Peter Tatchell has been arrested 103 times (though convicted only once) and lived to tell the tale. He may be best known as an LGBT+ rights activist, but he’s campaigned for numerous causes over the last 58 years.
Today he’s here at The Stand to talk about his life and career with Chief Executive of Humanists UK, Andrew Copson. Tatchell is a patron of the organisation.
‘He’s very necessary…incredibly brave…doing good work in a world where most people are too timid’
Sir Elton John
Is Tatchell happy, asks Copson, with being described as a ‘veteran humans rights campaigner’? Indeed he is, and at the age of 73 he has no plans to retire, and has said that he intends to carry on protesting well into his 90s. His activism is motivated by a sense of injustice, born of two key events in his working class Melbourne childhood.
Australia had no free health care until 1975, and even after that it was patchy. Tatchell’s mother was severely asthmatic; her treatment swallowed up most of the family’s money; was that fair? Things got worse when his mother remarried a violently abusive man; both Peter and his mother suffered, but Australia at that time had no women’s refuges, no charities that might help.
‘It left me with a burning sense of injustice.’
In 1963 white racists bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, a key civil rights meeting place. Four young girls were murdered. The bombing marked a turning point in the US, and a pivotal moment for 11 year-old Peter Tatchell. His interest in the Black Civil Rights movement led to his first campaign, opposing the death penalty in the state of Victoria. While it did not succeed in saving the life of an alleged murderer against whom evidence was poor, it did help fuel a public outcry.
By 1969 Tatchell realised he was gay. Homosexual activity was still a crime in Victoria – punishments included long prison sentences and compulsory psychiatric treatment. He’d heard about the Stonewall uprising in the US:
‘I had no gay role models, so when I heard about Stonewall I thought ‘YES! I want to be a part of that.’
When his friends were too scared to join him in a public campaign, he started writing to newspapers, at first anonymously but later in his own name. He was very scared, but again that sense of injustice won through, coupled with his lifelong view that,
‘it’s always better to do something than nothing.’
He adapted his campaign from the Black civil rights movement.
Two years later, he moved to the UK. He opposed Australia’s involvement in Vietnam, wanted to avoid the draft, and thought he’d stay just two years, until the government changed back home. He’s been here ever since.
He stayed partly because the 1967 Sexual Offences Act had partially decriminalised homosexual acts. In Australia they were still illegal. The Gay Liberation Front, the first mass movement of LGBT people in the UK, was campaigning. Within five days Tatchell was at his first meeting; less than a month later he was campaigning,
‘It was so exciting to be part of that.’
Tatchell had noted that non-violent direct action had worked for the Black Civil Rights movement when lobbying the President had not, and decided to try the same approach for LGBT+ rights. In the 1970s and 80s the Westminster Parliament would not even allow a discussion of LGBT rights. In 1972 he helped organise the UK’s first Pride march. That year GLF started to splinter; eventually, in the 90s, Tatchell and some other members formed OutRage! They also worked with lobbying groups like Stonewall. You need, he says, a two-pronged approach; direct action and lobbying are not mutually exclusive. Every campaign begins at the grassroots,
‘Parliament is usually the last place to get a message.’
OutRage! used protests to attract media coverage and raise public consciousness about the scale of LGBT+ oppression; when public opinion starts to shift, he says, MPs have to listen. Prior to the direct action campaign there was almost no public awareness of what was going on.
In 1998 he and other activists famously interrupted the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Easter sermon at Canterbury Cathedral. At the time. Tatchell says, the Archbishop opposed changes in the law to give LGBT+ people equal rights; he also opposed same-sex marriages, and supported the ban on LGBT+ people fostering children. OutRage! had been requesting a meeting with him for eight years; if he wouldn’t come to them, they’d go to him. Tatchell walked up to the pulpit and began his own sermon; discrimination, he said, was not Christian. As the police tried to remove him he clung on to the pulpit, which promptly fell to pieces. Church wardens punched and scratched him. A video of the event proved he had not damaged the pulpit, but he was still charged with ‘indecent behaviour in a church’,
‘I did not have my trousers down!’
Magistrates had no choice but to convict him, but they fined him just £18.60 in reference to the date of the statute under which he’d been charged.
Copson asked Tatchell about OutRage!’s controversial outing of closeted people. Tatchell insists this is not what happened, that the group never named anyone just because they were gay or closeted. What it did do was name some influential closeted people who were using their positions to target the LGBT+ community. Those people were ten Anglican bishops, who persisted in saying homosexuality was a sin and LGBT+ people should not have equality before the law,
‘There was no Biblical justification for it at all. After that not one of them said anything more against the community.’
OutRage! also wrote to twenty MPs who’d voted in favour of anti-gay laws, saying that this was hypocritical given their own sexuality,
‘There was no threat, we told them it was their own decision but we hoped they would choose the morally right option. Most of them never voted in this way again.’
The irony of the tabloid press’s two-faced approach is not lost on him,
‘When they outed adulterous ‘family values’ MPs, there was no outcry. When we did it we were called terrorists and LGBT+ fascists.’
Any regrets about it, asks Copson? Only, replies Tatchell, that he wishes he’d used that tactic earlier to deal with bigots; he still thinks it’s a good one, and he’s trying to encourage LGBT+ people in Poland to use it, ‘but they’re scared.’
