White devotes an entire chapter of his 1995 report to History, Context, and Culture of Islington.
Nowhere is it mentioned that a decade previously the small inner London borough had served as the headquarters of the national pro-paedophile rights activism between 1975-1984.
If White had been aware of the press coverage of the Paedophile Information Exchange’s activities in Islington he doesn’t mention it.
Leisha Fullick, the Chief Executive of Islington Council appointed in 1996, stated in her report ‘Modernising Islington’ that one of the risks identified as the Council being ‘vulnerable to lobbying groups.’
Which lobbying groups? If these ‘lobbying groups’ were lobbying for pro-paedophile rights, what does the Chief Executive’s admission of the Council’s vulnerability mean?
Vulnerable in what sense? Capable of being influenced by? Ideologically? Financially?
- For five years, between 1975 – 1980, Islington Council helped fund a voluntary organisation — London Friend — enabling its move from Paddington to Islington. This voluntary organisation proceeded to vigorously promote, support and defend PIE from its HQ located only a few doors down (305 ft to be exact) from Islington Town Hall
- During 1975-1980 London Friend’s two General Secretaries were quoted in the press as vocal defenders of PIE, both of whom also served on the NCCL Executive Committee and on the NCCL Gay Rights Committee alongside Paedophile Information Exchange stalwarts Micky Burbidge, Nettie Pollard, Keith Hose and later Tom O’Carroll
- In May 1977, London Friend’s support for PIE extended to hosting PIE’s Annual General Meeting at their Islington premises with 31 paedophiles and pro-paedophile rights activists gathering for four hours to elect Charles Napier as Treasurer, Tom O’Carroll as Chair and accept Peter Righton’s resignation as Community Liaison Officer.
- In October 1978 Peter Righton co-founded a new gay youth group in Islington with PIE Manifesto co-author Micky Burbidge along with Roland Jeffery attending. The Joint Council of Gay Teenagers (JCGT) was hosted by London Friend and Grapevine – both voluntary organisations also in receipt of funding from Islington Council. JCGT was conceived of and convened as an umbrella organisation under which pro-paedophile activists could gather existing grass roots gay teenage organisations to prey on and use as a front for lobbying purposes.
- From 1983 Islington Council was also funding the sending of groups of children from Walter Sickert Court, Rosemary School (Prebend Street) on vacations to the Islington-Suffolk Project based in Thornham Magna, where Peter Righton fled to following his conviction in 1992.
- In looking past the fact PIE operated in Islington, a central question is avoided:
To what extent did the Paedophile Information Exchange recruit Islington Council’s social workers and residential child care staff as members?
Peter Righton, as an Executive Member of PIE, was identified and published under his own name (possibly because Righton felt safe to say he was counselling paedophiles in either his role of Community Liaison Officer or Prison Visitor) despite most of PIE’s Executive Committee using pseudonyms. Any social worker or residential care staff joining PIE who recognised Righton’s name (from Social Work Today, Community Care articles or training he’d delivered) would have felt reassured. Any conflict between personal interests in lobbying for paedophile rights and their professional duties such as acting in the best interests of children’s welfare were surely negligible if Peter Righton, the person responsible for training residential childcare staff, didn’t see a problem.
1970: Father Trevor Huddleston launches Islington’s Council of Social Services
Four years before the DPP declined to prosecute Father Trevor Huddleston of molesting school boys in his role as Bishop of Stepney, he launched Islington’s Council of Social Service – a voluntary body established to serve as the focal point in coordinating voluntary services to supplement and extend statutory social services.
Trevor Huddleston & Others: Mr X and the Rule of Law
1974-1975: Home Office Urban Aid scheme applications for Islington
While PIE was busy putting a call out, recruiting social workers to the cause of promoting paedophilia as acceptable …
….On 11 February 1975 Islington Council voted in plenary on whether to contribute to voluntary organisations for which 75% of funding had already been raised through the government Urban Aid Scheme.
Just prior to being appointed Islington’s Social Services Director, John Rea Price had been working for the Home Office on the Community Development Project & Urban Programme in Southwark, out of which the Urban Aid scheme had evolved.

