Stonewall and the fight for gay rights

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Riot by San Francisco gays earlier this year T'he centre of London will be filled this Saturday by thousands of people in the rally and carnival which mark the climax of Gay Pride Week.

Gay Pride has been celebrated in London since 1971, but the organisers expect this year's event to be the "biggest ever gathering in Europe of homosexual men and women' Gay Pride 1979 is commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York.

It was these riots which violently induced the birth of the Gay Liberation Movement-first in the US, and then (unevenly) on an international scale.

Ghetto areas

The Stonewall was a dancing bar in Christopher St-the centre of New York's 'gay ghetto' in Greenwich Village.

The repression of homosexuality under capitalism had led to the development of such ghetto areas in most metropolitan cities of the major imperialist states.

Centred round bars and clubs, these areas housed and employed many gays.

They were the scene of the only social and leisure evictenra for montr 1U1 AIDIIT thousands of others.

But Christopher St., like the other ghettoes, was in no sense a 'free zone'. Capitalist states attempted, as far as possible, to restrict the open expression of homosexuality to such enclosed semi-societies and subcultures.

'But even this 'freedom' was severely limited. Capitalist exploitation took full advantage of this enclosed and captive market.

Controlled by Mafia Until the growth of the Gay Liberation Movement, all New York's gay bars and clubs were controlled by the Mafia.

Alongside this extraction of profit the capitalist state intervened directly and constantly through its police force.

Raids (to investigate alleged abuses of liquor laws, etc) were an almost nightly feature of the Christopher St. area.

Fought back

On 27 June 1969 it was the turn of the Stonewall Inn. But on that night the customers fought back against the police, who were forced to call in reinforcements.

The unprecedented fighting developed into riots which continued for two days and the next two nights.

The Stonewall customers were joined by other gays Irom the area, students from Columbia University and other forces sympathetic to their protest.

It was this breakthrough which led to the formation of the New York Gay Liberation Front.

The GLF was very obviously a part of The Movement'-the radicalisation of US students and petty bourgeois forces which surged forward in response to the crisis of US imperialism, and particularly in protest at the war against the liberation struggles in Vietnam.

GLF GLF grew rapidly in the US and began to spread internationally. In the autumn of 1970, a Gay Liberation Front was set up in London under the influence of the US movement.

The legal situation in Britain was by that time quite different from conditions in the US. Pressure groups had made various attempts to reform the law, but these had all foundered until 1967.

In the second Labour government under Wilson, Lord Arran introduced a bill in the House of Lords, which was then taken up as a private member's bill in the Commons by Labour MP. Leo Abse.

It was this bill-which became the Sexual Offences Act-that remains the major legal apparatus to supervise male homosexuality.

The bill legalised homosexual acts in private between consenting adults over the age of 21 provided only 2 men were involved.

It was certainly a major reform. But it applied only in England and Wales-the provisions do not extend to Scotland, Northern Ireland, the armed forces and the merchant navy.

Yet in some areas, the Act actually increased legal penalties, and of course it remains not only an inadequate reform but a piece of legislation which continues the repression of male homosexuality and the oppression of gay men.

For any man under the age of 21, however consenting, any sexual act with another man of any age is illegal.

Provocateurs

Any male homosexual acts in public are grounds for prosecution and this extends not only to kissing but even to partners holding hands.

The police interpret 'public' in! the widest possible sense, make widespread use of provocateurs and have actually increased the number of prosecutions brought against gay men since the 1967 Act was passed.

But the 1967 Act was nevertheless a major boost to the attempts by homosexual men to achieve an ending of legal penalties and social discrimination.

The Act was important not just for its progressive aspects, but also for what it symbolised-a shift in the ideological structures operated within capitalism and a changing social consciousness of homosexuality.

The growth of London GLF, and similar groups in other cities, was a factor in that process as it continued after 1967.

Before then, only small and elitist pressure groups for reform had existed, clothed in respectability and dignified politeness.

One of these bodies was the North-Western Homosexual Law Reform Committee, based in Manchester.

With partial law reform, this group began to set up groups all over the country.

'Coming out'

As a large membership grew, this organisation became the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE) which exists today nationally on a considerable scale.

GLF, and later radical groups, had a tense relationship with the conservative tendencies which dominated CHE.

GLF stressed a very different political emphasis and orientation.

'Coming out' was crucial here-public identification as gay, with pride in that identity and anger at social oppression.

This position led to the use of protest tactics-from badges and posters to pickets, demonstrations and the 'zapping of pubs which refused to serve gays or shows which exploited sexual oppression as exploitative entertainment.

Switchboards

The theoretical 1 work which went alongside this owed a great deal to the work of feminists, and also concentrated particularl ly on the ways in which psy chiatry was used to attack / gays.

GLF also spurred on other initiatives-inclu iding the development of counselling services and switchboards, and the launching of Gay New voice for the gay community').

But its existence was short-lived. Wracked by internal dissent, GLF collapsed after 2 y ears, although local organisat tions continued to funci tion, particularly in the nort :h of England (Manche ster, Leeds, Bradford).

Since then, CHE has continued its steady course : but wide sections of the gay movement have been alr nost completely disoriented.

The first signs of an end in this drifting came last year with the campaign against the prosecution of Gay News for blasphemy-a prosecution launched by Mary Whitehouse, then taken over by the state.

The size of the campaign encouraged the formation of Gay Activists Alliance, which has developed a national organisation and local groups.

Ten years after Stonewall gays in Britain have been able to gain a new confidence and the possibility exists for a new political clarity on the struggles that are necessary to overthrow sexual oppression.

But at the same time, the threat of reactionary attacks is rising to a new and extremely dangerous level.

As they move on to the offensive against the working class, the Tory leaders are even more determined than Callaghan's government to shore up the bourgeois family.

Not enough One part of this will almost certainly be a more violent application of the Act-an Act already labelled the "buggers' charter" by that well-known dispenser of "justice", , Judge Melford Stephenson.

The thousands of gays who participate in Saturday's carnival will be San Francisco zavs challenge the cons - - 0-1 tUMU demonstrating their pride in their homosexuality.

But gay pride, and even gay anger, will not be enough to defend homosexuals against the attacks of fascists and the state. The gains already made have to be developed.

In those battles gays will need to turn to the organised strength of the labour movement for support while all socialists must at the same time take up a fight on the issues within the mass organisations of the working class.

The demand must be for programmatic action to gain basic democratic rights for gay women and gay men in the struggles to overthrow the sexual oppression imposed by the capitalist ruling class and its social order.

David 'Grand Carnival' Assemble 1 p.m. Temple Place, Temple Embankment, moving off to Hyde Park, concert 3pm

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JULIALIL IALOO, NEuMESuay June 2I 1919 IDUST SAL NEWES to reciprocate their services they were mistaken.

The next item was moved by Richard Maybin, convenor of the CP's NALGO fraction, calling for a restoration of strike pay, currently limited to £4 per week, to the previous level of 55% of gross.

This move met a swift death in the face of a sharp attack by the NEC.

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GAY TEACHERSNA GROUP

GAY PRIDE