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Peter Gary Tatchell (born 25 January 1952) is a British human rights activist, famous internationally for his attempts to perform a citizens arrest on Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe. In the early 1980s, he was selected as Labour Party candidate for Bermondsey and was denounced by party leader Michael Foot for supporting extra-parliamentary action; although the Labour Party subsequently allowed his selection, when he ran in the Bermondsey byelection in February 1983 he was strongly attacked by tabloid newspapers and by graffiti in the constituency.
In the 1990s he was a prominent campaigner for gay rights through the direct action group OutRage! which he co-founded, and was identified as a supporter of outing, being denounced as a 'homosexual terrorist' in the Daily Mail of March 14, 1995. More recently, his human rights work has led him to set up the Peter Tatchell Human Rights Fund to assist his activities, and to take on human rights abuses in a much wider field. His willingness to take on human rights issues regardless of their origin has led to him becoming respected among some of the newspapers which have previously denounced him.
Early life
Tatchell was born in Seddon (an inner-city, industrial suburb of Melbourne, Australia) and brought up in a religious household by his mother and stepfather. His father was a lathe operator in an engineering factory; while his mother, a housewife, was a chronic asthmatic, and the family's finances were strained by medical bills. As a result he was unable to continue his formal education beyond a basic level, and in 1968, at age sixteen, Tatchell started work as a window-dresser in Melbourne's principal department store. He worked all-year round to develop attractive window displays for the Christmas period. Tatchell has said that he has incorporated the theatricality of these displays into his political activism.
While in Australia he began a lifelong interest in outdoor adventurous activities such as remote climbing, which he has recently explained as helping him develop the courage to be a political risk-taker in adult life. (He was speaking on BBC One's Question Time, in the context of insurance and legal risks preventing British teachers from being willing to take their pupils on outdoor adventures)
Political awakening
He discovered his homosexuality in 1969. His political activity had begun at Mount Waverley High School when he had launched campaigns in support of the aborigine population, and with the Australian campaign against the death penalty prompted by the hanging of Ronald Ryan in 1967. One night, Tatchell went round the centre of Melbourne daubing slogans against hanging, an action which was not identified as him until he revealed it in an interview nearly 30 years later.
The following year, Tatchell took on Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War and he was a member of the Vietnam Moratorium Campaign and of Christians for Peace. Impending conscription led him to move to London in 1971. Four days after arriving he spotted a sticker on a lamp-post in Oxford Street advertising a meeting of the Gay Liberation Front. He quickly became a leading member of the group until it disintegrated in 1974. At the celebrated GLF disruption of the Festival of Light meeting at the Methodist Central Hall, he was part of a group instructed to 'demonstrate spontaneous homosexual love'.
Journalism
Tatchell continued his education at the Polytechnic of North London. There he was a member of the National Union of Students Gay Rights Campaign. On graduating he became a freelance journalist specialising in foreign stories, during which he exposed some scandals including the child labour on British-owned tea farms in Malawi. A previous 1972 attempt having not seen a response, his application to join the Labour Party was accepted in Hornsey in 1978, shortly before he moved to a hard-to-let flat on the Rockingham Estate in Bermondsey.
In 1980 he was part of a group of left-wing members who won control of Bermondsey Labour Party. When the sitting Labour MP, Bob Mellish, announced his retirement, Tatchell was selected as his successor in November 1981. The selection was something of a surprise, as Arthur Latham (defeated in 1979 at Paddington by 106 votes, and former Chairman of the Tribune Group) was expected to be selected. Later the Militant Tendency were cited as the reason for Tatchell's selection, but as Tatchell pointed out in his book "The Battle for Bermondsey" they had at that time only a handful of members in the constituency and Tatchell had never been a member.
