FORMER Labour minister Patricia Hewitt reportedly defended plans to lower the age of consent despite a teacher accusing her of proposing to "shatter prospective individual happiness" at an early age.
The allegation is the latest twist in an ongoing row over the activities of the National Council For Civil Liberties (NCCL) in the 1970s and the role played by Ms Hewitt and her former Cabinet colleague Harriet Harman.
Ms Hewitt, a former Health Secretary, had said she and Ms Harman were both "naive and wrong" to accept claims by the Paedophile Information Exchange that it was a campaigning and counselling organisation.
But last night a newspaper reported that Ms Hewitt, as the general secretary of the NCCL, responded in April 1976 to a letter from the house master of a London boys' school. Philip McGuinness had said the organisation had "some very twisted minds" in it after it released a statement - bearing Ms Hewitt's name - proposing the age of consent be cut to 14.
In her reply, from the NCCL's archives, Ms Hewitt reportedly wrote: "Our proposal that the age of consent be reduced is based on the belief that neither the police nor the criminal courts should have the power to intervene in a consenting sexual activity between two young people. It is clearly the case that a number of young people are capable of consenting to sexual activity and already do so."
Mr McGuinness reportedly responded: "Are you aiming for the destruction of society, for the enslavement of the individual, for the destruction of family life? Is your object to shatter prospective individual happiness at an early age?"
The release related to an NCCL report on sexual law reforms. Ms Hewitt has said she did not support its proposal to reduce consent.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article