You know when a scandal has made it to the news big league when it gets the “gate” tag, like Watergate. Well, the last ten days or so in the UK have given us Paedogate, in which the rabid right wing Daily Mail launched a sustained campaign to expose left wing support for the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) when I was its Chair back in the 1970s.
The aim was clearly to embarrass and undermine three leading figures in the Labour party. It worked. Initially dismissed as old hat because the story had been around for years as vague internet gossip, the Mail’s detailed trawl through publicly accessible archives and their own newspaper cuttings library paid off. At last, the rest of the national media finally sat up and paid attention in a big way. The Labour trio who were under fire, thanks to their work for the National Council of Civil Liberties (NCCL), to which PIE was affiliated, were forced to respond publicly. Harriet Harman, now Deputy Leader of the Labour party, angrily denounced the Mail. She had been an NCCL legal officer. Patricia Hewitt, a former cabinet minister in Tony Blair’s government, had a tougher hand to play because she had been NCCL’s General Secretary and had been closely associated with the organisation’s own very radical policy on the age of consent. She was forced into an apology in which she disowned this policy and also wrote:
“As general secretary then, I take responsibility for the mistakes we made. I got it wrong on PIE and I apologise for having done so. I should have urged the executive committee to take stronger measures to protect NCCL’s integrity from the activities of PIE members and sympathisers and I deeply regret not having done so. In particular…Tom O’Carroll should never have been allowed to join the gay rights sub-committee.”
This did not stop The Sun from running a devastating front page the next day:
What struck me as most interesting, though, was how the other member of the trio reacted. This was Jack Dromey MP, formerly Treasurer of the Labour party and now a Labour shadow minister. He is also Harriet Harman’s husband. He chaired the NCCL for a while during a decade on its executive committee in the 1970s. After I spoke on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said:
“It is no surprise that a convicted paedophile, the like of whom I took action against during my time in the NCCL, should choose to smear me.”
Smear him? Moi? I was doing my best to exonerate him and the other two, not smear them. I was clearly reported on the BBC as saying none of the trio supported PIE or paedophilia. I have been a Labour voter all my adult life, albeit with little enthusiasm in its recent, increasingly authoritarian, years. I had no wish whatever to back the Mail’s savage attack agenda, which really has been a smear campaign.
But Dromey insisted no one would believe a “convicted paedophile” like me.
He was wrong. The words were hardly out of Dromey’s mouth when Melanie Phillips, famous as a fiercely conservative commentator on all things moral, appeared as a panellist on BBC 1’s Question Time political TV show. She said:
“The Paedophile Information Exchange gentleman, Mr O’Carroll, has said, perfectly correctly, the problem was not that Harriet Harman supported paedophilia or PIE… the problem was that it was mixed up with the whole gay rights agenda.”
I did not see any “problem” and her use of the word “gentleman” was no doubt intended as ironic. Nevertheless, at least she very sensibly preferred to take my word over that of a politician desperate to wriggle his way out of a tight spot. Indeed, what thinking person wouldn’t, especially those who know that many of my misfortunes, and PIE’s, can be attributed to an abundance of openness and honesty, not a lack of it. PIE never sailed under a false flag: paedophile was in our name, hence giving an unmissable clue to what we were about. Even the judge, when I was tried for conspiracy to corrupt public morals, told the jury “You may feel Mr O’Carroll has come remarkably clean in his evidence, if that is the phrase for a trial such as this.”
I dwell on Dromey’s attack on my integrity not out of personal pique but because it highlights the reflexive assumption of so many people that being minor-attracted means you must be morally deficient in every conceivable way. Question Time provided another striking example of this when Conservative defence minister Anna Soubry said:
“The other thing we now know about paedophiles is how wickedly cunning they are…I don’t like to stereotype but I think we can with paedophiles. The things they do are bad and evil enough in themselves but their wickedness and cunning, the way that they will inveigle their way into the affections of a child or a mother…”
Note that emotive word “inveigle”. Whereas ordinary, decent, folk become friends and win each other’s affections in a presumptively benign way, the paedophile is assumed to be devious and manipulative, with almost superhuman powers of deception – powers hard to reconcile with the claims of researchers who seek to dehumanise us in the opposite direction, writing us off as mentally deficient, with low IQs, implying we are subhuman.
