When even holding hands is against the law"

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* Organise the left to beat back the Tories' attacks! No to attacks on union rights; defend the picket-line; no state interference in our unions! No to any wage curbs. Labour must support all struggles for better living standards and * Wage rises should at the very least keep up with price organisations, as the basis for clauses in all wage agreements to provide automatic monthly rises in line with the true cost of living for the working class. The same inflation-proofing should apply to state benefits, grants and pensions. * Fight for improvements in the social services, and against cuts. Protection for those services against inflation by automatic inflation-proofing of expenditure. For occupations and supporting strike action to defend jobs and services. * End unemployment. Cút hours, not jobs. Fight for a 35 hour week and an end to overtime. Demand work-sharing without loss of pay: Organise the unemployed - campaign for a programme of useful public works to create new jobs * Defend all jobs! Open the books of those firms that threaton rinsure or redundancies, along with those of their supp!iers and bankers, to elected trade union committees. tor and blacking action to halt the closures. For nationalisation without compensation under workers' * Make the bosses may for: "defence'! Nationalise the banks and financial institutions, without compensation. End the mierest burden on council housing and other public services. * Scrap all immigration controls. Race is not a problem: Faces 4. The labour movement must mobilise to drive the fascists off the streets. Purge racists from positions in thr ERY DAY, week in and k out, the police forces Ingland, Wales and ScotI are preparing and occasally executing attacks on men and lesbians.

To some extent this is surprising. Being gay ns (at least partly) ing sex. The police see i job as exerting the sort pontrol over society that i think it should have. : two activities are incomble. It is sex belga egation i ordinary circumstances lich is the case), for fish (and thus Welsh) law uch that almost any act ¡ be seen as illegal. The Renge to the police is • best to secure convicDisapprove In this respect at least i police don't discriminate Inst gays any more than inst other sections of the prunity of whom they approve.

At times it seems that the I finds the prospect of le gay sex so disgusting I it may only take place veen two men over 21 in place where the most ermired "member of the ¡lic" cannot possibly er without using a pick‹For example, men have in cunvicted because they I sex in a locked hotel im - for hotel rooms re regarded as "not vate" enough for the purBe. But even this is not a le enough law for zealous licept tons.

Rec tly there have been pse u ons brought under i i lic Order Act, which pposed to deal with iscist demonstrations a. 1930s.

Lesbians And pretty much anying you do can be seen as iehaviour likely to lasion a breach of the jace" , particularly as there ino legislation which specifilly restricts lesbians.

Wh conditions.

for the unemployed.

CI LIUJULY occupation management.

hospitals, not a penny * Frezze rents and rates. Accepted benaviour on Jooroau The Report of the Working Party on Community/ Police Relations in Lambeth* , on which I worked, found evidence of police harassment of gay people which is typical of the cases which gay organisations come across.

ror example, one gay man told the working party:

"In October 1979 I was walking along Streatham High Road in the early morning with my lover. We were holding hands as we often do.

Walk

A police car went past us, then stopped, and three uniformed officers jumped out. They came towards us, and one said What do you think you're doing?' I replied that we were just going for a walk, and he said 'No, what do you think you are doing?' I repeated that we were going for a walk and he said That's against the law' obviously referring to our holding hands.

I asked him which law it was against, and he got a bit flustered and said 'Never you fucking mind, don't come the cunt with me.? not the working class. Millions for jerus. wry not ine serect:

"We walked on... about 5 minutes later the same police car came down the road and followed slowly behind us... The car caught up with us and one of the policemen called out, 'If you don't fuck off home where you belong, we'll give you a We also had a report of a lesbian who had been detained and harassed by police at Waterloo Station because she was wearing a badge with a lesbian liberation sigoan.

But the main police attack is on us gay men who meet and enjoy sex in more public places such as toilets.

It has to be stressed that such police activity is hardly ever the result of a complaint from a member of the public. As one gay group said of Streatham Common where gay men meet to have sex:

"You could walk over that common at night and never notice that it is going on... you can walk along official paths and see cigarette lights almost like fairies disappearing in the dark. You wouldn't notice unless you really know what is defence. Build workers' defence squads.

MI5, etc.), public accountability, etc.

nursery and childcare provision.

naid the average for the trade.

of the bankers and the bosses. going on."

But the police know that this is one place where they can get easy convictions and they regularly drive across the common searching for gay men. One witness whose home overlooked the common and didn't know or care about the gay sex said of the police:

"They would come punctually at one o'clock, with the searchlights beaming across the common, going pretty fast they were too."

Priorities

So this was one of the priorities of the Lambeth police at the very time that the SPG was being drafted into Brixton to deal with what they then described as a large increase in crime.

The Working Party found that generally-and particularly in the case of black people-the police attack on the streets was complemented by their complicity in attacks on the home. That is, the police were reluctant to take action on crimes committed against those whom they harassed on the street.

There was evidence that this was precisely the case in their dealings with gay people. One gay man told us that he had invited another man, steve, whom he had met in a pub, to go back to his flat.

Coffee

Whilst he was making coffee Steve let two more men into the flat. All three then attacked him with a knife, stole his money and smashed up his flat.

He told us:

"There was blood all over the place. The police came straight away ... (the following day) I described what had happened to me and said I wanted to make a statement.

.. In answer to their questions I stated explicitly that there had been no sexual contact between Steve and myself. I was asked how old he had been, and I replied that he was 20ish. (The Detective Constable) then suggested that I should reconsider whether 1 actually wanted to press on with my complaint, which surprised me.

He said that poofs were

This week's colum Campaign for Gay from Chris Beer.

all the same, it was probably a lover's tiff and I could be prosecuted for wasting police time. He also said that I ran the risk of being prosecuted if Steve was under 21.

The policeman who was with him suggested that I 'put it down to experience' and told me that in five weeks time, when all your injuries have healed up, then you won't be so mad about it. Do you really want to cause all this trouble."

The police refused to take a statement that day, and indeed had only done so when a witness went to the police station with a legal advisor. By that time it was almost inevitable that "Steve" and accomplices would not be caught.

Attack

In a separate incident, when a drunken man had made a "murderous" attack on the houses of gay people near the Railton Road Gay Centre, the police detained seven of the victims and allowed the attacker to return later to the same house, this time armed with a hatchet. This attack, and others like them, was only resolved by a group of gay people finding out where the attacker lived and threatening him with violence.

Although these examples are all culled from the Lambeth Report, they do not reflect only the behaviour of the police and gays in that Borough. Gay organisations, particularly the Gay Rights Committee of the National Council for Civil Liberties, have files of similar incidents from many parts of the country.

Some cases are far worse indictments of police attitudes to gay people: the cases in this article show the general pattern. Next week we will analyse the nature of the police attack on lesbians and gay men.

*Report of the Working Party on Community/Police Relations in Lambeth, published in January 1981 by the London Borough of Lambeth, London SW2.

Contact Labour Campaign for Gay Rights, c/o 61a Bloom St, Manchester M1 3LY.

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good hiding. We don't like queers around here."