Quick Facts
Biography
Peter Gary Tatchell (born 25 January 1952) a British human rights campaigner, originally from Australia, best known for his work with LGBT social movements.
Tatchell was selected as Labour Party Parliamentary candidate for Bermondsey in 1981. He was then denounced by party leader Michael Foot for allegedly supporting extra-parliamentary action against the Thatcher government. Labour subsequently allowed him to stand in the Bermondsey by-election in February 1983. In the 1990s he campaigned for LGBT rights through the direct action group OutRage!, which he co-founded. He has worked on various campaigns, such as Stop Murder Music against music lyrics allegedly inciting violence against LGBT people and writes and broadcasts on various human rights and social justice issues. He attempted a citizen's arrest of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe in 1999 and again in 2001.
In April 2004, he joined the Green Party of England and Wales and in 2007 was selected as prospective parliamentary candidate in the constituency of Oxford East, but in December 2009 announced he was standing down due to brain damage he says was caused by a bus accident as well as damage inflicted by Mugabe's bodyguards when Tatchell tried to arrest him in 2001, and by neo-Nazis in Moscow while campaigning for gay rights.
Since 2013 he has been a full-time employee of the Peter Tatchell Foundation.
Early life
Tatchell was born in Melbourne, Australia. His father was a lathe operator and his mother worked in a biscuit factory. His parents divorced when he was four and his mother remarried soon afterwards. Because the family finances were strained by medical bills, he had to leave school at 16 in 1968. He started work as a sign-writer and window-dresser in department stores. Tatchell claims to have incorporated the theatricality of these displays into his activism. Raised as a Christian, Tatchell says that he "ditched [his] faith a long time ago" and is an atheist. It is widely reported that Tatchell is a vegan; however, Tatchell himself only states that he eats no meat, but does eat eggs, cheese, and, according to Richard Fairbrass, wild salmon, meaning Tatchell is in fact a pescatarian.
He became interested in outdoor adventurous activities such as surfing and mountain climbing. Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Any Questions about how insurance and legal risks were making British teachers reluctant to take pupils on outdoor adventures, he said outdoor activities helped him develop the courage to take political risks in adult life.
Campaigns in Australia
His political activity began at Mount Waverley Secondary College, where in 1967 he launched campaigns in support of Australia's Aboriginal people. Tatchell was elected secretary of the school's Student Representative Council. In his final year in 1968, as school captain, he took the lead in setting up a scholarship scheme for Aborigines and led a campaign for Aboriginal land rights. These activities led the headmaster to claim he had been manipulated by communists.
He joined the Australian campaign against the death penalty. Prompted by the impending hanging of Ronald Ryan in 1967, Tatchell went round his local area painting slogans against the hanging, a fact he did not reveal until nearly 30 years later. Ryan was accused of killing a prison warder while escaping from Pentridge Prison in Coburg, Victoria. Tatchell claimed, unsuccessfully, that the trajectory of the bullet through the warder's body probably made it impossible that Ryan could have fired the fatal shot.
In 1968, Tatchell began campaigning against the United States' and Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War, in his view a war of aggression in support of a "brutal and corrupt dictatorship" responsible for torture and executions. The Victoria state government and Melbourne city council attempted to suppress the anti-Vietnam War campaign by banning street leafleting and taking police action against anti-war demonstrations.
In 2004, he proposed the renaming of Australian capital cities with their Aborigine place names.
Gay Liberation Front
To avoid conscription into the Australian Army, Tatchell moved to London in 1971. He had accepted being gay in 1969, and in London became a leading member of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) until its 1974 collapse. During this time Tatchell was prominent in organising sit-ins at pubs that refused to serve "poofs" and protests against police harassment and the medical classification of homosexuality as an illness. With others he helped organise Britain's first Gay Pride march in 1972.
In 1973 he attended the 10th World Youth Festival in East Berlin on GLF's behalf. His actions triggered opposition within and between different groups of national delegates including the Communist Party of Great Britain and National Union of Students. He was banned from conferences, had his leaflets confiscated and burned, was interrogated by the secret police (the Stasi) and threatened and assaulted by other delegates, mostly communists. Tatchell later claimed that this was the first time gay liberation politics were publicly disseminated and discussed in a communist country, although he noted that, in terms of decriminalisation and the age of consent, gay men had greater rights in East Germany at the time than in Britain and much of the West.
Describing his time in the Gay Liberation Front, he wrote in The Guardian that:
Graduation
After taking A levels at evening classes, he attended the Polytechnic of North London (now the London Metropolitan University) (PNL), where he obtained a 2:1 BSc (Hons) in sociology.
At PNL he was a member of the National Union of Students Gay Rights Campaign. On graduating he became a freelance journalist specialising in foreign stories, during which he publicised the Indonesian annexation of West Papua and child labour on British-owned tea farms in Malawi.
Political activity
Tatchell popularised the phrase "sexual apartheid" to describe the separate laws that long existed for gays and heterosexuals.
Labour candidate for Bermondsey
In 1978, Tatchell joined the Labour Party and moved to a council flat in Bermondsey, south-east London.
From October 1979, he became a leading member in a group of left-wingers planning to depose the right-wing caucus of Southwark councillors that controlled the Bermondsey Constituency Labour Party (CLP). At CLP's AGM in February 1980, the left group won control and Tatchell was elected Secretary.
When the sitting Labour MP, Bob Mellish,announced his retirement in 1981, Tatchell was selected as his successor. The selection was a surprise, as Arthur Latham, a former MP and former Chairman of the Tribune Group, was the favourite. Later, the Militant group was cited as the reason for Tatchell's selection, but he has said that it had only a handful of members at that time in the constituency; he had never been a member and Militant did not support his selection. Tatchell ascribed his selection to the support of the "older, 'born and bred' working class; the younger professional and intellectual members swung behind Latham".
