During the 1970s, there was some political advocacy in favour of significantly reducing the age of consent, supported by various 'youth liberation' organizations and mostly by members of the Paedophile Information Exchange.
Meanwhile, over a similar time period, the unequal age of consent for straight and gay young people was campaigned against by the LGBT rights movement.
[13] The Paedophile Information Exchange was an organisation with around 300 members which used its links inside government and the civil liberties movement to lobby for the decriminalisation of sex with children as young as four years old.
[15] In April 1972, the Society of Friends Social Responsibility Council (a Quaker conference), passed a resolution in favour of lowering the age of consent in Britain from 16 to 14.
[16][17] In July of that year, Dr. John Robinson, Dean of Trinity College, Cambridge, and chair of the UK's Sexual Law Reform Society, defended an age of consent of 14 in a lecture at a Methodist Conference.
[25] Harman denies ever supporting the age of consent being lowered to 10, and claimed that right-wing newspapers the Daily Mail and The Telegraph had tried to make her "guilty by association" with fringe groups that had previously been connected to the NCCL.
[14] Although he does not favour total abolition, Francis Bennion, a British liberal humanist also influenced by the historical context of the issue, emphasised the fact that children are "sexual beings", concluding that this in itself makes legal prohibitions unfair.
[27] Miranda Sawyer, British journalist specialised in music and youth culture, suggested that "we have sexual feelings from a very early age", considering that sex is "natural behaviour".
[37] Waites also observed that "qualitative research reveals a picture of many young people negotiating sexual behaviour in a context of secrecy, constrained by power relationships while lacking confidence, resources and support".
Sex education was criticised as out-dated, uninformative and taught too late, with little structured literature about sexually transmitted diseases, same-sex relationships and how to deal with pregnancy".
Those surveyed also said that free condoms should be provided in girls' toilets and that the £60 million drive by the government to halve teenage conceptions would have been better spent on clinics for young people wanting confidential advice.