1975-1980: Islington Council helps fund voluntary organisation promoting PIE

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

Despite Islington Gazette’s robust editorial reiterating Social Services Committee Chair Mrs Patricia Brown’s points about discrimination, a homophobic tirade from a Baptist Pastor from Highbury Place made it into the local press,

Note the use of “child molestor”, a term that PIE would erase from news reporting’s lexicon once paedophile became the accepted descriptor.

Islington Gazette, 1975

London Friend was given £7,900 per year over 5 years, which would be a total of £39,500 except for some reason the Gazette put the total at approximately £35,000 (possibly due to the Urban Aid grant being received part-way through financial year of 1974-75?)

25% of the total was provided by LBI council, 75% from Home Office urban aid

Using the Bank of England Inflation Calculator, in today’s money London Friend was due to receive £315,003.71 over five years (c. £63,000 p.a.)

LBI was scheduled to contribute somewhere between £7,900 – £9875 (in today’s money £63k – £79k)

“The organisation operates awareness groups and hopes to link up with other homosexual advice and information services to share resources.”

PIE wasn’t exclusively homosexual but it did consider itself an ‘information exchange’ and service to its members.

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

Having secured premises in Islington but not moved in yet, London Friend was ready to advertise for their co-ordinator, offering a salary of up to £2,500 (c.£20k p.a.). Without a permanent office address London Friend had to advise job applicants to write care of Peter Righton (PIE luminary and social work trainer and residential childcare policy): 48 Barbican Road Greenford Middlesex

“We are about to move into new premises in Islington, and are looking for a man or woman to run the office, coordinate the work of brefrienders, and build up effective communication and relationships between London Friend and the community at large.”

How far Peter Righton’s influence seeped into London Friend’s recruitment process beyond offering a postal address for prospective candidates to apply to is unknown.

London Friend’s 1st General Secretary

(September 1975 – September 1977)

Roland Jeffery was the lucky applicant who wrote into Righton’s address, was interviewed (by whom?) and bagged the job, starting in September 1975.

At Oxford University (1971-1974?) Jeffery had been a student CHE convenor and so was able to demonstrate previous experience in a voluntary organisation related to London Friend.

During 1975 he began volunteering with the NCCL Gay Rights Committee, campaigning alongside some of PIE’s most vocal and influential pro-paedophile rights activists:  Micky Burbidge (PIE Manifesto author with Keith Hose), Keith Hose (PIE Chair 1975 – 28 May 1977), and Nettie Pollard.

At PIE’s AGM Charles Napier became Treasurer (sentenced in 2014 to 13 years for sexually abusing 23 boys between 1967-1983). By the time London Friend hosted PIE’s AGM in May 1977, Roland Jeffery had been working with Charles Napier for 6 months,  drawn together by the former National Association of Youth Clubs chief Harold Haywood and his Earl’s Court Nucleus project.

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

Throughout Jeffery’s tenure as London Friend’s General Secretary (September 1975 – September 1977), London Friend continued to receive PIE Newsletters.

PIE publications in archives bear ‘London F

It is partially courtesy of London Friend’s subscription to PIE and their newsletters and their subsequent submission to the LSE archives, that there is an archive of PIE’s publications.

October 1975: ‘Befrienders tackle sex with clients’

 

Gay News reported a debate at the National Friend conference on 25 October 1975.

At the conference, as well as a workshop and discussion on paedophilia, a discussion took place on whether Befrienders should or could have sexual relationships with clients who had approached the voluntary organisation for help.

Despite elsewhere reporting a percentage of under 16s as contacting Friend, any concerns that a sexual relationship between a Befriender and a lonely isolated adult contacting the organisation was a potential abuse of power or at all exploitative were disregarded. There were apparently no concerns that paedophiles could abuse this leniency to access vulnerable minors offering ‘counselling’ or ‘befriending’.

Roland Jeffery suggested Befrienders could offer ‘sex therapy’ and have sex with clients or “use education and porno films” in cases of sexual dysfunction.

Would paedophilia be considered a sexual dysfunction Befrienders should try to alleviate the loneliness and frustration of? Would ‘befriending’ a paedophile in such a case have included the provision of child abuse images or films in the case of lonely isolated and sexually frustrated paedophiles? The Protection of Children Act 1978 was not yet in force.

May 1977: Islington Council funded voluntary organisation hosts PIE’s Annual General Meeting

31 members of PIE travelled to no 274 Upper Street Islington N1, representing over 13% of the reported PIE total membership of 227. Postage costs were up to £25 per month.

Nettie Pollard of the NCCL Gay Rights Committee was keen to advertise NCCL as an emergency port of call for paedophiles seeking legal advice or to choose a defence solicitor or barrister.

“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

When Richard McCance took on the position of London Friend’s General Secretary following Roland Jeffery’s departure, the enthusiastic and vocal support for the Paedophile Information Exchange — 25% of which was being funded by Islington Council over five years —  continued.

