by Garry Otton
Taking the stand in her sky-blue twin-set, Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher addressed a sea of waving Union Jack’s at the Conservative Party Conference of 1987 to declare to rapturous applause: “Children, who should be taught to respect traditional moral values, are being taught they have the inalienable right to be gay”.
The right-wing press couldn’t have agreed more. Fuelling public anger and exposing a trend they labelled ‘political correctness’ in ‘loony left’ Labour councils, they attacked initiatives such as the one in Ealing which offered support to young gay people by posting notices advertising a gay switchboard. Conservative MP Harry Greenaway declared the move “wrong”. The press went on to vilify ‘proselytising’ homosexuals; printing exaggerated stories of black lesbian self-defence groups and gay sex being taught in schools.
Behind the rhetoric, much darker forces were gathering, destined to be exposed by an unworkable piece of legislation that would divide the nation.
Section 28 was an amendment to the Local Government Act, 1986 and enacted by the Local Government Act, 1988 on 24 of May. It hatched from a Department of Education and Science circular, DES206/86 on 6 August 1986, stating: “There is no place in any school in any circumstances for teaching which advocates homosexual behaviour, which presents it as the ‘norm’, or which encourages homosexual experimentation by pupils”. The essence of this message was born again into a re-draft of a Private Member’s bill, introduced into the House of Lords by Lord Halsbury in 1986 called: ‘An Act to Refrain Local Authorities from Promoting Homosexuality’. The bill was led for the Conservative Government by the Earl of Caithness, a ‘family values’ campaigner who quit politics after it emerged he had been involved in an extra-marital affair with a lady he met at a tea dance. (His wife later took a gun and shot herself).
Dame Jill Knight, Conservative MP for Birmingham, Edgbaston, chairperson of the Child and Family Protection Group, introduced the bill - demonising English local authorities, which in those days had more control over education - into the House of Commons. It fell through lack of Government support and the announcement of the impending 1987 general election. Knight insisted: “There is evidence in shocking abundance that children, as young as five, are being encouraged into homosexuality and lesbianism in our schools on the rates and against the wishes of parents”. Margaret Thatcher thought the bill might be misrepresented and even “unnecessary”.
Clause 14, as it was known, (before becoming Clause 27, then Clause 28, then Clause 29 before going back to being Clause 28 again), was tabled by Tory backbencher, David Wilshire MP for Spelthorne during the committee stage of the Local Government Bill on 8 December 1987. (It was a Clause at this stage because it was in a bill being put before Parliament to pass. Acts of Parliament have Sections, therefore it became Section 28. To make things more confusing, Section 28 was sometimes referred to as Section 2a after the section that was inserted into the Local Government Act). In debates over the bill in the House of Commons, there was much talk of buggery and the corruption of children. Commons drunk, Sir Nicholas Fairbairn, MP for Perth and Kinross, who died of liver failure in 1995, branded homosexuality ‘a pathological perversion’. Just three Conservative MPs were brave enough to vote against the clause; gay MP Michael Brown (later outed by The News of the World), Andrew Rowe and Robin Squire.
Clause 28 was championed by Jill Knight and accepted and defended by former Conservative Prime Minister, Michael Howard, who was then Minister for Local Government. It was debated on 8 December 1987 before being swiftly presented to the House of Commons on 15 December, shortly before their Christmas recess. It was introduced into the 1988 Local Government Bill which was ostensibly about the compulsory tendering of school services and became widely known as Section 28 when, on 24 May 1988 - with controversial additions after Section 2a of the Local Government Act, 1986 - the Queen gave her Royal Assent to the first explicitly anti-gay measure introduced to Britain in the 20th century. Cancelling each other out, Scottish First Secretary, Donald Dewar ‘paired’ with Nicholas Fairburn and stayed away from the vote. Edwina Currie, MP for West Derbyshire, later told Gay Times that “there was a feeling among some of us that we’d gone too far that night”. Michael Howard also later expressed regret at its introduction.
By the end of the year, accompanying the law’s passage, a firebomb went off at the offices of London’s gay newspaper, Capital Gay. Far from condemning the action, Conservative MP, Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman stood up in the House of Commons to voice her contempt for gay sex and declared that it was “right that there should be an intolerance of evil”. And there was: There was a dramatic increase of attacks on gay men and another bombing of a gay bar in Rochester with teargas.
The first effect of Section 28 was to give the gay rights’ movement a new public profile in the media. During one parliamentary debate, three lesbians disrupted proceedings by abseiling from the public gallery into the House of Lords. On another occasion, newsreader, Sue Lawley famously tried to deliver the ITV Six O’Clock News with the classic understatement that they had “rather been invaded” after lesbians had burst into their studio. Nicholas Witchell was forced to sit on top of a lesbian as Lawley struggled to deliver an item on the council tax over her muffled shouts.
Section 28 was an unworkable piece of legislation in law. When Calderdale library service in Yorkshire attempted to ban The Pink Paper, they were forced to stock it after human rights group Liberty applied for a judicial review to clarify the law in 1995. Telford Lesbian and Gay Youth Group also won a battle with Shropshire County Council after they were closed down. Councillors reviewed the group’s funding after deciding they had not breached any law. The only successful attempt at bringing a council to court was by a nurse – backed by the Christian Institute – who claimed that Glasgow City Council’s funding of an AIDS support charity was promoting homosexuality. She lost.
Section 28 existed only - as its backers admitted - as a measure of control and self-censorship.
Section 28 was never introduced into Northern Ireland and on its imposition in Scotland, Brian Finch from Glasgow exercised his wit in the letters’ pages of The Herald: “This law was imposed on Scotland by the predominantly English Parliament in Westminster on the grounds that, because southern Tories were having a panic attack, we Scots must be compelled to eat the same medicine as our neighbours. In exposing an equally daft argument Sir Walter Scott once asked if, because the south of England was largely flat and suited to growing wheat, Scotland must be levelled and the cultivation of oats be proscribed”.
It was in a confused sexual age, before the new millennium, that the Labour Party in a newly-devolved nation saw fit to dispense of a legally-unworkable English Act they felt deserved no place in Scotland. The task fell into the lap of Communities Minister, Wendy Alexander.
It should have been so simple.
Part 2: The Bank of Scotland boss and the ex-guitarist
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You can read this free online. Garry Otton has not received payment for compiling this history but welcomes donations to any of the following: Peter Tatchell Human Rights Fund, PO Box 35253, London E1 4YF. www.tatchellrightsfund.org. Amnesty International www.amnesty.org.uk or Secular Society www.secularism.org.uk.
garry@scottishmediamonitor.com
