Thread by @Lachlan_Edi

@sacha_coward You were born in or around 1987, right? So you were either a fetus or a newborn infant when the notorious clause that would eventually become s28 was first introduced, shortly before the 1987 General Election. And still in nappies when reintroduced later that same year. Right?

@sacha_coward And, without apology for what you would probably, and incorrectly, call biological determinism, you were still breastfeeding from your mother when the clause became a section as it passed into law and the lesbians went abseiling into the news studios? Correct?

@sacha_coward And when it was successfully repealed, in Scotland, 12 years later, you had not yet completed your puberty and still had no idea that you would grow up to become a gay man as an adult, or a homosexual, or a queer, or whatever it is you are now calling yourself. Yes?

@sacha_coward And, in England, when it was repealed, after another 3 years, you were still only 15, more worried about your GCEs than lobbying your MP or attending demonstrations (which, by then, in the second term of a Labour government, had moved on to the right to marry, which ...

@sacha_coward ... trans people were already allowed to do, as trans people because GRA had already passed by then.

Do please correct my maths, Sacha, but I am left wondering who you think this 'we' was that fought section 28.

Because you weren't there, at all, at any stage. Ever.

@sacha_coward Amd your reference and comparison, and a recital of urban myths, like this, is erroneous. Damagingly so.

And I know that because, unlike you, I *was* there. All along, throughout. Intact, I secured and donated the 'Stop the Clause' office, and its phone (a land-line, natch) ..

@sacha_coward ... and it's access to a roneostat, and and a typewriter. You won't know what these antique instruments are so I'll tell you that they were the basic tools of grassroots activist campaigns back in the day, before Twitter and mobile phones and the Internet.

@sacha_coward And on the day the clause was introduced, I was called, in my office, on a telephone tree of lesbian and gay activists, and told that we would meet that evening, in Islington Town Hall, to discuss what to do about it.

And so after work, I went, as did Linda Bellos and Bob ...

@sacha_coward ... Crossman, who was then the first out gay mayor and booked us the Town Hall chamber to meet in, and some others. Maybe 20 of us, most of whom I could still tell you the names of, like my old friend and comrade Stuart, or my political foe and personal drinking buddy Gill.

@sacha_coward And as we talked about what had happened in Parliament earlier that day, and the background, and what we could do about it, I said, 'Well, I can get us an office in Malet Street, and a phone line, and the basics'.

Which is what I did, the next morning.

So Rebecca moved in ...

@sacha_coward ... and worked her butter off organising the campaign from what became its headquarters - she did way more than I ever did - using the roneostat and the typewriter and the desk I had managed to provide.

But what I did do was send out the first news releases announcing the ...

@sacha_coward campaign of opposition, and providing the address and phone number for people and journalists and supporters to get in touch.

And I checked the morning mail and the gay press, and the left press and the alternative press and was delighted when we were reported and people ...

@sacha_coward ... started phoning in and writing in - this was in the days before anyone outside NASA had an e-mail address. And then the first cheque arrived, because that's how we did money back then, and it was from the branch of the National Union of Mineworkers in Dulais, in South Wales

@sacha_coward ... which had been supported by the Lesbian and Gays support the Miners Group, and the note just said, 'n solodarity' and it was enough for the police deposit to go ahead with the first demo, a couple of weeks later, which was compered by the lesbian comedy duo ...

@sacha_coward ... Parker and Klein (Karen and Debbie if I recall correctly but they were lovely and did the whole gig for free). And I think we got about 6,000 people there and met up with our Manchester comrades, who went on to organise the even bigger, much bigger, protest and rally ...

@sacha_coward ... a few months after that, in the Gree Trades Hall, with the actors from Coronation Street and Brookside and Tom Robinson singing 'Glad to be Gay' and Hazell Dean being our disco ally.

@sacha_coward And we lost and we won.

The Clause was passed into law but we had built a movement bigger than anything that went before it and, with the Miners, we got the Labour Party to change its policies so, as soon as they came to power they set about its repeal, and introducing ...

@sacha_coward ... civil partnerships, and lowering the unequal age of consent.

And in those years of that campaign, Stonewall did not exist and Casan and McKellen were always going on about how the Clause would damage the theatre and artistic expression, but our Prode marches went from ...

@sacha_coward ... yens of thousands to hundreds of thousands and trusted allies like Suzanne Moore would write favourably in the Guardian and speak on platform after platform and lend her name to debates that would help. And she would mention artistic expression but her focus was on my dignity

@sacha_coward ... and my right to expect equal treatment and to love whoever I wanted to love, and make love to them too, which was, for me, at the time, still illegal.

And so far in this story I did not come across a single trans person who was not an old fashioned gay drag queen working ...

@sacha_coward ... the circuit of gay bars - The Vauxhall Tavern, The Black Cap, The Bricklayers Arms -and the organisations for transvestites wanted nothing to do with us because that was a gay thing.

And only our enemies called us queer, and it was spat at us with invective, which is why ...

@sacha_coward ... so many of my generation still flinch at the word because another difference to today is that all this happened against the background of an epidemic for which there was no cure, no treatment and we dying.

In out thousands. And we were being told it was our own fault, ...

@sacha_coward ... that it was the wages of sin and we werenswimming in a swirling cesspit of our own making because we were filthy, pervert queers. And that was from Royals, and Police Chiefs, and Members of Parliament - like some of those who sponsored the Clause.

A clause which ...

@sacha_coward ... attacked us. Which attacked what the GLC and ILEA and other local authorities were doing to promote positive images of gay people, and provide the services we needed, which the Tories had honed in on. For that 87 election.

It wasn't a questioning of our claim, like today.

@sacha_coward It was a rolling back of what we had already.

It wasn't, like today until we started to protest, an establishment and civic institution policy consensus that was being nodded through, it was a sharp divide along party lines

So, when I read your claims that 'we will do it again,

@sacha_coward ... like we did then I don't really need to check your age to know you weren't there, you weren't part of that struggle, you did sweet FA.

I know you weren't because you are talking rot.

You,.Sacha, are a beneficiary of our work, our efforts. And you can do with your ...

@sacha_coward ... New rights whatever you want

We delivered them for you, without strings for you 2B you. That's the point. That's why we did it.

If you want to be a Queer historical revisionist making up fictions about what happened and who was there, then so be it.

You are free to do so.

@sacha_coward I'm just a bit disappointed, that's all.

Because we fought section 28 with the truth. Honestly. And we didnt ask women to give up anything.

@sacha_coward 1987 GE Election