Blowing the lid : gay liberation, sexual revolution and radical queens

517 Pages·2015·4.91 MB·English

by  Feather

First published by Zero Books, 2015
Zero Books is an imprint of John Hunt Publishing Ltd., Laurel House, Station Approach,
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Text copyright: Stuart Feather 2014
ISBN: 978 1 78535 143 3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015937455
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publishers.
The rights of Stuart Feather as author have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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CONTENTS
Abbreviations
Chronology
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter One: Coming Out
Chapter Two: Have a Gay Day
Chapter Three: Gay is Good
Chapter Four: Northern Exposure
Chapter Five: The Permissive Society and its Enemies
Chapter Six: Revolution in the head … and/or in the World
Chapter Seven: Freaking Out the Fundamentalists
Chapter Eight: Ideologies Clash
Chapter Nine: A British Army Hero
Chapter Ten: Court Circular
Chapter Eleven: Trials and Tribulations
Chapter Twelve: Transvestites and Transsexuals
Chapter Thirteen: Party Games and a Serious Proposal
Chapter Fourteen: The Parting of the Ways
Chapter Fifteen: Knitting for Victory
Chapter Sixteen: Gay News
Chapter Seventeen: Gay Pride and Gay Prejudice
Chapter Eighteen: Radical Drag Queens at Home
Chapter Nineteen: Radical Drag Queens in the Community
Chapter Twenty: Bethnal Rouge – Curtains – The GLF Legacy
Notes
Bibliography
To Twelve Gay Men and One Big Happy Family
and To All who Came Out in Gay Liberation
Abbreviations
AB The Angry Brigade.
BP Black Panthers.
CHE Campaign for Homosexual Equality.
CID Criminal Investigation Dept, a Division of the Police Force.
CND Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
CPO Compulsory Purchase Order.
C-R Consciousness-Raising.
CT Come Together.
DoE Department of the Environment.
DEP Department of Employment and Productivity.
FHAR Front Homosexuel d’Action Révolutionnaire.
FoL Festival of Light.
FUORI! Fronte Unitario Omosessuale Rivoluzionario Italiano. In Italian
the acronym means Out!
GBH Grievous Bodily Harm.
GLF Gay Liberation Front.
GN Gay News.
HCA Hall-Carpenter Archives, the largest source for lesbian and gay
activism from the 1957 Wolfenden report to the present. Archive
Division, Library of the London School of Economics and Political
Science.
IRA Irish Republican Army.
IRB Industrial Relations Bill.
IS International Socialists.
IT International Times.
IT International Times.
Lily Lily Law: the Police in the gay slang of Polari.
LSE London School of Economics.
NCCL National Council for Civil Liberties. (forerunner of Liberty).
NFHO National Federation of Homophile Organizations.
NHCW Notting Hill Community Workshop.
NHHT Notting Hill Housing Trust.
NHPA Notting Hill People’s Association.
NHSG Notting Hill Squatters Group.
NUS National Union of Students.
QC Queen’s Counsel.
RAP Radical Alternatives to Prison.
RBK&C Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea.
S&M Sado-Masochism (ist).
SCUM Society for Cutting Up Men.
SB Special Branch.
SIB Special Investigation Branch, a unit of the British Army.
SN6 Stoke Newington Six.
SN8 Stoke Newington Eight.
TTA Trust Tenants’ Association.
TUC Trades Union Congress.
ULU University of London Union.
WL Women’s Liberation.
WLM Women’s Liberation Movement.
WM Women’s Movement.
WLW Women’s Liberation Workshop.
WNCC Women’s National Co-ordinating Committee.
Chronology
1954
June
8: The death of Alan Turing due to the horrendous side effects of
chemical castration, the sentence he received for gross Indecency in
1952 after openly declaring to police during the investigation of a
robbery at his home that he was having a sexual relationship with
another man. ‘The man who knew too much’, had become a security
threat to British and American interests during the Korean phase of the
Cold War, and establishment panic following the defection of the spies
Guy Burgess (who was gay), and Donald Maclean to Russia.
September
Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male (USA 1948) & Sexual Behaviour in
the Human Female (USA 1953) by Dr Alfred Kinsey, known as The
Kinsey Report, first published in the UK as An Analyses of the Kinsey
Reports on The Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male and Female.
15: First sitting of the Departmental Committee on Homosexuality and
Prostitution under Winston Churchill’s Conservative government.
Headed by John Wolfenden, it became known as the Wolfenden
Committee.
1957
September
4: Wolfenden Report published by Harold MacMillan’s Conservative
government.
1958
March
7: The Times publishes letter signed by 33 eminent people including
Isaiah Berlin, Bob Boothby MP, Julian Huxley, J.B. Priestley and his wife
Jacquetta Hawkes, Bertrand Russell, and A.E. Dyson who organized the
letter and persuaded a number of the signortories to found The
Homosexual Law Reform Society, and its funding arm The Albany Trust,
headed by Antony Grey, which also focused on Public Education,
Research, and Counselling.
1964
October
7: The North-Western Homosexual Law Reform Committee held its first
meeting.
15: General Election. Labour under Harold Wilson defeat Conservatives
by a 4 seat majority.
1965
May
24: House of Lords votes in favour of Lord Arran’s Sexual Offences Bill
by a majority of 94 votes to 49.
1966
March
31: General Election. Harold Wilson increases Labour majority to 98
seats.
July
5: Leo Abse introduces the Sexual Offences Bill in the Commons. It is
approved by 264 votes to 102.
1967
July
27: The Sexual Offences Act receives the Royal Assent.
November
18: Devaluation of Sterling. ‘The pound in your pocket remains the
same.’ – Harold Wilson.