17 August  2008

Last month the crowds gathered in Belfast - to watch and attend the annual gay pride parade. The red the green and the yellow joined with the rest of the rainbow nation to show their opposition to most recent homophobic face of the Democratic Unionist Party.

The organisers of Gay Pride were well satisfied with their achievement.  Understandably at the time the question ‘what now’ was not raised.  It is time now to take stock.

From Civil Rights to The St Andrew’s Agreement

Before Iris Robinson’s series of public pronouncements it had been extremely difficult for anyone opposed to the current Stormont government to get a hearing in the gay community. For the St Andrews and Belfast Agreements did not only give rise to the current political settlement, they also have given rise to a number of government supported bodies that act in its defence and act to stymie opposition and garner support for government initiatives. Along with the Parades Commission and the numerous ‘community’ and interface projects, the group set up under the auspices of Belfast Agreement - The Coalition on Sexual Orientation or COSO has until now dominated political discourse in the gay community.

 Like the other bodies set up under the Agreement, the structures COSO have established were marked by a wholesale opposition to previous types of direct action. What they stressed instead were consultations and meetings, followed by costly ‘research’ and then more meetings. Those who doubt such an analysis have only to examine the reaction when the organisation was recently accused of failing the gay community after it refused to oppose an official DUP/PSNI campaign against gay men in Lisburn. Even after two men had committed suicide, COSO’s supporters still defended their consultative process with the government and the police as producing ‘good meetings’ – Bi ‘Before Iris’ most of the organisations who were affiliated were in deep denial about the disaster of the DUP lead administration.

Now Ai – After Iris, the reality of reaction has hit home. And that reality has not ‘returned’ - it is the same reality that has always existed – the reality of bigotry, the reality of oppression and of violence against minorities. 

The DUP, The Government and The Strasbourg Case

When Civil rights activists recently visited an NIO government minister responsible for the administration of justice to ask for homophobic hate crime to be included in a new bill, he was hostile from the start dismissing them as ‘just a lobby group’. When he was warned that there may be a case to answer if homophobic hate crime was excluded from the bill he replied ‘so sue me – I’ve been sued before’. 

This type of hostility has always been part of the government’s response to reform here. When the civil rights lawyer Kevin Boyle took the test case of a local gay man to the European Court of Human Rights in late 1970s the British government fought tooth and nail to stop the case from succeeding (even when the case was over they disputed every penny of the costs awarded against them). 

 One of the lesser known outcomes of the Strasbourg case as it became known, was that the court agreed with the British governments’ right to maintain different legal standards and principles for different regions - wherever and whenever it liked (the judgement was only successful in upholding the ‘individuals right to a private life’ – hardly surprising since that life, along with a dozen others, had just been subjected to an in depth police investigation).  The court also agreed that the administration of justice was ‘an internal British matter’ - and so were the dirty deals done to maintain it. The British government’s official hostility to reform was not only official policy, it was also official DUP policy, which became government policy after the Callaghan government agreed to oppose reform in return for the DUP’s parliamentary support in 1979.

It was the crowning achievement of the DUP’s ‘Save Ulster From Sodomy’ campaign. And the person who was responsible for the DUP lobby of the then Labour Government was none other than the current First Minister – Pete the husband of Iris Robinson. Now that the Paisleyities have increased their influence at Westminster the job of genuine dissenters is to ‘save Ulster from the delusions of political necrophilia’ (a lesson that Sinn Fein will never learn as they are addicted to the DUP’s kiss of death).

Amnesty’s Interest

The truth is that Britain and other countries were forced to reform discriminatory laws by successful old style campaigning. However, even when the law was reformed the police and the administration of justice worsened. Historically, more people were targeted for arrest and persecution after the 1967 Sexual Offences Act and the Race Relations Acts than before anti discrimination laws were past. The same is true here post the 1982 decriminalisation of homosexuality. More people were attacked and suffered hate crime. The same true since the Belfast and St Andrew’s Agreements. Some community activists have put this down to the increased ‘visibility’ of minorities, when in fact the established minorities have been targeted continuously. 

Recently Amnesty International has expanded its work here to support those who may encounter persecution as a result of the political activities of Christian fundamentalists. Amnesty, along with the trade unions and some socialist parties, have formed the more radical side of recent pride demonstrations.  At this years Pride Amnesty were responsible for setting up an additional political meeting. The human rights activist Peter Tatchell gave a rousing speech on how one of our local heroes –  William III – King Billy was gay! 

This, as you might expect, caused some consternation among members of the Orange Order and Loyalists generally, but Peter Tatchell studiously avoided the more thorny questions of the way forward  – for the simple reason that he did not think it his job to tell his audience how to conduct their politics. But his example is nonetheless instructive. Some time ago he tried to be the Labour candidate for a poor inner city borough. He did not make his sexuality an election issue – not because he was afraid to – but because he simply saw his sexuality as incidental to his politics. That is of course not how the forces of reaction and bigotry saw it – they made it the issue. After that the Labour Party wanted rid of him.

OutRage!

He then helped establish the group OutRage! - OutRage! began to campaign more militantly for gay rights outside official parties and government established front organisations.  If they did put in an appearance it was to challenge the official orthodoxy.

The widespread belief that after the Belfast and St Andrew’s agreements the government would listen to community leaders and deliver on Equality agenda has proved to be false. The post agreement process has been marked by an excess of unproductive meetings, consultations that have now proved worthless. 

It was paralysis by analysis – a product of the rulers embrace – the nationalisation of dissent. In reality the government (both local and national) have opposed reform and Civil Rights and supported only its own supporters. 

Before Iris, the majority of the LBGT community thought that government sponsored political initiatives like COSO would help alleviate the violence and bigotry. Westminster and this Stormont government – the DUP and Sinn Fein have been blowing opium smoke in the gay community’s face and putting a stupefying amount of ‘development’ money into its own official front organisations – not for the purposes of reform or to sharpen or clarify political focus – but to act as a political shock absorber. Meanwhile the DUP sponsored attacks on gay community become more frequent and more deadly. 

The Festival of The Oppressed 

Before the nationalisation of dissent gay activists taught the Civil Rights Movement a valuable lesson:  you can’t ignore the significance of our fight for liberation and freedom. Now that fight has become essential to a better society for all. That is why despite opposition socialists and trade unionists will be giving more support to Pride events next year. There is no Chinese wall between one section of the communities fight for freedom and liberation and another - we go forward together. 

The difference, the power and effectiveness, of this recent Gay Pride was due to the way it challenged the government-sponsored way of doing things. It was inspirational and brought back the true sprit and the greatest achievements of the Civil Rights Movement. It was something to be proud of - a true festival of the oppressed. It showed that political change can only be brought about from below and cannot be ushered in from above by government supported front organisations.