CHE 1977/78 Executive Committee Biographies

Social Worker Richard McCance’s support for PIE extended beyond his tenure as London Friend’s General Secretary, before and after.

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

In January 1981, while giving evidence for the defence at the PIE Trial of 4 of the Executive Committee, McCance said that as General Secretary of London Friend he received the magazine Magpie but without the contact page. He read it because elsewhere there was so much misinformation about paedophiles and Friend often had to help gay paedophiles who are “having to cope with all the hostilities of society.”

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.

When Richard McCance penned an Editorial for CHE’s in-house publication Broadsheet (August 1978) denouncing “the virulent hostility towards paedophilia and paedophiles” and criticising Gay News for their betrayal of paedophiles who had supported their legal defence against Mary Whitehouse’s private prosecution for blasphemy, other CHE members felt strongly there should be more editorial consensus reached before allowing individual’s free reign for opinion pieces, and so an insert disclaiming McCance’s opinion as representative of CHE was included.

CHE Broadsheet, August 1978

McCance’s conflation of gay rights with paedophile rights was an essential and well-used approach to blackmailing gays and lesbians into feeling intolerant if they weren’t willing to campaign for the rights of adult to have sex with children:

“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

Following Dr Brongersma’s attendance at CHE’s annual conference in Nottingham, PIE’s Executive Committee past and present were repositioning their campaigning to more closely resemble the Dutch paedophiles approach. Instead of paedophiles campaigning for the right to have sex with children, paedophiles must create or infiltrate youth organisations so it appeared to be teenagers campaigning to abolish the age of consent and their rights to have sex with adults.

During October 1978 Peter Righton co-founded a new gay youth group with PIE Manifesto co-author and Islington resident Micky Burbidge: the Joint Council for Gay Teenagers.

1979-1980: London Friend suffers Council funding cutback

Over Christmas 1979 London Friend was “fighting a last-ditch battle to save its council grant.”

In 1978-79 Islington Social Services Committee had granted London Friend £14,350 but during 1979, despite Friend’s application for an increased grant of £17k, the Social Services Committee had voted to grant only £5,500.

However it soon became clear that there may be no money to be found for the borough’s funded help services and now all grants will be examined again before the final decision on January 29 1980.

Gay News 181, 13 December 1979 – 9 January 1980

Gay News March 1980

Within 3 years of leaving London Friend, Richard McCance had moved to Nottingham to be elected as a Labour Councillor.

Peter Righton’s Haven: Council funding for the Islington-Suffolk Project

Islington Council Minutes, March 1983 – Agenda Item 5.

Over the course of five years, funding from Islington Council to the Islington Suffolk Project had jumped from an annual ‘Capital Grant’ contribution of £3,233 to approximately £27.5k per year.

Despite being billed as a philanthropic venture by Lord Henniker, Islington Council was picking up the tab to send selected Islington children from schools, day centres and play schemes to spend 4 day weekends camping at the Project’s Thornham Magna campsite.

However, by March 1988 the Project faced losing £5,000 in Council funding cuts, a reduced contribution of £22.5k meaning that £50 per group (£25 of which was a deposit for camping gear) would be charged.

David Pare, Director of the Project based on St John Street in Clerkenwell spoke to the Islington Gazette about the council’s funding cuts.

Islington Gazette, March 1988

 

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1971-1975: Ivor Street, Icebreakers and PIE

Ivor Street, Icebreakers and PIE

A key clique to emerge out of the explosion of energy and activism created by the Gay Liberation Front during 1970-72 was The Counter-Psychiatry Group, emulating US West Coast groups formed in reaction to gay men and women treated as if they had a medical or psychological condition which could be expunged or made heterosexual with ‘treatment’ such as aversion therapy. Icebreakers, a gay counselling/befriending group would emerge from the Counter-Psychiatry group during 1972, under the leadership of 35 year old sociologist and lead Housing Development researcher at the Department of Environment, Michael J Burbidge.

One third of the founding twelve members of the NCCL Gay Rights Committee established in September 1974 already knew one another through Icebreakers:

• Micky Burbidge (PIE Manifesto co-drafter);
• Keith Hose (first PIE Chairman);
• Nettie Pollard (NCCL Gay Rights Officer responsible for PIE and PAL’s affiliation with NCCL and PIE member); and
• Anna Duhig

“In London the group formed around Elizabeth Wilson, herself a psychiatric social worker with previous experience of the anti-pysychiatry theories and writings of RD Laing. The original lists of GLF members interested in the group survive and show twenty-eight names including Elizabeth, Mary, Jeffrey Weeks, Micky Burbidge and David Hutter, all of whom were to be centrally involved in its writings, actions and spin-off groups.” [No bath but plenty of bubbles: An oral history of the GLF 1970-73, Lisa Power, p.42]