Bermondsey by-election
Tatchell had written an article for the left-wing magazine London Labour Briefing in which he urged the Labour Party to support innovative direct action political campaigning. The article came to the attention of James Wellbeloved, a former Labour MP who had joined the Social Democratic Party. Wellbeloved, arguing it was anti-Parliamentary, used it at Prime Minister's Question Time in December 1981 to embarrass Labour leader Michael Foot. Unexpectedly, Foot denounced Tatchell, stating that he would not be endorsed as a candidate. Foot narrowly won a vote at the Labour Party National Executive Committee to refuse endorsement to Tatchell.
However, the Bermondsey Labour Party continued strongly to support him, and Tatchell worked on convincing Foot that his article had been misinterpreted. It was eventually agreed that when the selection was rerun, Tatchell would be eligible, and he duly won. When Mellish resigned from Parliament and triggered a by-election, Tatchell was endorsed as the Labour Party candidate.
The divisions in the Labour Party which Tatchell's far-Left views had caused, and his homosexuality, were used against him by many opponents in an election campaign which was widely regarded as one of the dirtiest in modern British history. Tatchell was assaulted in the street and at one stage sent a live bullet through the post. Although the Bermondsey seat had long been a Labour stronghold, the Liberal candidate, Simon Hughes won the election. When Hughes revealed his own bisexuality in 2006, Tatchell said that he forgave him for the "dirty tricks", to the extent of stating that, had he a vote, he would have supported for Hughes for the leadership of his party in 2006.
In the mid- and late-1980s, Tatchell worked as an author, writing books including The Battle for Bermondsey (the story of the by-election), Democratic Defence and an early guide to surviving with HIV and AIDS. His book Europe in the Pink gave an introduction to the different laws on homosexuality through the European Union. In 1990 Tatchell sought (unsuccessfully) the Labour nomination for Hampstead and Highgate, being defeated by actress Glenda Jackson.
OutRage!
- See also: OutRage!.
Increasingly Tatchell took part in gay rights campaigning over issues such as Section 28. Following the murder of actor Michael Boothe on 10 May 1990, Tatchell became one of thirty founding members of the radical gay-rights group OutRage! and has remained a leading member. The group fuses theatrical performance styles with queer political protest. As the most prominent OutRage! member, Tatchell is frequently taken to be the leader of the group, but the few histories of it published demonstrate that this was not an accurate picture during the era they cover.
In 1991, a group of members of OutRage! announced that they were to form a separate group to engage in a campaign of 'outing' people who were homophobic in public but homosexual in private. The group took the name 'FROCS' (Faggots Rooting Out Closeted Sexuality) and Tatchell agreed to act as the group's spokesman. Considerable publicity and public debate followed this announcement. Embarrassingly for Tatchell, the members of FROCS eventually called their own press conference (without him) to tell the world that their campaign was a hoax intended to demonstrate the hypocrisy of those newspapers which had condemned the campaign despite publishing stories which had the same effect.
Some of the activities of OutRage! have been highly controversial. In 1994 it unveiled placards inviting ten Church of England bishops to "tell the truth" about their homosexuality. Shortly afterwards the group wrote to twenty UK MPs, urging them to reveal their homosexuality. Sir James Kilfedder, who had received one of the letters, died two months later of a sudden heart attack on the day one of the Belfast newspapers ran a story about him. Although no definite connection could be proved, Tatchell was widely denounced in the press for having caused the death. In a comment in The Independent in October 2003, Tatchell identified the action with the Bishops as his greatest mistake because it allowed a relevant campaign against Anglican homophobia to be derailed by putting the focus on OutRage!'s actions.
Some in the gay press have dubbed him "Saint Peter Tatchell" following further OutRage! campaigns involving religion, and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence inducted him as one of their Saints in the mid-1990s. OutRage! protested on the occasion of the puported marriage between Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles, and Tatchell was questioned briefly by police under the Terrorism Act after displaying a banner reading "Charles can marry twice! Gays can't marry once."
