Manchester City Council

During the Repealed! exhibition, held between 18 November and 31 December 2003, we asked people to share their experiences of Section 28 and add their stories to our record.

Here are the stories visitors told us.

To protect sources, names have been changed

Sidy

I remember Section 28 demonstrations before Section 28 became law. They kept inserting new clauses into the Bill or deleting clauses, and when we travelled to London, I think it was Clause 29. In Leeds it was Clause 27. We kept having to make new banners!

The biggest demonstration was in Manchester when over 20,000 attended. I was involved in the Viraj Mendis Defence Campaign, an anti-deportation campaign. I spoke at the rally after the march as Viraj could not attend. (He was in sanctuary in the Church of Ascension, Hulme) I was shaking, when delivering the speech, and had leg cramps all night afterwards!

I'm glad we got rid of Section 28. I remember when Labour came into power in 1997. There was a public meeting in the Town Hall and Tony Lloyd MP said that it was a priority for Labour and they would cancel Section 28 within a year. I expected so much from a Labour government, only to be disappointed.

Carmen

I remember when the law was passed and there being a sense of disbelief mixed with an inevitable gloom which much of the Thatcher years created. It was hard enough being out, but then to give the bigots a legitimate weapon in law for their homophobia.

This law for years gave strength to the arguement that homosexuals were not welcome in mainstream society. Labour let us down by not getting rid of the law quick enough, but then with their swing to the right, we now know why.

Thankfully Section 28 is now history, but the setback it had on lesbian and gay human rights has left us behind in this country. My hope is that we now go forward and realise from all generations that politics matters to our basic human rights.

Get active, whether it is on a personal level in your daily life, or on a larger scale. It all matters. I want to grow old and not be isolated and shamed into hiding my sexuality. I want that now as well, and I know that we can all have an effect on how society sees and so treats us.

Cath

I remember a true sense of Pride when I travelled down with a whole load of dykes from Newcastle to attend the Section 28 march in Manchester. My younger brother was here at university and joined me on the March in solidarity.

Manchester has long been a strong centre of activism in the North, long may it continue! Over a decade later I now have 6 year old twins and as a lesbian mother I plan to buy a book for the children's class to celebrate!

Daniel

For many young gay and lesbian people in Manchester 2003, it must be hard to imagine the climate that gay men and lesbians were living through in the late 1980's.

We were being battered by the AIDS epidemic and the Tory Government, led by Margaret Thatcher, had just been re-elected in June 1987. The Conservative Government cynically wanted to use gay rights as a vehicle to introduce a right wing moral agenda in their third term of office.

Gays were seen by the Tories as an "easy target" because AIDS was still considered at that time to be primarily a "gay issue". "Homosexuals are swirling around in a cesspit of their own making" in the words of the then (notoriously homophobic) Chief Constable James Anderton.

Looking back I realise just how defensive I felt at that time. It really did seem that the gains we had been gradually making since the birth of the Gay Liberation in the UK, following the Stonewall riots in 1969 in New York, were all in peril.

Local Government was a particular target of the Tories attack and they had abolished the Greater London Council, led by Ken Livingstone, which was a major ally of gay people.

Manchester City Council, since 1984, had been a beacon of active support for lesbian and gay people and "Clause 27" of the Local Government Bill, which finally became Section 28, was aimed to prevent local government from implementing an equality agenda for gay people. There's such a lot I could say about the campaign against Section 28.

It was the moment when gay rights became a major political issue in this country. The Tories were staggered both by our capacity as lesbian and gay people to organise and defend ourselves from their attacks, and also at the broad support the campaign against Section 28 attracted across all sections of British society.

It was the defining moment in which a whole generation of UK citizens made up their minds whether they wanted to embrace lesbians and gay men as human beings, or drive Britain back to the dark days before 1967 when homosexuality was completely illegal.

I was one of the organisers of the North West Campaign For Lesbian and Gay Equality. We organised the biggest protest rally seen in Manchester on a cold day in February 1988, with fantastic support from the City Council.

