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Angered by police entrapment operations after the murder of a gay actor in a west London park, LGBT activists set up the protest group OutRage! 30 years ago this week.
The campaign – which involved mass kiss-ins, invasion of police stations, disruption of the archbishop of Canterbury’s Easter sermon and the citizen’s arrest of Robert Mugabe as he went Christmas shopping – helped transform equal rights in the UK.
Decades after its launch, however, its leading figures are trying to establish whether they were targeted by undercover police who they believe infiltrated and undermined the campaign.
The brutal kicking to death of Michael Boothe outside public toilets in Elthorne Park, Hanwell, on the night of 30 April 1990 sparked fury among LGBT rights activists.
They resented the resources police dedicated to anti-gay operations and raids on public toilets long after homosexuality had been formally decriminalised. Boothe’s murder remains unsolved to this day.
On 10 May 1990, about 30 people met to create the movement that became OutRage! Prominent among the activists was Peter Tatchell.
A public meeting followed two weeks later at which a statement of aims featured the right to sexual freedom, an end to discrimination and preventing violent attacks on the gay and lesbian community. It also condemned homophobia which had become more prevalent following the 1980s Aids epidemic and the Conservatives’ section 28 legislation that banned promotion of homosexuality.
In June that year, OutRage! held its first rally outside Hyde Park public toilets, in protest against Metropolitan police entrapment operations targeting gay men. A mass kiss-in by same-sex couples, under the winged statue at Piccadilly Circus known as Eros, followed in protest at arrests for public displays of affection. One activist climbed up and embraced the sculpture.
Many arrests were under 19th-century laws against “indecency” that were poorly defined and not finally repealed until 2003. Even the Ecclesiastical Courts Jurisdiction Act 1860, which outlawed indecent behaviour, was pressed into service.
OutRage! was the first UK organisation to call for same-sex marriage. In 1992, it arranged for five same-sex couples to arrive at Westminster register office. The registrar was alarmed to discover the ceremonies would not be outlawed by the 1949 Marriage Act and called the Home Office. She was reassured the prohibition did exist but was instead under the 1973 Matrimonial Causes Act.
One high-profile action involved OutRage! activists – bearing posters declaring “Carey backs gay marriage ban” – taking over the pulpit in Canterbury Cathedral on Easter Sunday 1998 during a sermon by George Carey, the then archbishop. They were arrested swiftly by police who had been in the congregation. Tatchell suspects they had been tipped off in advance by an informant inside the organisation.
Mugabe was ambushed by OutRage! because his regime punished anyone committing homosexual acts with 10 years in prison. They halted his convoy as it was leaving the St James’ Court Hotel in October 1999 and attempted to make a citizen’s arrest on charges of torture. Officers intervened. “Mugabe was given a police escort to go Christmas shopping,” Tatchell recalled.
Outrage’s last action was in 2011. “We achieved a lot of our aims,” Tatchell said. “The policing campaign was extremely successful. Homophobic sexual offence laws were repealed. A 2007 report labelled the police institutionally homophobic. Same-sex marriage has become law.
“Much of our success was due to non-violent direct action and civil disobedience. It raised public awareness about anti-LGBT discrimination and put the state under pressure to speed up change. We partly modelled ourselves on the suffragettes and the black civil rights movement in the USA.”
Three decades on, Tatchell is now trying to find out the truth over police infiltration. “We know we were under surveillance and investigation,” he said.
He has applied for core participant status at the undercover policing inquiry but been rejected.
“We have been knocked back for no good reason,” he suggested. “It is confirmed that the police spied on 1,000 activist groups but the inquiry won’t say if OutRage! was one of them and it won’t reveal the names and aliases of all the undercover cops. We need that information to determine if, when, how and by who we were infiltrated.”
His solicitor, Mike Schwarz of the law firm Hodge, Jones and Allen, has written to the inquiry asking to know whether or not “an ‘RF’ or special branch file was prepared on Peter Tatchell or one of the campaigns with which he was connected”.
Suspicion about the identity of the informer has fallen on one man, believed to have formerly served in the army, who claimed to have had military intelligence training and become disillusioned with the armed forces. The inquiry, however, has ruled that since there was no proof he had been a police officer, it would not investigate his role.
Schwarz, who represents about 90 core participants at the undercover policing inquiry, said: “Peter has been trying for around four years to have his concerns examined. I wrote to the inquiry last week asking them to review their refusal.
“You have to show you were directly affected but it’s very difficult given the secrecy of the inquiry over the identities, even cover names, of many of the officers. Peter believes he must have been targeted. But, for activists and their lawyers, it’s like a game of battleships where you have to hit targets not knowing exactly what’s there. It’s immensely frustrating and unfair.”
Despite the significant advancement in LGBT rights since 1990, inquests still to be heard into the victims of the serial killer Stephen Port, who drugged and murdered four young gay men in Barking, east London, are expected to show that police understanding of the gay community may still be limited.
Port’s victims were all drugged, raped and their bodies dumped. Despite the striking similarities in the murders, the Metropolitan police failed to link them until the family of his final victim forced officers to re-examine all the deaths.
After Port was found guilty of murder in 2016, Commander Stuart Cundy, who leads the Met’s specialist crime and operations command, said: “All I can say is from the evidence we’ve heard at trial there were potential opportunities that were missed. The IPCC [Independent Police Complaints Commission] investigation will carefully consider those.”
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