 Good afternoon everybody, my name is Ken Taylor and I'm one of the cultural producers at the British Library and I'm pleased to welcome you to today's event, Gay Liberation Front at 50. I'm going to hand you over shortly to Stephen Dryden who's going to be your main presenter today, but I'll just do a couple of housekeeping things beforehand. Close captions are available at this event. If you have a Windows or a Mac system, you should see an options bar near the top of your screen, which should allow you to switch on captions. If you have an Android or iOS device, you have to go into your settings and toggle to captions on. You can also adjust your caption settings near the start stop video. If you click on to the button to the side of that, you'll see accessibility and close caption options. We have the chat function set up so you talk directly to me. So if you have any technical issues, if you couldn't hear a sound clip or one of the presenters, drop me a message and I'll do my best to resolve that. But if you have any questions about the topic, about what Stephen's presenting about, you put those into the Q&A box, we'll cover as many of those as we can towards the end of the presentation, we'll have a dedicated Q&A section. There are nearly 300 of us online at the moment, so we might not be able to answer everyone's questions, but we'll do our best to cover the main points. And do feel free to put questions in at any point, even if we address them at the end, because I know it can take a little while to type points. Okay, then I'm going to hand you over to Stephen now who's going to begin the presentation. And so Stephen Dryden is a humanities and sound archive reference specialist at the British Library. He curated the Gay UK exhibition at the library in 2017, and also creates content for our LGBTQ History website. So Stephen, over to you. Hello everyone. Thank you very much, Ken. It's really nice to be with you all today, if not slightly bizarre, this is the first time that I've ever presented in this format. So this is International Museums Day, just to give you some context about the British Museum, the British Library, we were formerly the printed collection at the British Museum, and we became an institution our own right in the 1970s. We've been based at St Pancras since 1996 in one of our physical spaces and we also have an additional storage facility and a reading room at Boston Spa in York. It's printed material published in the United Kingdom as well as a plethora of other things that you might not know about. And I hope that this presentation today might highlight some of those specifically sound, some political ephemera, as well as journals and print newspapers, which might have, you might not have thought that we would have. So I'm going to start trying to share my presentation with you now. Technology, technology. Great. Now somebody do let me know if there isn't anything on show there. So today I'm going to be talking about Gay Liberation Front UK. Gay Liberation Front formed in 1970 at the London School of Economics. And in advance of this presentation, I'd just like to shout out and thank Debbie at the LSE, the London School of Economics Library, who has very kindly allowed me to use digitised photographs, which all of you will be able to access via their digital online platform and there are links that will share for that throughout the presentation. So every story has a beginning and the story that I'm going to tell you today starts in the summer of 1970. Specifically, with these two gentlemen, Bob Mellers and Aubrey Walter. Both Bob and Aubrey went to America in the summer of 1970. Didn't know each other. One of them ended up on the West Coast, experienced San Francisco and California's gay cultures. And the other was in New York and experienced Gay Liberation as it was forming post stonewall. August that year, that summer of 1970 had been one year anniversary of the Stonewall uprising and the first Christopher Street Day parade, which was a very public show, public expression of Gay Liberation. What was also happening in America in the summer of 1970 and the early autumn was the Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention. And this was organized by the Black Panther Party and was attended by both Bob and Aubrey, which is where they met. And the reason why the Revolutionary People's Convention became a magnet, if you like, for Gay Liberation in America in the 1970s was because of this letter, which was published and sent out to all members of the Black Panther Party and other revolutionary groups. From Huey Newton, who was the leader of the Black Panther Party at the time, and it's, you can see their title, a letter from Huey to the Revolutionary Brothers and Sisters about the women's liberation and Gay Liberation movement. Essentially what Huey was doing was aligning what was happening with the Black Civil Rights Movement with both women's liberation and Gay Liberation and this was really powerful because it was a founding stone of what would go on to become Gay Liberation UK, which was a press groups coming together and working together in overcome adversity and change society. So why did people attend Gay Liberation Front? There are two clips here, which I'm going to play from the library's oral history collection. One is by Mary McIntosh and the other is by Bette Bourne. And this might give you an idea of why people might have encountered or gone to a Gay Liberation Front meeting. I went to my first meeting of the Gay Liberation Front in 1970, almost as soon as I heard about it. And we went to what was probably the second meeting upstairs in the LSE. At the time, I thought it was a very curious phenomenon. I remember thinking, I'd heard of women's liberation, but I hadn't heard of Gay Liberation, but it did ring a bell with me, I suppose, and that was complete convert to Gay Liberation from that moment onwards. At that time, I think it probably was a mixed group. I didn't question that at all. There were probably far fewer women and lots of women didn't stay for various