Due to Tatchell's support for direct action in the London Labour Briefing newsletter, Tatchell was denounced by party leader Michael Foot for allegedly supporting extra-parliamentary action against the Thatcher government; according to Tony Benn, Foot lied about Tatchell's alleged extremism in order to allow the Social Democratic Party to rejoin the Labour Party. Neil Kinnock stated that the whole affair was a matter of political judgement, asking "the question is: are we talking of extra-parliamentary or anti-parliamentary behaviour?" The fact that Tatchell was a gay man was also considered by some as a factor as to why Tatchell should not be supported.
Labour subsequently allowed him to stand in the Bermondsey by-election, held in February 1983.
Bermondsey by-election
In an article for a left-wing magazine, Tatchell urged the Labour Party to support direct action campaigning to challenge the Margaret Thatcher-led Tory government. Social Democratic Party MP James Wellbeloved, arguing the article was anti-Parliamentary, quoted it at Prime Minister's Questions in December 1981 to embarrass Labour leader Michael Foot. Unexpectedly, Foot denounced Tatchell, stating that he would not be endorsed as a candidate. Foot narrowly won a vote at the Labour Party National Executive Committee to deny Tatchell's endorsement. However, the Bermondsey Labour Party continued to support him and he worked on convincing Foot that his article was in the tradition of the Chartists and the Suffragettes and had been misinterpreted by his political opponents. It was eventually agreed that when the selection was rerun, Tatchell would be eligible, and he duly won. When Mellish resigned from Parliament and triggered a by-election, Tatchell's candidacy was endorsed.
The divisions in the Labour Party, which Tatchell's far left views had exposed, and his homosexuality (which he refused to confirm or deny in media appearances), were used against him, in an election campaign widely regarded as one of the dirtiest and most violent in modern British history. Tatchell was assaulted in the street, had his flat attacked, and had a death threat and a live bullet put through his letterbox in the night. Although the Bermondsey seat had long been a Labour stronghold, the Liberal candidate, Simon Hughes, won the election. During the campaign, allegations were made that some Liberal canvassers stirred up xenophobia and homophobia on the doorsteps, playing up the fact that Tatchell was born in Australia and making an issue of his homosexuality. Members of the Liberal Gay Action Group campaigned wearing lapel badges emblazoned with the words, "I've been kissed by Peter Tatchell" to rebut the view held by some that he was attempting to hide his sexuality (see Bermondsey by-election, 1983). One of Hughes' campaign leaflets was condemned for claiming the election was "a straight choice" between Liberal and Labour, but this phrase is regularly used by many parties within the UK, and Hughes has since apologised for what may have been seen as an inadvertent slur. Hughes later came out as bisexual in 2006.
In the mid- and late 1980s, Tatchell wrote books including The Battle for Bermondsey (the story of the by-election), Democratic Defence and a ground-breaking guide to surviving with HIV and AIDS, AIDS: A Guide to Survival. His book Europe in the Pink described the varying laws on homosexuality through the European Union. In 1990 Tatchell sought (unsuccessfully) the Labour nomination for Hampstead and Highgate, but was defeated by actress Glenda Jackson.
Democratic Defence
Tatchell's book Democratic Defence was published in 1985. This outlined how defence of the United Kingdom might be assured after the nuclear disarmament that he and the Labour Party were then committed to. (Labour has since abandoned this policy.) Tatchell argued that the British military was still organised on an imperialist strategy of basing troops abroad rather than on a strategy of defending the UK itself against foreign attacks. Citing the problems that the British army was facing in Northern Ireland, he argued that their long-established methods were ineffective against guerilla warfare. He argued for a range of methods to liberalise the regime in the armed forces so that troops could be allowed to join trade unions and political parties, and to end [what he referred to as] the "bull" of "petty regulations" and harsh punishments for violating them. He upheld the British Home Guard as an example of a citizens' army that had been effective in fighting Nazi Germany, and also upheld the armed forces of Sweden, Switzerland and Yugoslavia as effective in deterring foreign aggression.
Tatchell argued for withdrawal from NATO and for the establishment of a European Self-Defence Organisation, independent of both the United States and the Soviet Union. Regarding the United States, he felt that Europe had become too dependent on their military protection and that this was inappropriate given the differing interests of many European countries. He condemned the Soviet Union's invasions of Czechoslovakia and of Afghanistan, as well as condemning its internal repression. He wrote, "It is quite evident that the Soviet system today represents the complete opposite of everything that the left in the West is striving for..." He quoted with approval Enoch Powell's argument that the threat from the Soviet Union to the UK was exaggerated.
Green issues
In February 2000 Tatchell resigned from Labour, citing the treatment of Ken Livingstone during the nomination of a candidate for Mayor of London, and of similar cases in the Scottish and Welsh elections, as evidence that the party "no longer has any mechanism for democratic involvement and transformation". He fought unsuccessfully for a seat on the London Assembly as an Independent candidate within the Green Left grouping, in support of Livingstone. On 7 April 2004 he announced that he had joined the Green Party of England and Wales but did not envisage standing for election. However, in 2007, he became the party's parliamentary candidate for Oxford East.
On 16 December 2009, he withdrew as a candidate claiming brain damage from an assault while protesting in Brussels in 2001, while protesting in Moscow in 2007 and in a bus accident in July 2009.
Tatchell opposes nuclear power; instead he advocates concentrated solar power. In Tribune, he pointed out the adverse effects of climate change: "By 2050, if climate change proceeds unchecked, England will no longer be a green and pleasant land. In between periods of prolonged scorching drought, we are likely to suffer widespread flooding."
For many years, he supported a green-red alliance. More recently, he helped launch the Green Left grouping within the Green Party. He urged links between trade unions and the Greens. On 27 April 2010, he urged Green Party supporters to vote for Liberal Democrats in constituencies where they had an incumbent MP or a strong chance of winning.
