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

First published by Zero Books, 2015
Zero Books is an imprint of John Hunt Publishing Ltd., Laurel House, Station Approach, Alresford, Hants, SO24 9JH, UK
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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.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Design: Stuart Davies

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY, UK

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To Twelve Gay Men and One Big Happy Family
and To All who Came Out in Gay Liberation

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 dAction Rvolutionnaire.

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.

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 Peoples Association.

NHSG Notting Hill Squatters Group.

NUS National Union of Students.

QC Queens 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 Womens Liberation.

WLM Womens Liberation Movement.

WM Womens Movement.

WLW Womens Liberation Workshop.

WNCC Womens National Co-ordinating Committee.

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 Churchills Conservative government. Headed by John Wolfenden, it became known as the Wolfenden Committee.

1957

September

4: Wolfenden Report published by Harold MacMillans 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 Arrans 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.

1968

March

The Western Worlds biggest economic collapse since The Great Depression.

17: The anti-Vietnam war demonstration in Grosvenor Square, London, ended with 86 people injured and 200 demonstrators arrested.

April

4: Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr, prominent leader of the African-American Civil Rights movement.

May

2: Paris. The vnements commence with the closure of the University of Paris at Nanterre leading to mass uprisings of students and workers throughout France that lasted until the end of the month.

October

5: The Derry march of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association attacked by Loyalists.

1969

May

9: Scottish Minorities Group (SMG) formed.

June

27: New York. The police raid The Stonewall Inn, Greenwich Village. Drag queens and lesbians fight back. A riot erupts, followed by an uprising that continues until the following weekend.

July

The Mattachine Society New York meeting about the uprising turns into a walk-out of the newly radicalized members who move to the Alternative University in the West Village and form the Gay Liberation Front.