Tory MP Geoffrey Dickens was best known during his bustling 16-year career in Parliament as a pugnacious right-winger who supplied hang 'em and flog 'em" quotes to the tabloids. Eighteen years after his death, however, the backbencher's reputation as a political lightweight is being revised in the wake of a Scotland Yard investigation which is exhuming a scandal long buried in the Westminster of Margaret Thatcher's premiership. New evidence suggests that Dickens stumbled upon an Establishment paedophile ring in the early 1980s - and that his efforts to expose a cover-up left him in fear of his life. In 1981 Dickens had used Parliamentary privilege to name a diplomat and MI6 operative, Sir Peter Hayman as a pederast and demanded the Attorney General explain why he had escaped prosecution over the discovery of violent pornography on a London bus two years previously. Two years later, in 1983, he warned a paedophile network involved "big, big names - people in positions of power, influence and responsibility" and threatened to expose them in Parliament. In 1984, he campaigned for the outlawing of Sir Peter's Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) organisation. Last month Metropolitan Police began Operation Fernbridge into allegations that residents of a childrens home in Richmond, west London, were taken to the nearby Elm Guest House in Barnes, where they were abused. Pornography involving adults having sex with children was allegedly shot at the property and then circulated commercially. Sir Peter was among the visitors to the property.