Iraq War
Tatchell opposed the war in Iraq, and its subsequent occupation. For nearly three decades he had previously supported the Iraqi Left Opposition, helping them remove the government of Saddam Hussein because of the gross violations of human rights Saddam had committed against democrats, left-wingers, trade unionists, Shia Muslims and the Kurdish people, and because under Saddam's dictatorship there were no opportunities for peaceful, democratic change. He advocated military and financial aid to opponents of the Saddam government, suggesting that anti-Saddam organisations be given "tanks, helicopter gun-ships, fighter planes, heavy artillery and anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles". While opposing western intervention, he advocated regime change from within in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Syria." Tatchell has written that on 12 March 2003 he ambushed Tony Blair's motorcade in an anti-Iraq war protest. He forced Blair's limousine to stop, and then unfolded a banner that read "Arm the Kurds! Topple Saddam". He added that in terms of the political struggle within Britain (as opposed to struggles against absolute tyrants like Hitler and Saddam, where violent resistance can be the lesser of two evils): "I remain committed to the Gandhian principle of non-violence". After the war he signed the 'Unite Against Terror' declaration, arguing that "the pseudo-left reveals its shameless hypocrisy and its wholesale abandonment of humanitarian values" by supporting resistance and insurgent groups in Iraq that resort to indiscriminate terrorism, killing innocent civilians.
In 2003 Tatchell said he supported giving "massive material aid" to Iraqi opposition groups, including the "Shi'ite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq" (SCIRI), to bring down Saddam. But in 2006 Tatchell noted that SCIRI had become markedly more fundamentalist and was endorsing violent attacks on anyone who did not conform to its increasingly harsh interpretation of Islam. He claimed that SCIRI, the leading force in Baghdad's ruling coalition, wanted to establish an Iranian-style religious dictatorship, with a goal of clerical fascism, and had engaged in "terrorisation of gay Iraqis", as well as terrorising Sunni Muslims, left-wingers, unveiled women and people who listen to western pop music or wear jeans or shorts.
In September 2014, Tatchell advocated arming the Kurdistan Workers Party to fight against ISIS, and argued that the USA and EU had been wrong to designate it as a terrorist organisation. In November 2015, Tatchell condemned the conviction of British teenager Silhan Özçelik for trying to join the Kurdistan Workers Party.
Syrian civil war
A previous supporter of the Stop the War Coalition, Tatchell and many other public personalities expressed concern with the coalition's allegedly unduly favourable view of Bashar al-Assad's government in Syria, and has called for the Labour leader and former Stop the War Chair Jeremy Corbyn not to attend the Coalition's Christmas fundraiser 2015. In December 2016, Tatchell and others disrupted Corbyn's speech on human rights on the basis that the Labour leader had responded insufficiently to the bombing of Aleppo and urged him to condemn Russian military intervention in Syria.
Balochistan
Since 2006, he expressed concern for the Baloch people facing military operations in their homeland, Balochistan in Pakistan. From 2007 to 2009, he campaigned in defence of two UK-based Baloch Muslim human rights activists, Hyrbyair Marri and Faiz Baluch, accused of terrorism charges and tried in London. Both men were acquitted in 2009. He alleged British and U.S. collusion with the suppression of the Balochs, including arms sales to Pakistan, which he says were used to bomb and attack Baloch towns and villages.
Activities in Moscow
In May 2006 Tatchell attended the first Moscow Pride Festival. He appears in the documentary Moscow Pride '06 featuring this event.
In May 2007 Tatchell returned to Moscow to support Moscow Pride and to voice his opposition to a ban on the march, staying at the flat of an American diplomat. On 27 May 2007, Tatchell and other gay rights activists were attacked. He was punched in the face and nearly knocked unconscious, while other demonstrators were beaten, kicked and assaulted. A German MP, Volker Beck, and a European Parliament deputy from Italy, Marco Cappato, were also punched before being arrested and questioned by police. Tatchell later said "I'm not deterred one iota from coming back to protest in Moscow." On his release, Tatchell made a report on the incident to the American Embassy.
On 16 May 2009, the day of the final of the Eurovision Song Contest in Moscow, Russian gay rights activists staged a protest in Moscow in defiance of the city's mayor, Yuri Luzkhov, who had long banned gay demonstrations and denounced them as "satanic". Tatchell was among 32 campaigners arrested when they shouted slogans and unfurled banners.
NUS politics
On 14 February 2015, Tatchell was one of a number of signatories to a letter criticising the trend in the British National Union of Students to apply a No Platform policy to feminists who criticised the sex industry or challenged demands made by certain groups of trans people. In particular, the letter cited the denial of a platform to Kate Smurthwaite at Goldsmith's College and to Germaine Greer at the University of Cambridge.
Tatchell received death threats after signing the letter. He later stated that he would have worded the letter differently to clarify that he supported the human rights of trans people and sex workers, but that he had signed the letter nonetheless because he believed in the message of free speech on campuses. He said that the initial draft that he signed contained the sentence "Some of us have disagreements with the views expressed [by feminist critics of trans people]", and that he was "not happy" that this was cut out of the final letter.
On 13 February 2016, Fran Cowling, the national LGBT representative for the NUS, refused to share a platform with Tatchell at Canterbury Christ Church University to discuss the topic of "re-radicalising queers". Cowling said that Tatchell supported speakers who are "openly transphobic and incite violence" against transgender people, and also that Tatchell had used "racist language". Tatchell responded that no evidence could be produced to support either claim, and that Cowling had never consulted the NUS membership before deciding to make pronouncements on their behalf, and said "This sorry, sad saga is symptomatic of the decline of free and open debate on some university campuses. There is a witch-hunting, accusatory atmosphere. Allegations are made without evidence to back them – or worse, they are made citing false, trumped-up evidence."
Campaigns
OutRage!
Tatchell took part in many gay rights campaigns over issues such as Section 28. Following the murder of actor Michael Boothe on 10 May 1990, Tatchell was one of thirty people to attend the inaugural meeting of the radical gay rights non-violent direct action group OutRage! – although he was not a co-founder – and has remained a leading member. The group fuses theatrical performance styles with queer protest. As the most prominent OutRage! member, Tatchell is sometimes assumed to be the leader of the group, though he has never claimed this, saying he is one among equals.