Zimbabwe
Part of Tatchell's journalism in the 1970s had involved the Second Chimurenga in Rhodesia, in which he had generally supported the Zimbabwe African National Union and its military wing. However, Robert Mugabe's fierce denunciation of male homosexuality in 1995 led him to help organise a protest by Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe outside the Zimbabwe High Commission in London. He managed to speak to Mugabe on a brief London visit in the late 1990s but was unable to get a substantive response. On October 26, 1997 a letter from Tatchell to The Guardian argued that the United Kingdom should suspend aid to Zimbabwe because of its persecution of homosexuals.
At this point, Tatchell researched Mugabe's Gukurahundi attacks in Matabeleland in the 1980s when Mugabe had sent the Fifth Brigade of the Zimbabwe army against supporters of the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union. Two journalists, Mark Chavunduka and Ray Choto, were tortured to death by Zimbabwean forces during the attack. He became convinced that Mugabe had broken international human rights law. The arrest in London of Augusto Pinochet seemed to him a precedent. On October 30, 1999 Tatchell and teenager Chris Morris attempted to stop Mugabe's car in London to perform a citizens arrest. Instead, he and Morris were arrested for a breach of the peace. Mugabe responded by describing the pair as "gay gangsters", a slogan frequently repeated by his supporters, and claimed they had been sent by the United Kingdom government.
In 2001 Tatchell received a tip-off about a visit by Mugabe to Belgium. He travelled to Brussels, and in the lobby of the Brussels Hilton attempted a second citizens arrest on March 5. This time, Mugabe's large corps of bodyguards pushed him away roughly and were seen punching him to the floor. The action drew world-wide headlines as Mugabe was by then highly unpopular in the western world for his government's land reform policy which involved the compulsory seizure of farms owned by white people. His actions were praised by many of the newspapers that had previously denounced him.
In late 2003 Tatchell acted as a press spokesman for the launch of the Zimbabwe Freedom Movement which claimed to be a clandestine group within Zimbabwe committed to overthrowing the government of Robert Mugabe by force . The civic action support group Sokwanele urged Tatchell to check his sources with the group, speculating that it may be an invention of supporters of the Zimbabwe government in order to justify violent action against its opponents . However, two Central Intelligence Organization members were spotted and turned away from the launch, as shown in the film "Peter Tatchell: Just who does he think he is?" by Max Barber.
Political activity
Over the years, Tatchell has developed a largely original mixture of political views. He sees gay rights as more than just a subsection of civil rights and equality of opportunity, but as a revolutionary movement to replace traditional ideals of masculinity, which he sees as a large cause of crime. Such machismo is seen as still present amongst groups that claim to be left-wing and anti-sexist and to have been counter-productive in the struggle for just causes, such as during the UK miners' strike (1984-1985). He sees his ideas as also liberating to those who do not consider themselves to be gay, as everyone would benefit from a society that is more open about sex and that does not put pressure on people to repress homosexual urges. He has opposed the Miss World contest on the grounds that it demeans women, but he does not believe that there should be any laws against pornography or public nudity.
In February 2000 he resigned his membership of the Labour Party, citing its treatment of Ken Livingstone, and in support of Livingstone he fought unsuccessfully for a seat on the London Assembly as an Independent Green Left candidate. On 7 April 2004, Tatchell announced that he had joined the Green Party but that he did not envisage standing as a candidate in any future election. In January 2005 Who's Who announced that he was to be included in that publication for the first time. He is unpaid for his human rights work; he earns approximately £8,000 a year from occasional freelance journalism, media appearances and guest lecturing.
Although Tatchell opposed the Iraq war in 2003, he made it clear that he would welcome the removal of the government of Saddam Hussein by force because of the gross violations of human rights he had committed. He advocated military and financial aid to opponents of his government in order to assist them to overthrow it. Since the war he has signed the 'Unite Against Terror' declaration, arguing that "the pseudo-left reveals its shameless hypocrisy and its wholesale abandonment of humanitarian values" by supporting the resistance and insurgents in Iraq.
Controversies
In 1996 Tatchell led an OutRage! campaign to reduce the age of consent to 14, with an agreement that there should be no prosecution at all if the difference between the ages of the sexual partners was three years. He was quoted in the OutRage! press release as saying "Young people have a right to accept or reject sex, according to what they feel is appropriate for them". Leo McKinstry, in The Sun called it "a perverts' charter".
