by | February 25, 2014 · 9:17 am

PIE: Harriet Harman Newsnight Interview

I couldn’t believe just how badly Harman put across her defence in last night’s interview.

39 Comments

Filed under Abuse, News, Politics

39 responses to “PIE: Harriet Harman Newsnight Interview”

  1. iain carstairs
    May 25, 2014 at 10:15 am

    Sorry, I meant to type “..is a sign of serious..”

  2. iain carstairs
    May 25, 2014 at 10:14 am

    Blinking more than once or twice a minute i a sign of serious internal stress. She starts blinking at the rate of 130 (one hundred and thirty) times a minute the moment she’s asked about PIE.

  3. HOLLIE GRIEG JUSTICE
    March 1, 2014 at 10:10 am

    They r all at it ,but canne say about each other coz the other lot know,its a Mexican stans aff of abuse storiesf,the one people it shouldn’t bother is the polis and the crown,but they are too busy covering it up or playing wi Saville

  4. paul
    February 26, 2014 at 2:18 am

    has the tory ex cabinet minister and all the right wing Monday clubbers been allowed to get away with it? All those allegations seem to have disappeared now. Did the mail call for the resignation of lib dems who turned a blind eye to Cyril smith allegations?

  5. staying anon
    February 25, 2014 at 11:56 pm

    See DM article with Tom Watson. And if this continues as it is heading expect this to now progress. Watch carefully.

  6. Bishop Brightly
    February 25, 2014 at 11:22 pm

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10661251/New-evidence-casts-doubt-on-Harriet-Harmans-defence-over-paedophile-links.html

    The telegraph have discovered that the archives have a ton of incriminating stuff in them. Just wait until someone trawls the LGBT archives and realises that harry coen was also peter coell….

  7. Sabre
    February 25, 2014 at 8:17 pm

    @card2 the 1967 act removed the distinction between felonies and misdemeanours, hence the repeal of misprision of felony.

    Sections 4 & 5 of the act were intended to effectively remedy the repeal of misprision.

  8. Sabre
    February 25, 2014 at 7:49 pm

    @card2 Re your allusion to what amounts to a universal right of confidentiality.
    Case law going back to at least 1856 establishes that ” there is no confidence in iniquity “

  9. Ian
    February 25, 2014 at 6:57 pm

    Any chance of a list of members of PIE in Daily Mail so that we get that it was a cross party and establishment organisation.

    • staying anon
      February 25, 2014 at 7:33 pm

      I am sure I remember later there was a big issue over shops reporting innocent snaps of peoples kids to social workers/police. I was young but I remember something about it. I want to know though where this is going in general. Just now there are aspects that could be good or bad. Only time will tell on that and the next few months will I think really show whether this will go quiet or snowball. The timing of this added to the release of info about the Liberals is curious.

      • Andy Barnett
        February 27, 2014 at 2:23 pm

        Staying anon, see this link to a 1995 article re the arrest of Julia Somerville. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/julia-somerville-defends-innocent-family-photos-1538516.html
        The article refers to the debate in the 80s about child pornography and how cases of “innocent family photos” should be treated. It was a debate that focused “in particular on whether society has become too sensitive to the possibility of child abuse – sometimes with traumatic results for innocent parties.”
        So maybe we should give the likes of Harman the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps, at the time, there were genuine (albeit profoundly mistaken) reasons for wanting to water down laws on child pornography? But if this was the case, why won’t she be honest about it and say so?
        Who gains from politicians’ not being entirely open about past attitudes to CSA? Not the survivors, nor potential future victims, clearly. What does this say about the priorities of those that rule over us? Sad, very sad.

    • sunnyclaribel
      February 25, 2014 at 10:21 pm

      Hi Ian Go into @UKPaedos_Named on twitter & you’ll get a load of information on PIE.

  10. nuggy
    February 25, 2014 at 5:26 pm

    if only news night had been that aggressive towards new labor when they were in power.

    if only the daily mail had brought up these things when new labor was in power.