“Version therapy (usually electric shock treatment) was such a major issue because it was the publicly accepted way of dealing with homosexuality. I knew that I was gay in 1962 and decided that I didn’t want to be. I read an article about a man who did aversion therapy for homosexuals and I wrote to him asking for therapy. He had a long waiting list, so nothing happened. Then I read a story in the paper about a man who had aversion therapy to make him fall out of love with the wrong woman and I suddenly realised that it was awful to think of switching off loving feelings by shock treatment. There had to be another way of dealing with it. That totally changed my mind and I decided that I wanted to be what I was, after all.” (Micky Burbidge, No bath but plenty of bubbles: An oral history of the GLF 1970-73, Lisa Power, p.93)

Nettie Pollard and Micky Burbidge

“I was in the Counter-Psychiatry Group with Micky and others. I helped to organise a conference at the London School of Economics in Autumn 1971 — Homosexual Oppression?  Freedom? Mary McIntosh spoke on abolishing the age of consent and people from outside, like doctors, came along.” (Nettie Pollard, No bath but plenty of bubbles: An oral history of the GLF 1970-73, Lisa Power, p.97)

“My best friend who was called Jake read about it in the Daily Mirror in April 1971 and we went along. It was in Middle Earth. I was straight then. Bruce Wood was there and Ted Brown, Micky Burbidge. Elizabeth Wilson got up and told everybody about the Women’s Group and what they were doing…The second week I went, there was an argument about intergenerational issues. It was seen as an issue of solidarity — people wanted to help anyone oppressed by the state. I felt that I could identify with it even as straight, because it was about sexual liberation and not gay rights, it was involve with women’s liberation and gender roles and so on. There was lots of debate about what gay meant — did it conclude transvestites and transsexuals, anyone who didn’t fit in.” (Nettie Pollard, No bath but plenty of bubbles: An oral history of the GLF 1970-73, Lisa Power p.69)

“I knew some other gays through cottaging. People I met this way would ask ‘are you active or passive’ and there were a lot of self-denigrating attitudes. I was very relieved when I finally found out that you didn’t have to be one or the other. I saw a poster in Compendium for the first meeting and I thought it was incredible, I wanted to go but I was afraid to walk into a room full of openly gay people. It was Jeffrey [Weeks] who insisted I go to GLF, we were friends.” (Micky Burbidge) [No bath but plenty of bubbles: An oral history of the GLF 1970-73, Lisa Power p.24]

During 1971, at the height of GLF’s wave of liberation, Micky Burbidge could fill the neo-gothic rafters of All Saint’s Church Hall in Notting Hill with an outraged crowd, sickened to hear of electric shocks and chemical castration.

By 1972 the Counter-Psychiatry Group had become a regular Sunday evening meet-up at 24 Ivor Street, Camden, NW1, where Micky shared a house with a 24 year old Scottish soon to be drama student Angus Suttie and 27 year old Jeffrey Weeks.

“Counter-Psychiatry Group later after long vicissitudes went in different directions. Mary got involved in the Manifesto Group, so that was like the theoretical bit of the group. Some us, myself, David Hutter, set up a small group who produced the pamphlets…Another wing moved in to what became Icebreakers. We worked on Psychiatry and the Homosexual from September 1971 into 1972. The group moved around and part of the rota was Ivor Street where Micky, Angus and I lived at the time. One particular meeting, I remember, we discussed the way forward and I suggested the pamphlet. One subgroup formed to do that, another talked about the helpline which became Icrebreakers and we just evolved in different directions and went on meeting separately. The group as such faded away and its energies went into the subgroups.” (Jeffrey Weeks No bath but plenty of bubbles: An oral history of the GLF 1970-73, Lisa Power p.99)

On occasion the Counter-Psychiatry Group would meet elsewhere, as when Nettie Pollard (who 2 years later would become a founding member of NCCL Gay Rights Committee alongside Micky Burbidge; and PIE member #70) hosted it at her home, as on Sunday 8th October 1972:

In line with the Counter-Psychiatry Group’s thinking on and rejection of medical experts’ opinions on homosexuality, a new counselling/befriending group called Icebreakers began to emerge who believed there were no better or additional qualifications necessary to counsel gay people other than the counsellor being gay and out themselves. This put the group’s attitude to counselling at odds with the Albany Trust’s more conservative approach and Antony Grey’s emphasis on professionalism and concern to associate himself professional counselling bodies.

On Tuesday 7 March 1972 the first few members of a proposed Ice Breaking Group gathered at Micky Burbidge’s address at 24 Ivor Street to discuss how best to help the most isolated gay people to come out.

1973-74: Phoney Bishop of Gleaves once housed Icebreakers

During 1973-1974 the Icebreakers crystallised into a collective of just over 20 gay men and 2 women on a rota answering a phone every evening between 7.30pm and 10.30pm. Keith Hose [PIE’s first Chairman] became a ‘prominent member of Icebreakers‘ and Anna Duhig, another founding member of NCCL Gay Rights Committee also joined Burbidge’s Icebreakers.

