The incomparable and tireless champion of gay rights, civil rights and free speech, Patron Saint here at Dolores Delargo Towers, Mr Peter Tatchell is 70 years old today!
From his own Foundation's press release:
Peter Tatchell is one of Britain’s best known and longest surviving LGBT+ and human rights campaigners. He’s supported nearly every major human rights campaign for the last half a century – and taken on everyone from Mike Tyson to Tony Blair and the Archbishop of Canterbury.He first began campaigning while still at school in 1967 aged 15, against the death penalty and the execution of Ronald Ryan in his home state of Victoria, Australia. He went on to champion indigenous Aboriginal rights and oppose Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War. On moving to London in 1971, he was prominent in the newly-formed Gay Liberation Front and ... helped organise the UK’s first LGBT+ Pride parade in 1972 – this July being the 50th anniversary...
He stood as the Labour candidate in the notorious 1983 Bermondsey by-election – often regarded as the dirtiest, most violent and homophobic election in Britain since 1945. In 1990 he was a founding member of the LGBT+ campaign group OutRage! Its activism against homophobic discrimination included the most numerous and sustained direct action protests in Britain since the suffragettes.
Over the last five decades, he’s participated in 3,000 peaceful protests, been arrested 100 times and suffered 300 violent assaults by homophobes and far right extremists, including 50 attacks on his flat. He has described the violent assaults as like living through a low-level civil war. For many years he suffered from PTSD.
He was beaten unconscious by President Mugabe’s bodyguards when he tried to make a citizen’s arrest in Brussels in 2001 and suffered a severe beating by neo-Nazis in Moscow in 2007 when he supported the bid by Russian LGBTs to hold a Pride parade.
“My coordination, memory, balance, vision and concentration are somewhat impaired. Campaigning is more difficult but I still manage. I’ve no regrets. Compared to the jailing and torturing of human rights defenders in China, Russia, Syria and Uganda, I’ve got off lightly,” said Mr Tatchell.
All hail!
We would really love to see the recent film of the great man's life - co-produced (i.e. funded) by Sir Elton John and Peter Furnish, and featuring (among others) commentary and tributes from esteemed gayers such as Stephen Fry and Sir Ian "Serena" McKellen - Hating Peter Tatchell, but unfortunately it seems to have been snapped up by that behemoth Netflix, a service to which we stalwart BBC-ers would never subscribe, so I doubt we will get the opportunity for a while...
Regardless, we charge our glasses to a true hero!
Peter Gary Tatchell (born 25th January 1952)
Today also happens to be Burns' Night - yet another excuse for Scots to get pissed on whisky and eat pig guts - so what better way to pay tribute to Mr Tatchell's milestone birthday than with one of Scotland's finest bands and an appropriate choon?
OCH, AYE!
Oh, I have Netflix - I will let you know what the film is like.
ReplyDeleteAnd I wonder what this nice young man has going on beneath his kilt.
Sx
It looks like it should be a good documentary. Jx
DeletePS I'd hope that nice young man has rather a lot going on under all that unnecessary material...
Brave man.
ReplyDeleteI'm more worried about Amazon and Apple having so much control of broadcasting than Netflix, then again I don't have Netflix either.
I really like haggis! Don't know what people have got against it. Probably worse things in a sausage
"The less the people know about how sausages and laws are made, the better they'll sleep at night." - Otto Von Bismarck (attrib.)
DeleteJx
Love that van in the vid. The group, song, strikes me as very Dexy's Midnight Runner's. Tatchell has quite an impressive resume'. And, while I long to see Scotland, I do not look forward to the food... at all.
ReplyDeleteThe Bluebells were of an era when "that sound" was very popular [cf. Aztec Camera, Orange Juice, The Housemartins, Lightning Seeds and so on].
DeleteAs for Scottish food, I imagine (despite their reputation for "anything deep-fried", or the once-a-year haggis) it's much the same as the rest of the UK - meat, fish, veg and anything-you-can-get-at-the-supermarket. Jx
Tatchell was a cute little button in his youth and I would still be willing to share the Mr. Kilt with him, as long as he didn't get in my way.
ReplyDeleteHe had sufficient hair for you to grab in order to wrench him off. Jx
DeleteT Rex fan I'm guessing. Or Sparks
DeleteAnd today, in his birthplace, it's what the Gummint likes to call Australia Day. Some of us call it "Invasion Day." I stand (as , I expect, would Mr Tatchell, with the Aboriginal people.)
ReplyDeleteCheers! Mr T.
Not planning to sing as you stow that jumbuck in your tucker bag, then? Jx
DeleteNah...think I'll go vegan...
DeleteIn some circles stuffing the jumbuck had a different connotation.
I just had to look it up, and found that it's a slang word for sheep. I'm shuddering at those connotations... Jx
DeleteI'm not a militant homosexualist (too exhausting) so forgive my ignorance when I say wasn't he in Eastenders during the Den and Angie years?
ReplyDeleteYou're getting him mixed up with Michael Cashman (aka "Colin"), who is also a gay rights campaigner (albeit a "poof in a suit" type) who co-founded Stonewall and became an MEP. He's now a Lord.
DeleteBoth are, however, skinny and grey. Jx
a true hero indeed
ReplyDeleteHis knighthood is well overdue !
He's far too much of a "Leftie" to ever accept such a thing from the Establishment... Jx
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