reasons. That's probably true of lots of men, but I related more to the women. But there were certainly enough of us involved by the, well, by the time we moved into the old lecture theatre at LSE, certainly, for us to feel that there was a group of women, and that we were very much part of it. And they always insisted that there should be at least one woman on the steering group, as it was called, which sort of organised what we were going to talk about. So the meetings developed rapidly. As it said there, they started at the London School of Economics, and that was largely thanks to working together with a lesbian named Bev Jackson who was attending the London School of Economics at the time. The meetings grew rapidly. There was over 200, 300 people attending within the first few weeks, where on these slides where you see the names of people talking, the digits afterwards is actually the British Library shelf mark. So if any of you did want to come into the library and explore oral history, just make a note of some of those and you'll have direct references that you can quote to us. I'd met this man in Australia, we'd become lovers and we were living together at the end of the street here, and he went to this meeting with the GLF and came back and I poo pooed at that man. And of course actors didn't get involved in politics, you know, everything you say, everything you breathe is political as well as I understand. So anyway, I just pooed and then he said there was really nice blokes down there, you should come down. I was down there like a shot. Of course to me it was another gay bar, but it wasn't. It was people actually talking about issues and getting out and onto the streets. And what kind of people at the meeting? Where was the meeting? It was rather famous directors now at this meeting, theatre directors and theatre stars and David Hockney and people like that. They'd come along for curiosity and I became a regular and I was on the steering committee and all that. But there were mostly students and working class queens. I'd met this man. So the vet was talking there about meeting thinking it was a gay bar going along and becoming in some way kind of politicized and obviously any political organization and gay liberation wasn't technically an organization. It was a movement of people, a group of a collective of people who were working together in order to achieve a common aim. And very quickly it became apparent that there had to be a common aim stated a way that people could come together and unite a banner. And this is a document from the London School of Economics which you can find on their Flickr account of digitized documents from the Hall Carpenter archive. And this is an articulation of the first principles that were taken up by the gay liberation front. I want to highlight just a couple of paragraphs from it. So there is this one here which is the beginning of the document which is that we believe that apathy and fear are the barriers that imprison people from an incalculable landscape of self-awareness. And that they are the elements of prejudice and the enemies of truth. That every person has the right to develop and extend their character and explore their sexuality through relationships with any other human being without moral, social, or political pressure. So this is very much a social revolution, a social sexual revolution that the GLF are starting to articulate from this very first public statement. The last paragraph I think is quite poignant. And I think it summarizes the anger which was within the community at the time at increased levels of policing of the community. Following the passing of the Sexual Offences Act in 1967 which partially decriminalized homosexuality in the United, well in England and Wales, not the United Kingdom. There was a lot of anger within the community still. And this last paragraph I think is quite articulate in maybe the reasons why. In the name of the tens of thousands who wore the badge of homosexuality in the gas chambers and concentration camps who have no children to remember and whom your history forgets. We demand honour, identity and liberation. And these would become the beating drum if you like of where and how gay liberation front would organize in the beginning. Obviously the word gay was something that was relatively new to Britain in the 1970s. And there was a clip here from John Chesterman who was an early activist attending gay liberation front meetings and he articulates that word gay and what it meant to him at the time. The other thing we had to adjust to was suddenly using this word gay because for my life up to that point we'd call ourselves queer as a sort of joke, another negative word which was turned around to be positive. And this was considered terribly incorrect to try to use that word. And it was agreed that gay should be adopted and all of a sudden that's what we called ourselves. I don't think anybody had really used that term in this country before the origins of GMF. So in this instance the word gay means any sexual or gender minority who was oppressed by society. So women were gay women, men were gay men, and it was only later that language would develop and people would become politically aware enough to begin assigning or coming together under different words. So the term lesbian became prominent amongst gay women from gay liberation front. Indeed terms like bisexual and men having sex with men and transsexual would all be begin to start brewing within this melting pot of gay liberation and the political ideas that were there. This badge itself is from the Hall Carpenter Collection at London School of Economics and the reason why I include this here is this is a really important way in which gay liberation put into action one of their beliefs that everybody should come out, that everybody should be visible. And the idea was that members of the public who saw you on the tube or walking in the street could see the badge and perhaps ask you what does that mean. I'm going to play a clip now of Nettie Pollard talking about wearing the