This “inveigling” allegation, or something very like it, was also used in the context of PIE’s relationship with NCCL. PIE did not merely affiliate with the civil liberties body, oh no. We were said to have “infiltrated” it, as though by stealth, and as though we could not possibly be entitled to take part in the democratic process like any other properly constituted democratic body, which we were, putting forward our policies in proposals presented to government, lobbying members of parliament and so forth. We were even bad-mouthed for having tried to forge alliances with other radical groups, as if this were not part and parcel of ordinary political life. It was implied, indeed asserted openly, that we were so “vile” (definitely the adjective of the moment) we should not have been allowed to take part in this process.
This orgy of shunning and anathematising has had its opponents though. Brendan O’Neill, in Spiked, came up with a classic defence of civil liberties, backing the stance NCCL took all those years ago in allowing PIE to affiliate. He wrote:
“If civil liberties organisations won’t defend the freedoms of speech and association of unpopular groups, then what is the point of them? Respectable groups don’t find their freedoms curtailed. The Women’s Institute is not prevented from publishing its ideas; Labour Party members aren’t arrested for what they write in private letters. It is only the moral outliers of a society who have their right to propagate their beliefs hammered by the authorities, whether it’s gay pornographers, the hard left, Nazis or self-confessed paedophiles. It is the freedom of speech of these deeply unpopular causes that true civil libertarians must defend, firstly because we recognise that freedom of speech means nothing unless it extends to everyone; and secondly because if we allow the state to define a certain outlook as so foul that it ‘corrupts public morals’ and thus must be extinguished, then we set a very dangerous precedent that might one day reach to us and call into question the acceptability of the views we hold, too.”
Germaine Greer, the now venerable and ancient pioneer of Second Wave feminism in the 1970s, was also strikingly forthright in her support for NCCL on Any Questions?, BBC Radio 4’s equivalent of TV’s Question Time. She defended Harriet Harman and said the press appeared to have forgotten what a civil liberties organisation actually does. She defended PIE’s right to put itself forward just like other groups. Revisiting her own stance in the 1970s, she pointed out that the age of consent issue was not just about paedophiles but about young people’s right to a sexual life, which was why she and others had supported changing the law. Remarkably, others on the panel also defended the NCCL and a straw poll of the studio audience (at the Bath Literature Festival, so perhaps a more sophisticated bunch than your average) revealed nearly unanimous support for Harriet Harman. They thought she should not be obliged to apologise for NCCL’s relationship with PIE.
After the best part of a fortnight in which imprecations such as vile, perverted, depraved, disgusting, etc., have been spat out endlessly over the airwaves against me and other former PIE members with perhaps even more venomous, in-your-face force than comes across in print, I hope I will be forgiven the indulgence of quoting a rare comment that perhaps can be seen as putting me in a slightly better light. It was in a local paper near the Open University, where I was a press officer until 1978 when I was sacked after my role in PIE had become a high-profile embarrassment. The Milton Keynes Citizen quoted a former colleague of mine at the university as saying, “Tom O’Carroll was a bit of a charmer. He was a handsome man and an eloquent talker. I can see how people may have been hooked in to support his cause.”
I’d love to know who that was so I could give them a hug! But, of course, being charming etc. is all part of how demonically cunning we are, isn’t it?!
Finally, it might be an idea to give links to some of the stories that were either particularly effective in giving Paedogate momentum, or strikingly bizarre, or even in a few cases informative and insightful. See below. The links are roughly in chronological order, earliest first.