One of Tatchell's more amusing controversies was his theory that homophobic rapper Eminem could be gay, based on the way that he dresses, his attitude towards women and his obsession with gay sex. However, Tatchell still led calls for laws against homophobic music and participated in protests outside of Eminem's concerts.
Tatchell believes that Australian cities should be renamed to sever the ties with the history of the British empire. He wants the Tasmanian capital Hobart to be renamed Nibberluna, claiming that this shows due respect to Australia's Aboriginal heritage which has been disgarded for too long.
OutRage!'s protest against Chief Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits, who supported the idea of eugenics to rid the world of babies who would grow up to be gay, led to accusations that Tatchell was being anti-semitic. OutRage! has also conducted a long-running campaign against reggae artists who include lyrics which seem to support violence, including murder, of gay men. The campaign began in the early 1990s when Buju Banton's song "Boom bye-bye" was released and has continued to date; Tatchell has picketed the MOBO Awards ceremony to protest at their invite to some of those who have recorded "murder music" as he termed it.) Tatchell received death threats and was labelled a racist. Tatchell defended himself by pointing to a life's work campaigning against racism, and stated that his statements on Jamaica were in support of terrorised black groups within Jamaica.
In May 2004 Tatchell and other OutRage! members joined a London demonstration of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. However, his placards which drew attention to the torture and murder of homosexuals in the Palestinian Authority-controlled area ("Israel: stop persecuting Palestine! Palestine: stop persecuting queers!") were greeted with hostility by some other demonstrators, and he was accused of being a Mossad agent sent to disrupt the march, of being a racist or a Zionist, a supporter of Ariel Sharon, or an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency or MI5.
In December 2005, UK singer Robbie Williams won £200,000 damages from The People newspaper and the magazines Star and Hot Stars after they published false and defamatory claims that he was secretly homosexual. Tatchell commented publicly that " legal action has created the impression he thinks it is shameful to be gay" (see ).
Attitude to Muslims
Tatchell's criticism of homophobic muslims has been interpreted as a product of Islamophobia, although Tatchell has often condemned Islamophobia in his writings. In 1995 he wrote that "although not all Muslims are anti-gay, significant numbers are violently homophobic .. homophobic Muslim voters may be able to influence the outcome of elections in 20 or more marginal constituencies. Their voting strength could potentially be used to block pro-gay candidates or to pressure electorally vulnerable MPs to vote against gay rights legislation (and other liberal measures)."
Tatchell has described Sharia law as "a clerical form of fascism" . He was the keynote speaker at a 2005 protest at the Canadian High Commission over Ontario's arbitration law, which already permitted religious arbitration in civil cases for Jews and Christians, being extended to Muslims.
Following the hangings of two teenage boys, Tatchell described Iran an "Islamo-fascist state". The circumstances of the case are in dispute with Tatchell insisting that the two were hanged merely for being gay, while the Iranian authorities' press release states they were convicted of the Gang-rape of a 13 year old boy at knifepoint . Tatchell counters that the Iranian authorities usually make such claims, which are impossible to verify. Some international organisations have urged restraint given the unclear circumstances .
On 20 March 2006, Dr Muhammad Yusuf, a research fellow for Interfaith Alliance UK, withdrew from a planned lecture he was intending to give to raise money for Tatchell's human rights fund. Yusuf was due to argue for "an Islamic reformation that reconciles Islam with democracy and human rights, including human rights for women and gay people"; according to some reports, it was alleged that unnamed "senior Islamic clerics" told him they could not guarantee his safety if he went ahead .
Despite Tachells' claims that "The idea that we single out Muslim leaders is just plain wrong", in the "Religion" section of his website, of the 13 articles covering the 2004-6 period, ten are about Islam, two about Catholicism and one is about Anglicanism. Further, when writing in the Guardians Comment is free section, of the seven pieces he has posted so far, five are about Islam.
