Just over two weeks after the Gay Liberation Front, women’s liberationists and other activist from London’s underground had made a laughing stock of the reactionary Christian Festival of Light at Westminster Central Hall, the climactic event of the Festival was to take place on September 25th, with a rally in Trafalgar Square followed by a march to Hyde Park.
The opposition got into gear again… An alternative ‘Festival of Life’ was called for Hyde Park.
Thanks to the continued presence of the GLFs infiltrator in the Festival office, maximum confusion was wreaked on the organisation in the run-up to the 25th. Fake parking plans were mailed out, sending delegations form other town and cities to park miles away; letters were sent out a couple of days before announcing false time changes, and claiming the Trafalgar Square event had been cancelled.
In the Square, ‘old men in dark suits who carried signs that said, “Fear God” and “The Wicked Shall Be Turned Into Hell,” and young people, many more young ones than old, holding up the regulation Festival of Light poster, a map of the British Isles blazing brightly against a blue background. Young girls walked with rings of Jesus buttons pasted on their foreheads and in a circle on their hair. They wore T-shirts embroidered with buttons in the shape of a J that ran between their breasts, and the slogan “Smile, Jesus loves you” scrawled on the back. Even the Blackstone lions that guarded Nelson’s column had orange Jesus buttons glued into their eye holes.’
A number of GLF and feminist activists tried to disrupt the event in Trafalgar Square:
‘Michael [James] was a lady schoolteacher with a cane; Nicholas Bramble was the Spirit of Porn, Paul Theobald and Carla and others were dressed as riot police carrying the coffin of freedom, Mary McIntosh and others as choirboys, Michael Redding, Chris Blaby and Douglas MacDougall as nuns, me as Mary Whtehouse. We all met in Covent Garden, in Henrietta Street because we knew there would be heavy security hearer the Square, and we changed into our costumes in shop doorways. We got as far as the steps of St Martins, where I conducted the choir in ‘All Things Bright And Beautiful’. We had planned to join the crowd and process to the rally in Hyde Park but we got as far as the south of the Square and we were blocked by the police.’ (Stuart Feather)
‘I was in the choir singing at Trafalgar Square. We knew the bit about the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate… that may have been the only verse we sung. We had to repeat it over and over.’ (Mary McIntosh)
‘I was part of a little Street theatre and we all organised ourselves into heterosexual couples and were chained together as heterosexual couples. There was a sort of sex symbol and a business man and I think I was a downtrodden housewife, and we had discussion with the people around us. So we formed this straggling little procession and we did manage to get to the base of the column… it was a pretty effective protest because people couldn’t quite suss whether we were hostile or not. We came up the back of the plinth and generally infiltrated into the crowd and the mass of Christians were basically confused as to whether this was just some odd it of the entertainment or not.’ (Sarah Grimes)
‘Richard Dipple was carrying a cross and there were thousands in Trafalgar Square, it was jammed to the gills. There was another group singing hymns and carols, I never knew who they were. Stuart stopped to conduct them. Then there were Womens Lib, they had a demo with prams and dolls and things. They were going across the top of the Square in front of the National Gallery. We slipped down by South Africa House and sidled up to the back of the column, no problem. I was a schoolteacher and I had all my kids in school costume, roped together and I was the oppressive schoolmarm with the cane and an earphone type wig. We had no intention of disturbing the rally itself at all. We were grossly outnumbered. What we were going to do was march with them or beside them. Mary Whitehouse and people were at the front. The police got freaked out – we were outside the railings on the pavement away from the Square itself, looking down towards Whitehall and they told us to stand there and we said, ‘We want to stand here, we’re not going anywhere else’, and this police inspector or sergeant or something freaked out and they started pushing us and pushing us until they hemmed us in to that little space between two of the lions. Well we had nowhere to go but up, because they were getting heavy, so up we went and we were quite happy there…’ (Michael James)
Mary Whitehouse took the podium. A former schoolteacher, her name was synonymous in Britain for opposition to publications like Oz, sex on the telly and dirty words on the wireless. She’d appeared on a panel show with Mick Jagger once and attacked him for “living in sin” with a woman. She is 61. “The eyes of the world are on what’s happening in Britain at this time,” she said, as a women’s lib banner began circling the crowd. It read “All God’s Children Got Nipples.”
