‘Reflections on a gay life and a long one’ Patricia Hatchett

Patricia Hatchett, for Winstanley College LGBTQ+ Society

I am a 75-year-old lesbian. Female homosexuality has never been explicitly targeted in any legislation.

I grew up in an era of sexual repression and toxic homophobia. When I was a kid in the 1950’s, sex outside marriage was considered a sin. Sexual attraction between two men was something to be ashamed of. It was thought to be a mental illness needing treatment. Mutual attraction between women was on no-one’s agenda.

Geraldine Bedell sums up what it was like1 . ‘Loving the wrong person could make you a criminal. Smiling in the park could lead to arrest and being in the wrong address book could cost you a prison sentence. Homosexuality was illegal and hundreds of thousands of men feared being picked up by zealous police wanting easy convictions, often for doing nothing more than looking a bit gay. It wasn’t until I was twenty that The Sexual Offences Act 1967, decriminalised sex between two men over 21 and ‘in private’.2

Dame Kelly Holmes, the double Olympic gold medallist, waited 34 years before she felt safe enough to be open about her sexuality. She told the Sunday Mirror: “It was illegal to be gay in the army. The risk if you were caught, was to be arrested, court-martialled, thrown out, sometimes jailed. I had wanted to be in the armed forces since I was 14 and was desperate to stay in, so couldn’t let them know. But it was hard because it consumed my life with fear.”3

Although the 60s was a decade of liberation for many women, my teenage years were years of confusion and furtiveness. LGBTQ+ kids were not recognised, we were shunned and shamed, and it was easier to just keep quiet. I was 17 in 1964, when the North-western Homosexual Law Reform Committee (NWHLRC) was formed4 to promote legal and social equality for lesbian, gay, and bisexual people. I remember the headlines when it became the campaign for Homosexual Equality in 1969. That really started me thinking, but I was confused and shy and kept quiet.

Following the Stonewall riots in New York, the LGBTQ+ liberation movement began to take off. I remember reading about it in the papers and they seemed far removed from my everyday life. They were the spark for the formation of The Gay Liberation Front (GLF) in the UK. I had just finished my training

In the 1970s, British establishment attitudes to LGBTQ+ people were still entrenched. The Nullity of Marriage Act 1971 defined the legally valid reasons a marriage could be or annulled in Britain. It was the first time in British law that marriage was explicitly defined by statute as being between a male and a female. Most people I knew thought this was right and proper.

In the same year, April Ashley attracted lurid headlines and established a precedent that a person's sex cannot legally be changed from what it was at birth, even after surgery. It was ruled that ‘intercourse using the completely artificially constructed cavity could never constitute true intercourse’5 .

It felt like the ground rules for love and marriage were not going to be easily shifted, though change was in the air. The 1971 Gay Liberation Front Manifesto proclaimed that ‘Homosexuals, who have been oppressed by physical violence and by ideological and psychological attacks at every level of social interaction, are at last becoming angry.’ Peter Tatchell was causing outrage in the newspapers. He describes the GLF as ‘Britain’s first direct action, human rights movement of openly lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.’ 6

In 1972 The first Pride march was held in London, with the theme of being ‘out and proud’. It attracted less than a thousand participants. I didn’t go, like most LGBTQ+ people then, I was too scared to come out, and many of us still felt ashamed of who we are. It marked a significant turning point. Tatchell recalls ‘Many of my friends were too scared to march. They thought everyone would be arrested. That didn’t happen, but we were swamped by a very heavy, aggressive police presence. They treated us like criminals. It was quite scary’ and ‘We got mixed reactions from the public – but predominantly curiosity and bewilderment. Most had never knowingly seen a LGB or T person, let alone hundreds of queers marching to demand human rights.’

7Switchboard was started in 1974 to give advice and information, and signpost people to the newly developing “gay scene”. Volunteers self-identified as lesbian, gay or bisexual. Switchboard’s current CoChair Natasha Walker looked at the archived log calls; ‘One of the most prominent types of calls we received throughout the 70s were in reference to the countless police raids during this period. Numerous calls from people informing Switchboard of raids that had happened, but our volunteers also received calls tipping us off about impending attacks. Each from a person questioning their identity, with themes of shame, confusion and loneliness. Themes which remain constant in the calls we take today. 45 years after that very first logbook, Switchboard is still here – providing calm words when needed most.’8

In the early seventies dedicated newspapers began to be published. I bought my first copy of Sappho magazine, from the local bookshop in 197. Its’ aim was to "educate society about the true facts of lesbianism, support lesbians and women's causes”. It was not embarrassing to buy, as it also covered feminism and the Women’s Liberation Movement, so it didn’t identify the purchaser as having only gay interests.