Now say sorry! Ex-Yard chief calls on Labour trio to admit backing paedophilia was a ‘huge mistake’
The ‘right’ to sleep with children was one ‘civil liberty’ that NCCL supported
‘Harman did not want to rock the boat over links to child sex group’
MP Jack Dromey denies paedophile group ‘smear’
‘Paedogate’ Gets Worse For Harriet Harman As PIE Leader Tom O’Carroll Reveals New Details
Harriet Harman rejects claims from paedophile campaigner Tom O’Carroll
Lobbying by paedophile campaign revealed
Harriet Harman, paedophilia and sexual norms: the past seems like another country
Looking back to the great British paedophile infiltration campaign of the 1970s
How did the pro-paedophile group PIE exist openly for 10 years?
Labour chiefs: It’s OK to have sex with 10-yr-olds
Labour’s paedo problems: no reason to gloat
The NCCL was right to affiliate with PIE
Allen Ginsberg, Camille Paglia and the literary champions of paedophilia
Huge sums of TAXPAYER’S cash ‘handed to vile child-sex pervert group’ by Home Office officials
EXCLUSIVE: ‘Paedogate’ storm has its roots in MK
[…] I have had your book Paedophilia: The Radical Case since 2003. I have always told myself that sooner or later I would contact you, and as soon as the PIE “scandal” came out this year, l googled your name and, voilà, I saw that you have a blog. [For the “scandal” see Paedogate puts the past in the pillory] […]
[…] the focus of media attention earlier this year. See Home Secretary cheated justice by dying! and Paedogate puts the past in the pillory. But now the scene of the crime, as the media would have it, had shifted to the 1980s, including […]
This may have already been mentioned and apologies if it has, but I ran a search on it and got nothing.
One Ian Pace — “pianist, musicologist, political animal” — has apparently been doing some hostile research on PIE, including going through the issues of Magpie magazine which are kept at the British Library. During Paedogate, he posted at his blog, ‘Desiring Progress’, a series of extensive excerpts from the magazine under the title ‘NCCL and PIE: documentary evidence’. Thanks for the favour Ian, they make a good read…
Yes I do, and I encourage more people to use this example of hypocrisy. I believe the demonisation of paedophiles has only developed because of the assumption they are all male. I am starting to believe David Icke and his alien theory now, which is quite scary :/
What is the best way of contacting Anna Soubry? I have some information she might find interesting.
Start using Google search, Dave. Finding the info below took only two clicks and less than 10 seconds. Would we be interested in this information you have? Or is this a private matter between you and her?
http://www.annasoubry.org.uk/contact
Email: anna.soubry.mp@parliament.uk
Constituency Office
Barton House
61 High Road
Chilwell, NG9 4AJ
Telephone: 0115 943 6507
Thanks very much for the reply and for the information.
Yes, I realise a google search is a few clicks away, but I wanted confidence she would receive it in person, rather than her PA read it and throw it in the bin. I was appalled by her behaviour on Question Time, and wanted to show her the definition of what a paedophile is, as she seems to be confused about it. I want to bring to her attention a form of child abuse that is accepted in this misandric society, where you can strap down boys to a board, and then proceed to cut off the most sensitive part of their genitals in the name of the mystical being in the sky while they lay there screaming with blood coming from the private parts. There is zero tolerance: be it religious or cultural, where it can be done to a girl. I would also like to point out that it can only be permissible to *deliberately* stereotype a minority when you have reduced them (which includes teenagers and children) to subhuman beings. No one is brave enough to criticize such demonizing, because paedophiles cannot be defended in any way shape or form, yet they are human beings with basic human rights. What is worse: sexuality, or sexual mutilation? That might sound a sensationalist term, but when the facts are on the table and without sexism, that’s what it is. I hope not to offend anyone here.
Regards
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZSUQUKDxNA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndWmHF_HMOg
Not me, certainly. You make a good point, Dave.
Hi linca,just to correct you about we queer peados,i myself am bi when it comes to paedophilia and in some cases mid teens so hebephile also.