‘They invaded the rostrum and the fake Mary Whitehouse, Stuart, was up there with the proper one. There were several Mary Whitehouses and very funny they looked.’ (John Chesterman)
‘We were gathering a crowd at the back, we had no microphones, so we were quite happy to have our little discourse. But then of course the police got up and of course we could only go higher and they got very rough and grabbed hold of me by the arms and legs and I was hauled down to the ground. I was terrified I was going to be thrown down another six feet from the plinth.’ (Michael James)
‘There were police chasing transvestites in all directions, smoke bombs going off… it looked like a revolution.’ (John Chesterman)
‘I saw this police inspector who’d started it all coming towards me. I was laying down with one leg free and I just gathered that leg up and shot for his balls. And I hit him, right in the balls. But he never knew it was me, because there were so many people there, all around us. But I got him. Then the next thing I knew, I was being see-sawed off the edge of the plinth. Then they dropped to the ground and I was being carried by the arms and legs, looking up through all these Christians who’d started marching off. They were screaming ‘Hang him! Birch him!’ I thought, ‘Yeah, that’s exactly where you’re at now, isn’t that exactly it.’ I felt quite good about that, ‘I’ve dug you out, you’ve said what you really believe. We’ve got the truth.’ Once you get that, you know what you’re dealing with.’ (Michael James)
‘They accused us of being the Angry Brigade, that was what some Assistant Chief Constable said to us. As were pushed back against Nelson’s Column and our only way of escape was to get up on it, so we did. The ‘choirboys’ were at the bottom of the plinth, so we all started singing ‘All Things Bright And Beautiful’ again. The police were chasing us all over the plinth and they arrested some people And on the north side of the plinth were Mary Whitehouse, Lord Longford, Cliff Richard and Malcolm Muggeridge and so on. Michael Redding was accused of waving a cucumber obscenely while dressed as a nun. Some people escaped and made it to Hyde Park, but the police swooped on them and arrested them there.’ (Stuart Feather)
‘I was the only GLF woman arrested in the Square. Mary O’Shea heard a senior officer point at me and say ‘Get that one.’ Richard (Dipple), who was Jesus, took off his robe and crown and disappeared into the crowd. I was taken to Bow Street and put into a cell with the women from Women’s Street theatre who’d come as the nuclear family. Michele Roberts was dressed as the vicar’s wife, Alison Fell was the vicar’s son. They had come as a family and chained themselves together, so when the police picked up one of them they got the lot.’ (Carla Toney)
‘A few of us decided to use the occasion to try to expose the perverse morality of the Festival organisers. On the one hand they condemned lesbian and gay people for victimless consenting relationships, yet on the other hand they were totally silent about the war in Bangladesh which was resulting in the death and displacement of millions of people. We got some collecting tins from the organisation that was fundraising to help refugees in Bangladesh and went amongst the crowd in Trafalgar Square, soliciting donations. We challenged them over their apparent disinterest in the starvation and murder of people in Bangladesh. It very successfully put them on the spot over their distorted sense of moral priorities. They found it very embarrassing.’ (Peter Tatchell)
‘I was slung into the van. They’d got Michael Redding previously because he was a nun. I don’t know how they’d managed to get him. Douglas MacDougall was also a nun. I think there were three nuns. And I think one of them escaped. Whoever got into the green van – the women were already there, they’d already picked the women up from the top and they’d done nothing. So it was clear that we were not going to be allowed to express our opinions at all. We were taken down to Cannon Row police station, just by Old Scotland Yard and there were more women there when we arrived, they’d got the singers and the dykes, they’d picked them off first. They knew what to look for, they knew who to look for. We were eventually bailed about nine or ten o’clock that night.’ (Michael James)
The Festival continued on its way to Hyde Park, harassed by activists, among them the GLF Youth Group. Several hundred demonstrators (mainly straight hippies, apparently), gathered at Marble Arch, pelted the marchers with stink bombs and jeered…
‘In detachments a block long, the marchers streamed out of the square to Hyde Park. They marched behind a wooden cross with the band booming… At Hyde Park, the sound of the band brought freaks running from all over the park across open green fields, swirling through fallen leaves and vaulting over a high spiked fence to join others already wheeling up Park Lane. Surrounding the band on all sides, a raggle-taggle army with right hands outstretched in a Hitler salute, chanting “Sieg Heil.” Freaks reading madly from the Bible with no one listening as they marched, freaks carrying little children in their arms, freaks carrying signs that read “Go To Hell — It’s More Fun” and wearing jackets that said “God Speeds.” ‘
In the park, huge numbers of police were arresting any protestors on any pretext. ‘The most beautiful of the GLF banners, with three interlocking circles, in red, purple and white, was confiscated by police as an offensive weapon and never returned, it is thought to have been destroyed at a later date.’