badge within her activism. That was something that we were doing very openly as lesbian people. I mean for quite a few years actually I wore a gay liberation front badge all the time. So I mean you met ordinary people who would never have met people like us before at all. But we did it sort of completely openly as being gay and it was very interesting actually just how little hostility one came across. What kind of work did you do within the claimant? Well it was trying to get people the benefits that they were entitled to and it was also quite often dealing with their housing situations and helping families to do squatting, that kind of thing, trying to get them rehoused. It was amazing how many lesbians we actually met who were people who would never have anything to do with GLF particularly. But I mean I remember particularly a woman who had about eight or nine children and she's married and everything. She said things like well I was like you when I was your age but of course you had to get married in the end. I mean this is not somebody that would have identified as a lesbian at all. So we can see that this visibility, this talking about homosexuality was part of what gay liberation did extremely well which was consciousness raising. And this was an idea which came very much from the Black Panthers and the civil rights movement. That people had to understand the means and ways in which they were oppressed or suppressed by society. The Gay Liberation Front's ideas, political ideas, grew rapidly and expanded. In November 1917 we step away from the principles and we begin to get this articulation of demands. We demand from society. There were eight demands from the Gay Liberation Front which were published and here they are. I think looking through them there are a few which are still extremely pertinent today. So looking at them, the sex education schools stopped being exclusively heterosexual. One only has to think about the protests which happened in Birmingham last year to think about how education has changed and how education is changing in order to talk about everybody in society. Others which to me strikers particularly poignments are is the final one which is that gay people should be free to kiss and hold hands in public as a heterosexuals. Here's Mary McIntosh talking about the making of the demands. The first thing that we did in the Gay Liberation Front, certainly in the second meeting, was discuss what should be our demands. I remember being debated particularly, I remember the demand for holding hands in public, our right to hold hands in public. Some people said it was quite trivial and not nearly as important as the other ones and some people said it was vitally important and we needed that right in order to show that there was nothing wrong with being gay. And we didn't at that time have slogans like glad to be gay and gay power and so forth. So we did have to fight our way towards that I think. So to me these demands are still very powerful, especially when we start thinking about them in a global context where there are still countries where people aren't free to be who they want to be. And I think also if we broaden this out and don't just think about gay people, which is how we were articulating ourselves in the 1970s, but think more broadly about the LGBTQ plus community and where these demands perhaps stand for us as a community. And of course gay is good all power to the oppressed people. These were new and revolutionary ideas in the 1970s and really articulate way in which people could organize. Many people were also interested in talking to other gay people and the Gay Liberation Front were quickly expanding their ideas to the point of a manifesto. This was created by the manifesto group which is a subgroup within Gay Liberation Front and activists would meet discuss often argue and formulate the Gay Liberation Fronts manifesto. I'm showing you now a picture of the introduction page. So these are the first two paragraphs which a gay person would see when they were picking up a copy of the Gay Liberation Front manifesto. And to me it's extremely powerful in describing what it is that this person is about to encounter when they open this document. As you are gay brothers and sisters we say that you were oppressed. We intend to show you examples of the hatred and fear with which straight society regulates us to the position and treatment of subhumans and to explain this basis. I want to show you how we can use our righteous anger to uproot the oppressive system with its decaying and constricting ideology and how we together with other oppressed groups can start to form a new order and a liberated lifestyle from the alternatives which we offer. The document then goes on to explain how and why gay people are oppressed and also why they should come together and why they should organize. It's extremely powerful in the 1970s when there was little representation. There was no internet and we think of a time when you would literally have to go and find a document a piece of paper in order to find out about yourself to chew at anything about yourself. This document acted as a beacon. It was talismanic almost and acted as a gateway in which people could find their own community. The first demonstration by the Gay Liberation Front was actually a hybrid fields and that was 150 members of the GLF holding torches and holding a rally against police harassment. Accounts of this are present in the British Library's archive, specifically in oral histories and I'd be very happy to chat with people about those. But what I wanted to talk about was come together and come together is the newspaper, the Journal of the Gay Liberation Front which was produced at Harcourt most but it was a regular publication. And this issue, issue number eight actually coincides with the age of consent march, which was the first public protest demonstration march through the centre of London by a gay organization. It was organised by the youth group and was to highlight the discrepancy between the age of consent for homosexuals and