Yeah, I posted that article because it gave a good summary of the sequence of events w/r/t the Mail's reporting. I don't really agree with that last point. The

Yeah, I posted that article because it gave a good summary of the sequence of events w/r/t the Mail's reporting. I don't really agree with that last point. There's no evidence that any of the Labour politicians expressed sympathetic attitudes towards paedophilia. Their argument at the time was about exactly where criminality should begin --- arguing against a blanket ban on images of nude children (because it might criminalise totally innocent parents) and sex between underage children of a similar age (which is arguably more an issue for education, youth services, etc. than the police and courts) --- y'know, the sort of things you'd expect a civil liberties organisation to be concerned with. You might disagree with their position, but the Mail's reports really were trying to cast them as having been sympathetic to child abuse ("LABOUR MP ADVOCATES LOWERING OF AGE OF CONSENT TO 10", etc.), which clearly wasn't the case. It's hard to see it as anything other than a smear campaign (or, at best, extremely sensationalized journalism) given that.