‘Sweeping into the park like a conquering army with the band playing for them, laughing people with long hair and open faces, goose-stepping along on the green grass singing “Lloyd George knew my father … father knew Lloyd George” in perfect time to “Onward Christian Soldiers.”
“Oh, do be quiet,” folksinger Judy Mc Kenzie scolded from the stage. “Praise God. Now I’m going to sing, ‘He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.’ He’s got the whole world …” she began.
“Between his legs,” the crowd screamed.
“He’s got the whole world …” she repeated.
“In his pants,” the crowd howled.’
As at Central Hall, Tony Salvis was dressed a vicar again, lecturing to a large crowd… So, this time around was ‘Father Fuck of Tooting’:
‘We always have younger cannabis in the Church of Aphrodite at Elmbourne Road in Tooting… we keep it in the Chalice on the altar. We… said that our church’s contribution in the Festival of Light will be a sacrificial cake baked in the shape of a phallus with half an ounce of cannabis as one of the ingredients, that we’ll take it to Hyde Park and share it with the people as the sacraments of the church… three of us took it to Hyde Park… I got up on our sacrificial altar and a crowd of about 100 heads gathered round me.
I told my listeners that the prick is the symbol of our Church because the prick with a lovely pair of ball is the symbol of life and the cross is the symbol of death. The heads were saying ‘Lets have the sacrament now’… I performed the religious ceremony: I broke off the knob of the prick, crushed it in my fingers and as the crumbs were falling to the ground I was praying aloud For Peace, For Love, For Freedom. Having thus prayed I broke off another piece of it for myself and handed the rest to the people to be shared as the sacrament of our Church.
Man, you’ve never seen a faster castration of the prick. It just disappeared in ten seconds… great happiness all round!… Later I got a bit closer to the Jesus people, put up our altar, got on it and started to indoctrinate my listeners… about 100 people were listening to me, some Jesus people, some heads… I was grabbed by a bobby and about six of them started to drag me to the waiting police van… A girl, a psychologist, walks beside us and keeps asking the policeman ‘Why are you arresting this man?’… she too is pulled into the van. Then they drive us to Hyde Park police station. A bobby says to me ‘What’s your occupation?’ ‘Reverend Father Fuck’ says I. ‘Occupation?’ ‘Minister of religion’ says I. ‘Will you sign for bail?’ ‘Yes’ says I. ‘In what name?’ ‘Reverend Father Fuck’ says I. ‘I can’t accept that name’ says he and they lock me up in the cell till Monday.’ (Father Fuck)
[NB: Father Fuck, aka Paul Pawlowski, was later one of the organisers of the somewhat abortive Windsor Free Festival in 1972. The Church of Aphrodite was apparently dedicated to ‘psychedelia and shagging’.]
‘Cliff Richard, once Britain’s Elvis and now a convert to Christ, came out and plugged in.
“Ooooh, it’s Cliff,” a GLFer moaned, swooning, “Oh, Cliff.”
“If we get honest with ourselves …” Cliff is saying on stage.
“Be honest, Cliff,” someone shouted. “Admit you’re a homosexual. … Come out, Cliff.” ‘
[2018 Note: he never has yet!]