  11. Chris
    February 25, 2014 at 5:20 pm

    Green’s comment about Blair and Harman being novices fails doesn’t take into account that they both had ambitions as well as powerful backers inside the Labour Party. They were both quick learners.
    John Smith died unexpectedly and before he was cold, Blair was preparing his bid for the party leadership. The public saw him as ‘Mr Nice Guy’ and trusted him.
    Greeen asks why people didn’t go to the police, well if there’s no evidence, there’s no proof and we’ve seen what happened to whistleblowers at that time, as well as these days.
    Ordinary people were frightened to come forward and without evidence peoples’ suspicions were ignored. This website exposes some vile people and the NCCL was used by some vile organisations including PIE.
    What happened to those supporters and members of PIE? Many are still about, but until they commit a crime, they cannot be arrested or prosecuted. Britain can’t always deport many people from other countries who are settled here and who commit serious offences, including sex crimes.
    Many paedophiles are enshrouded in cloaks of respectability and authority.
    The media exposed the situation at Bournemouth in the early 1980s where the three committee members of the Bournemouth National Council for Civil Liberties Group had formed the Peoples’ Rights Centre using the Headquarters a Labour Party hall at Bournemouth for their open surgeries, which included giving free legal advice to paedophiles, as well as applying for a grant to form a permanent office at Bournemouth and pay themselves salaries. See the archives of the Bournemouth Echo and Advertiser/Times.
    Angry NCCL members from Bournemouth complained to NCCL’s national headquarters who held an enquiry and the Peoples’ Rights Centre folded, with the three organisers resigning from NCCL and it was only thanks to the media that this scandal was publicly exposed. No one was prosecuted, because there was no evidence that criminal acts had taken place.
    Harriet Harman and her husband, as well as Patricia Hewitt had their own agendas, the main ones of which were to get elected as M.P.s and they weren’t the only wannabe M.P.s who used NCCL as a vehicle.
    The Militant Tendency was well entrenched within the Labour Party and when action was finally taken to get rid of them they didn’t go away, they simply quietened down, but they remained. Many are in the House of Lords now or respectable employment. How many homes do the Bliars own today?
    If Harriet Harman is so concerned about children, why did she ignore the Fathers for Justice group? Here was an opportunity for her to have engaged with an organisation which deserved to be given consideration, but she didn’t engage in trying to create legislation which would help those children whose fathers are prevented from having any contact with them and not always for good reasons.

    • green
      February 26, 2014 at 9:29 am

      “Greeen asks why people didn’t go to the police, well if there’s no evidence, there’s no proof and we’ve seen what happened to whistleblowers at that time, as well as these days. Ordinary people were frightened to come forward and without evidence peoples’ suspicions were ignored.”

      You said in your previous post that you’d discovered something, now you say there’s no evidence. Whistleblowers usually do have evidence, otherwise they’d have nothing to whistle about. Perhaps someone wanting to be seen as a whistleblower and as having the inside track on the entire story decided to create some “evidence” by writing down a list of names and bringing it into the public eye after the Savile scandal via the independent media.

  12. john carey
    February 25, 2014 at 4:59 pm

    Harmen,Droney, and Hewitt must go! – I hear the sons of Blair/Straw/Prescott are all applying for Labour seats in the next election

  13. Topsy
    February 25, 2014 at 3:57 pm

    This is a distraction. The Daily Mail should put their energy and resources into exposing actual child sex abusers and where better to start than with politicians no matter which party.

    • nuggy
      February 25, 2014 at 5:23 pm

      i couldn’t agree more im not trying to defend Harman but yes its a distraction.

      • card2
        February 25, 2014 at 5:55 pm

        No it is not a distraction. Labour changed this country profoundly in 1967 by repealing Misprision of Felony. The right of confidentiality shifted from a professional privilege to a universal right. (Now excepting Misprision of Treason Money Laundering and Terrorism Law) The likes of Harriet Harman could thereafter go into human rights with no duty to the rest of society to report knowledge of crime they acquired through their social reform crusades.All of the influence and none of the consequence.

        After 1967 society relied on whistleblowers to protect it. A flimsy situation.

        And after 1967 celebs like Esther Rantzen could bleat that they had knowledge but as a mere woman in a BBC man’s world blah blah they made the career move of keeping quiet. Before 67 that silence may have been a criminal offence Ms Rancid.

      • Andy Barnett
        February 27, 2014 at 1:58 pm

        Card2, that is a very interesting post re Misprison of Felony – clearly related to the current debate on Mandatory Reporting of CSA. Would you know the reasoning behind its repeal, and whether anyone has sought since to bring it back?

  14. Alice Moore
    February 25, 2014 at 3:47 pm

    Oh dear! Methinks the lady doth protest too little.

  15. nuggy
    February 25, 2014 at 3:29 pm

    it was to see anna racoon and moor larkins take on this tribe politics at its best i think.

    http://annaraccoon.com/2014/02/25/newsnight-harriet-harman-talks-exclusively-about-the-paedophile-information-exchange/

  16. gw
    February 25, 2014 at 3:09 pm

    What a deeply unpleasant episode this has been

  17. Andy Barnett
    February 25, 2014 at 3:01 pm

    What Harman did not explain is why she actively advocated the position that naked photographs of young children should remain legal, where it is not possible to prove the children concerned suffered harm. Was this a mistake or would she still advocate such a position?

  18. Terry B
    February 25, 2014 at 12:50 pm

    I’ve been impresses by the speed that it went from “these are all horrible lies” to “I’m so sorry but it wasn’t my fault”.

