Peter Tatchell
Peter Gary Tatchell is an Australian-born British human rights campaigner, best known for his work with LGBTQ social movements.
Tatchell was selected as the Labour Party's parliamentary candidate for Bermondsey in 1981. He was then denounced by party leader Michael Foot for ostensibly supporting extra-Parliamentary action against the Thatcher government. Labour subsequently allowed him to stand in the Bermondsey by-election in February 1983, in which the party lost the seat to the Liberals. In the 1990s he campaigned for LGBTQ rights through the direct action group OutRage!, which he co-founded. He has worked on various campaigns, such as Stop Murder Music against music lyrics allegedly inciting violence against LGBT people and writes and broadcasts on various human rights and social justice issues. He attempted a citizen's arrest of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe in 1999 and again in 2001.
In April 2004, Tatchell joined the Green Party of England and Wales and in 2007 was selected as prospective Parliamentary candidate in the constituency of Oxford East, but in December 2009 he stood down due to brain damage acquired mainly during protests, as well as from a bus accident. Since 2011, he has been Director of the Peter Tatchell Foundation. He has taken part in over 30 debates at the Oxford Union, encompassing a wide range of issues such as patriotism, Thatcherism and university safe spaces.
Early life
Tatchell was born in Melbourne, Australia. His father was a lathe operator and his mother worked in a biscuit factory. His parents divorced when he was four and his mother remarried soon afterwards. He had a half sister and brothers.Since the family finances were strained by medical bills, he had to leave school at 16 in 1968. He started work as a sign-writer and window-dresser in department stores. Tatchell claims to have incorporated the theatricality of these displays into his activism.
Raised as a Christian, Tatchell says that he "ditched faith a long time ago" and is an atheist. It has been wrongly reported that Tatchell is a vegan; however, Tatchell himself has stated that although he eats no meat, he does eat eggs, cheese, and, according to Richard Fairbrass, wild salmon.
He became interested in outdoor adventurous activities such as surfing and mountain climbing. Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Any Questions about how insurance and legal risks were making British teachers reluctant to take pupils on outdoor adventures, he said outdoor activities helped him develop the courage to take political risks in adult life.
Campaigns in Australia
Tatchell's political activity began at Mount Waverley Secondary College, where in 1967 he launched campaigns in support of Australia's Aboriginal people. Tatchell was elected secretary of the school's Student Representative Council. In his final year in 1968, as school captain, he took the lead in setting up a scholarship scheme for Aboriginal people and led a campaign for Aboriginal land rights. These activities led the headmaster to claim he had been manipulated by communists.Prompted by the impending hanging of Ronald Ryan in 1967, a 15-year old Tatchell protested against the use of the death sentence, writing to the press and spraying graffiti to raise awareness of the issue. Ryan was convicted of killing a prison warder while escaping from Pentridge Prison in Coburg, Victoria. Tatchell wrote that the trajectory of the bullet through the warder's body made it unlikely that Ryan could have fired the fatal shot, casting doubt on the conviction. His protests were unsuccessful.
In 1968, Tatchell began campaigning against the American and Australian involvement in the Vietnam War, in his view a war of aggression in support of a "brutal and corrupt dictatorship" responsible for torture and executions. The Victoria state government and Melbourne city council attempted to suppress the anti-Vietnam War campaign by banning street leafleting and taking police action against anti-war demonstrations.
In 2004, he proposed the renaming of Australian capital cities with their Aboriginal place names.
Gay Liberation Front
To avoid conscription into the Australian Army, Tatchell moved to London in 1971. He had opened up about being gay in 1969, and in London became a leading member of the Gay Liberation Front until its 1974 collapse. During this time Tatchell was prominent in organising sit-ins at pubs that refused to serve "poofs" and protests against police harassment and the medical classification of homosexuality as an illness. With others, he helped organise Britain's first Gay Pride march in 1972.In 1973, he attended the 10th World Youth Festival in East Berlin on GLF's behalf. His plans to protest at the festival were not well received by either the British delegation or the GDR hosts, but he was eventually allowed to give a speech at Humboldt University. His lecture was subject to various disruptions; it ended in his denunciation as a "troublemaker" by a member of the audience. The following day, Tatchell attempted to hand out leaflets at a concert: an official of the Free German Youth objected and encouraged fellow concert-goers to destroy the leaflets. Tatchell intended to carry a placard advocating gay rights at the closing rally of the festival. The British delegation incorrectly translated the placard to read "East Germany persecutes homosexuals"; this was put to a vote and the majority decided the placard was not acceptable. Yet, in defiance of the collective decision, Tatchell carried the placard anyway and was then beaten. The placard was torn in half.