Yes im also hetrosexual,so in a free society i would have a great time,I think kids from 9 to 14 would be the ice in the cake for me though,there are times when i cant get boys out of my mind,like i mentioned i went to boys boarding school,so i understand the sexuality you cant label someone gay at that age,
To be honest im just an ordinary guy and should not be used as a poster boy for boylove,Im quite crude when it comes to sexual things i dont make an exception for kids,But there just my thoughts im always respectfull especially when i think a boy may be gay and likes me,I wont let everybody else know not just for me for the sake of him and his friends.As mentioned in a post is it wrong to lust after boys without romance in mind,in my experience romance comes after.
I was not seeing it as a missed opportunity at all, just curious as to the amount of time that had passed (and to confirm that it was the correct reference – I think the original comment is on the About page). I think your conditions were mild, in the circumstances.
A decent documentary, properly prepared and presenting all facets of the matter (and perhaps recommending Alexander’s Choice as a school set-work as well as required reading material for anyone in this area of the social sciences) would be a great idea.
Can that idea not be flighted with the credible media?
Mr. P,
Thinking about how you described your boyhood play with your 11-year-old pal brings to mind that there is a new Blu-ray out in the UK and coming out this month in the US: “Britten: Death in Venice [Blu-ray] (2014)”. A reviewer at Amazon.uk described the death scene: “At Achenbach’s death, there is a stark orange orb; two boys including Tadzio play nearby him. He is sitting on a seat. As he dies Tadzio walks away into the sun as the sky grows dark. All the time an unforgettable theme is played by the orchestra.” Remember the dancing and playing and wrestling in the older versions of this opera? Like you and your young pal.
Yesterday I showed slides of Max Liebermann’s “Swimmers” that is in the Dallas Museum and his “Boy Bathers” in several versions in several museums to a friend now well into his 40’s who was a boy prostitute when he was 13. He said, “I would love to have copies of those blown up really big on the walls of my apartment and if I were there on the Dunes at Noordwijk I would be going back behind a dune with them.” He finished by saying, “I really like those paintings. I mean it, I really like them”
We Queer Paedo’s are really different aren’t we? Our skins, our eyes shine. We have words, we have thoughts, we have actions the world needs.
Straight gays, assimilationist gays, gays of the stroller parade are not out friends. They would put us in the furnaces, strap us to the trees in “The Singing Forest” as described at 57 minutes in the film “Paragraph 175” by the then very old Paedo Heinz Dormer if they could. The way things are going and they way they have been they will probably get the chance. Things have a way of coming back around don’t they?
Our skins, our eyes shine we have so very much to give to the world. Let’s never never abandon the boys. We can each have our own ways to work for them and us: Art, Novel Making, Poetry Writing, Activism, The Study of The Science of Money, etc., etc., etc., ways to build a new, a healthy zoo for us all to live in.
Linca
Heretics here might like to know that I emailed a reply to this request in the following terms:
“Give me a one-hour prime-time documentary slot with my full editorial control agreed with a written contract witnessed by attorneys, complete with substantial financial penalty clauses for non-compliance, then we might be in business!”
There was no follow-up!
Just to clarify, Tom, was that to this message?
“Hi Tom. I work for ITV and am keen to speak to you about an interview. Can you drop me an email – nicola.bryan@itv.com Thanks”
How long has it been?
That was 4 March. The approach was from breakfast TV. This was a media approach in which I saw, and continue to see, no merit whatever. This was emphatically not, in my view, a missed opportunity, if that is what you are thinking. I’ve been through the media wringer enough times to know that for many minorities, but especially ours, there are few occasions when there is a serious chance of a fair hearing. My conditions on this occasion were designed to be off-putting. Had it been an approach from a usually well regarded documentary team my response would have been somewhat more accommodating but still cautious.
intresting link,it think that one is well known by BLs,what i will add is fair play to the mother,why cant they all be like that lol.
I never had sex education,i learned everything myself,or saw it or did it,
for the whole evening i followed ferdinand around of my own will.
