No Clause 28

Intentional Promotions created a stall, with Jackie and Rob travelling to universities and Pride events around the country raising the profile of LGBT+ issues through marketing materials such as leaflets and information, and selling pin badges to spread the word. They attended rallies and protests, handing out leaflets and selling their badges. The idea was to intentionally promote homosexuality in defiance of the wording of the Act going through Parliament that included the infamous clause 28, which included the words “not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality or promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship" so that’s exactly what we did. We promoted, we published, but you better believe we were not pretending!

We used to set up our stall using a collapsible pasting table, with the badges pinned to the inside padded display. The idea behind this was to allow for a rapid take down and run if we encountered trouble from the public or the police.

There were so few of us willing to be out, we thought we need support from straights, or anybody else. So we specifically designed badges that said things like, ‘Some of my best friends are gay’, ‘Some of my best friends are lesbian’, and they sold absolutely loads.

We were shocked when we got the stall up and running, we honestly thought we might get beaten up. We did have some trouble, but we had enough people around and we were safe and we couldn’t believe how many people wanted to support us. That was the bigger shock. But we’d never had a chance to all have a voice before.

We encountered many difficulties as we sought to spread our message through Intentional Promotions. For example, several print shops in the city refused to print our badges and flyers because of the content. They may have feared that there would be legal repercussions if they were seen to be helping the collective, or they may have been supporters of Section 28. Luckily Rob was a graphic designer and was working at the Leeds University print shop at the time. He took on the design of the badges, and almost everything was printed in-house at the University, although we did use a printers down in Holmfirth, which is where they filmed ‘Last of the Summer Wine’.

When we travelled with the stall there was a constant threat of potential violence. We visited any university that invited us and we always tried to ensure that we would have some kind of protection at events.

We were lucky, because everywhere we went we organised security, which basically meant we were either near security people, official security people, or we had enough people who came to stand near us to make sure that there was a good enough crowd to support… it stops people beating you up if there’s 20 people stood behind you. Jackie is fairly sure it was Aberystwyth where we went where they got the rugby team to help.

'One of their guys was out in the rugby team and they were all friends with him, so the whole rugby team came in their rugby gear to stand behind us while we did the stall for a couple of days, which is amazing.'

Jackie might not remember, but at Cardiff, where our Welsh translated badges were very popular (although the translation by NUS Wales was cuter than planned - it turns out that cariad has a few meanings other than ‘Love’, so the badge could be read as ‘A Sweetheart is not a Crime’. So still on the money 😂), we had an unexpectedly fun weekend.

The badges ‘Rhyddhad lesbaidd a hoyw nawr!’ (Lesbian and Gay Liberation Now!) and ‘Nid yw cariad yn drosedd’ (Love is not a crime), were part of our belief in letting everyone share the message. We even had ANO Alba, that's NUS Scotland, provide some Gaelic translations.

Now back to Cardiff. We were put up in the Union guest rooms, but as explained, you had to sneak back in after the Union shut using a secured exit gate. So after being taken onto the fun Cardiff scene, The Tunnel club as I recall, we arrived back at the gate slightly merry. Turns out the gate had a push handle but you had to climb over a wall that just happened to have a teensy gap and a 20m drop to a train track. Somehow, I clambered across and we snuck back in about 1am, ready to set up again on the Saturday morning.

We had a song

As part of the nationwide protest, Boy George wrote and produced “No Clause 28” as a 12” single with proceeds going to Stop The Clause and other campaigns. You can still listen to it on YouTube. I bought a copy at Pride that year on the Southbank.

Boy George - No Clause 28