Surprisingly, considering Icebreakers had formed out of the GLF, the Icebreakers phone wasn’t at the GLF centre on Railton Road but instead was installed at one of the Bishop of Gleaves’ hostels on Branksome Road in Brixton [see further on the murder of Billy Two-Tone and TV documentary Johnny Go Home, Gleaves’ associate Malcolm Raywood as co-defendant with Charles Hornby in the Playland Trial].

Gay News

However, it soon became apparent that Gleaves was answering the phone himself and directing teenagers and young men looking for support from Icebreakers to come and stay at one of his hostels. Lambeth Council had started asking questions about a ‘male brothel run by priests’.  Only 3-4 years previously in November 1970 had a group of men been found guilty of prostituting and sexually abusing children in a flat on Solon Road, moments from Branksome Road. Gay News reported Icebreakers had swiftly severed links with Gleaves and moved in to the South London Gay Centre on Railton Road, Brixton instead.

Gay News No 76 p.4 [1976]

By Icebreakers 3^rd year it reported it had received 4, 417 calls –

1 in 7 were women; [631] 14.2%

1 in 11 married or divorced; [402] 9.1%

1 in 9 were under 21; [490] 11%

Just under 1 in 20 were transvestites; [220] 4.9%

19 calls were from transsexuals; 0.43%

52 calls were from paedophiles = 1.18%

March 1975 Ivor Street, Camden: PIE’s London Inauguration

Three years after Icebreakers’ first meeting, the first official London meeting of PIE also took place at an address in Ivor Street. Michael Hanson resigned and a young graduate from Hull University who had led the university’s Sexual Liberation Society, Keith Hose, was elected as Chairman.

During autumn that same year Micky Burbidge and Keith Hose would work together swiftly to produce the Paedophile Information Exchange’s response to the Criminal Law Revision Committee consultation. Together Burbidge and Hose would propose the abolition of the age of consent and the decriminalisation of ‘consensual’ sexual activity with children. Despite deploring the trauma of courtroom appearances for children as a reason for decriminalisation, the civil system of injunctions they proposed to replace it meant children (with no distinction made for pre-verbal and non-verbal children in their lack of ability to voice consent) would still be required to give evidence in court, the only difference being that it would a civil court rather than a criminal court.

It is unknown whether PIE’s London inauguration gathered at Micky Burbidge’s address at no 24 on Ivor Street in Camden or whether there happened to be another house on this short street where a gathering of pro-paedophile activists would have been welcomed.

“It was Martin also, who along with Keith Hose presided over the PIE gathering at London’s Ivor Street in March – with the object of initiating London PIE meetings.”

PIE Newsletter (No.6) 1975, p.4

In just 2.5 years Micky Burbidge had nurtured Icebreakers into a small clique who met regularly for consciousness-raising sessions in between taking calls from mostly men and boys aged 14 to 70.

Within six months of Keith Hose’s election as PIE Chairman and PIE’s inaugural London meeting at Ivor Street, Burbidge wrote into the Guardian to defend Hose against John Torode’s London Letter column of 28 August 1975. Torode had obtained a copy of the PIE leaflet circulated by Hose at the Campaign for Homosexual Equality’s 3rd Annual Conference in Sheffield and commented:

“In short we are talking about poor, sad, perverted adults who take pleasure in having it off with children too young to know what they are doing and why. People who need medical treatment rather than sneering persecution, no doubt. But above all, people who need to be kept away from your kids and mine.”

The suggestion of paedophiles as needing medical treatment conflicted with Burbidge’s belief that the categorisation of paedophilia as a psychiatric disorder was as wrong as homosexuality’s categorisation as a psychiatric disorder and should be campaigned for alongside homosexuality under the umbrella definition of ‘sexual orientation’. Instead, Burbidge argued,

“The ‘harm’ which sometimes is associated with paedophilic (sic) relationships is real enough: it stems from the bigoted reactions of adults, from the hounding and interrogation of younger partners by the police and others, and from the intense feelings of guilt and anxiety which distort relationships.”

The Guardian, Letters to the Editor Sep 3, 1975 p10

On 3rd January 1976 Keith Hose, when writing to Mary McIntosh (a Home Office policy advisor) to offer an early copy of the PIE Submission to the Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure he and Micky Burbidge had drafted, emphasised that mutual friends Jeffrey Weeks and Nettie Pollard had advised him to get in touch.

In spring 1976 Angus Suttie, Burbidge’s housemate at Ivor Street, wrote an article for Gay Left (launched as “A Socialist Journal produced by Gay Men” the previous autumn): “From Latent to Blatant: A personal account”. Suttie’s partner and housemate Jeffrey Weeks, [then Chair of the Charing Cross Branch of the Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staff (ASTMS)] had co-founded the journal.