If the word grooming had been invented at that time they would still have stuck
that on the bloke.
I dont want to say to much about myself because other than MAPs there must be dark forces lurking trying to piece together bits of a metaphorical jigsaw.
when i was about 13,despite being at a boys boarding school,i would look forward to going home for the weekend,and hope to come across a boy
in my village,his name was stephan,to me he was sexy stephan,and fingers crossed he would be wearing something loose or shorts,we loved to play wrestle.But dont get me wrong he knew what i was about,he would have been about 11 i think,one night the tree of us were wrestling in the park,i told the other kid,when you tackle him go for the legs,stephan just said,yes well that would be good for you.the other said i know what you mean,he was the same age as stephan.This goes against the simplistic notion that ends most conversations,the they cant consent argument,if thats true then,how did stephan know whats good for me and the other boy,who i still know to this day,
he knew what i liked and what it entails.i think he enjoyed winding me up.
we all grew up together,we dont talk about those days weather they remember or even care i dont know.
One thing i was thinking today as homosexualty becomes accepted or even cool,the authorities will have problems trying to control boys experimenting with themselves and men.
i remember reading a few months back,about a sex tourist cant remember the country but in africa somewhere a bit further down from morocco senegal maybe,this guy had a lets say holiday girlfriend 15 i think,they had good sex but after he put intimate photos of her on the net without her consent,bang out of order,so she exposed him,but she kept repeating to the deaf reporter no i was not abused,I was angry about the photos only.
It goes to show the abuse hysteria has not reached every country yet.
Interesting comment Mr P. Ipce hosts a set of interviews with three Dutch boys who found themselves in a similar situation. They all had a sexual and emotional relationship with the same man, Ferdinand, of whom they speak in glowing terms. Another man, Fred, took sex photos of them on holiday and that was fine, all in good fun — but when they discovered that he’d been distributing the photos without their knowledge or consent, they were very angry about that, as they had every right to be. Nuances like these get lost in the hysteria. Here are the interviews: http://www.ipce.info/library_3/files/trade/appendix_e.htm
Thank you for this link A. Their stories are exactly what Bruce Rind found in his studies, exactly what the finding of The American Association For The Advancement of Science (AAAS) determined to be SCIENCE. Yet these stories are continually discounted by people citing neo-phrenology that says these boys did not have developed frontal lobes. Does this remind you of Nazi measuring head sizes to determine if a person was a Jew?
What about the hundreds of thousands of years we spent becoming humans where we all slept together, man woman child man man child child. Did this not give us an advantage over the wild cats, snakes and crocodiles who hunted us? We cared for each other, taught each other necessary survival skills, and protected each other. Those boys testified to all of that in their statements didn’t they?
And remember Bruce Rind and the AAAS found similar findings and that makes these findings science. That is important to get through our thick skulls. Psychologists cannot ignore science and get federal funds to do their studies. And, further when they counsel us and do not bring Bruce Rind findings into their counseling and court room testimony they are violating our right to due process. That is a BIG DEAL. An Actionable Deal.
A I sure did enjoy taking a trip around Holland via the places that the boys mentioned, a trip via Google Maps. Also, discovered an artist I had not known of until now: Max Liebermann. He liked to paint at The Dunes At Noordwijk a place one of the boys mentioned they visited. Thanx!
Linca
Tom,
You have been at this, i.e., in the media eye for a long long time haven’t you. Your long time at this is what I came away with from this post of yours.
I have been told Evolutionary Psychology (EP) nails down the essential need for change away from the human zoo as it is now. I have been told and believe it to be true that Anthropology only offers a “lazy susan” approach for people to accept or reject sexualities they reveal as existing, but that may be distasteful to current social conventions. Therefore lawmakers can allow what they like and decline to consider what they don’t. We cannot let them do that.
You have a chance to speak now. You are not being ignored. Being ignored you have so well said is worse than being in the eye of the storm / a paraphrase of Oscar Wilde.
