Peter Tatchell: Bermondsey Revisited

The Sun, under the editorship of Kelvin MacKenzie, published a fake story that I had abandoned constituents to attend the Gay Olympics in San Francisco (it sounds fun, I wish I had gone). After discovering that I had staged the first gay rights protest in a Communist country – in East Germany in 1973 – his paper rewrote the incident to falsely depict me as a simpering, feeble queen who fled from the Stasi in tears.

The other red tops were no better. The News of the World carried a photo that looked retouched to give me plucked eyebrows, lipstick and eye-liner. The sneers and sniggers were endless. I was pilloried as a "self-confessed" gay rights supporter.

My mainstream Labour policies on housing, jobs and pensions were ignored by most journalists. Also passed over were my ideas for the green redevelopment of Bermondsey as an urban garden city. I was a left-winger, which led to me being demonised as "Red Pete" – a Marxist ogre who must be stopped. Much of the press portrayed me as endorsing the Trotskyite Militant Tendency. I didn't.

The Daily Star falsely claimed my selection as the Labour candidate had been fraudulent; while the Daily Mail misleadingly captioned a photo of a local supporter with the warning that I was getting a hostile reception from voters.

Xenophobia was stirred and my Australian heritage condemned. According to the Daily Express, I was a "rather exotic Australian canary who sings some odd songs". In other words: Tatchell is a foreigner and queer. These slurs on my nationality and sexuality were also spread by the Liberals to boost support for their candidate, Simon Hughes.

I was deluged with hate mail, death threats, attacks on my flat and more than 100 physical bashings. I went to sleep at night with a fire extinguisher, carving knife and large stick by my bed. I was vulnerable, yet the police refused me protection. I felt powerless to get media redress. The Press Council was useless. It sat on my complaints for months. At the start of the campaign, polls put me on 47 per cent, with the eventual victor, Simon Hughes, on less than 20 per cent. By election day, after weeks of media abuse, the levels had almost reversed. Simon romped home....

In The Independent, Peter Tatchell recalls the media's smear campaign during the Bermondsey by-election in February 1983.
Note he never was out during the campaign - who was? - as he says here, he "advocated LGBT rights".
He was first outed, I think, at a press conference by a journalist from Gay News.
I was 15 and had such a political crush on him.
A gay socialist, imagine!
The Battle For Bermondsey - with a forward by Tony Benn! - was the first "gay book" I ever bought.
From Collets, the late left-wing bookshop on Charing Cross Road.
I'd spend whole afternoons there, dreaming of all the books I could read.
Blushed while buying it, scarpered out breathless - like I'd outed myself, like that time not long after when I bought a gay porn mag on Baker Street.
For the record, I still like and admire Peter - I just don't think we should see anyone as a "saint" above criticism.
Sad he ended up conducting smear campaigns himself.