‘The branch and Tony Kelly’ by Jeffrey Weeks, Letters to The Guardian ” 5 May 1976 p.12

In his personal account of coming out, Suttie wrote of the ambivalence he felt towards his sexually predatory scout master who molested him when he was only 10 years old; “to be gay or paedophile was to be a pariah and delight would be taken in making one aware of one’s outcastness”. For Suttie, despite recognising he’d felt no sexual attraction towards the scoutmaster as a 10 year old and that the experience was not ‘mutually pleasing”, the iniquity of society’s treatment of gays and paedophiles was suffered side by side.

“I at this time hadn’t reached puberty yet and all that was involved was tickling and stroking one another’s genitals, but on every occasion I felt dirty and guilty, so much so that I left the scouts and joined another troup. I had received enjoyment from the contact but I felt no attraction from the scoutmaster and I would think longingly of some of the other scouts with whom I would have much preferred a mutually pleasing sexual relationship.”

Perhaps for Weeks, it was the combination of his lifelong friendship with pro-paedophile activist Micky Burbidge with whom he lived for many years and his romantic relationship with Angus Suttie, which blurred his vision when writing of paedophilia ‘and its controversial, if contested, overlap with child sex abuse.’

Paedophiliac ‘relationships’ were only ever contested as not abusive by pro-paedophile activists arguing for the abolition of the age of consent and the decriminalisation of sexual activities children had ‘consented’ to. Unfortunately those activists or apologists never really got round to explaining how non-verbal or pre-verbal children could consent, or indeed, prove that they hadn’t, without a statutory age of consent to protect them.

Sexuality by Jeffrey Weeks, p.76, first published in 1986

12 Sept 1978: Hewitt tries to refocus NCCL Gay Rights Committee away from fighting paedophile cases as civil liberties issues per se

In January 1978 Tom O’Carroll had been dismissed by the Open University, in June the News of the World had infiltrated PIE’s AGM and in August the Protection of Children Act had entered into force.

On 12 September 1978 the NCCL Gay Rights Committee got together at the NCCL offices for their regular monthly meeting.

Letters to NUPE re free speech. Alan [Deighton] had discussed this with Patricia Hewitt. This was further discussed under item below.

Article for Rights! on chemical castration. This was temporarily suspended, due to discussions about rumoured new home Office policy. Nettie meeting with MIND on this on Bill Pate case. It was doubted that exact Home Office policy would be stated (prison secrets etc…)

Protection of Children Bill. Bill [Forrester] was in touch with Hattie [Harman] about how this was to be monitored. David Offenbach agreed to monitor prosecutions under the Act, and relay information to Hattie. Attempts to have PIE proscribed, and to prosecute its publications were discussed.

 

3. Paedophilia

A memo on ‘Paedophilia’ from Patricia Hewitt was read out and noted (memo appended) [scroll down for the document and Nettie Pollard’s note to Antony Grey]

 

5. NUPE and Free Speech

In the light of the Memo on ‘Paedophilia’ it was agreed that Roland [Jeffrey] contact Patricia Hewitt and ask her to again approach NUPE for a more satisfactory response over their members apparent attempt to prevent a discussion of, inter alia, paedophilia. Roland to ask Patricia for progress report so far and to invite her to next GRC meeting.

 

11. Visit to Brynmor John

Roland report on joint NCCL/JCWI visit on non-national gay lovers. Pending the outcome of the appeals of the cases in question, John would consider using his ministerial discretion; no guidelines were given, though he indicated that ‘persecution’ in the country of origin of the non-national partner would impress him strongly as grounds for the exercise of discretion.

 

 

 

 

Patricia Hewitt’s Memo on Paedophilia to staff and members of the NCCL Gay Rights Sub-Committee  during September 1978 attempted to re-focus the GCR’s almost exclusive scope on paeodophile civil liberties which left Nettie Pollard aghast. When forwarding the note to Antony Grey she prefers to construe Hewitt’s memo as a threat by NCCL to drop all issues relating to sexuality:

“Seriously Antony, this paper is really saying is that the powers in NCCL want NCCL to have nothing to do with the subject. For example, the thing to do with Tom O’C being thrown out of Swansea (you may remember seeing Patricia with Roland and me at the start of the year) – this has still got nowhere at all inspite of about six separate reminders from people on the Committee.

If were (sic) are not viligant NCCL will quietly drop all issues to do with sexuality.

Love Nettie”

Hewitt had not asked for all matters relating to paedophilia to be dropped. Cases where the ‘relationship’ involved a child of 14 or over (as submitted by NCCL to the Criminal Law Revision Committee), the NCCL Legal team or Gay Rights Committee may still appropriately become involved in.

“The EC [Executive Committee] agreed that paedophilia was not itself a civil liberties issue. In particular, it is not a gay rights issue and does not therefore fall within the scope of the gay rights committee.”