The way to make people really sit up and take notice it isn’t enough to show that sexual experience prior to puberty, inclusive of intergenerational sex, is natural to our species; but that it’s actually sex abuse to, in any way, interfere with a child’s need for sex experience. Stopping such experiences as peer “doctor games” and intergenerational sex play and sex teaching experiences as “socially inappropriate” creates a sexually “sanitized” development that actually produces sexual fixations and perversions in adulthood, including destructive forms such as obsessive pedophilia (children as sex objects). Beyond these sex problems stopping sex experiences in childhood increased violence levels, it widens generational gaps that never naturally existed, and increases artificial pleasures in adulthood, such as substance abuse and gambling additions.
EP’s say that all this evil comes from the insults to natural sexual development that adults and parents heap upon, what should be, naturally developing children. And, like you, I need to hear the evidence from EP. We need to hear this power message in detail from EP. We need the evidence don’t we? So any EP reading here give it to us: PLEASE. Tell us where to get the evidence we need, the evidence almost all here have experienced but can’t say in our own defense. I am devoting as much study as I can to try to hear it but come up short. I think another one here on your blog is too. You know one EP. Go to him and demand he give you the evidence so you can spread the word. A lot of the words in this post were his words.
Dear EPs reading this it isn’t enough to say these things but it is something to say them. We are ready to go to the next step. Maybe you have gone to the next step and I am just too dense to hear it: HELP.
Linca
Tom, I wonder what your objective is when you talk to the press about lowering the age of consent, and whether you believe your interviews/writings help further that objective.
Nick, your questions this time, following similar ones on previous occasions, come in the particular context of a media storm in the UK which I did absolutely nothing to initiate. It was never my belief that in the present social context it would be possible to find a receptive audience in the media for my view of the AOC.
Having said that, I see no need to apologise for voicing a minority opinion. My position, and those of many other minorities, may seem lost causes, but would you prefer to live in a society where dissent is not tolerated? We are getting perilously close to that right now with regard to minor attraction. I think it is important to resist.
I understand that this storm was not of your making. I wanted to speak more globally about the wisdom of arguing in favor of adult-child sex in a public forum, and was merely using this controversy as an opportunity to do so. I agree with you that it can be important for activists to voice dissent when they disagree with the views of the majority, but it is also important to utilize tactics that are most likely to lead to success. I’ve only been involved in pedophilia-related issues for a brief period, and I realize you’ve been fighting the battle for a very long time. Like you, however, and like many other people who discuss these issues, I’m a reasonably smart guy. In my brief time, I’ve observed that whenever someone argues in favor of consensual adult-child sex, no matter how reasonable or persuasive the arguments, the result is an eruption of anger and hate that targets pedophiles generally. If I shared your views on the subject, which you know I do not, it strikes me that a better approach would be to remain silent, root for VirPed to succeed in its efforts to reduce the hatred directed towards pedophiles who don’t have sex with kids, and hope that this will lead to an environment where your arguments receive a more sympathetic hearing.
No reply option at the end of Nick Devlin’s reply of 7 March, so I will leave this here.
I read from your reply Nick that you recommend Tom, and others who share his AOC views, me included, to root for VirPed who, as far as I understand it, do not recommend a change to the AOC. Once we have done this, VirPed will prevail, society will no longer hate us, and we will then be free to change our minds once again and promote a lowering of the AOC. No offence intended, but the word smart is not the adjective I would use to describe your suggestion.
“I don’t like to stereotype but I think we can with paedophiles”. What the lady actual means is: “I like very much to stereotype – except when things are so trivial that I’m not forced to question my prejudices…”
She said she used to be a lawyer defending sex offenders in court. With her as your defence counsel the prosecutor would hardly need to turn up!
to the blog above,thats true young people today may not be able to comprehend that there was once an emancipation group dedicated to paedophilies,in this situation is it naive of me to say any publicity is good for the cause.
somebody mentioned an extract from brasseye above,there was an anti paedophile song by smash my brothers face in, called stay away from me,
I have a song for the paedo in the eye of the media
terminal choice,im a monster,battlescream remix.