In 1991, a small group of OutRage! members covertly formed a separate group to engage in a campaign of outing public figures who were homophobic in public but gay in private. The group took the name FROCS (Faggots Rooting Out Closeted Sexuality). Tatchell was the group's go-between with the press, forwarding their news statements to his media contacts. Considerable publicity and public debate followed FROCS's threat to out 200 leading public personalities from the world of politics, religion, business and sport. With Tatchell's assistance, members of FROCS eventually called a press conference to tell the world that their campaign was a hoax intended to demonstrate the hypocrisy of those newspapers that had condemned the campaign despite having themselves outed celebrities and politicians.
Some OutRage! activities were highly controversial. In 1994, it unveiled placards inviting ten Church of England bishops to "tell the truth" about what Outrage! alleged was their homosexuality and accusing them of condemning homosexuality in public while leading secret gay lives. Shortly afterwards the group wrote to twenty UK MPs, condemning their alleged support for anti-gay laws and claiming they would out them if the MPs did not stop what they described as attacks on the gay community. The MP Sir James Kilfedder, one such opponent of gay equality, who had received one of the letters, died two months later of a sudden heart attack on the day one of the Belfast newspapers planned to out him. In a comment in The Independent in October 2003, Tatchell claimed the OutRage! action against the bishops was his greatest mistake because he failed to anticipate that the media and the church would treat it as an invasion of privacy.
On 12 April 1998, Tatchell led an OutRage! protest, which disrupted the Easter sermon by George Carey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, with Tatchell mounting the pulpit to denounce what he claimed was Carey's opposition to legal equality for lesbian and gay people. The protest garnered media coverage and led to Tatchell's prosecution under the little-used Ecclesiastical Courts Jurisdiction Act 1860 (formerly part of the Brawling Act 1551), which prohibits any form of disruption or protest in a church. Tatchell failed in his attempt to summon Carey as a witness and was convicted. The judge fined him the trivial sum of £18.60, which commentators theorised was a wry allusion to the year of the statute used to convict him.
The LGBT press dubbed him "Saint Peter Tatchell" following further OutRage! campaigns involving religion.
A number of African LGBTI leaders signed a statement condemning the involvement of Tatchell and OutRage! in African issues, which led Tatchell to respond that he favoured working with the radical LGBTI groups in Africa rather than the more conservative (according to him) leaders who had signed the statement. Tatchell and OutRage! published a refutation of the allegations.
OutRage!'s protest against Chief Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits, who supported the idea of genetic engineering to eliminate homosexuality, led to accusations that Tatchell was antisemitic, following OutRage!'s leaflets citing the similarity of Jakobovits ideas for the eradication of homosexuality to those of Heinrich Himmler were distributed outside the Western and Marble Arch Synagogue on the Rosh Hashanah in September 1993. Rabbi Julia Neuberger, who had campaigned for gay rights, said "Drawing a comparison between Lord Jakobovits and Himmler is offensive, racist and [...] makes OutRage appear antisemitic". She stated that the action and leaflet would "alienate Jews who are sympathetic to gay rights".
Stop Murder Music campaign
Tatchell argues that a number of Afro-Caribbean artists produce music that glorifies murder of homosexual men, and incites violence against homosexuals. He argued that British laws against incitement to violence were not being enforced on foreign artists traveling to the UK. He also organised protests outside the concerts of singers whose lyrics he says incite violence, mainly Jamaican dancehall and ragga artists who he says glorify violence toward lesbians and gay men, including murder. Tatchell's campaign began in the early 1990s when Buju Banton's song "Boom bye-bye" was released. He has picketed the MOBO Awards ceremony to protest at their inviting performers of what he terms "murder music". Tatchell argues that murder is not legal in Jamaica, and glorification of murder is not a legitimate form of Afro-Caribbean culture. In response Tatchell received death threats and was labelled racist. Tatchell defended himself by noting that the campaign was at the behest of the Jamaican gay rights group J-Flag, and the UK-based Black Gay Men's Advisory Group, with which he works closely. He also pointed to what he described as his life's work campaigning against racism and apartheid and stated that his campaigns against "murder music" and state-sanctioned homophobic violence in Jamaica were endorsed by black Jamaican gay rights activists such as Jamaican Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays (J-FLAG), and by many straight human rights activists in Jamaica (male homosexuality remains illegal in Jamaica). The campaign has had positive effects with seven of eight original murder music singers signing the Reggae Compassion Act, which says that signatories will not "make statements or perform songs" that incite hatred or violence.
Members of the Rastafari movement accused Tatchell of racism and extremism, saying, "He has gone over way over the top. It's simply racist to put Hitler and Sizzla in the same bracket and just shows how far he is prepared to go." Tatchell denies equating Sizzla with Hitler.
Age of consent laws
Tatchell contributed a chapter to the 1980 book Betrayal of Youth that questioned whether 16 was the appropriate age of consent, but did not make any specific recommendation for the appropriate age. He wrote in 2012 that he would not have written for the book had he known that the editor and many of the other contributors were involved in paedophile advocacy.
In 1996 Tatchell led an OutRage! campaign to reduce the age of consent in the UK to 14 years, to adjust for studies that showed nearly half of all young people had their first sexual experiences prior to 16 years old, regardless of sexuality. He stated that he wished to exempt these people from being "treated as criminals by the law," and that the campaign claimed there should be no prosecution if the difference in ages of the sexual partners was no more than three years, provided that these youths are given a more comprehensive sex education at a younger date. He was quoted in the OutRage!'s press release as saying "Young people have a right to accept or reject sex, according to what they feel is appropriate for them". Leo McKinstry, in The Sun, called the release "a perverts' charter".