‘Everyone was charged with breach of the peace and put in the cells, but Nicholas Bramble got charged with assault, which was much more serious. I was opposite him in the line when they charged him and all it was, was that a policeman had cut his little finger on Nicholas Bramble’s diamante bracelet while arresting him. Nicholas was a trained dancer and when the policeman had grabbed him, he’d locked his arms and the policeman’s hand had slipped. He ended up having a separate trial from the rest of us, but he was found not guilty. We went to court in the drag we were arrested in. I was Mary Whitehouse, in the dock with Paul Theobald and Chris Blaby. We used friends as Mackenzie lawyers and a Catholic Worker priest gave evidence to say that he hadn’t been offended, but wherever nuns appeared they were found guilty even though the rest of us weren’t. Nicholas Bramble felt that there was very little support within GLF for the people who’d been arrested and he said so at a meeting…’ (Stuart Feather)
‘We came up at Bow Street and we all had Mackenzie lawyers, defending ourselves. Michael Redding appeared first, in a frock I think, he was done for being a nun, they accused him of masturbating with a cucumber. I had big floppy trousers, a wrapover dress and a long maxi-coat and an Indian headscarf wound round. I don’t think I was wearing make-up. My nails were painted though. Michael was found guilty. I went in and the magistrate screamed at me straight away, ‘Take that hat off!’ I thought, what on earth’s he talking about? He said ‘You take that hat off’ and I said ‘but I’m not wearing a hat.’ I wasn’t, I was wearing a scarf, not a hat. He said ‘Take that thing off your head’ and I said ‘Excuse me, I’m coming here to be tried on a charge, what I wear is entirely up to me, it’s not up to you, you don’t buy my clothes, you’ve got no say over what I wear.’ ‘I’ll also charge you with contempt of court.’ I said ‘I’m not in contempt of court, I’m in contempt of you.’ ‘Get out of here and don’t come back while you’ve got the hat on!’ So I’m led from the well of the court by two detectives, but just as I’m leaving Douglas (MacDougall) is coming in with a full circle skirt and a broderie anglaise blouse. And I thought, go on girl, you deal with that now.
Douglas came out and I was called back into court and the magistrate said to me ‘I see you still intend to remain contemptuous of this court’ and I said ‘I’m not contemptuous, but as I pointed out to you, you do not buy my clothes and you’ve got o right to tell me what to wear. This is a free country.’ He went ‘Hmph! Let’s get on with it then.’ So we got on with the case and the policeman who arrested me was lying his head off and I cross-examined him. He accused me of shouting this obscene rhyme, it was very bad and I thought ‘what!’ and said something very dismissive like ‘If I’m going to make up rhymes I’m sure I can do better than that.’ I said ‘That was made up in a police canteen and it sounds like it.’ We hadn’t been shouting anything obscene at all, not as far as I was aware.
The dock was actually about a foot away from the magistrate, I could reach over and touch him. He said ‘Tell me what happened’ and I said ‘Can I start from the beginning?’ I went into the background of the demonstration and my part in it. He said ‘What were you?’ and I explained I was meant to represent a repressive schoolmarm. He said ‘Did you have button boots?’ and I said ‘Oh yes, I did.’ And he said ‘I think I’ll dismiss this case’ and he did. Obviously a shoe fetishist.’ (Michael James)
‘The elements of camp and theatricality gave a lot of the actions a strong humorous edge which police officers often found hard to deal with. They were used to responding to belligerent macho left-wing demonstrations, but because GLF didn’t fit that traditional pattern they found it a bit unnerving. If we had followed the orthodox leftist way of doing things with the clenched fist, all very serious and quite threatening, the police would have come down on us heavier and quicker. Because some officers could see the amusing side to what we were doing it was psychologically disarming for them… The GLF style of protest was political jujitsu – we threw the police off balance by not conforming to their expectations.’ (Peter Tatchell)
‘…we were being festive. We had a lot of debate about the Festival, how it was moral rearmament and fundamentalist. We did see it as very dangerous. It might have developed as something rather unpleasant and I think it was one of those rare events that [the opposition] succeeded in tis objectives. Everyone loved putting energy into doing it, it was a target made for us.’ (Sarah Grimes)
The Festival organisers’ predictions for the mass turnouts expected at the final rallies turned out to be grossly exaggerated – about 35,000 turned up, rather than the forecasted 100,000. The protests helped to deflect the plans the Christians had to step up their movement, which never won the mass public support they had aimed for.
Sarah Grimes’ conclusion, that the GLF-inspired disruptions had effectively crippled the Festival of Light’s grandiose plans, seems to be borne out by some of the organisers’ own hindsight. John Capon, the official historian of the Festival, concluded that the press coverage of the main events and the opposition had reduced the whole movement to ridicule. This was summed up by the response of a man in the street to an interviewer asking what they knew about the Festival: ‘Isn’t it something about mice and nuns?’
This post was nicked from Lisa Power’s excellent ‘No Bath But Plenty of Bubbles: An Oral History of the Gay Liberation Front’.
and some came from here
LONDON RADICAL HISTORIES 
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