30 Years Since Stonewall

The Stonewall Riot - 28 June 1969

• gay bar in New York, raided by police, customers rioted, Tactical Police Force called in, confrontation continued for the next few nights
• marks the birth of the modern lesbian/gay movement
• Pride established to mark anniversary (first march 1970 New York, 5,000 people)
• took place in a wider radical political context - women’s liberation movement, anti-Vietnam, black militancy, student activism

Gay Liberation Front

• new approach - non-apologetic, defiant, uncompromising, radical, active
• stressed ‘coming out’ as a strategy for building a mass movement
• unstructured, so disagreements led to splits
• dominated by men, radical feminists arguing that all men were the enemy - radical feminists split from GLF
• GLF / new lesbian/gay movement ignored by much of the left eg. Militant ran Labour Party Young Socialists, never raised issue with socialist youth throughout 1970s

San Francisco

• June 1976: 90,000 marched on Gay Freedom Day
• 1977: Harvey Milk, out gay man, elected city supervisor (councillor)
• 1978: Board of Supervisors (council) passed lesbian and gay right ordinance, one vote against
• John Briggs, Republican Senator for California, introduced Proposition 6, proposal to bar open homosexuals, or anyone advocating homosexuality, from teaching in state schools - state-wide ballot, Prop 6 defeated
• 3 weeks later, Harvey Milk and (Democrat) Mayor assassinated - killer Dan White (former city supervisor, had voted against lesbian/gay rights ordinance, supported Prop 6)
• White’s trial - all-heterosexual jury, prosecutor did not mention political differences between killer/victims, so did not show murder to be premeditated - White convicted only of manslaughter - 5-10,000 rioted in SF

Into the 80s

• 1979: Tories won General Election
• USA: Republican government increasingly under influence of ultra-conservative religious groups
• reversal of fortune: LGBs faced new political climate, rise in new right moralism, forced onto defensive

Bermondsey by-election 1983

• Labour candidate: Peter Tatchell, Liberal candidate Simon Hughes
• tirade of bigotry against Tatchell for being gay (and left-wing, and foreign)
• Labour leadership kept distance from Tatchell; journalists rummaged through his bins, visited Australia to hunt down his relatives
• Liberals won, biggest swing in Parliamentary history (at the time), achieved by whipping up homophobia

Miners’ Strike 1984/85

• Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners
• collections around gay scene, pink minibuses took activists took gay activists to miners’ picket lines
• NUM banners prominent on Pride 1985, NUM fought for Labour Party and TUC to take up pro-LGB rights policy - both sides learnt from solidarity
• “You have worn our badge, ‘Coal Not Dole’, and you know what harassment means, as we do. Now we will pin your badge on us, we will support you. It won’t change overnight, but now 140,000 miners know that there are other causes and other problems. We know about blacks and gays and nuclear disarmament. And we will never be the same.” (David Donovan, Dulais mining community, Dec 1984)

Local government

• early 80s: Labour councils took up LGB rights, funded Gay Centres, switchboards etc
• good initiatives, but became a substitute for taking on Tory government’s attacks on councils
• Labour councils cut services, encouraged backlash

Section 28

• December 1987: amendment to Local Government Bill to outlaw ‘intentional promotion’ of homosexuality, referred to ‘pretended family relationships’
• proposed by Dame Jill Knight; initially support by Labour front bench, then opposed
• huge mobilisations against it: 30,000 marched in Manchester, more on national demo in London
• direct action: lesbians abseiled into House of Lords during debate; chained themselves to desk and shouted slogans on BBC evening news
• May 1988: Clause 28 passed; no council ever been prosecuted; main effect - self-censorship by Labour councils

The AIDS crisis

• early 80s: discovery of AIDS (originally referred to as GRID - Gay Related Immune Deficiency)
• tabloid hysteria: ‘gay plague’, ‘divine retribution’
• government AIDS education late, moralistic, uninspiring - gay community’s own campaigns much better
• government allowed anti-sex moralism to prevent effective action against HIV
• right wing called for restrictions on rights of HIV+ people
• search for cure / effective treatments motivated by profits more than humanity
• AIDS activism, mainly USA

Outrage! / Queer politics

• rejected respectability, attitude of rebellion, direct action
• disagreement over reclaiming words eg. ‘queer’
• controversy over ‘outing’

‘Virgin births’

• 1990 Embryology Bill, statutory licensing for clinics providing donor insemination
• press ran ‘virgin birth scandal’ stories, denounced clinics providing DI to lesbians / single het women
• amendments to Bill attacking abortion rights - some on left (eg, SWP, Socialist Action) argued for campaign solely on the amendments - argument: “Working-class people can be mobilised to support abortion rights, but not to support lesbians”
• note: deep distrust exists between LGB movement / left - some justification, given opportunism, unreliability

Hat-trick of hatred

• early 1991
• Paragraph 16 (of guidelines to Children Act) - sought to prevent LGB fostering
• Clause 25 (of Criminal Justice Bill) - stiffer sentences for eg. public same-sex affection
• Operation Spanner - prosecution of 16 gay men for consenting SM sex
• protests organised; demos in London, Manchester; local groups
• to some extent, ‘pecking order’ emerged: Spanner de-prioritised, due to reactionary attitudes to SM; Clause 25 prioritised by many men

Age of consent

• 1994: vote on age of consent; vote against equality at 16, for 18
• campaign based largely on Parliamentary lobbying, noticeably lower level of mass mobilisation / direct action
• Labour Party refused to whip MPs despite conference policy commitment - 35 voted against 16, including David Blunkett
• 1998: Commons voted for 16; withdrawn before vote in Lords in deal over Lords reform

Current situation

• lack of meaningful action by New Labour government
• current issues

Conclusions

• advances won by action and struggle: can’t rely on rights being bestowed on us ‘from above’
• advances won can be taken away (unless we fundamentally change society)
• fortunes of LGB movement parallel other progressive movements, and especially labour movement
• patchy relationship between labour movement / left and LGB movement - lessons for both
• today’s LGB activists have a responsibility to build on the struggles of those before us