Tatchell later claimed that this was the first time gay liberation politics were publicly disseminated and discussed in a communist country, although he noted that, in terms of decriminalisation and the age of consent, gay men had greater rights in East Germany at the time than much of the West.
Describing his time in the Gay Liberation Front, he wrote in The Guardian that:
Tatchell collaborated with public artist Martin Firrell to mark the 50th anniversary of the GLF in 2020. The artist's "Still Revolting" series drew on Tatchell's personal recollections of the GLF, quoting Tatchell's 1973 placard "Homosexuals Are Revolting" created by Tatchell for London Gay Pride. The artist's addition of the word 'still' reflects the truth that homosexuality is still regarded as intolerable by some and many LGBT+ people around the world are still struggling for acceptance, security and equality.
Graduation
After taking A levels at evening classes, he attended the Polytechnic of North London, now part of London Metropolitan University, where he obtained a 2:1 BSc in sociology.At PNL he was a member of the National Union of Students Gay Rights Campaign. On graduating he became a freelance journalist specialising in foreign stories, during which he publicised the Indonesian annexation of West Papua and child labour on British-owned tea farms in Malawi.
Politics
Tatchell popularised the phrase "sexual apartheid" to describe the separate laws that long existed for gays and heterosexuals.Labour candidate for Bermondsey
In 1978, Tatchell joined the Labour Party and moved to a council flat in Bermondsey, south-east London. At the Bermondsey Constituency Labour Party's AGM in February 1980, the left group won control and Tatchell was elected Secretary. When the sitting Labour Member of Parliament, Bob Mellish, retired in 1981, Tatchell was selected as his successor, despite Arthur Latham, a former MP and former Chairman of the Tribune Group, being considered the favourite. While Militant was cited as the reason for Tatchell's selection, Tatchell disagrees and ascribes his selection to the support of the "older, 'born and bred' working class; the younger professional and intellectual members swung behind Latham".In an article for a left-wing magazine, Tatchell urged the Labour Party to support direct action campaigning to challenge the Margaret Thatcher-led Tory government, stating "we must look to new more militant forms of extra-parliamentary opposition which involve mass popular participation and challenge the government's right to rule". Social Democratic Party MP James Wellbeloved, arguing the article was anti-Parliamentary, quoted it at Prime Minister's Questions in November 1981. Foot denounced Tatchell, stating that he would not be endorsed as a candidate and a vote at the Labour Party National Executive Committee denied Tatchell's endorsement. However, the Bermondsey Labour Party continued to support him and it was eventually agreed that when the selection was rerun, Tatchell would be eligible, and he duly won. When Mellish resigned from Parliament and triggered a by-election, Tatchell's candidacy was endorsed, and the ensuing campaign was regarded as one of the most homophobic in modern British history.
Tatchell was assaulted in the street, had his flat attacked, and had a death threat and a live bullet put through his letterbox in the night. Although the Bermondsey seat had long been a Labour stronghold, the Liberal candidate, Simon Hughes, won the election. During the campaign, Liberal canvassers were accused of stirring up homophobia on the doorsteps. Male Liberal workers campaigned wearing lapel badges with the words, "I've been kissed by Peter Tatchell" following the suggestion that he was attempting to hide his sexuality; this campaign was criticised by Roy Hattersley at a Labour news conference. One of Hughes' campaign leaflets claimed the election was "a straight choice" between Liberal and Labour. Hughes has since apologised for what may have been seen as an inadvertent slur and later came out as bisexual in 2006.
''Democratic Defence''
Tatchell published the book Democratic Defence in 1985. In it, he outlined his suggestions for a defence policy for the United Kingdom after it underwent nuclear disarmament. Tatchell argued that Britain's military was primarily organised on a strategy of basing troops abroad rather than defending Britain itself from outside attacks, which he claimed was a legacy of the British Empire.Citing the difficulties that the British Army was facing in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, he argued that their current methods had proven ineffective against guerrilla warfare, along with arguing for UK military personnel to be allowed to join trade unions and political parties, and to end strict adherence to "petty regulations". He praised the Second World War-era British Home Guard as an example of a "citizens' army", as well as the armed forces of Sweden, Switzerland and Yugoslavia as positive examples for the UK military to emulate.
In the book, Tatchell also argued for a British withdrawal from NATO and for the establishment of a European Self-Defence Organisation, independent of both the United States, as he felt that Europe had become too dependent on their military protection, and the Soviet Union, which he condemned for their invasions of Czechoslovakia and of Afghanistan, as well its internal repression. He quoted with approval Enoch Powell's argument that the threat from the Soviet Union to Britain was greatly exaggerated. The book was reviewed by the Times Literary Supplement in May 1985.