 

1978: Tom O’Carroll writes to Antony Grey at Defence of Literature & Arts Society re ‘freedom of speech’

In 1978, during the passage of the Protection of Children bill through Parliament, and just as PIE were preparing to publish their Paedophilia: Some Questions & Answers and distribute the booklet to MPs pigeonholes in the House of Commons, Tom O’Carroll, Chairman of Paedophile Information Exchange and member of the NCCL Gay Rights Committee wrote to Antony Grey in his role on the Executive Committee of the Defence of Literature and Arts Society (‘DLAS’).

O’Carroll wanted to thank Grey for his support at the 1978 NCCL Annual General Meeting and “in relation to” the National Union for Public Employees. The NCCL AGM had taken place on 1-2 April at City University, a fortnight prior to O’Carroll’s letter.

“Dear Antony, I was pleased to see you the other day, and only regret that I had to dash off without having a chance to talk to you after the meeting. Allow me, however, to thank you very much for your support at the NCCL AGM, and in relation to NUPE etc.”

Motion. 39: Freedom of Discussion proposed by Nettie Pollard and Bill Forrester

At the 1978 AGM which O’Carroll and Grey had attended, PIE member Nettie Pollard had seconded a motion proposed by Bill Forrester to ask NCCL to condemn the protests against PIE’s meeting in September 1977:

“This AGM re-affirms the right of free discussion and freedom to hold meetings for all organisations and individuals doing so within the law.

In particular this AGM condemns the physical and other attacks on those who have discussed or attempted to discuss paedophilia and re-affirms NCCL’s condemnation of harassment and unlawful attacks on such persons.” [Bill Forrester and Nettie Pollard]

Tom O’Carroll was responding to an approach made by DLAS to David Grove, PIE’s Children Rights’ Campaign leader and keeper of the PIE mailing list.

In June/July 1976 edition of Understanding Paedophilia (PIE’s forerunner to Magpie) the ‘Magnificent Six’ had been announced, with the following people undertaking the following roles for PIE

‘It’s the Magnificent Six’, p. 7
New EC:
Keith Hose – re-elected to serve as National Chairperson for the coming year
Warren Middleton – re-elected as National Vice Chairperson/PIE Magazine Editor
Tom O’Carroll – elected as PIE General Secretary/responsible for the formation of local groups/PIE members’ contact service/Publicity [See further: Did NCCL’s trawl of List 99 radicalise PIE’s Tom O’Carroll? Palaver #6 October 1976]
David C Grove – elected as Director of PIE’s forthcoming children’s rights campaign/responsible for distribution of mail
Charles Napier – elected as Treasurer/responsible for recruitment of new members.
Peter Righton – elected as Organiser of prison-hospital visits/general correspondence and PIE befriending.
Want applicants for Legal adviser and Director of Research. [Ian Pace blog]

DLAS wanted an article from PIE on the ways in which their freedom of speech have been muzzled for the DLAS publication “Uncensored” Tom O’Carroll nominates Keith Hose to write this for Grey.

Three years later, in a letter to Tony Smythe, Grey wrote

“ The drubbing which free speech, civil rights and common sense have taken over the PIE case is appalling. I always feared that Tom O’Carroll was hellbent on opening this particular Pandora’s Box, and so it has proved.” [See further: With compliments from Ian Dunn, and while you were out Tony Smythe called March 1981 ]

Seemingly, a fear precipitated by Grey’s own invitation, adopting the role of a self-fulfilling prophet of doom while bearing in mind Grey’s ego couldn’t bear not to archive these writings publicly.

 

The Defence of Literature and the Arts Society (1968 – 1983)

The Defence of Literature and Arts Society attracted sponsors from “the great and good”:

Lords, charity directors, MPs, former MPs, lawyers and even doctors such as Dr David Stafford-Clark and Lords who were also Doctors such as Lord Winstanley (apparently a staunch supporter of everyone else’s freedom of speech bar Mary Whitehouse’s when he commanded Antony Grey to pursue her to the end of the road if not further! [Dec 1976: See further blog post here]

Francis Bennion, Parliamentary Counsel and Civil Liberties Barrister

One member of the Executive Committee who served alongside Antony Grey and Eric Thompson was Francis Bennion, Barrister and Parliamentary counsel, who had drafted the constitutions of Pakistan and Ghana, the Consumer Credit Act, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, and the hugely successful reference book for lawyers on ‘Statutory Interpretation’. In 1968 he founded the Professional Association of Teachers.

On Francis Bennion‘s website : http://www.francisbennion.com/pdfs/non-fb/1983/1983-007-nfb-dlas-pamphlet.pdf

In 1979 Bennion wrote a review of G Parker Rossman’s book Sexual Experience between Men and Boys [Freethinker Vol.99 1979] [See further for Antony Grey’s meeting with Parker Rossman on his July 1979 trip to UK from the states and Rossman’s letter to Grey and more on George Parker Rossman’s 1971 arrest in the Long Island New York ring with Dr Morris Fraser ]

In 1983 Antony Grey and his partner Eric Thompson were still serving on the Executive Committee of the DLAS along with Michael Rubinstein (the solicitor who Sir Harold Haywood was dismayed at charging for his advice on suing Mary Whitehouse due to his “special interest in the Trust”).