In a 1997 letter to The Guardian, Tatchell defended an academic book about "boy-love," calling the work "courageous," before writing:
Tatchell has since reiterated that he does not condone adults having sex with children. On his personal website, under the subsection Age of Consent, he writes:
On Tatchell's personal website he also states that "My Guardian letter cited examples of youths in Papuan tribes and some of my friends who, when they were under 16, had sex with adults (over 18s), but who do not feel they were harmed. I was not endorsing their viewpoint but merely stating that they had a different perspective from the mainstream opinion about inter-generational sex. They have every right for their perspective to be heard." He also debunks various claims that his critics (such as the British National Party) made against him, such as his contributions to the Betrayal of Youth (BOY) book, published by Warren Middleton of the Paedophile Information Exchange, stating that:
He also comments on an interview he conducted in the late 1990s on the subject of paedophilia and child prostitution, in which he interviewed a 14-year-old boy (under the pseudonym "Lee") who had had sex with older men, in some cases for money. In this interview, Tatchell makes various counterarguments against Lee's point of view, such as: "How can a young child understand sex and give meaningful consent?", "Perhaps your friends were particularly mature for their age. Most young people are not so sophisticated about sex", "Many people worry that the power imbalance in a relationship between a youth and an adult means the younger person can be easily manipulated and exploited", "Many people fear that making sex easier for under-age teenagers will expose them to dangers like HIV. Isn't that a legitimate worry?".
In the Irish Independent on 10 March 2008 he repeated his call for a lower age of consent to end the criminalisation of young people engaged in consenting sex and to remove the legal obstacles to upfront sex education, condom provision and safer sex advice. In 1998 and 2008, he supported relaxation of the then strict laws against pornography, arguing that porn can have some social benefits, and he has criticised what he calls the body-shame phobia against nudism, suggesting that nudity may be natural and healthy for society.
He opposed the appointment of Ruth Kelly as Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government in 2006, as Kelly had not supported equal treatment of lesbians and gay men in any parliamentary votes. Tatchell said "her appointment suggests the government does not take lesbian and gay rights seriously", adding "Tony Blair would never appoint someone to a race-equality post who had a lukewarm record of opposing racism".
Civil partnerships
Tatchell has pledged his support for opposite-sex couples to be allowed to have civil partnerships, stating that some opposite-sex couples dislike the "sexist, homophobic history of [the institution of] marriage", and allowing them into civil partnerships "is simply a matter of equality". Writing for his organisation the Peter Tatchell Foundation, he claims that:
Writing for Pink News, he continues:
Foreign politics
Imperialism
While still at school, Tatchell campaigned in favour of better treatment of, and full human rights for, the Aboriginal people of Australia. He believes that Australian cities should be renamed with their original Aboriginal place names, to sever ties with the colonial era. For example, he wants the Tasmanian capital Hobart to be renamed Nibberluna, arguing that this would be a fitting tribute to Australia's Aboriginal heritage, which he says has been discarded and disrespected for too long.
His anti-imperialist activism began in 1968 and involved campaigns against the war in Vietnam. He participated in the mass Vietnam Moratorium protests in his Melbourne in 1970. The same year he founded and was elected secretary of the inter-denominational anti-war movement, Christians for Peace. Later, on moving to London in 1971, he was active in solidarity work with the independence movements in Mozambique, Angola, Guinea Bissau, Namibia, Eritrea, Oman, New Hebrides, Western Sahara, Palestine, East Timor and West Papua.
In 2002, he brought an unsuccessful legal action in Bow Street Magistrate's Court for the arrest of the former U.S. Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, on charges of war crimes in Vietnam and Cambodia.
Despite Tatchell's history of anti-imperialist campaigning, far-left promoters of cultural relativism allege he is a "cultural imperialist" or "gay imperialist".
Zimbabwe
Part of Tatchell's political activism and journalism in the 1970s involved the Bush War (or Second Chimurenga) in Rhodesia, in which he supported the black nationalist movement, including the Zimbabwe African National Union and its military wing. Mugabe's denunciation of male homosexuality in 1995 led Tatchell to help organise a protest for LGBT rights in Zimbabwe outside the Zimbabwe High Commission in London. Two years later, he passed through police security disguised as a TV cameraman to quiz Mugabe during the "Africa at 40" conference at Central Hall, Westminster. Mugabe told him that allegations of human rights abuses were grossly exaggerated; he became agitated when Tatchell told him that he was gay. Mugabe's minders summoned Special Branch guards, who ejected Tatchell. On 26 October 1997 a letter from Tatchell to The Observer argued that the United Kingdom should suspend aid to Zimbabwe because of its violence against LGBT people.
Tatchell researched the Gukurahundi attacks in Matabeleland in the 1980s, when the Zimbabwean Fifth Brigade attacked supporters of the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union. He became convinced that Mugabe had broken international human rights law during the attack, which is estimated to have involved the massacre of around 20,000 civilians. Then in 1999, journalists Mark Chavunduka and Ray Choto were tortured by the Zimbabwe Army. The arrest of Augusto Pinochet in London seemed to him a precedent that human rights violations could be pursued against a head of state, thanks to the principle of universal jurisdiction. On 30 October 1999 Tatchell and three other OutRage! activists approached Mugabe's car in a London street and attempted to perform a citizen's arrest. Tatchell opened the car door and grabbed Mugabe. He then called the police. The four OutRage! activists were arrested, on charges including criminal damage, assault and breach of the peace; charges were dropped on the opening day of their trial. Mugabe responded by describing Tatchell and his OutRage! colleagues as "gay gangsters", a slogan frequently repeated by his supporters, and claimed they had been sent by the United Kingdom government.
On 5 March 2001 Tatchell believed Mugabe was about to visit Brussels. He went there and attempted a second citizen's arrest. Mugabe's bodyguards were seen knocking him to the floor. Later that day, Tatchell was briefly knocked unconscious by Mugabe's bodyguards and was left with permanent damage to his right eye. The protest drew worldwide headlines, as Mugabe was highly unpopular in the Western world for his land redistribution policy. Tatchell's actions were praised by Zimbabwean activists and many of the newspapers that had previously denounced him.
