The police raid on the Royal Vauxhall Tavern in 1987 was symptomatic of decades of Met Police witch-hunts against the LGBT+ community. They and other police forces raided our bars, clubs, saunas and even private birthday parties. Officers arrested same-sex couples for merely kissing, cuddling, or holding hands. They abused LGBTs as ‘poofs’ and ‘queers’, released their names to the press and informed their employers. This was the shocking level police homophobic persecution.
We had the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, James Anderton, saying that gay people were ‘swirling round in a cesspit of their own making.’ He and other senior homophobic officers gave a green light for the police to witch-hunt our community.
We are not asking the police to apologise for enforcing the law but for the abusive, zealous and sometimes illegal way they did it.
By 1989, the number of gay and bisexual men convicted of the consenting offence of so-called ‘gross indecency’ was almost as great as in 1954/55 when male homosexuality was totally illegal, and the country was gripped by a McCarthyite-style anti-gay witch hunt.
If the police say they have changed, they need to show it by acknowledging past wrongs, to draw a line under the abusive things they did. This means all British police forces should apologise for their decades of harassment. Apologise now!
Thanks so much.
