‘the most exciting period of my life’ – the Gay Liberation Front at 50

Gay Liberation Front at 50
Photos by Holly Buckle

Members of the GLF return to the LSE campus where one of the UK’s most influential gay liberation groups was founded half a century before.


It was a cold Thursday evening with a harsh wind blistering its way up Kingsway. In the face of a brewing pandemic, activists from several generations of queer activists made their way over to the sixth floor of LSE’s austere copper Student Centre. It was a time to come together and celebrate the work of those who paved the way for LGBT+ liberation here in the UK. Before there was Pride, just a matter of feet where we came together to celebrate, there was founded a movement that was to change the face of queer life here in the UK. Advocating for ‘Absolute freedom for all’, the Gay Liberation Front was of the catalyst to the freedom that many of us enjoy today. But as they will eagerly admit, their work isn’t over.


Among the littered bags of crisps and written materials mingled the movement’s most notable faces. Each donning a shoddy sticker name badge, they gathered to remember those early few days. Bringing with them some of the flyers from back then, binders full of vintage badges and stories of those grassroot first few meetings, some of them were meeting for the first time since those meetings all those years ago. Inspired by the movements taking roots in the US, from the Black Panthers’ Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention of September 1970 to the Stonewall Rebellion of 1969, Bob Mellors and Aubrey Walter brought the front to London, meeting in an LSE basement.

Gay Liberation Front at 50
Photos by Holly Buckle

About those early few establishing meetings, Member of the GLF and co-founder of Gay News Andrew Lumsden shared the early disagreement they had as a group: “Those of us who were male were mostly as ignorant as straight men about the abuse of women and talked over women, and those of us who were white mostly understood nothing of the racism in this country or were racist ourselves.” The Front itself, as a larger movement, would only last a few years splintering into several movements by 1973. In just under three years, they coordinated some of the most public demonstrations for gay rights.

One of the most notorious demonstrations came in the September of 1971 with the disruption of a Westminster rally for the Nationwide Festival of Light. The church-based morality campaign had come together to show support for the lobbying against extra-marital sex, pornography in films, sex on TV and people being openly gay. In a blaze of smudged make-up frocks and snogging, the Gay Liberation Front staged a “zap” that married radical drag, disruption and a potent public spectalce. “Yes, that made the biggest impact and was the funniest,” Lumsden recalls. One of the most well-known attendees of the act of disruption was, of course, Peter Tatchell.

Speaking at the 50th Anniversary meeting, standing beside a disco light system he asked: “Who would’ve thought all those years ago we’d be celebrating the 50th? Who would’ve thought we would have achieved this much in those decades?” Though Tatchell was not present at that first meeting, he threw himself into their activities after arriving from Australia some months later. “I saw a sticker on a lamp post advertising a meeting of the GLF.” Discussing the group’s impact on his personal life, he held nothing back. “It was an incredible personal liberation. It was and remains the most exciting period of my life.”

When asked about the GLF’s own profound impact on their lives, Ted Brown took the opportunity ot remembering those radical first queer colonies that aimed to bring about dramatic social change. Nettie Pollard read aloud from the original Gay Liberation Front demmands, cautioning that they always manage to make her cry. “We believe that apathy and fear are the barriers that imprison people from an incalculable landscape of self-awareness. That they are the elements of prejudice and the enemies of truth. That every person has the right to develop and extend their character and explore their sexuality through relationships without any other human being without moral, social or political pressure.”

Gay Liberation Front at 50
Photos by Holly Buckle

There came a point in the evening when there was a shift from remembering to planning. Moving on from the work that has been done, to the work that has yet to be done. They sincerely mean it when they declare themselves to achieving absolute freedom “for all”. Groups continue to meet in gatherings of tens, sometimes hundreds of people for “Think Ins” to exchange ideas and raise consciousness around pressing issues.

Gay Liberation Front at 50
Photos by Holly Buckle

It is a very different queer political landscape that the GLF are continuing into. The community is splintering with trans-exclusionary groups taking root, with gay men and lesbians turning thier backs on the trans people who paved the way for them. In discussing this damaging movement towards trans-exlusion, Andrew Lumsden shared: “I think that anyone who is content to be called ‘trans-exclusionary’, or uses a trans-exclusionary name such as LGB Alliance, is wrong. Just as Betty Friedan, the wonderful fighter for women’s right in America in the 1950s and 1960s, was wrong in 1969 when she called, as a straight woman, for lesbians to be banned from a forthcoming conference of NOW (the National Organisation for Women).”

Photos by Holly Buckle
Photos by Holly Buckle

In the face of these fractures, onward marches the Gay Liberation Front. Lumsden even livened up the upcoming functions by reciting them through rap. As was true all those decades ago, it is still young blood that is driving the Gay Liberation Front forward. Enthusiastic young activists took to the microphone to announce their own causes, fundraisers, exhibitions and happenings. It’s clear that the GLF’s legacy lives on even in its fifties, inspiring a new generation of people to take action. Ready to “DEMAND honour, identity and liberation.”


Support the documenting of the activism of the Gay Liberation Front at GoFundMe.com/F/Film-with-the-Founders-of-Modern-lgbtqia-Pride.

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