Tatchell ultimately failed in his attempt to secure an international arrest warrant against Mugabe on torture charges. The magistrate argued that Mugabe had immunity from prosecution as a serving head of state.
In late 2003 Tatchell acted as a press spokesman for the launch of the Zimbabwe Freedom Movement, which claimed to be a clandestine group within Zimbabwe committed to overthrowing the Mugabe government by force. The civic action support group Sokwanele urged Tatchell to check his sources, speculating that it might have been by the Zimbabwe government to justify violent action. This speculation proved to be unfounded. The Mugabe regime dismissed the ZFM as a "hoax." However, two Central Intelligence Organization members were spotted and turned away from the ZFM launch, as shown in the film "Peter Tatchell: Just who does he think he is?" by Max Barber.
South Africa
A long-time anti-apartheid activist (from 1969), his lobbying of the ANC in 1987 contributed to it renouncing homophobia and making its first public commitment to lesbian and gay human rights. Later, in 1989 and 1990, he helped persuade the ANC to include a ban on anti-gay discrimination in the post-apartheid constitution (he assisted in drafting model clauses for the ANC). See: Sex and Politics in South Africa (Double Storey Books, Cape Town, 2005, pp. 140–149).
He was involved in the anti-apartheid movement from 1969 until the end of the white minority regime in 1990; being a regular protester and speaker at the 24/7 non-stop, four-year-long picket outside South Africa House.
Gaza and the West Bank
For nearly four decades, Tatchell has campaigned for Gaza and the West Bank to be the basis of an independent Palestinian state. In May 2004, he and a dozen other OutRage! members, including gay Arabs, joined a London demonstration organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Their placards read "Israel: stop persecuting Palestine! Palestine: stop persecuting queers!" (the latter a reference to the arrest, jailing and torture of homosexuals by the Palestinian authorities). The OutRage! presence was greeted with hostility by some other demonstrators, and Tatchell claims they accused him of being a Mossad agent sent to disrupt the march, of being a racist or a Zionist, a supporter of Ariel Sharon or an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency or MI5. Tatchell has written a number of articles in the Guardian on the issue.
2008 Olympics
In April 2008, Tatchell attempted to disrupt the procession of the Olympic torch though London. As a protest against China's human rights record he stood in front of the bus carrying the torch along Oxford Street while carrying a placard calling on Beijing to "Free Tibet, Free Hu Jia" (the name of a recently jailed human rights activist). Tatchell was taken away by police but was not charged. In an interview Tatchell called on the world to boycott the opening ceremony of the Olympics, or to take other visible action.
Iran
Tatchell is a critic of Capital punishment in Iran. Within Iran, the criminal code has parts based on sharia, and punishments are prescribed for zina offenses, including consensual sexual relations between same-sex partners. Iranian members of parliament publicly support the death penalty for homosexuality. Iran is a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child which forbids the execution of juveniles, however, Iran kills juvenile offenders.
In 2005, Iran executed two teenage boys, Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni, aged 16 and 18. The Iranian government, and Iranian state media, reported that the pair were executed for raping a 13-year-old boy at knifepoint. Tatchell argued that Iran has a history of arresting political activists on false charges and extracting false confessions from death penalty convicts, and declared that he believed the original crime was consensual sex between the two, which is illegal in Iran. Tatchell reiterated his long-standing view that Iran is an "Islamo-fascist state". He argued that information from Iranian exile groups with contacts inside Iran was that the teenagers were a secret gay party before they were arrested.
International human rights groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch preferred campaigners to focus on the Convention on the Rights of the Child violations rather than the weak allegation of a connection to gay sex. Faisal Alam, founder of American Gay Muslim group Al-Fatiha, argued in the magazine Queer that Iran was condemned before the facts were certain, and in 2003 the United Nations Committee Against Torture noted that "from different and reliable sources that there currently is no active policy of prosecution of charges of homosexuality in Iran". This is disputed by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. They confirm that the death penalty exists for homosexuality in Iran and that gay and lesbian people suffer persecution, including arrest, torture, imprisonment and execution by slow strangulation. This is corroborated by the Iranian Railroad for Queer Refugees, most of whose members are based inside Iran and regularly provide reports of police beatings, torture and imprisonment.
Russia
Tatchell is a strong opponent of the Russian LGBT propaganda law. In 2014 Tatchell protested Valery Gergiev's support for Vladimir Putin. Tatchell protested the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi over the gay rights stance of Russia, comparing the event to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.
Tatchell was arrested at the Moscow Pride parade in 2011 amid a spate of anti-gay violence by Neo-Nazis. Tatchell argues that the Russian police collude with Neo-Nazi elements, and that some in the Neo-Nazi group were undercover police officers.
In February 2007 the Mayor of Moscow, Yury Luzhkov, visited Ken Livingstone for an annual meeting that also involved the Mayors of Berlin and Paris, with the mayor of Beijing present as well. Nikolay Alexeyev, one of the organizers of the Moscow gay pride parade, joined Tatchell in protesting the visit. A notice of the protest quoted Talgat Tadzhuddin saying that the Moscow pride marchers should be flogged.
Ken Livingstone asserted that he supports gay rights, and said "In Moscow the Russian Orthodox church, the chief rabbi and the grand Mufti all supported the ban on the Gay Pride march with the main role, due to its great weight in society, being played by the Orthodox church. The attempt of Mr Tatchell to focus attention on the role of the grand Mufti in Moscow, in the face of numerous attacks on gay rights in Eastern Europe, which overwhelmingly come from right-wing Christian and secular currents, is a clear example of an Islamaphobic campaign." Tatchell retorted that Livingstone's remarks were "dishonest, despicable nonsense", adding "The Grand Mufti was not singled out". He further said the Mayor had brought his "office into disrepute" and "has revealed himself to be a person without principles, honesty or integrity."