What must never be forgotten is how close we came to losing the gains which the gay movement had been making. Without gay people taking the initiative at that time and refusing to let the homophobic government roll over us, life in Britain today could have been very different for gay people. And lets not forget it has taken 15 years to get this odious piece of legislation off the statute book. We still have a long way to go!

David

I had come to the Stop the Clause march from Liverpool with my friend Eddie and his mum and dad (who had very strong feelings and views themselves about Section 28). At one point in the march a group of young men, standing on a street corner, began to shout abuse at us ; 'queers!' etc.

I think it was because my emotions were so heightened by the sheer power and size of the demo that, and this is not my usual reaction to such situations, I made a run from the crowd directly towards them. What would have happened had I found myself nose to nose with one of them I have no idea, but, luckily, Eddie's dad grabbed my hand and pulled me back. 'Don't play them at their own game' he said 'you're better than that'.

The memory still brings a lump to my throat- an ordinary working class bloke marching to support not only his son, but his sons friends too. When we got to Albert Square we stood together and Eddies mum cried when the woman from the Parents Group spoke. She turned to her son and told him how much she loved him and how proud she was of him. Cue another lump in the throat!

No demonstration I have ever been on before, or since, compares to what was, I believe, the most significant and powerful expression of lesbian and gay solidarity Manchester has ever seen.

Brian

Some things that I remember: Marching in London (demo 1) and being angry that my friend Paul was arrested and nearly trampled by the police horses.
Catching an "Out and Proud Special" train from Manchester Piccadilly to London for demo 2.

The queue for the train back from Euston was located next to a group of horrified rugby fans queueing to travel to a match. There was lots of shouting, arguing and sloganeering. One woman in our queue triumphed by declaring her girlfriend to be a better rugby player than any man. (I still have the specially printed train ticket in my scrap books!)

Seeing so many people coming to Manchester for the biggest street gathering in the city since Peterloo and hearing them all shouting and singing:
"Lesbians and Gay Men Out and Proud, Never Going Underground"
"2,4,6,8 is that copper really straight? 3,5,7,9 does his wife phone lesbian line?"
"we're here, we're queer, we're not going shopping" "we're here, we're queer, get used to it"
"she'll be coming with a woman when she comes..." etc.

Making many new friends and going on to join other political campaign groups (HIV and AIDS, anti-immigration laws...)
Getting angry
Getting loud
Getting organised
Getting arrested
Getting supported
and never going underground...

Jan

All those years ago I was really there outside Manchester Town with my other queer friends and family, part of history, I'm proud to have been there and sorry that the Tory system brought this into my life.

So..... "if you don't know your history you don't know where you're coming from". B. Marley

Jeffrey

Both my parents are gay. I can remember going past the houses of Parliament when I was five years old on my skate board with shouting "Maggie Maggie Maggie, out, out, out!" I wasn't sure who Maggie was then but I knew my parents hated her.

When I was sixteen I went to the health tent at Pride and took a large collection of leaflets and information. I checked them thoroughly and weeded out the stuff that was too explicit, then I took them into school and asked the librarian if I could lay some stuff out on a free table.

When she saw what I was laying out she stopped me - "You can't have things like that here" she said. I asked why and was told that people would laugh or that I would incur the wrath of other students.

When I explained that I was getting beaten up quite regularly and that if people were laughing at my exhibition then it meant they were reading it I was scorned for being argumentative. I tried to explain that one of the students laughing might come back later and take the number of London Switchboard or maybe even realise that they weren't alone.

It was only because of section 28 that I wasn't allowed to assert my self or take part in the education of my peers. I don' think the librarian actually knew the damage she was causing, but she caused it none the less.

Bye bye section 28 !!!!

Khaled

I'm a gay teenager and when I came out at school teachers were unable to help me.

I can only hope now that the section is repealed there will be more help for teenagers like myself in school.

Rebecca

I was in the middle year of my degree course at Manchester Polytechnic (as it was then!) when I woke up to Clause 28 (wasn't it called 'clause' at the beginning??)

At the time, I was an arts student, I had escaped the Shropshire countryside, gone away to college in a 'big' city and now was having damn good fun.

Political...what's that? I wasn't one of those big baggy jumper/dungaree dykes... but I did wear Doc Marts (still do come to think of it!!).