heterosexuals. So the 1967 Sexual Offences Act legalised same sex activity between men over the age of 21 in private, only two of them, no threesomes, and you had to be in England or Wales. These laws did not apply in Scotland or Northern Ireland. The youth group were highlighting the discrepancy both within England and Wales for the age of consent. Straight people were 16, gay people had to be 21, but also highlighting the fact that Northern Ireland and Scotland still did not have equal age of, it was still criminal, homosexuality was still criminal in Scotland and Northern Ireland. In September 1971, we have possibly one of the best known demonstrations which was held by the Gay Liberation Front and it was targeted at this organisation, the Festival of Light. In the centre there you can see a young Cliff Richard and he's also there lighting a prayer beacon as well. And he's with Mary White House. Mary White House might be known to some of you if you were around in the 60s, 70s and 80s. Mary White House led an organisation called the Listeners and National Listeners and Viewers Association and was also a figurehead of the Festival of Light, which campaigned through government against what they saw as moral evils. And these moral evils included extramarital sex, pornography, abortion, sex in TV and films, and obviously homosexuals, the gay rights movement, which was extremely vocal at this point following the passing of the 1967 legislation. The actual protest itself was known as Operation Rupert and there are a few accounts of this within oral histories at the British Library. I think specifically of an interview with Michael James, who was involved in the, in the protest. I haven't cut and edited any of the oral history into this presentation because it takes a lot of work to try and condense exactly what actually happened in the Methodist Hall, Central Hall in Westminster on the 9th of September 1971. But in a nutshell, I can summarise it like this. Members of Gay Liberation Front formed small groups who decided upon an action that they would take once they were inside the Methodist Central Hall in Westminster, where the Festival of Light was holding a rally. Each group was told what the action was preceding their action, and they would start their action when that finished, the crowd had settled, and the person had been ejected from the hall. Actions on the day included kiss-ins by members of the youth group, mice being released into the auditorium, there were lesbian couples standing holding each other, showing affection and kissing. All of a sudden nuns appeared, a group of nuns who were actually members of the radical drag theatre group, which was part of GLF, Street Theatre. There was a bishop, a very theatrical Betty Bourne, who we heard earlier, who was a classically trained actor, stood up and proclaimed that they could feel evil in this place. After each act, the person would have to be physically removed from the hall, and the crowd calmed before the rally could continue, and just as it settled, another action would begin. It completely disrupted the event of the rally and gained widespread national press. This issue of Come Together actually articulates an attempt by Gay Liberation Front to join a different demonstration a few weeks later. The photograph here is of Stuart Feather conducting the GLF choir, and the GLF were keen to join the march with the Festival of Light in solidarity, mock solidarity, obviously. There was a photograph here, again from the London School of Economics collection, where activists were being arrested. This is Stuart Feather and Nicholas Bramble as the spirit of porn. What's interesting about this issue of Come Together, number 10, is that it shows Rupert, Rupert Bear, trying to join a march with other woodland creatures. And what this does is it really links Gay Liberation Front to the political activity and the counterculture that was going on at the time. As this was happening, Aus Magazine released its kids issue, which the editors were taken to court for, for corrupting minors. The school children had included a rather obscene cartoon of Rupert Bear. And the court case was a revolution in the counterculture. John Lennon was there and gave evidence, as did Marty Feldman, the comedian. You can also see here on this slide a copy of Ink Magazine, which is a radical underground press publication, and its cover from December 1971, in which they show a lipstick and eye shadowed clad Shea Guevara with just the term gay exclamation part. Communes were also a big part of the Gay Liberation Front and people coming together and finding new ways of living and being. And this issue of Come Together, which is held in the British Library's collection, is the Notting Hill issue. And there was a very well known Gay Liberation Front commune based there and you can see some of the members in the wonderful photograph which was shared with me by Stuart Feather. The publication itself is folds out into an 80 size page, and there is a black and white photograph or a copy of this photograph but this is this is an original that's been put together by Stuart. And the communes themselves were really interesting because that was where people were putting money in pots, sharing wardrobes and clothes, experimenting with dress and drugs, very much part of the counterculture which was already going on in London. Indeed, the ideas which were played within the communes would perhaps best be articulated years later by Larry Mitchell in his book Faggots and their Friends Between Revolutions, which was published in America, in which he said that there is more to be learned from wearing a dress for a day than there is from wearing a suit for a lifetime. The communes very much sought to break down gender roles, which was a key component of the GLF manifesto, which viewed the nuclear family and the almost forcing of women to marry in order to acquire any kind of independence from their family as oppressive within itself. And the communes did an awful lot to generate these discussions around gender and with