COMMENT
By Giles Broadbent It is staggering to modern eyes that the Paedophile Information Exchange should have found any currency at all, let alone the championing voice of an authoritative body such as the National Council of Civil Liberties in the '70s.
It was a vile coup - and a characteristically brilliant piece of manipulation - for the so-called lovers of children to hitch their wagon to other social reform movements which were gathering pace and credibility.
To equate themselves to gay people, who were then struggling to shake off the "deviant" tag, gave paedophiles the legitimacy of an oppressed minority and the blinkered support of a liberalisation movement that was rushing its bandwagon so fast it lost touch with basic common sense.
Deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman, pictured, has been defiant in distancing herself between the policies and her own involvement.
"Consensual sex between 'adults' and 'children," wrote Mike Morten in the NCCL in-house newsletter, "is simply people of different ages being nice to each other."
It is typical of the Arrogance Of Now that we consider ourselves so knowing, enlightened and piercing that such conceits as that of the PIE manifesto would not, could not, pass muster in the 21st century.
And yet look around at how some of the defining issues of our age - passive religious intolerance, the language of division, push-button porn, the overt sexualisation of popular culture...
These issues are the direct descendants of the PIE scandal, in which the freedoms of one group are considered, by default and without argument, to outweigh the hurt and damage done to their silent victims.
I wonder what elements that we accept as enlightened or inevitable today would be greeted with similar smug astonishment by the next generation.
★ Icons | Backing the barrier
I become unnaturally fond of the giant civil engineering projects around the Thames in east London - the Millennium Dome, Brunel's tunnel, yes, the Emirates Air Line. They are testimony to confidence, vision and ingenuity.
So I'm hoping that climate change, fads and practicalities will keep the Thames Barrier to schedule and that, by the time comes for a replacement, sometime later this century, I will be any number of riverbed molecules that are stirred and shifted by its final leviathan machinations.