Lord Beaumont of Whitley (former Albany Trust Chairman 1969-1972?) is also a sponsor.

 Ben Whitaker (former Lab: Hampstead MP 1966-1970)

Ben Whitaker was the Chairman of the DLAS and had been Labour MP for Hampstead 1966-1970 during Wilson’s first term, at the same time Dr David Kerr, a fellow DLAS sponsor, had been Labour MP for Wandsworth Central.

NCCL AGM Ballot Papers 1978: Biographies for candidates standing for NCCL Executive Committee

Brian Sedgemore MP (Lab: Hackney South)

Sponsors included Brian Sedgemore MP (Lab: Hackney South)

See further for Mark Trotter, the Hackney Labour agent whose abuse of children left some victims with AIDS with a history of abuse in Liverpool:

• Poisonous regime that betrayed the children (07.01.98)
• Hackney’s tainted chiefs ‘will be axed’ (08.01.98)
• The council officer told her friend: Don’t use Trotter as your babysitter. But the public was never warned (21.01.98) [Evening Standard, Stewart Payne & Eileen Fairweather]
• MP’s attack on the man who helped expose Hackney abuser (04.02.98) [Evening Standard, Stewart Payne & Eileen Fairweather]

Ian Mikardo MP (Lab: East end, Bow, Poplar, Bethnal Green 1964-1987)

Ian Mikardo MP (Lab:  Reading 1945–50, Reading South 1950–55, Reading 1955–59, Poplar 1964–74, Bethnal Green and Bow 1974–83 and Bow and Poplar 1983–87)

“… the progress of the Child Protection bill was threatened by MP Ian Mikardo, who blocked it to protest against tactics being used by the Conservative party to block Edward Fletcher‘s bill on employment protection, the Prime Minister, James Callaghan, stepped in to ensure that the Bill received the time required to become law.^{[1]” [Wikipedia: Child Protection Act 1978]}

On 12 May 1978 Auberon Waugh wrote ‘Save the Children’ for The Spectator  when Mikardo was MP for Bethnal Green and Bow:

“After all the recent hysteria about the Child Protection Bill, when Mr Ian Mikardo was practically accused of supporting the vile trade in child pornography, we have at last been given a chance to examine the Bill as it ambles its way through its second reading in the House of Lords. To judge from press reaction, and from statements by various opportunist MPs, one might have supposed that child pornography was a new and hideous development which somehow escaped existing legislation on obscene publication and protection of minors, while threatening to corrupt a whole generation of British schoolchildren for the unscrupulous gain of these merchants in human misery . . .”

 

1974-75: Keith Hose’s concurrent NCCL-PIE roles

PIE was ‘officially’ formed in October 1974 by three co-founders from the Scottish Minorities Group not just Ian Dunn and Michael Hanson who have previously been identified in the press [see further: A 3rd co-founder of PIE?]

Keith Hose took over as Chairman in June at a meeting of the Executive Committee  at Ivor Street, Camden, NW1 in June 1975 following PIE’s first AGM in March held in Edinburgh.

According to the NCCL Annual Report 74/75 on the work and membership of the Gay Rights Committee Keith had been serving on the NCCL Gay Rights Committee for the year of 1974 (see below) when he attended the event “First International Gay Rights Congress” organised by Ian Dunn and Derek Ogg for 18 -22 December. Keith attended (on behalf of NCCL GCR or on his own behalf?) and heard Frank Kameny of the US Mattachine Society speak calling for more militancy in the movement.

Six months later, while still a member of the NCCL Gay Rights Committee with fellow PIE member Nettie Pollard, Keith Hose concurrently held the office of PIE’s chairman. Michael Schofield who was on the NCCL GCR’s committee with Keith at the time had also been involved with the Albany Trust since 1968 [see further for Schofield’s telephone conversation with Dr Charlotte Wolff over Peter Righton’s attempt to take control of the Trust’s counselling case files in 1971]

See further for more information on the NCCL’s association with PIE’s second chairman after Keith Hose: Did NCCL’s 1976 trawl of List 99 radicalise PIE’s Tom O’Carroll?

 

 

PIE Newsletter No.6 [Published late July/early August 1975]

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Executive Committee of PIE met on 22 June 1975  when 23 year old Keith Hose stepped in as Chairman and Treasurer, with Warren Middleton as the new Vice-Chairman (newsletter production).

In July 2011 Warren Middleton (a.k.a John Parratt) John Parratt, 63, a former vice chairman of Pie, also known as Warren Middleton, was jailed for 12 months for having indecent images.

Interestingly, Parratt’s address in this 1990 Daily Star article is given as Harwood Court, Upper Richmond Road, Putney is just over a mile from Elm Guest House.

 

 

 

All the other original members of the Executive Committee had resigned leaving Keith as the the only real choice. Michael Hanson, a student at Edinburgh University, who had been a member of Scottish Minorities Group and founded PIE all while taking his final exams was leaving the country.