and alongside sexuality. And this is a clipping from inside this issue of Come Together, which was published in 1973. And this includes photographs from the first Gay Pride March, which happened in London in 1972, which was known as Gay Pride Day. And in the top there you can see that there is an all men come out and do it, in which it says one thing I think I now see clearly is that these these attacks on Queens so vigorously from the ones who most want from the ones who most want to get into drag. Essentially, this is the radical communes articulating why they think straight gays as they would have turned them so people who just wanted to blend in to get on with our lives perhaps they should in turn take on some of this gender play drag and try to understand what gender was within the society which we were forced to participate in. Gay Pride was a huge thing that was started by the Gay Liberation Front. The first Gay Pride March was held on the 1st of July 1972. There are over 2000 participants. And like this photograph which is from a later Pride, you can see that the police rather than marching with Pride are actually policing it. These first Pride demonstrations which were very much protests were done without anybody knowing how crowds would react. We're very familiar now with Gay Pride bringing a celebration, something which brands and large national organizations, indeed instruments of government participate in, but that wasn't always the case. And it was very much the revolutionary lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people which formed the core of Gay Liberation Front who started that first March in 1972, who founded Pride and what it was. There's some more photographs there of various gay Pride. All of these are available on the London School of Economics digitized image pages. You can see there in the bottom screen there is a banner for the campaign for homosexual equality. This was the group which very much picked up and was fighting for legal legislative change for gay people. Since the 1967 legislation but certainly after Gay Liberation Front disbanded in late 1973, early 1974, they certainly picked up the banner and led and organized Gay Pride marches from then on. The relationship of women to Gay Liberation Front is something which you encounter quite a lot in oral histories in the British libraries collections. And it was something which was the male chauvinism was something which was talked about an awful lot in Gay Liberation Front. So we can see here an issue have come together from issue number three, which the subject of is Gay Liberation Front and male chauvinism. I'm going to play a clip now from Mary Macintosh which articulates how women were forming their own consciousness and their own identities within the Gay Liberation Front and where they were meeting with the women's Liberation Movement specifically at the Women's Liberation Movement conference in Skegnes and I'm going to play that clip for you now. Rosalind Del Mar came along to us and DLF meetings and persuaded a group of us women to go to the Skegnes Conference, the National Conference of the Women's Liberation Movement and we went a group of us in a mini bus. We formed very much a group of people who knew each other and we sat in a row and remember people on the platform including men on the platform and then a row of us and lots of other women in the body of the home. We formed a Women's Liberation Movement which had started as a non-sectarian movement and defended its non-sectarianism quite strongly against, well, at that time the socialist workers, the Communist Party, various groups. There was a threat that they would be taken over by a group of Maoists. My memory is of, as she was then called Mary O'Shea, standing up with her, she had long blonde hair at that time and proclaiming that they were wrong and that we had the right to be women and be non-aligned and so forth and she was very dramatic. We basically stormed the platform. We made sure that one of the male Maoists that he was ejected from the hall and actually the male security guards at that conference centre did lead him away and we just talked about women's right to be self-organising and but basically we stormed the platform and took over the conference and from then on the conference was run as a women's conference, very much like future women's liberation conferences I think. So we see there from 1971 the women of Gay Liberation Front were meeting and organising with the Women's Liberation Movement. This would form almost a rift within Gay Liberation Front between gay men and lesbians and it would be part of the reason that many activists would view Gay Liberation Front as having ended once the women had decided that they were no longer going to be part of the organisation. Women did stay but the politicised or the political movement of women from Gay Liberation Front really did move more towards the women's liberation movement and indeed were responsible for men being removed from the platform at women's liberation conferences and in subsequent years would also have lesbianism added to the demands for the women's liberation movement. Rosalind. The counter-psychiatry group was also a group which formed in Gay Liberation Front and this was very important for people understanding their own oppression by society but also helping to inform psychiatry about homosexuality and aiming towards one of the demands which was that homosexuality stopped being treated as a sickness and that it stopped being tried, treatments stopped being made by psychiatrists in order to cure people of homosexuality. This Gay Liberation Front pamphlet number seven is part of the British Library's holdings and alongside that the with Downcast Gays which was published in 1974 after Gay Liberation Front disbanded but was very much formed by members of the Gay Liberation Front or activists within Gay Liberation Front. I'm very conscious of using the term member in relation to Gay Liberation Front because it wasn't an organisation in that respect. Another publication which came out