When it involves metropolitan left-wingers, says the Daily Mail. For a week, it has been exposing how Harriet Harman and Patricia Hewitt – or “Hat and Pat” as the London left of the early 1980s knew them – committed the National Council for Civil Liberties to the cause of helping the Paedophile Information Exchange.
The Mail showed that while at the NCCL (now Liberty)
* Hewitt described PIE in glowing terms as ‘a campaigning/counselling group for adults attracted to children’;
* The NCCL lobbied Parliament for the age of sexual consent to be cut to ten – if the child consented and ‘understood the nature of the act’.
* It called for incest to be legalised in what one MP dubbed a ‘Lolita’s charter’;
* The NCCL claimed research shows young paedophile victims are often ‘consenting or even the initiators of the sexual acts involved’;
* It filed a submission to Parliament claiming that ‘childhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in, with an adult, result in no identifiable damage’.
Britain’s best politics newsletters
You get two free articles each week when you sign up to The Spectator’s emails.
Already a subscriber? Log in
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in