Taking Liberties

Apparently I am not the only person who is unimpressed at the way Harriet Harman has handled this NCCL business - here's an assessment of her performance by Roy Greenslade, a former editor of the Guardian if I recall correctly, which makes a number of telling points.   


Harriet Harman's handling of the Daily Mail 'smear' has been wholly inept

The deputy Labour leader's attempt to play hardball with the rightwing newspaper has played right into its hands


By Roy Greenslade - The Guardian

'Harriet Harman's decision to appear on Newsnight was sensible, but her performance was not.' Photograph: pixel8000/BBC

If Harriet Harman's early handling of the Daily Mail's story about her was ill-advised, then her actions over the last couple of days have been wholly inept. The deputy Labour leader and, significantly, shadow culture, media and sport secretary, walked smack into a media storm that she could have avoided .

She is, of course, right to see the Mail as utterly dedicated to undermining the Labour party. That's the very reason she should have dealt with its articles about her with care. Instead, in an attempt to play hardball, she has stimulated a storm that played into the paper's hands. She posted a tweet, in which she included a picture from Mail Online showing three bikini-clad girls, and asked: "When it comes to decency and sexualisation of children, would you take lessons from the Daily Mail?"

This must have seemed like a clever wheeze, but it was beside the point and amounted to a clumsy defence. Two wrongs do not prove a right.

The point at issue was Harman's failure to address the substantive matter of the proven links between the organisation she once worked for, the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL) and the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE). Sure, it wasn't a new revelation that the NCCL had allowed PIE to become an affiliate body. Yes, the Mail carried it in the hope it would embarrass the Labour party. And yes again, it was all a long time ago.

But Jimmy Savile's abusive misbehaviour, about which Harman has been an outspoken critic, also happened a long time ago. When it comes to paedophilia , time is not a healer.

Harman, in company with her husband, the Labour MP Jack Dromey, and the former Labour health secretary Patricia Hewitt, found themselves accused in the Mail of giving a measure of credibility to PIE and, by implication, paedophilia. There cannot be any doubt that none of the trio did so consciously. In that sense, their claims that it amounted to a smear had a measure of credence, but not entirely so. The links were clear and the questions the Mail were asking were valid.

The problem was that the questions were asked by the Daily Mail and the three obviously felt they would not dignify the tabloid with a response. That was their first mistake. The Mail dug further and came up with more supposed dirt. Nevertheless, the trio remained silent: mistake two.

Then the story found its way into other papers and online. So Harman appeared on Newsnight. That was sensible, but her performance was not.

Given several opportunities to make an apology for what happened 30 or so years ago, she twisted and turned to avoid doing so, mistake three. Then belatedly and grudgingly, she was forced to issue an apology the following morning. Mistake four was compounded by mistake five, that tweet.

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, the NCCL's successor, has been more nimble-footed by issuingan apology in which she regretted the links to PIE. If only Harman had done the same weeks ago, a media storm would have been avoided. Or am I seeing this the wrong way round?

Perhaps Labour wants to get into public scraps with the Daily Mail. But, given that about 40% of its readers vote Labour, I really don't think that's wise.