Israel
Following the vote by the Knesset, the Israeli legislature, in 2007 in favour of bills to ban lesbian and gay pride parades in Jerusalem, the Lesbian and Gay Coalition Against Racism criticised Tatchell, saying:
Tatchell was in and out of hospital at the time, as a result of the injuries he received at the hands of far-right assailants in Moscow. On his partial recovery, he issued a strong statement condemning the Jewish fundamentalists who had promoted the bill which had banned gay pride in Jerusalem.
National Front and British National Party
In the 1970s and 1980s Tatchell was involved in campaigns against the National Front and the British National Party. He campaigned with Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League.
Anglican and Catholic churches
Tatchell criticised the Catholic Church and Pope Benedict XVI, whom he described as "the ideological inheritor of Nazi homophobia". "He'd like to eradicate homosexuality, but since he can't put LGBT people in physical concentration camps, is doing his best to put them in psychological concentration camps."
Channel 4 indicated in June 2010 that Tatchell would be the presenter of a documentary film examining "the current Pope's teachings throughout the world". The announcement sparked criticism from some prominent British Catholics including Conservative politician Ann Widdecombe, who said that Channel 4 appeared to be trying to "stir up controversy". Tatchell stated as part of the announcement that the documentary "will not be an anti-Catholic programme".
With respect to Anglicanism, he stated that "it's very sad to see a good man like the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, going to such extraordinary lengths to appease homophobes within the Anglican Communion".
On 15 September 2010, Tatchell, along with 54 other public figures, signed an open letter, published in The Guardian, stating their opposition to Pope Benedict XVI's state visit to the UK.
Multiculturalism
Tatchell has been occasionally been moderately critical of multiculturalism. He gave a speech to the Libertarian Alliance at the National Liberal Club in 2010, arguing that British people are increasingly "fragmented according to their different and sometimes competing identities, values, and traditions. These differences are prioritised over shared experiences and interests. Our common needs and the universalities of human rights are downplayed in favour of religious and racial particularities."
Free speech
In 2006, during the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, Tatchell spoke at a 25 March 2006 rally called the Freedom of Expression Rally. At the rally, Tatchell argued for the "disestablishment of the Church of England and the freedom to insult the Queen, Prime Minister and Archbishop of Canterbury." Tatchell said that the far-left is "Mired in the immoral morass of cultural relativism, they no longer endorse Enlightenment values and universal human rights. Their support for free speech is now qualified by so many ifs and buts. When push comes to shove, it is more or less worthless."
In a 2007 Guardian opinion piece, Tatchell argued that "The best way to tackle prejudice is by presenting facts and using reasoned arguments, to break down ignorance and ill-will."
In 2016, Tatchell made threats to free speech in Britain the topic of his British Humanist Association annual conference lecture. Speaking with reference to a number of censorship controversies in the 2010s, he said that "the recent trend against freedom of speech means that we must fight the battles of the Enlightenment all over again."
Islam
Tatchell is critical of Islamic fundamentalism, and first wrote about its rise in Britain in 1995. However, Tatchell condemned Islamophobia, saying "Any form of prejudice, hatred, discrimination or violence against Muslims is wrong. Full stop". He described the Qur'an as "rather mild in its condemnation of homosexuality". Tatchell also points out that much of his prison and asylum casework involves supporting Muslim prisoners and asylum seekers—heterosexual, as well as LGBT. In 2006, he helped stop the abuse of Muslim prisoners at Norwich jail and helped secure parole for other Muslim detainees. Half his asylum cases are, he reports, male and female Muslim refugees. Two of his highest-profile campaigns involved Muslim victims—Mohamed S, who was framed by men who first tried to kill him and then jailed him for eight years, and Sid Saeed, who brought a racism and homophobic harassment case against Deutsche Bank.
Tatchell has described Sharia as "a clerical form of fascism" on the grounds that it opposes democracy and human rights, especially for women and gay people. He was the keynote speaker at a 2005 protest at the Canadian High Commission demanding that Ontario's arbitration law, which permitted religious arbitration in civil cases for Jews and Christians, be extended to Muslims. Tatchell argued there should be no separate arbitration systems for any specific religion. In 1995 he wrote that "although not all Muslims are anti-gay, significant numbers are violently homophobic [...] homophobic Muslim voters may be able to influence the outcome of elections in 20 or more marginal constituencies."
Tatchell describes the Muslim Council of Britain as "anti-gay", asking how "they expect to win respect for their community, if at the same time as demanding action against Islamophobia, they themselves demand the legal enforcement of homophobia?". He noted that the MCB had joined forces with right-wing Christian fundamentalists to oppose every gay law reform from 1997 to 2006. In January 2006, the MCB Chairman Iqbal Sacranie said that homosexuals are immoral, harmful and diseased on BBC Radio 4. Tatchell argued that "Both the Muslim and gay communities suffer prejudice and discrimination. We should stand together to fight Islamophobia and homophobia". Tatchell subsequently criticised Unite Against Fascism for inviting Sacranie to share its platforms, describing him as a "homophobic hate-mongerer." When the MCB boycotted Holocaust Memorial Day, partly because it included a commemoration of the gay victims of Nazism, Tatchell wrote that "the only thing that is consistent about the MCB is its opposition to the human rights of lesbians and gay men".
A colleague of Tatchell's, Islamic theologian Muhammad Yusuf, a research fellow with Interfaith Alliance UK, withdrew from a planned lecture on "an Islamic reformation that reconciles Islam with democracy and human rights, including human rights for women and gay people" after receiving threats from Islamist fundamentalists. Yusuf said that "senior Islamic clerics" told him they could not guarantee his safety if he went ahead. The lecture was to raise funds for the Peter Tatchell Human Rights Fund.
Tatchell chose Malcolm X as his specialist subject when appearing on Celebrity Mastermind, explaining that he considered him an inspiration and hero (his other inspirations are Mahatma Gandhi, Sylvia Pankhurst and Martin Luther King). However, his endorsement of Bruce Perry's biography in an article calling for black gay role models led to criticism due to Perry's claim that Malcolm X had male lovers in his youth.
