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Hypocrisy of the worst kind

The Daily Mail tries to hide behind the banner of media freedom in pursuing its scurrilous vendetta against Harriet Harman and Jack Dromey.

The Daily Mail tries to hide behind the banner of media freedom in pursuing its scurrilous vendetta against Harriet Harman and Jack Dromey.

The newspaper, which already disgraced itself by demeaning Ralph Miliband as "the man who hated Britain" as a means of undermining his Labour leader son Ed, is no zealous pursuer of truth.

Its pious declaration that "it is a newspaper's job to ask awkward and controversial questions" cannot be taken at face value.

Exposing hypocrisy and corruption is a valid role for investigative journalists, but the best it can do is to trawl through cuttings from 40 years ago to attempt to embarrass two prominent Labour politicians.

It could have delved into the archives of just a few weeks back to expose the hypocrisy of its own well-heeled editor Paul Dacre, the scourge of "benefits scroungers" and all things European Union, who trousered €300,000 in EU handouts for his 14,000-acre Langwell estate near Ullapool, which attracts shooting and fishing parties.

If that's too recent, why not go a bit further back to lay bare the Mail's journalistic ethos?

Just 80 years ago the paper backed Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists enthusiastically, plumbing the depths with its Hurrah for the Blackshirts splash headline.

A decade earlier, it published the forged Zinoviev letter four days before general election day in a bid to minimise Labour's vote.

The Mail has been consistent in defending the class interests of big business and landowners and it will stoop to any level to misrepresent and abuse anyone it perceives as threatening those interests.

In one sense, Harman, Dromey and Miliband should be proud of being bracketed as the main threats to the Tories winning the next election.

Morning Star readers might justifiably wish that the threat posed by Labour to the wealth and power of the City and the beneficiaries of inherited riches was greater than so far revealed.

However, no-one can remain neutral in this concocted anti-Labour controversy that has all the sophistication of a lynch mob.

Harman and Dromey must be supported in their battle to defend their political reputations against the Mail's witch-hunt.

It is certainly true that the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) was affiliated to the National Council for Civil Liberties - forerunner of today's Liberty - in the 1970s. The NCCL had an open door approach to affiliation.

It is equally true that, in the wake of the legalisation of male homosexuality, there was wide debate on other forms of sexual expression, including incest and paedophilia.

But, as NCCL secretary Patricia Hewitt pointed out then, associating paedophilia and gay rights damaged the fight for gay rights.

Dromey, who took over the chair at NCCL in 1976, led the way in rejecting the supposed "rights" of paedophiles while Harman, as legal officer, had her priorities defined by the annual general meeting and had no involvement with PIE.

Neither has anything to apologise for over the issue of sexualisation of children, which is more than can be said for the Mail.

Independent columnist Owen Jones's online petition drawing attention to the paper's record of "presenting underage girls in a deeply inappropriate and sexualised manner" should be supported as an antidote to its descent into character assassination.

As Jones says, "it's about time we showed our disapproval at this sinister portrayal of underage girls. Sign this petition and add your voice to this call for change."

Sign Jones's petition at www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/daily-mail-mailonline-stop-the-daily-mail....

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