Hey, SuperDevious Deviants is a necessary part of the witch-hunt myth — how else could it be that sometimes a child is fond of a child-lover and enjoys sex play with him, that the guy’s neighbours tell the papers they liked him before they found out, etc.? Mind control is the only possible explanation.
The single flash of a silver lining I see in all this is that it may serve to inform a few young people, paedophile and otherwise, who have known nothing other than paedo-beast hysteria that once not so long ago it wasn’t like this. I mean, the hysteria has been going on so long now that sometimes I worry it will self-perpetuate indefinitely.
keyboard warrior,i do a few posts myself,to my shock yahoo logs all my conversations.you tend to get more objective thoughts on youtube, theirs quite an articulate and hot looking,well young and effeminate looking young man called dendrophllian,paedophilia my actual viewpoints. caused quite a stir on yt,there was a site called hebephillia today which i put a few posts on shame i cant find it now.
What a shit-storm in a tea-cup!
It seems that where paedophilia and paedophiles are concerned people can say whatever their imaginations conjure up about them and present it as hard fact. That’s why the Paedogeddon satire was so perceptive – Doctor Fox saying:
“paedophiles have more genes in common with crabs than they do with you and me. Now that is scientific fact—there’s no real evidence for it—but it is scientific fact”
sort of sums it up.
For what it’s worth I’ve been doing my 2p’s-worth and acting the keyboard warrior (under variations of my current pseudonym, of course, and registering with anonymous email addresses).
I’ve found two comment boards where I’ve been able to put a pro-paedo case: ‘Spiked’ is excellent and doesn’t censor at all as far as I can see; the Guardian is hit and miss, most days anything at all questioning the established position is moderated out (I’m pre-moderated in order to protect the reader’s sensibilities from my sudden and unexpected opinions), but some days everything I write gets through. I suppose it depends on who’s manning the board at the other end.
It’s quite a liberating feeling being able to fight one’s corner after years of self-censorship. And what is clear is that all the haters and hysterics really haven’t got their thoughts at all sorted out, their arguments are very weak- it sometimes feels like I’m Mike Tyson fighting his way through a Charles-Hawtrey look-a-like convention!
Even a few score dedicated keyboard warriors could make a substantial difference to the tone out there, so I like the spirit.
Very interesting, Tom. Somewhere in all the press coverage of this you were quoted as saying that back then PIE was trying to be both a support group and an advocacy group and that was a terrible mistake. Can you say more about that?
In that case, I think you’ll find Chapter 11 of my book Paedophilia: the Radical Case even more interesting:
http://www.ipce.info/host/radicase/chap11.htm
The relevant pages begin here:
“The emphasis in PIE, during most of its short history, has been on campaigning, on producing what we have intended to be thought-provoking and controversial documents, such as our Evidence on the Age of Consent, and on seeking publicity for them. But, as already pointed out, our formally defined aims were much wider than this: they included giving ‘advice and counsel’, and/or legal help, to paedophiles who ask for it, and providing a means for paedophiles to get in touch with each other.”
This gives the context. I might come back to the mistake aspect later.
Tom, being nice and telling the truth are admirable qualities, and you may be rewarded in heaven for your upright responses on the Today program. Is it not the English who invented such delicious put downs as damning with faint praise? Don’t the likes of Jack Dromey, the craven creatures they are, deserve to be praised for their help of PIE in the ’70s, never mind if the support was for the right of free speech and not for PIE’s policies? Most of the hoi polloi would not get the difference, and you would still be telling the truth and guaranteeing your acceptance into heaven.
Yes, the NCCL deserves support for what it did, certainly. But the support came from below, as it were, from quarters such as they gay rights sub-committee, not from the leadership who are now under fire.
The irony I intended may have gone unnoticed.
But everyone knows that Americans don’t do irony! 🙂