Homosexual acts
between consenting adults (only two at a time) over the age of
twenty-one and conducted behind closed doors were finally made legal
in England and Wales in 1967, ten years after the Wolfenden Report
had proposed it.
The legislation was
promoted in parliament by its sponsors, Leo Abse and Lord Arran
(named after a species of cardigan, he could never have imagined...)
as an act of kindness to the poor homosexual whose preposterous
sexual urges were certain to lead to a life of abject misery and
quite possibly to incarceration in a closed institution with other
men, which for some probably lifted the abject misery a bit. Prison
isn't for everyone, though, so decriminalisation was quite the
radical idea.
Before this time, to
society at large, gay men didn't exist. I used to meet people who
claimed it was better before 1967. I'm pretty sure they'd never been
to prison or they might have thought differently. There were also
those who told us young radicals that we shouldn't rock the boat and
that having pubs and clubs that were only occasionally raided and
friends who were only occasionally beaten up, was something for which
we should have been grateful; that sticking our heads above the
parapets was counterproductive. Of course, the very existence of such limited freedoms
was entirely due to people sticking their heads above
the parapet, but they never really understood this.
 | |
| Arran Cardigan, worn by gay cardigan enthusiasts to recognise Lord Arran's contribution to law reform. |
Wearing a cardigan
has never been a radical act, unfortunately. It is however nice to
think that Lord Arran's efforts on our behalf have been commemorated
by the Arran cardigan.
Before and even
after the '67 act there were subversive activities going on. There
were code words used in ads in the straight press (I met a very nice
man back in 1978 through the NME personal ads which were awash at
that time with “Tom Robinson fans”, all, as I was, under age and
excluded from other media). The radio, or as we used to call it back
then, the radio, had requests for records on Housewives Choice to
celebrate ruby weddings, which was code. There was also Julian and
Sandy on Round the Horne whose outrageous polari went over most
people's heads. And who could forget the Jimmy Savile Violent
Non-Consensual Sodomy Hour on the Light Programme on Saturday
mornings (only kidding, he did a lot of great work for charidee...).
There were also
magazines, not many though. One was called Jeremy and ran for
a while, available hardly anywhere. For the cardigan aficionado there
was Men's Cardigans, four issues a year of men wearing
knitted cardigans, smoking pipes and looking frightfully normal. It
could have been mistaken for knitting patterns but there was not much
knit-one-purl-one going on, just a load of code amid a sea of
innocuousness and, naturally, tobacco advertisements as well as ads for
car coats and driving gloves.
 | |
| Men's Cardigan from 1965. Rather nice card modelled by someone thankfully not smoking a pipe. I'm betting it's in his pocket. |
Arran cardigans were
undoubtedly featured, but back in 1965 they had little to celebrate.
Happy new year.
