The marches against the Tories’ Section 28 were full of fun and decent people

By Paul Richards

One of the nicest chants on an 80s demo went something like this: single voice: ‘give me an ‘oh”. Crowd: ‘oh’. Give me an ‘oh’. Crowd: ‘oh’. ‘Give me an ‘oh” Crowd: ‘oh’. What have you got? ‘Ooooooh!’ (as in ‘oooooooh, get her…’).

Needless to say it wasn’t on the picket lines of Orgreave or Wapping, but on the demonstrations against Clause 28 of the Local Government Bill. As a Labour student in the 1980s, I had many reasons to hate Margaret Thatcher, from the miners’ strike to her turning the GLC into an aquarium. But Clause 28 seemed so overwhelmingly hateful, spiteful, and nasty. It was the Daily Mail made law. It was state-sanctioned discrimination, and it felt to my 20-year old self a little like the first step towards fascism.

When we arrived at London Euston, the massed ranks of the Salford University Labour Club and the lesbian & gay society joined a huge demonstration comprising Labour MPs, trade unions, celebrities, Guardian-reading liberals, students and of course tens of thousands of lesbians and gay men. Most large demonstrations are angry, serious affairs with Trot paper sellers and the ever-present danger of violence with the police. This one was an incredible explosion of colour, life, and love. Home-made banners and flags, drag queens, songs and chants, public kissing as a political act. It was as though all the fun, kind, decent people in the world got together for a stroll through the streets of London.

Instead of taunts and chants aimed at the Metropolitian police, gay men eyed them up and made suggestive remarks about their truncheons. Leading the demo was Michael Cashman, from Eastenders, who was the only one I really recognised, but Peter Tatchell, Ian McKellen and others were there too, who went on to form Outrage! and Stonewall.

On those demos against Clause 28 twenty years ago in Manchester and London, I knew the kind of solidarity and common humanity that we in the Labour movement often eulogise but seldom experience.

Paul Richards writes a weekly column for Progress.