which was extremely important for the community at this time was Gay News, Britain's first Gay Newspaper. This was first published in 1972 for the very first Gay Pride March, an issue of Gay News was released. The publication would go on printing until 1983 and it was where the community could come share news stories which were relevant to them. You can see on some of the issues here are a few things that people would have been interested at the time. Gay Pride March in 79 and it's growing notoriety within mainstream national press. I'm hoping that this is your far right but I'm not sure. You've got Scott's anger Gay News so this is obviously where Scotland still did not have age of consent equality and the ongoing political situation within the United Kingdom and in the centre there about queer bashing which was rife. It's interesting that yesterday was international day against homophobia, biphobia, transphobia and this has always been an issue within the community and often it is being brutalised and treated badly in society which had people coming towards Gay Liberation Front to help them understand that there was nothing wrong with them, that the way society was treating them was down to education, visibility and people knowing that gay people were just the same as everybody else had the same concerns, the same worries, the same hopes in many instances as well. Gay Liberation Front also spread throughout the United Kingdom and the library has a few examples of Gay Liberation Front leaflets and pamphlets that were produced in the region. So here we can see Gay Liberation Front from Bradford, the front issue there about the National Front. This was produced in May 1976. So even though the main organisation of Gay Liberation Front London had disbanded in early 74, out in the regions Gay Liberation, the idea, the notions of Gay Liberation Manifesto were still the rallying call and the thing which people were going to in order to start consciousness raising to understand themselves in their place in society. In the sense of their gay flashes which is publication from Leeds and on the far right Gladrags from Birmingham Gay Liberation Front produced in 1976. One organisation which came out of Gay Liberation Front and I'm just checking the time was Gay Icebreakers and Lesbian and Gay Switchboard. This was a really important organisation for people to find out more about homosexuality and themselves and have somebody to talk to. I'm going to play very briefly this clip by Zahid Dar who wasn't in Gay Liberation Front which was but is very much one of these people who benefited from the work that Gay Liberation Front had done in setting up organisations like Gay Switchboard Icebreakers and Gay News. There used to be an out in time out gay icebreakers so for weeks and weeks I used to buy this and I always used to turn to this ad and eventually I was alone one Saturday night and I phoned the number of phoned icebreakers. But the first time I phoned I couldn't say a word. I was so scared at the thought that I was phoning something that was gay and I remember that whoever it was who answered made me feel so good. He knew exactly what I was going through. He said you don't have to say anything and he just talked and talked and eventually I came out with it. But I didn't say I was gay. I said I think I might be bisexual you see. From there it was just carried on talking to me. I rang a few times then but I remember I could only ring when everyone was out and I was positive there was no one in. After that going through icebreakers going to their discos then going to tea parties on Sunday afternoons talking about sexual politics, politics in general. I became more politicised and I met another gay Asian at an icebreakers tea party and we became very good friends. I've known him ever since and I haven't looked back really. So with that sentiment of never looking back, Gay Liberation Front was founded 50 years ago this year in October. These are some of the surviving Gay Liberation Front activists. And this was from a photo call that they did in last year at Trafalgar Square where you seen images of earlier on in my presentation. Gay Liberation Front to celebrate their 50th birthday party, their 50th anniversary birthday party anniversary have been meeting again at the London School of Economics for the last 18 months. Consciousness raising, talking about issues within the community and there will be as far as I understand some events happening later on this year. Obviously situation dependent and how things go with us to keep us all safe. But it would definitely be worth if you are interested in seeing what is happening or finding out more about Gay Liberation Front to seek them out online. I would strongly encourage that. There are a few resources here which I think Ken would have shared with you throughout the presentation which I think for the reading I'm there are other accounts by activists who are actually there which are worth checking out and there are also a few links. Ken are there any questions that you think we should go with. Just coming on, Stephen. Yeah, there's a few questions come in do encourage people to send a few more in. I think we're getting a few in now. One is a question from Maisie. Do you know are there many links between the role of GLF and LGSM. I mean in Gay Support the Miners LGSM. There were through. I think mostly gay left. But they were they were much later I believe LGSM has been engaged support the minors minors formed in the early 80s and Gay Liberation Front had disbanded within, you know, 1974 kind of the last estimate. What are the tactics and the strategies for which Gay Liberation Front were doing. I'm sure there would have been some influence but I couldn't really comment on direct links I'm afraid. No problem. Question from Robert. Stephen, what do you think that today's liberation and justice movements can learn most from the actions of the GLF. What can they learn most from the Gay Liberation Front. I think to be honest the thing that I find most refreshing and encouraging about the GLF