  19. Chris
    February 25, 2014 at 11:00 am

    This isn’t about political ammunition, it’s about political ambition.
    There were internal difficulties and power struggles inside NCCL, as well as in the Labour Party and NCCL was a convenient vehicle for some ambitious people to mount in oder to get up the political ladder and get noticed.
    So eager were so many, that they failed to attend to what sort of rif raf their cause was attracting and they laid the foundations for rotten apples to pervade the barrels.
    Paedophiles exist in every political strata and profession.
    Many people who supported NCCL/Liberty were decent and honst people who had no idea what was going on.
    A number of factors included problems involving NCCL’s paid employees who fell out with each other and the elected officials, all of who had their own agendas. The PIE network was AND IS very powerful and influential, which is why those at the top of the paedo-dunghill haven’t so far faced any charges and it’s doubtful that they ever will.
    Harman and Droney as well as Hewitt, all wanted to impress those trendy Labour leadership hopefuls, and their wives (!) that they would be useful puppets in the future. Look at what a balls-up Hewitt made of the NHS. She was a disaster with everything she touched and also who she appointed to positions of power and influence which needs to be scrutinised and investigated.
    We’re very grateful to this and other websites for exposing the truth and giving the public opportunities to share what we’ve discovered, because we are scared of the serious consequences which can and do happen to those who blow whistles about paedophilia and other evils.
    No, it’s not conspiracy theory, it’s simple fact. Knowledge can be dangerous and those who have covered up their tracks and evil ways for so long whilst building their empires, aren’t all that happy when people like us try to expose them for what they are.
    All that’s necessary for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing to prevent it and the facts are that Harriet Harman and her spouse did bugger all to kick out all the paedophiles in NCCL.

    • green
      February 25, 2014 at 3:02 pm

      “all wanted to impress those trendy Labour leadership hopefuls, and their wives (!) that they would be useful puppets in the future”
      It seems a bit far-fetched to imagine that Harman’s involvement in NCCL (“Between 1978 and 1982, Harman was employed legal officer for the National Council for Civil Liberties” [Wikipedia]) was designed to impress Blair. They both became Labour MPs in 1982 [Wikipedia], so he was another young novice politican like her, her peer, and nowhere near becoming party leader.

      “We’re very grateful to this and other websites for exposing the truth and giving the public opportunities to share what we’ve discovered”
      Why didn’t you go to the police or media years ago with your discoveries if you wanted to save children from abuse?

    • Liz727
      February 25, 2014 at 5:37 pm

      Seems I am not able to reply to Chris! My comments that are posting to Green are in fact for you. x

  20. Sabre
    February 25, 2014 at 10:33 am

    If you ever find yourself before the courts and you are faced with the choice of defending yourself or engaging the advocacy of Harman, defend yourself.

    Her exculpatory endeavours would have been eclipsed by the average barrack room lawyer.

    It has to be admitted that she only really had a choice of a mea culpa followed by a plea of mitigation or a nolo contendere in which case she would have been well advised to have released a press release or to have remained silent.

    Harman should have realised that the Actus Reus had been established by the mere fact of PIE’s affiliation, the DM has merely reminded the great unwashed of facts in evidence.

    Harman’s defence had she decided to lead one, would have centred on the absence of Mens Rea, an exercise that failed abysmally.

    actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea criminal pleading 101 Harriet.

  21. OyiaBrown
    February 25, 2014 at 10:26 am

    Reblogged this on Oyia Brown.

  22. green
    February 25, 2014 at 10:02 am

    Sounds as if the NCCL allowed anyone to become a member as long as they paid. In which case, who were the other members and were they all above board? If they were not, it seems disproportionate to fixate on one dubious member if it did not actually influence the organisation’s work. No more logical than saying that if a member of a political party has been convicted of a particular crime, it means that the party approves of that crime. Makes good political ammunition, though.

  23. Chris
    February 25, 2014 at 9:38 am

    I could, Gojam,. That’s because she’s got no defence!
    She and her husband Droney were too busy building their own political empire that they didn’t care who supplied their bricks and if it meant pandering to the paedophile population who would give them money and votes, what the hell, they didn’t care.
    Now they’re trying to wriggle out of it, but they will never be able to rid themselves of the fact that they were leading lights in an organisation which was infested with twisted people who used it for their own ends, just as Harman and Droney used it for theirs.
    Harman, Hewitt, Droney and others used Liberty/NCCL as a vehicle to promote themselves as do-gooders, which got them political accolades with Blair and his clique.
    The scum floats to the top and this cesspit is no exception.
    Harman turned a blind eye to the way in which NCCL/Liberty was infiltrated and the Daily Mail is right to expose them.