The Campaign Against Public Morals

The Campaign Against Public Morals (CAMP) was initially formed in 1980 as a defence committee for Thomas O'Carroll and his PIE co-defendants at the 1981 trial for "Conspiracy to corrupt public morals". The committee was hi-jacked by two radical paedophiles (Dave Landau and Tim Brown) with a different agenda, hostile to PIE, and O’Carroll resigned from his own defence committee. In 1981 CAPM produced a left-wing / a quasi-anarchist booklet entitled "Paedophilia and Public Morals" (1980) which scrutinized patriarchal, state and family oppression of young people, as well as defending the indicted PIE committee members. Notably, the booklet also criticized O’Carroll, his book, PIE and its politics, as well as the trial and society’s disdain for the freedoms and capacities of children. Their political analysis was strong, their sense of solidarity less so.