is the fun that they seem to have had the camaraderie the phrasing the discos the zaps and activism that they did and street theater seems to have been from the accounts that I've read seem to have been a been great fun in order to get political messages out into the public eye. So I would strongly suggest reading. If you are interested in activism within GLF and how it was done and Stuart Feathers but blowing blowing the lid. It'd be a great thing for you to read. Another good question here because obviously with the British library but we have a lot of international views to this event. So what were the links with GLF with organizations outside of the UK. And did the groups influence each other in terms of political actions tactics, etc. So there's well documented links, especially between America in the United Kingdom during this time. I think specifically of publications which would have gone backwards and forwards we have to remember that when we're talking about Gay Liberation Front and the 1970s in general. So the way that information was exchanged was through the postage of publications journals newspapers so I think specifically of things like Farrag which was a publication which was produced in the 70s in Boston, Massachusetts, which would have come over to the UK and in other countries and come together migrated over to the United States. We had, we were at an advantage in the UK over America as well that you have to remember that in America homosexuality was still illegal. In the United, well in England and Wales, not the United Kingdom in England and Wales homosexuality was partially decriminalized in 1967, and that didn't happen in America for a very long time. So this is a great question from George here says great event. Thank you George. And I think it's one of a couple of questions we have looking at placing the GLF in in wider history. So, how important do you think Stephen was the spirit of the GLF in the radical HIV AIDS politics which followed in the 1980s and 90s. And obviously HIV and AIDS is the great pandemic from the 20th century which is still ongoing as we find ourselves in another time of pandemic. I think specifically thinking of actions which GLF undertook which then went into act up and organizations like that both in America and the UK. There are other members of the youth group who would then go on to be extremely vocal in the HIV AIDS campaigning world. But that specifically going into a place and causing a scene and I mean that in the nicest possible wonderful way to have direct action which is nonviolent, but also passes on a political message. And that's something which came through from gay liberation from specifically thinking about that Methodist Hall demonstration against the Festival of Lights. That was adopted and utilized very well, especially by the American act up movement and indeed the UK as well. Any other questions. I don't know if you could elaborate more about the presence and role of trans people in the GLF in the 70s. Obviously, the language of sexuality of gender and sexuality was going undergoing radical change throughout the 1970s we have the women's liberation movement. We have the publishing of Jermaine Greer's seminal book The Female Unique and there are these developing understandings of who and what people could be if they were living their true authentic lives themselves. In terms of trans movements and trans people, I would say that they were welcome within gay liberation front because gay liberation gay in the term that we're thinking of it now didn't just apply to men or men who had sex with men. These languages ideas these notions and different ways of being with something that was developing throughout gay liberation front and there's certainly evidence of communes where people dressing in clothes not assigned to their gender and was actually a founding stone of that commune or that living situation. So it's hard to say even how developed and ever changing our language is about gender and gender identity now to compare that with the lives and the opportunities and the ways that people could articulate their gender identity in the 1970s. There are and continue to be trans activists who were involved in Gay Liberation Front who are out there and in the world I think specifically of Ross Kevney who I met at one of the Gay Liberation Front thinkings recently at London School of Economics. And so they were certainly present they were certainly there and but the language is something that we must always be conscious and consider of when we're thinking about these things in historic and current contexts. Thanks Dean. There's a good question from Sophie here in terms of more your day to day work when you're not doing a webinar. So, could you tell us a little bit more about how the library continues to collect items recordings documents related to LGBTQ plus rights and issues now. Cool. Yeah. So the library has an active collecting policy of printed ephemera for producing the United Kingdom. We also since 2014 have been archiving the worldwide web so dot co dot UK web domains. And we have a very active and ever growing collection of zines and a lot of those come from the LGBTQ community. In terms of sound recordings and how that collection grows all of the recordings that I played for you today come from collections from the oral history department at the library, and they have ongoing projects which they archive. And I also would suggest that you check out the British libraries web pages for unlocking our sound heritage and save our sounds projects. These are nationally funded projects which aim to preserve the nation's audio heritage and make it more accessible. And I hope that in in the years to year year year to come not years year to come, we will be able to provide more access to our oral histories off site specifically relating to the LGBTQ community. Thanks, Stephen. Another good question about the wider context. And I think it's something you touched upon but maybe you could elaborate a bit more. Did the gay liberation activists regard themselves