LABOUR LET CHILD ABUSER SIGN UP

Notorious paedophile faced trial as he joined

A NOTORIOUS campaigner for the legalisation of child sex was allowed to join the Labour Party in support of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership bid despite facing trial for abusing brothers aged nine and ten, the Daily Mail can reveal.

In a major embarrassment for Mr Corbyn, Tom O’Carroll, a former chairman of the infamous Paedophile Information Exchange, narrowly escaped jail after he admitted preying on the boys nearly 40 years ago.

However the 70-year-old – a supporter of the Hacked Off group’s campaign for tougher Press regulation – continued mixing with young activists at party functions until horrified local officials learnt of his repugnant views. His membership was yesterday suspended by Labour after his outraged local MP, John Woodcock, wrote to the party’s general secretary to demand to know how he slipped through the net. The disturbing revelation raises questions about who else might have used the cover of the 180,000 people who joined Labour in the months after the General Election to infiltrate the party.

Under O’Carroll’s leadership in the 1970s, PIE openly campaigned for the age of consent to be reduced to ten. The Mail has previously exposed how in 1977 he shared a conference platform with National Council for Civil Liberties chairman and future Labour health secretary Patricia Hewitt.

But while O’Carroll has served prison sentences for distributing indecent images, he has never previously been convicted of underage sex offences.

Last July he was one of thousands of people who paid £3 to register as Labour supporters in order to vote in the leadership election, where he was a strong supporter of Mr Corbyn. While full members are not routinely vetted by Labour when they sign up, special checks were performed on the £3 supporters. However, O’Carroll somehow slipped through the net.

He became a full member after Mr Corbyn became leader, hailing the victory on his website as ‘an entirely unforeseen earthquake’ and adding: ‘The impossible just happened.’

However, the Mail has learnt that from his first contact with Labour last summer, O’Carroll was awaiting trial for six counts of sexually abusing brothers aged nine and ten during a holiday to North Wales in 1978. On the second day of his trial in December, O’Carroll pleaded guilty to one count of indecently assaulting one boy and one of gross indecency with the other. He was formally acquitted of the remaining counts.

At Caernarfon Crown Court he was given a two-year prison sentence sus-

‘He shouldn’t have a political platform’

pended for two years, placed on the sex offenders’ register for ten years and made the subject of an indefinite sexual harm prevention order.

It is understood that police in his home town of Barrow-in-Furness notified Labour officials last week that a member was a sex offender. Barrow MP Mr Woodcock, who had met O’Carroll at local events, said yesterday he was legally barred from commenting on what police had said, but that hours later he wrote to Labour Party general secretary Iain McNicol demanding O’Carroll’s expulsion.

‘It makes my blood run cold that this man was able to join the Labour Party,’ Mr Woodcock told the Mail yesterday. ‘As soon as we became aware of his identity I put into place immediate safeguards to stop him being able to use the Labour Party to prey on children in any way.’

Yesterday one of the brothers abused by O’Carroll – now in his late40s – told the Mail he feared he had infiltrated Labour in a bid to continue his campaign to justify paedophilia.

‘I may be suspicious that his motive may be to state the case for what he believes in,’ he said. ‘He shouldn’t have a political platform to do that.’

Labour declined to comment on whether O’Carroll had been vetted, saying only: ‘He has been suspended from the Labour Party.’