Muslim Council of Britain
Tatchell is critical of the Muslim Council of Britain, the largest Muslim group in the UK, which he describes as "Anti-gay". He once justified his hatred, asking how "they expect to win respect for their community, if at the same time as demanding action against islamophobia, they themselves demand the legal enforcement of homophobia?". When the MCB boycotted Holocaust Memorial Day, Tatchell wrote that "the only thing that is consistent about the MCB is its opposition to the human rights of lesbians and gay men". Tatchell's response to Sir Iqbal Sacranie of the MCB, after he described homosexuality as harmful and criticised civil partnerships, was that "Both the Muslim and gay communities suffer prejudice and discrimination. We should stand together to fight Islamophobia and homophobia" , an invitation Sacranie was unwilling to take up. Tatchell subsequently criticised Unite Against Fascism for inviting the MCB to be on one of its platforms, describing Sacranie, its chair, as a bigot and a "homophobic hate-mongerer" .
Yusuf al-Qaradawi
In July 2004 Tatchell attacked Mayor of London Ken Livingstone for inviting Yusuf al-Qaradawi to London, referring to Qaradawi's analysis of homosexuality as homophobic . He referred to al-Qaradawi as "rightwing, misogynist, anti-semitic and homophobic". Livingstone explained that Qaradawi had been invited to address a conference on the wearing of the hijab and issued a dossier in defence of Qaradawi as a moderate He later criticised Tatchell for writing about the conference in the New Statesman without having attended it. The affair became a bitter one with a photograph of Livingstone and Qaradawi embracing appearing prominently on the Outrage! website, and Tatchell frequently returned to the issue. Livingstone replied by stating his position in several letters to The Guardian, which also published letters by others in support of Livingstone . Nick Cohen wrote a column in The Observer, criticising several statements by Qaradawi as well as Livingstone's support for him . IMAAN, the Muslim gay group, accused OutRage! and other organisations of "continuously misrepresenting Islam".
Adam Yosef
In December 2005, the Muslim journalist Adam Yosef wrote an article for the Desi Xpress opposing the introduction of civil partnerships for same-sex couples which he subsequently retracted amid much criticism, claiming to have been mis-interpreted. Yosef then published a column in which he identified Peter Tatchell, British National Party leader Nick Griffin and Omar Bakri Mohammed of Al-Muhajiroun as the top three "hate filled bigots", saying that Tatchell needed "a good slap in the face" and his "queer campaign army" should "pack their bent bags and head back to Australia".
Tatchell denounced the article as "a naked appeal to homophobia and xenophobia" which echoed "the racist, xenophobic language of the BNP" . Yosef issued another statement apologising for this article, claiming the "slap in the face" remark was a "figure of speech". Yosef asserted that he did "not hold a racist view towards Mr Tatchell's Australian origins", and that the "pack their bent bags" was made to "compare the his views with the Islamophobic riots which recently gripped Sydney" referring to the Sydney riots .
Malcolm X
Tatchell chose the Black Muslim Malcolm X, who was a spokesman for the Nation of Islam, as his specialised subject when appearing on Celebrity Mastermind, explaining then that he considered him a hero. However, his implicit endorsement of Bruce Perry's biography of Malcolm X and an article he wrote in The Guardian in July 2005 calling for black gay role models have led to criticism by other scholars of Malcolm X's life as the book and article claim that Malcolm X had male lovers. Malcolm X had six children with his wife Betty Shabazz, and the claim of Homosexuality was described as "shocking" and "inappropriate" by Peter Akinti, the editor of Black In Britain.
References
- OutRage! press release, February 21, 1996
- Leo McKinstry, "Gays Homing In on Kids", The Sun, February 24, 1996
External links
- Official site
- Peter Tatchell: Just Who Does He Think He Is? (concerning a 2004 biographical film by Max Barber)
- Observer interview (2004-12-19)
- The left's retreat from universal human rights
- Radio interview on Little Atoms (2006-04-16)