Peter Tatchell: ‘We Do Now Have the Right to Love Who We Wish But there Are Still Battles to Fight’

PT: Way back in 1967 in my hometown of Melbourne, Australia. I was campaigning against the death penalty for indigenous Aboriginal rights, against Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War, and LGBT+ freedom as well. 

It only really became a full-time vocation in 1983, after the ill-fated Bermondsey by-election, when I was the defeated Labour candidate. Commentators described that election as the dirtiest, most violent and most homophobic election in the latter half of the 20th Century in Britain.

Gay News described what happened to me as the most sustained vilification of any gay public figure since Oscar Wilde. That gives you a flavour of how bad it was. But it wasn’t just over my homosexuality and my support for LGBT+ plus rights, it was also the other things I stood for, which are now mainstream. 

I argued for a national minimum wage and that was denounced as extremist. They said, ‘you’ll bankrupt business’. I argued for a negotiated political settlement in the north of Ireland and I was told I was an IRA supporter, but of course the Good Friday Agreement did exactly the same thing. I argued for a comprehensive anti-discrimination law to protect every person against discrimination. That too, was seen as over the top and extreme, but we now have with the Equality Act of 2010.

That experience was so traumatic, it prompted me to think, ‘well, now I am a national name, I have a public profile – I want to use this to champion not just LGBT+ rights, but all human rights’. So I’ve been doing it as a full-time, mostly unpaid, career since 1983.

During that time, I’ve been involved in over 3,000 protests. I’ve been arrested about 100 times and subjected to horrendous levels of death threats and hate mail. And I’ve been physically violently assaulted over 300 times. But I’m still here and I intend to carry on for another 25 years.

To me, human rights are universal. They are for everyone on this planet. All people deserve dignity, respect and equal rights.

I think I’m just is a bit too radical for Labour which is the party I stood for in 1983. Maybe working outside of Parliament I’ve had greater freedom to champion causes and put energy into campaigns that I wouldn’t have time to do if I’d been a member of the House of Commons.

We do now have the right to love who we wish, but there are still battles to fight. There’s still a huge struggle to secure dignity, respect and rights for trans people. 

Even today, about a third of all LGBT+ people in Britain have been victims of homophobic, bi-phobic or transphobic hate crime. And in our schools, nearly half of all pupils have been victimised because of their sexuality or their gender identity. So quite clearly, there is progress still to be fought for and won. 

Well, of course I do when human rights are being challenged, threatened and abused. We have to challenge those who are responsible.

Dr Carey was arguing at the time that LGBT+ people were not entitled to equal human rights, that discrimination against us was justified. For eight years, we had tried to get a meeting with the archbishop – he wouldn’t meet us or anybody from the LGBT+  community. 

So that is why I myself, and members of the LGBT direct action group Outrage, went to Canterbury Cathedral and called him out during the service. We made the very simple point that discrimination is not a Christian value. 

What I delighted in seeing in the Netflix film was that, when George Carey was interviewed, he’d revised his view. He actually