 

 “Keith’s appointment was very much to be expected as he has vast experience of the ‘gay rights movement’ and is very well-known to prominent campaigners. A long serving member of the EC, Keith will be remembered by all those who came to the PIE London gathering in March. Like Michael, he is a dedicated campaigner and is completely open about his proclivities. Having substantial influence in the gay scene, he is also a prominent member of Icebreakers, and is a member of the NCCL Gay Rights Sub-Committee. Additionally, Keith will be remembered by many readers as the author of a highly intelligent article on paedophilia in ‘Quorum’ magazine. He has been the author of numerous other articles and has recently been featured in both ‘Time Out’ magazine and ‘Gay News’. He will shortly be writing a feature article on the aims of PIE and how our organisation is attempting to tackle the sexual problems of pedophiles – at the invitation of ‘Time Out‘.”

Warren Middleton (John Parratt) was a member of the British Library then engaged in research on the works of the Victorian Calamites.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

April 1977: Penthouse funding to NCCL for PIE’s Nettie Pollard falters

*again with thanks to A.N.Other

Penthouse owner Bob Guccione

A 1977 new model telephone

 

 

In April 1977, PIE member and NCCL Gay Rights worker Nettie Pollard almost lost her job. While she was busy writing to the Lord Chancellor’s office to request that Judge Alan King-Hamilton be disciplined for his comments on the Paedophile Information Exchange (looking like one big blackmail set-up)* during the case of R v Andre Thorne, the Penthouse grant from Bob Guccione which funded her role at NCCL was due for renewal in June or October that year. As ever, Lord Beaumont was Nettie’s first port of call in the House of Lords (despite no longer being Albany Trust chairman) when her plea for admonishment fell on deaf ears at the LC’s office.

Geoffrey Robertson, then a barrister of 4 years call, considered it a ‘moot point’ as to whether it would be renewed and was having discussions with Guccione as to conditions being attached to renewal. Robertson stated that the current grant had been given to support gay rights work but that Patricia [Hewitt’s] subsequent conversations with Penthouse meant that may have been altered.

The fact that Penthouse was acceptable funding for NCCL Gay Rights Committee staff and came with conditions shouldn’t perhaps be surprising in the context of Peter Righton’s fellow ACCESS trustee Dr Robert Chartham/Ronald Seth also being Penthouse Forum’s agony uncle, providing free 1 hour sessions on Wednesdays at a ‘clinic’, or Dr Charlotte Wolff or Michael De La Noy publishing articles there.

[*N.B. Judge Alan King-Hamilton presided at Playland Trial No. 2, Charles Hornby in July – September 1975 – David Archer’s dossier of ‘millionaires, influential and titled people’ escaping prosecution for abuse of boys at the Piccadilly amusement arcade]

 

 

Jan 1976: A 3rd co-founder of PIE? Keith Hose writes to Mary McIntosh

*with thanks to researcher wishing to remain anon for now for finding these documents

Mary McIntosh (1936 – 2013), turning forty, was working at the Home Office Policy Advisory Committee on Sexual Offences in 1976. She would later become Head of Sociology at University of Essex working with Ken Plummer [“Paedophilic interest is natural and normal for human males,”The Telegraph 5 July 2014], a visitor to the Albany Trust’s offices on Shaftesbury Avenue from 1967/1968 working with Michael Schofield, sociologist and Albany Trustee.

“She joined Essex after working at the Home Office Research Unit, the University of Leicester; Borough Polytechnic (now South Bank University) and Nuffield College, Oxford University.” [University of Essex obituary]

 

Keith was keen to emphasise that he was contacting McIntosh on the basis of them sharing two mutual friends – Nettie Pollard, fellow PIE member and NCCL Gay Rights worker, and Jeffrey Weeks – and their suggestion that he contact her to enquire whether she would like to receive an early copy of the PIE ‘evidence on the law relating for certain sexual offences involving children for the Criminal Law Revision Committee’.

For more on Jeffrey Weeks’ writings please see https://ianpace.wordpress.com/tag/jeffrey-weeks/

 

But what is even more interesting than discovering Mary McIntosh as yet another friendly face for PIE residing in the Home Office (from Advisory Policy to Research Unit) is the suggestion that in January 1976 it was stated there was a third co-founder of PIE from the Scottish Minorities Group. So far, it appears only Ian Campbell Dunn and Michael Hanson have ever been named as co-founders in the press.

In the literature Keith Hose encloses for McIntosh the first line states:

“PIE was founded in October 1974 by 3 members of the Scottish Minorities Group, who felt that there was a need in britain for a group of those men and women who are sexually and otherwise attracted to young people below the age of 17. The inaugural meeting of its members took place in March 1975.”

 

Were the results of the questionnaire/survey collated by PIE taken from their membership form as set out below? This may be the same survey Mary Manning later reports on for Community Care.