Backs to the Wall: Learning from Clause 28

In this country the UK government is progressing with its legislation on free speech in universities, and the Scottish government is getting into all kinds of trouble in trying to pass legislation around gender identity. Much of this debate is presented in terms of ‘academic freedom’ or ‘free speech’ and both sides are clearly poles apart. It is also seen as part of a wider ‘culture war’ that has been spreading across the US, and beyond that through Canada, Australia, the UK and elsewhere for many years now.

I have heard others say that in the light of the invasion of Ukraine, or the global climate crisis (to take just two examples) such ‘petty’ disputes fade into insignificance. Who can worry about what we can or cannot say about race, or gender, when others are being killed in Russian bombing raids at the heart of Europe and the world is failing to tackle the crisis in our climate that could kill many millions of people?

What comes to my mind when I read of this activity are the campaigns in the 1990s around Clause 28 (introduced into UK legislation in 1988). In this clause the UK government set out to ban the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality in schools. As with many of the debates in the States today around race, and the current debate about gender identity, this also led to the banning of books and a concern about the potential corruption of younger generations, especially children. In the 1990s case a children’s book about a young child who lived with two dads became the subject of concern and negative campaigns. Public libraries and schools were petitioned not to stock the book and shops were picketed in an attempt to make sure it was not distributed.

Clause 28 was a major cause for the gay community, alongside fighting for recognition for AIDS patients, and the two were closely related. It was the presence of AIDS, and its popular image as a ‘gay plague’ that gave the Conservative government the moral cover to impose Clause 28. It was not referred to, in those days, in terms of ‘culture wars’ but, of course, it was exactly the same principle that was at play, and much the same groups that were lined up on either side of the debate. It was a discussion, in theory, about ‘morality’ and ‘protecting children from harm’ but it was, at heart, discrimination pure and simple, enacted in legislation.

Clause 28 was finally repealed in 2003 and the gay community celebrated widely. It was only a few years later that gay marriage was also legalised in the UK, and the gay community gained a range of other rights, bringing inequality for those who identified as lesbian and gay in particular to levels that would have been unimaginable in the 1980s or before. We are now at the stage where Tom Daly and Elton John (to name but two), and their respective husbands and children, are feted by the press and treated as national treasures, beloved of the nation, including many children. This is a very long way from the banning of books about children and their two dads. We can, perhaps, hardly believe that the Clause 28 legislation was ever enacted, or at least, that so many people at the time supported it.

The situation in the United States is clearly very different and far more complex even today. The latest reports are of certain conservative States banning drag shows in public spaces as they are thought to have the potential to corrupt the young. Other countries, of course, still have a very long way to go and racism and homophobia are far from settled even here in the UK.

The learning point in all this, however, is obvious, at least to me (but there will no doubt be many out there who disagree with me). Clause 28 is often seen as the last gasp, the final throw of the dice, from those who held prejudicial views on homosexuality (often derived from their own upbringing). It was an act of desperation by those who saw that society at large, and the younger generation in particular, were rejecting their own understanding of morality and establishing a new order, in which sexual orientation was becoming less of an issue and being gay, lesbian, bi-sexual or whatever was being seen as unremarkable, if not exactly normal.

Is it possible, therefore, that the current banning of teaching around critical race theory and transgender rights in the States, and the opposition to trans rights in the UK, is itself a sign of a desperate, aging, conservative minority (who happen to hold on to power for now) in the face of an inevitable and unstoppable change in society more generally? Will we all be ‘woke’ in ten years’ time? Will we wonder, in twenty years’ time, what all the fuss was about? Probably. Hopefully. It does not, of course, make life any easier for black Americans, or transgender people in the meantime, as life was not at all easy for the gay community in the face of Clause 28. Nor does it mean that we should stop fighting these bigoted views. We are all in the debt of those brave few who challenged Clause 28 in the 1990s.

However, there may be hope on the horizon. If we see these actions, including the debate about free speech, as nothing more than the desperate acts of the prejudiced few who now have their backs against the wall and are thrashing out in one last gasp of outdated values, then we should perhaps be less concerned about the impact of legislation, at least in the long term, while constantly fighting to have it repealed. We should, perhaps, also respond with more understanding to those who find it difficult to change the views that are so entrenched. That will only come through listening, sharing, and speaking out, not by refusing people the right to speak.