Tom Watson promises action after pro-paedophile activist 'joins Labour Party'
Tom Watson MP has vowed to take action after it emerged a convicted paedophile who called for sex with children to be legalised had been allowed to join the Labour party.
Tom O'Carroll, 70, former chairman of the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE), is said to have joined the party after Jeremy Corbyn was elected as leader last September.
He was jailed in 2006 after he admitted distributing child porn images.
During his time at the PIE he advocated the relaxation of the age of consent, while the group argued that children as young as four should be able to make their own decisions about sex.
A Labour spokesperson said that O'Carroll has now been suspended from the party. Labour is now expected to take steps to bar him.
West Bromwich East MP Mr Watson, who has campaigned against child abuse, tweeted:
Wolverhampton South West MP Rob Marris backed the decision to suspend O'Carroll from the party.
"It sounds like the right thing has been done," he said. "It is regrettable that he saw fit to join the Labour Party but I would not support a system where political parties have to background check members before they join."
O'Carroll received a two-and-a-half year sentence at Middlesex Guildhall Crown Court in December 2006 for two counts of distributing indecent images of children.
Almost 50,000 images from magazines, videos and slides, were found in a secret vault in a country house in Surrey owned by a former vicar.
The court heard that children - mainly boys and some as young as six - had been filmed and photographed being raped and tortured.
O'Carroll helped to run the library and admitted two counts of distributing child porn images between January 1995 and 2005. He was 61 when the case was heard.
He had been jailed for two years in 1981 on charges of conspiring to corrupt public morals.
A petition calling for his removal from the party had received more than 200 supporters in the hours after his suspension was announced.
It said: "It has been made public today that Tom O'Carroll has been granted Labour Party membership. O'Carroll is a convicted distributor of "child pornography" or in real language - pictures and images of children being abused and raped.
"He advocates for the scrapping of the age of consent and believes that children of the age of four can consent to sexual activity and adults should not be convicted for this.
"As a survivor of child abuse and rape I cannot remain in the same party as this man. Please, please sign and share."