In February 2010, Women Against Fundamentalism defended Tatchell against allegations of Islamophobia and endorsed his right to challenge all religious fundamentalism: "WAF supports the right of Peter Tatchell and numerous other gay activists to oppose the legitimisation of fundamentalists and other right wing forces on university campuses, by the Left and by the government in its Preventing Violent Extremism strategy and numerous other programmes and platforms".
Muslims and gay rights
Tatchell wrote a 2006 opinion column in The Guardian arguing that Muslims deliberately conflate offense with violence, in an effort to suppress Muslim reformers in Britain. He argued that Islamist groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain see "any criticism of Islam is an insult and that all such insults are unacceptable" in order to suppress the "free exchange of ideas".
Yusuf al-Qaradawi
In July 2004, then-Mayor of London Ken Livingstone invited Yusuf al-Qaradawi to attend a talk called "A woman's right to choose" about the wearing of the hijab. Livingstone had read positive coverage of Qaradawi in The Guardian and the Sun.
In October 2004, 2,500 Muslim academics from 23 countries condemned Qaradawi, and accused him of giving "Islam a bad name and foster[ing] hatred among civilizations" and "providing a religious cover for terrorism".
Tatchell argued that Qaradawi expresses liberal positions to deceive the Western press and politicians, while being "rightwing, misogynist, anti-semitic and homophobic" and using his books and fatwas to advocate female genital mutilation, blame for rape victims who dress immodestly, and the execution of apostates, homosexuals, and women who have sex outside marriage.
Livingstone issued a 2005 dossier praising Qaradawi as a moderate, based on positive press coverage he had received previously. Livingstone pronounced that Tatchell has "a long history of Islamophobia", and asserted that he is in a "de facto alliance with the American neo-cons and Israeli intelligence services." Tatchell strenuously denied the accusations, pointing out that he has never said any of the things that Livingstone accused him of saying. Livingstone continued to describe Qaradawi as “one of the leading progressive voices in the Muslim world” in 2010, after having been denied entry to the UK for his extremist views.
Two years after condemning Tatchell, Livingstone stated that he "probably shouldn't" have called Tatchell an "Islamophobe".
Adam Yosef
In December 2005 Respect party activist Adam Yosef came under criticism for an article in Desi Xpress opposing registered civil partnerships. He asserted that Tatchell needed "a good slap in the face" and his "queer campaign army" should "pack their bent bags and head back to Australia". Desi Xpress staff expressed regret to Tatchell and gave him a right of reply, and Yosef apologised and retracted his article, claiming the "slap in the face" remark was a "figure of speech" and the remark about Australia was not racist. Yosef later backed Tatchell's 2009 campaign.
Secondary issues
Environmental issues
For over 20 years, Tatchell has written and campaigned about environmental problems including global warming and resource depletion, pointing out that they often have a disproportionately negative impact on developing countries. In the late 1980s, he was co-organiser of the Green and Socialist Conferences, which sought to ally reds and greens. He championed energy conservation and renewable energy; in particular tidal, wave and concentrated solar power. On 24 May 2009, he appeared on the BBC Daily Politics programme to oppose the Elephant and Castle regeneration scheme, which he said would bring few benefits to local working-class people. However, most of his campaigning continues to be in the areas of human rights and "queer emancipation". In August 2008 Tatchell wrote about speculative theories concerning possible atmospheric oxygen depletion compared to prehistoric levels, and called for further investigation to test such claims and, if proven, their long-term consequences.
Animal rights
Tatchell is an active supporter of animal rights, saying "human rights and animal rights are two aspects of the same struggle against injustice". He is a patron of the Captive Animals Protection Society, a charity campaigning for an end to the use of animals in circuses, zoos and exotic pet trade. He is also a patron of Animal Aid and works with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).
Cornwall
Tatchell campaigned on the issue of the constitutional status of Cornwall. In November 2008, The Guardian carried an article by him entitled Self-rule for Cornwall, in which he said:
This article received the largest number of comments to any Guardian article, according to This is Cornwall. Over 1,500 comments were made, and while some comments were supportive, Tatchell found himself "shocked and disgusted" by the anti-Cornish sentiment shown by many commenters.
Columnist and other pursuits
Tatchell has written numerous articles in newspapers and magazines related to his various campaigns. He was highly critical of the media coverage of the Admiral Duncan pub bombing, claiming than the homophobic attitudes of news outlets had helped fuel the attack, and that the press concerned themselves almost exclusively with the one heterosexual victim, rather than the two other deaths and the dozens of maimed patrons, saying that:
As of 2009, he has been an Ambassador for the penal reform group, Make Justice Work.
In 2011, he became the Director of the Peter Tatchell Foundation, a human rights organisation that seeks to promote and protect the human rights of individuals, communities and nations, in the UK and internationally, in accordance with established national and international human rights law..
He contributes to The Jeremy Vine Show on BBC Radio 2.
Awards
In 2006, New Statesman readers voted him sixth on their list of "Heroes of our time".
In 2009 he racked up multiple awards. He was named Campaigner of the Year in The Observer Ethical Awards, London Citizen of Sanctuary Award, Shaheed Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti Award (for reporting the Balochistan national liberation struggle), Evening Standard 1000 Most Influential Londoners (winning again in 2011), Liberal Voice of the Year and a Blue Plaque in recognition of his more than 40 years of human rights campaigning.
In 2010 he won Total Politics Top 50 Political Influencers. A diary journalist reported rumours that he had been recommended for the award of a life peerage in the British New Year Honours. He was said to have turned it down.
In 2012, the National Secular Society awarded Tatchell Secularist of the Year, in recognition of his lifelong commitment to the defence of human rights against religious fundamentalism.
On 21 September 2012, he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement award at the UK's first National Diversity Awards. Alongside Misha B, Jody Cundy, Peter Norfolk and others he was a patron for 2013 National Diversity Awards.
In January 2014, Tatchell was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Laws by De Montfort University.