Would he advocate its use in African and Arab countries, where, says Copson, well known closeted statesmen impose anti-LGBT laws? It’d probably too dangerous, says Tatchell, but in any case it’s a decision for local activists. He’s not bothered about outing being risky for the statesmen though; ‘they bring it on themselves, but they should be given fair warning and a chance to change.’
Tatchell is very clear and uncompromising in his stance on just about every issue Copson raises. He says this comes from always putting himself in the position of the victims. And he doesn’t act alone; everything is discussed with his fellow activists ‘I’m just often the front man.’
And although he has strong convictions, he’s not afraid to change his mind. He used to support hate crime legislation, but now feels it may infringe free speech. It’s one thing, he says, having an opinion that he doesn’t agree with, and quite another to issue death threats. People are entitled to their views. The definition of ‘hate’ is difficult, and laws that were intended to protect people are often used for other purposes. He’s very concerned about current policing; human rights legislation should not be interpreted as a tool to prevent people expressing a legitimate opinion.
In May this year he attended a Palestinian Solidarity march with a placard, ‘Stop Israeli genocide, stop Hamas executions.’ He was arrested for ‘racially and religiously aggravated breach of the peace.’
‘My criticism of Hamas, a proscribed organisation, mentioned neither race nor religion, but that was the basis of my arrest….the Met eventually told me there’d be ‘no further action’ – there will be from me! The English Public Order laws were written to deal with football violence and violent street disorder, but I’ve been arrested for a ‘Gay Equality Now’ sign. The laws are so broad they can be used to justify anything.’
After decades of Tory government, what, asks Copson, does Tatchell think of Keir Starmer’s new regime? Is it better?
No, Tachell replies, it’s a huge disappointment. Starmer promised to outlaw gay conversion therapy; nothing has happened. Exorcisms and beatings are still being inflicted on LGBT+ people. The Scottish government has also dropped its commitment to legislate against this. In opposition, the Labour Party condemned the anti-Trans agenda. Now it’s banned puberty blockers (on the basis that they are dangerous) for young trans children, but not for non-trans children with early onset puberty. So are they ‘dangerous’ or not?
Keir Starmer has said that the much discussed Supreme Court decision on ‘biological sex’ ‘provides clarity’ – ‘rubbish’ says Tatchell. The Court took representations from anti-Trans groups but not from any Trans ones. It even refused to allow the intervention of Dr Victoria McCloud, the UK’s first transgender judge, and Stephen Whittle of the Good Law Project. (McCloud intends to take the government and the Supreme Court to the European Court of Human Rights.)
‘Would they make a decision about Black issues without hearing the representations of the Black community?’
As the session draws to a close, the audience has many questions, Tatchell’s views on the monarchy being one of them. He supports its abolition on the basis that it is incompatible with democracy. Public positions of statehood, he says, should be open to everyone; the crown, the highest office in the land, excludes every single one of us except the Windsor family. This is also ‘profoundly, if unintentionally, racist, as no person of colour can ever be head of state.’ He doesn’t want to see a president with executive powers, but one with only ceremonial duties, as in Germany, would be good. ‘It’d be much cheaper too.’
Another question focuses on the Trans community. What does he think should be done to protect them, and how do we build a broad base of allyship? Public opinion, says Tatchell, has shifted against trans people and a different approach is now needed. His controversial view is that trans and non-trans people are not the same, though they are of course equal, and their differences should be celebrated,
‘We should say “yes, there is a difference, but it’s great.”’
He feels this could bring the community more public support. He also thinks much more work needs to be done to highlight the shared experiences of trans and non-trans women. They both suffer misogyny, domestic abuse, hate crimes and prejudice and should be working together to oppose these things.
A final question asks for his views on the rights of Indigenous Peoples in his native Australia. Having heard that many Aboriginal students were leaving school early to work to support their families, he and others campaigned for a scholarship fund to help them stay on to get qualifications, better jobs and the ability to uplift their own communities. The scheme still exists today and has helped many people.
Peter Tatchell is often described as a ‘fearless’ campaigner, but he mentions more than once that he has been ‘terrified’ when taking direct action. He’s been violently assaulted over 300 times, his coordination, memory, balance, vision and concentration are somewhat impaired, and he suffers from PTSD. Nevertheless, he has always persevered, still motivated by that burning sense of injustice, still always ready to put himself out there to try to right the many wrongs of the world. Not many people have been prepared to stick their neck out as consistently as he has over almost six decades of protest. Is he brave, foolhardy or a combination of both? I’ll stick with Richard Holloway’s opinion,
A modern-day prophet…dauntingly brave in his pursuit of equality and justice
Rchard Holloway
Conversations with the Godless is a series of events being hosted by Humanists UK at The Stand Comedy Club, York Place (various Venue numbers, please check) this August. Journalist and broadcaster Polly Toynbee and writer, comedian and broadcaster (The Infinite Monkey Cage with Brian Cox) Robin Ince are next, on 14 and 15 August (times vary.) For full details please check the Fringe tab on The Stand website here.
The Peter Tatchell Foundation promotes and protects the human rights of individuals, communities and nations, in the UK and internationally. Read more here and sign up for Peter’s free weekly newsletter here.