as part of a wider civil rights movement and a did they expand to have solidarity with other ethnic religious minority communities in the UK. Absolutely gay liberation front attended marches by Black Panther activists within London. We heard that from the clip featuring Netty Pollard that Netty and other lesbians were involved in the claimants union, which was helping people to get access to benefits and housing. So yeah, they, the, the coming together of oppressed people is something which this document, the gay liberation front manifesto and certainly emphasized all oppressed people needed to come together in order to reform society to create radical change. Yeah. And we've got plenty of questions here so if only we won't be able to answer everyone so but again some really great ones and we will give their contact details and things later on, so we might be able to send some links through to you. Let me just pick another one. Oh yeah. So you touched upon Steven LGBTQ rights in Scotland and obviously that the legislation didn't change there as rapidly. Could you describe the relationship between the main group and activists in Scotland with the different legal situation. I can't speak specifically to their relationship with Scottish activists, you know, specifically, I don't, I'm not conscious of that but I can obviously put you in touch with people who might be able to help you. What I can say is that members of the London group London gay liberation front did go out into the regions and actively help set up regional groups to initially for meetings to show people how they did it in London if you like. There are on the LSE digitized images website which which you've seen links for hopefully go out on the chat. And there are actually images of London gay liberation front activists in I think it's Bradford and helping them organize and show a meeting. I am sure that that happened in Scotland also that lessons will learn by Scottish activists and we're taken back to Scotland and used but I couldn't speak specifically to the Scottish relationship I'm afraid. Another good sort of museology question here. Do you know of any resources we could direct people to discuss the practice of cataloging LGBTQ plus collections, specifically about language and using that in a more inclusive way, given how much as you've mentioned language in the community does change. Yeah, language is language is really interesting and it's actually one of my my interests and passions I'd be I'd be very happy I wouldn't want to start reaming off things with the wrong titles, because I don't have the information to hand. But I believe that is that question from Tony. Yeah, Tony, if you if you would like to get in touch with me I'm very happy to share with you some links and resources related to gender cataloging. If you would like to get involved in any kind of cataloging of LGBTQ material I can tell you for certain that the Bishop's Gate Institute which is in London, if you are in an easy reach of London does have an amazing newspaper clippings collection which they are in the process of trying to get catalogs. And so if you want experience of cataloging there are there are always there are always opportunities out there somewhere just waiting to be discovered. Okay, and I think maybe time for sort of one or two more questions. Let's see. I'm so happy there are questions that's great. Oh yes. And we're sorry we can't answer every single one but we will try to cover the broad subjects and follow up with some things. So just carrying on from a question on language, Stephen, John asks. John, John Chester refers to the word queer, as how people describe themselves before the word gay was widely used. Did queer get erased in the dialogue and reclaimed later, or has it always remained part of the dialogue since the time of the GLF. I think it was possibly always kind of floating around there I think that when queer reclaimed it sort of radical power was during the 1980s, and that was when queer power was a mantra of in the UK certainly the group outrage, who were a direct action gay rights organization. The way which John was talking about queer there is a very different term in the 1960s pre gay liberation friends. And I would guess if you talk to activists from that period. I'm only just turning 40 this year but certainly when I, my experience would have been that the word queer was something which was reclaimed so it was perhaps something that was used against gay people following 1970, and then was reclaimed in the 1980s in order to, you know, come together and unite around HIV AIDS activism and indeed just broader social change I think we do sometimes forget that the age of consent was only made equal for everybody in the United Kingdom in 2001. We forget that marriage equality only came through in 2015. So the word queer in the 1980s had a very different formal radical connotation than it did in the 1960s when John's clip was talking about the word queer. Okay, thanks Stephen I think we're sort of coming to the end of our time now. But thank you very much. Thanks also to Dana for transcribing for us. I hope that was useful to some of the audience. And yeah thanks to everyone taking part and asking some really brilliant questions. I've shared some of the links Stephen mentions in the chat box I'll share them again before we finish and I'll also put it on a slide. A few people asked about recordings we are recording the event and I hope that we'll issue it as a video at some point or I can tell you exactly when in the future. As obviously the library is putting a lot online at the moment. Do follow British Library on social media to find out future events we're doing online. There's lots coming up. Again, thanks to everybody. We'll send you a survey for email afterwards. Do please fill that in if you can tell us what you thought of the event, what you'd like to see covered in future by the library as we are doing more of these digital events. We really appreciate your feedback. Okay, thanks and goodbye everyone and goodbye Stephen as well. Thank you.