I have a vivid memory of the indignant figure of Mary Whitehouse in the seventies and her highly vocal campaigns against what was called the ‘permissive society’. She had set up the national Viewers and Listeners Association in the sixties and was vitriolic in her attacks on the BBC. In 1974 Denis Lemon, the editor of Gay News was found guilty of ‘blasphemous libel’. Both he and his paper were fined, and Lemon received a nine-month suspended prison sentence. An unexpected consequence was an increase in the paper’s circulation. She suggested that an imaginary group, an ‘intellectual/homosexual/humanist lobby’ was to blame.10

The eighties were a horrible decade for LGBTQ+ people. Terry Higgins died of AIDS, and the first UK Aids charity was founded. Very little was known about AIDS and there was widespread misinformation from the popular papers that called it the ‘Gay plague.’ I remember the government’s TV adverts, that helped create an atmosphere of fear. Anyone who lived through the Thatcher years will remember the bitter and violent defeat of the miners fighting Pit closures, and the horrible scenes at Orgreave, of the police on horseback, charging strikers and wielding their truncheons. Less publicity was given at the time to the support for miners from LGBTQ+ groups, immortalised later in the 2014 film Pride.

A backlash for that support came in 1988. Margaret Thatcher introduced Section 28, legislation which banned local authorities from ‘promoting homosexuality’ and banned the discussion of LGBTQ+ issues in schools. Everyone was shocked, teachers were worried that kids could not be told the truth. They found it harder to stop bullying and name calling, and they feared being prosecuted for saying the wrong thing. There were protests and campaigns to get the law changed and in 1989, Stonewall was founded in the UK to fight back14. The law wasn’t changed until 2003. Life for LGBTQ+ people were poisonous under Section 28 and made worse by the HIV epidemic.

Stonewall has made a huge contribution to gay rights in modern times. Their website sums up the eighties - ‘Under Tony Blair’s government in the 2000s, a raft of positive legislation was introduced. The UK Government lifted the ban on lesbian, gay and bisexual people in the armed forces, the age of consent was lowered to 16, same-sex couples were granted equal rights when applying for adoption, and Section 28 was finally repealed across the UK. We also saw the Civil Partnership Act and the Gender Recognition Act introduced in 2004, granting same-sex couples the same rights as married couples, and allowing trans people to acquire new birth certificates. Finally, The Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2007 outlawed the discrimination in the provision of goods, facilities, services, education, and public functions on the grounds of sexual orientation.

The Civil Partnership Act and Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Act was passed in England and Wales in 2004. That was personally very important as it allowed me and my partner to have formal recognition of the importance of our relationship, when I was nearly sixty years old.

The nineties saw a steady flow of people in the public eye coming out. It meant a lot to me as a lesbian when Angela Eagle defeated the Tories in Wallasey, and then went public about her sexuality. It also made headlines when Stephen Twigg, who was openly gay, was elected to parliament. Waheed Alli was the first gay member of the House of Lords.

I think the seeds of the Tory antipathy to Europe and the Human Rights Act were sown in the late nineties, when the European Commission ruled that the age of consent should be the same for everyone. The European Court of Human Rights also found the dismissal of two people in the Royal Navy because of their sexuality, to be a breach of their right to a private life, under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.17

There was a big campaign by Outrage! and Amnesty International on behalf of The Bolton 7, a group of gay and bi men who had been convicted of gross indecency. They were awarded compensation by the government, after the ECHR which ruled there had been a violation of Article 8 and the right to a private life.18 Again, in 2006 the European Court of Human Rights held that denying a state pension at age 60 from a male-to-female trans person was a breach of the right to respect for private life.19 No wonder this government want to redefine Human Rights!

In 2013 Alan Turing was given a posthumous royal pardon for his conviction of ‘gross indecency’ which resulted in his being chemically castrated and later committing suicide. It was only last year that the government announced plans to legislate to ban conversion therapy, but it hasn’t happened yet.

Despite the progress made in my lifetime, and the increased visibility of LGBTQ+ people in the media and public life, we still have a long road ahead before we achieve genuine equality. Women and members of Black Pride report feeling marginalised, harassed and unsafe in public. Confusion and fear are still out there. There is a toxic debate about trans relationships and gender boundaries. Hate crime is rising 20and certain groups now wish to separate the “T” or the “L” from “LGBTQ+.” Stonewall is still campaigning – their priorities now are to ban conversion therapy and improve the treatment and welcome we give to LGBTQ+ refugees. They need all the support we can give them.