The Six O'Clock News from the BBC,
with Sue Lawley and Nicholas Witchell
(Oh #@*%~<! we've got a nutter in the studio!)
(Get 'em out!)
(Stop Section 28!)
(Crash)
We're protesting about rights for lesbian and gay people.
In general, Britain was quite a hostile environment in the 1980s
for the LGBT community.
About 75% of people when surveyed said that it was mostly or always wrong to be gay.
Simply by walking down the street, if somebody identified you as lesbian or gay,
you could get abuse and you could be violently attacked, just for being.
I obviously don’t want children taught that the gay and lesbian lifestyle is natural and normal.
It is not, it never has been, and it never will be.
My overriding concern is with the promotion of ‘positive images’ of homosexuality in schools
from primary school right through. And that is what is causing many parents real concern and offence.
There was a sort of a catalyst moment where a book was published, called ‘Jenny lives with Eric and Martin’,
about a girl who lives with her two dads, and it sort of kicked off a moral panic in Parliament.
What we were told we were doing was destroying the heterosexual family.
So that lobby grew, to get this clause enacted.
Section 28 banned local authorities from promoting homosexuality.
The second part of it banned the teaching of the acceptability of homosexuality in schools.
Basically it meant the closing down of services, so young people became very vulnerable particularly,
and schools couldn’t protect people from being bullied.
All kinds of groups, all over the country began to protest.
Actor Ian McKellen was at the head of a protest which stretched nearly two miles.
A group of lesbians chained themselves to Buckingham Palace gates dressed as suffragettes,
a group of lesbians abseiled into the House of Lords.
Through all of the campaigning prior to the enactment, we could not get the media to understand
what the impact was going to be on our community, on our children.
So really the only thing left was to actually be the news, by being on the news.
We met outside Television Centre, we managed to get through the security, the whole thing was timing really.
And as soon as the lights changed we barged into the studio.
The whole place went mad, I got smacked to the ground by I don’t know how many people.
One of our number managed to handcuff herself to a camera, and the other one got behind the news desk,
where she was quite violently subdued by Nicholas Witchell, who's since apologised.
Sue Lawley carried on trying to read the news.
And I do apologise if you’re hearing quite a lot of noise in this studio at the moment,
I’m afraid that we have rather been invaded.
In the footage it’s all got quite muffled, and you can hear little muffled shouts of ‘Stop the Section 28!’
And eventually we were all arrested.
It did get huge media coverage, you know the headlines were all about looney lesbians.
But over time I've heard from quite a lot of people what it meant to them as young LGBT people,
in their own home, knowing they were gay but maybe not even out, and just felt a little bit empowered by it.
So here we are in Television centre again 30 years later, clearly things are a lot better than they were in the 1980s,
but it hasn't completely changed, and there are very dangerous and serious pockets of homophobia.
We have to be in solidarity with all the communities worldwide, who are in daily fear of their lives.
I'm glad we did it. The fact we're here today means the story is being remembered.