Anyway, I'd got myself a girlfriend, we could go to the Aytoun lesbian and gay disco on a Friday night and also upstairs at the Rembrandt when we felt brave enough to push through all those men downstairs.... what more could a young lesbian ask for! ... I don't even remember how me and my girlfriend ended up deciding to go on 'that' march ... 'the never going underground march'... but what I do remember is that our friends from the course said they were coming too - and all of them were straight.

And that sums up 'that' march in 1987, it was the fact it galvanised so many people together gay and straight.... it was absolutely fantastic. I remember being absolutely 'blown' away by the sheer numbers of people packed into All Saints Park , opposite the Mandela Building (as the Poly Student Union Building was then called!).

There were so many people everybody blocked the roads all around. Then once on the march I remember when I was just up past the Cornerhouse (that brand new trendy arts complex that had just arrived in Manchester), I looked back down Oxford Road towards the Poly Buildings and the mass of people behind me was still huge .... thousands and thousands of lesbian and gay people with their supporters.

That really was the first time that this 'farmgirl' had seen so many people especially the 'queer' sort...and I suppose that was 'the event' which awoke me to lesbian and gay politics.

And now fifteen years later, I have been back in Manchester one year having been away since 1988.... and ironically, it feels like full circle for me .... this is because I work in the field of Sex and Relationship Education in Manchester Schools - and this is the very area which Section 28 so effectively stifled, through the confusion it caused amongst the teaching profession, even though it was never relevant to them in the first place.

And now Section 28 has been repealed but its legacy is is, and will, continue to prevent children getting the relevant information that they need within schools...there is still a lot to do!!!

A time to celebrate indeed... but not to become complacent...

Toni

I was living in Leicester, at the time the clause was made law, and I was a student on a Youth and Community Development course. You will probably be aware that Youth Work is a branch of the education service.

I remember the clause suited some of my fellow students very well, as many of them were Christian fundamentalists and they had already been very vocal and explicit about their unwillingness to support young lesbians and gay men. They considered my sexuality to be 'slightly less evil than a murderer'.

Some lecturers were very supportive towards me, despite being fairly ignorant about the issues, and others saw it as an embarrassing issue they would rather not deal with.

I'm optimistic that youth work courses of today would not tolerate such overt homophobia, though I know it does continue in a more covert way.

I was also working in a project for unemployed young people, a voluntary project funded by Leicester City Council who, at the time, were very radical. They actively supported us in our campaign to fight the clause.

We took a group of young people, not all of whom were gay, to one of the big demonstrations in London and we saw it as part of their political education. We had a wonderful, empowering day. I seem to remember the rally was held in Kennington Park and there was a huge banner above the speaker's stage with the words of James Anderton, in which he referred to gay people swirling in the dregs of something or other.

Such divine retribution when it was reported that his daughter had come out as a lesbian! What I most remember about the immediate impact of the clause was the way it brought us together to rally against it and it was a politicising experience for many of us.

Maggie wouldn't have bargained for that. In many ways it made those of us who were out much stronger, because we became determined not to be beaten by the Tories. However we must not forget that many younger lesbians and gay men have undoubtedly been adversely affected by their teachers' fear of supporting them and the potential for homophobic teachers to use the clause as a way of not dealing with homophobic bullying etc.

The repeal of the clause is a moment in history, and all of us involved should feel a sense of pride in that we were there then, and we continue to be here now, campaigning to keep lesbian and gay issues and rights on the political agenda.

William

Section 28 did not affect me directly, as I was not of that age group at that time, as I went to school in the 70's and was not gay until my mid 20's and did not take part in any local lesbian and gay groups and allies campaigning for the years to repeal this law.

But as you can imagine I was in a strange position voting Conservative during the Thatcher years when all around me my peers were so against the government at that time over this.

Yvette

My only old memory of Section 28 is seeing someone's outrage towards it sprayed in paint across a wall in Newcastle.

At the time, I was not even out to myself, and couldn't connect with the outrage.

Now, older, wiser, and angrier, I'd like to give thanks to the people who campaigned against this vile legislation when I was unable to.