seeking to water down a proposed   
   ban on child pornography, Harman said the NCCL had argued for   
   measures to stop the criminalisation of pictures used for sex   
   education or those taken by parents of their children on the   
   beach or in the bath. She said anyone could apply to join the   
   NCCL on payment of a fee and the PIE was just one of nearly   
   1,000 affiliated organisations.   
      
   "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 said.   
      
   In a separate statement, Dromey said he personally "took on" the   
   PIE when he was chairman of the NCCL in 1976 and defeated a   
   "loathsome motion" on the "so-called rights of paedophiles".   
      
   "As a lifelong opponent of evil men who abuse children, the   
   accusations of the Daily Mail are untrue and beneath contempt,"   
   he said.   
      
   Labour sources said Miliband had also looked into the claims   
   made by the Mail and "regards them as complete nonsense". Hewitt   
   has not commented on the story.   
      
   Speaking to Newsnight, Harman rejected the "ugly insinuation"   
   that her work was influenced by PIE. She said the group had been   
   "challenged and pushed aside" in 1976 and all the "anxiety and   
   controversy" about it was over by the time she arrived.   
      
   Harman said PIE was a front for "very bad people" and should not   
   have existed but refused to say it was a mistake for the NCCL to   
   take affiliation fees from the group. She accused the Mail of   
   being a greater supporter of "indecency", claiming it was not   
   above producing photos of "very young girls" in bikinis.   
      
   A spokesman for the Daily Mail criticised the MPs for failing to   
   say sorry and claimed the "belated statements of Ms Harman and   
   her husband – full of pedantry and obfuscation – failed to   
   answer the Mail's central points and deny allegations the Mail   
   has not made … 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," he added.   
      
   Last year Chakrabarti, who joined the organisation in 2001,   
   issued an apology about the links between the NCCL and the PIE.   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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