"Six o'clock news from the BBC, with Sue Lawley and Nicholas Witchell."
[Newsreader reads headlines, while protestor shouts]
"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
or 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 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 closing down their 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 up ahead of a procession 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 rather muffled and you can hear little muffled shouts of "stop Section 28"
and eventually we were we were all arrested.
It did get huge media coverage. You know the headlines were all about loony
lesbians but over time and and beyond that 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 at 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's been remembered.