Letter to the Editor, The Guardian, [date 1973]

Islington Council Minutes, 11 February 1975
The ‘Homosexual Centre’ Councillor Denton was at pains to make clear he disapproved of was the Greater London & Home Counties branch of ‘Friend’, a national counselling and befriending organisation which had so flourished establishing various local Friend groups that it had spun off from the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE) as a separate concern.
Originally based in a shopfront facing onto the busy market of Church Street, W2, almost equidistant between two national railway stations at Marylebone and Paddington, London Friend had been conveniently based to deal with some of the fall-out from Playland Trial 1 but by late 1974 the voluntary organisation was due to become homeless and was casting around for funding and somewhere to put down roots.
Mike Launder, an Islington resident and social worker activist had co-founded Friend and it was to Islington that Friend’s London HQ would move.
Islington Social Services Committee had come to the rescue with an Urban Aid application for funding and shop premises at 274 Upper Street, a few doors down from Islington Town Hall.

Islington Gazette, ‘Government money for Islington Gay Centre’, 21 February 1975, p.15

Islington Gazette, 1975

Islington Gazette, March 1975
“The Committee has pursued a policy of submitting urban aid applications on behalf of voluntary organisations. This has resulted in a great deal of central Government money coming into the borough to help solve pressing social problems. It is not our policy to exclude any groups seeking urban aid grants.” (Mrs Pat Brown, Islington Council Social Services Committee Chair)
May 1975: London Friend recruits first General Secretary

London Friend’s 1st General Secretary
(September 1975 – September 1977)

NCCL Executive Committee Elections Ballot April 1978: Candidate biographies – Roland Jeffery

PIE publications in archives bear ‘London F
October 1975: ‘Befrienders tackle sex with clients’
May 1977: Islington Council funded voluntary organisation hosts PIE’s Annual General Meeting

“Nettie Pollard from the NCCL gave the meeting a short, but very helpful speech about homosexuality and the law, and about arrest. She outlined several aspects of some of the cases involving paedophiles which had come to her notice in her work as Gay Rights Organiser of the NCCL.”“Care should be taken in the choice of a lawyer — NCCL maintained a list of suitable lawyers, and that organisation should be asked for their advice.”


Gay News No 126, September 1977
London Friend’s 2nd General Secretary (1977- 6 March 1980)
Richard McCance

CHE 1977/78 Executive Committee Biographies
A keen trade unionist and member of the British Association of Social Workers, McCance was eager to harness support for Tom O’Carroll, chairman of PIE, by using the Anti-Discrimination Clause he had successfully campaigned for adoption by a number of Trade Unions during 1976-77.
Just prior to joining London Friend, while on the CHE Executive Committee Richard McCance gave the view (‘Gays join PIE fight’) that since the National Union of Journalists’ anti-discrimination clause included sexual orientation, the NUJ would take up Tom O’Carroll’s suspension by his employer the Open University.
The implied assertion being that a paraphilia like paedophilia was a sexual orientation like heterosexuality or homosexuality and therefore capable and deserving of being protected against discrimination in employment.

Guardian, September 1977

Gay News 22 Jan – 6 Feb 1981, Judge Orders PIE Re-Trial

Gay News, Judge Orders PIE Re-Trial, 22 Jan – 6 Feb 1981 p.

CHE Broadsheet, August 1978
“The virulent hostility towards paedophilia and paedophiles is not dissimilar to that encountered by the gay movement not so many years ago when CHE and GLF tried to hold their first meetings in public halls.”

Gay News 149 August 1980 p10
Roland Jefferies (sic) of the NCCL said:“When PIE is under attack we should support them. Dropping the listing of PIE from the Gay News Guide may seem to them to be bad faith on our part.”

CHE Vice-Chairman slams Gay News, Gay News, September 1978
1978: PIE organising Islington’s gay youth
1979-1980: London Friend suffers Council funding cutback

Gay News 181, 13 December 1979 – 9 January 1980

Gay News March 1980
Peter Righton’s Haven: Council funding for the Islington-Suffolk Project

Islington Council Minutes, March 1983 – Agenda Item 5.

Islington Gazette, March 1988