By Peter Tatchell
Published in The Independent – 19 June 2025
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/police-homophobic-witch-hunts-apology-kiss-in-b2773084.html
For too long, Greater Manchester Police (GMP) have allowed institutional homophobia to stain their reputation. At the height of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, when hundreds of gay men were suffering slow, agonising deaths, their former Chief Constable, James Anderton, denounced gay people as “swirling in a human cesspit of their own making.” He abused his position as Chief Constable to promote religiously-motivated persecution of LGBTs, including advocating the recriminalisation of same-sex relationships.
His public homophobia was not mere rhetoric. It informed operational policing. GMP officers were directed to illegally harass gay venues, including a notorious raid by 23 police on Napoleon’s bar in 1984. The membership list, including names and addresses, were illegally seized. Patrons were lined up against the wall and forcibly and unlawfully photographed. Some had their feet deliberately stamped on and all were made to feel afraid by aggressive, bullying officers.
There were also regular police raids on the New Union pub, Rembrandt Hotel and the Clone Zone shop. These were acts of vindictive, malicious police harassment. Manchester police openly boasted: “We’ve been trying to close these queer places for years.” This was a clear admission of a witch-hunt.
GMP were given a chance to say sorry to the LGBT+ community. My Peter Tatchell Foundation offered to work with them to draw a line under decades of police malpractice and abuse.
The GMP’s Chief Constable, Stephen Watson, refused. So did his counterpart at West Midlands Police (WMP), Craig Guildford.
However, in response to my #ApologiseNow campaign, 21 out of the 45 Chief Constables in the UK – including the Metropolitan Police, Merseyside and Police Scotland – have said sorry, with many also implementing new LGBT-supportive policies. They recognised the injustice done to LGBTs.
In contrast, the Chief Constables of GMP and WMP suggested there was no evidence of anything that justified an apology or that any claimed wrong-doing happened too long ago to matter.
Their refusal to say sorry is even more shocking given that GMP and WMP were historically two of the most viciously homophobic forces in the country, with gay arrest rates much higher than average. And WMP compounded their insult by their double standards. They rightly apologised in 2020 to the black community for their long history of police racism but they refuse to do the same to the LGBT+ community. On top of that, WMP had me forcibly removed from the recent Birmingham Pride parade after I criticised their refusal to apologise. They falsely claimed I did not have permission to be in the parade and that the Pride organisers asked for me to be removed. The organisers have confirmed that both these claims were fabrications.
The GMP and WMP Chief Constables have snubbed their own National Police Chief’s Council lead on LGBT+ issues, the Chief Constable of Northumbria, Vanessa Jardine. Recognising the importance of a formal apology for past police abuses, she wrote to all Chief Constables over a year ago urging them to review our request for an apology for historic anti-LGBT+ persecution.
She had a good reason. In the decades before the full decriminalisation of homosexuality in England and Wales in 2003, police across the UK went out of their way to target and arrest thousands of gay and bisexual men for consenting, victimless behaviour. They went far beyond merely enforcing anti-gay laws. They did so in an often abusive, illegal and sometimes violent manner.
Same-sex couples were arrested for kissing, which was not a crime. Officers burst into private gay birthday parties and the partygoers were shoved and insulted as “f*cking queers” and “dirty poofs.” At closing time for bars and clubs, police would arrive to harass men chatting on the pavement outside. Those who hesitated to disperse, or questioned the lawfulness of police harassment, were threatened and sometimes arrested and beaten up. Little wonder that the police were reviled by many LGBTs as ‘queer bashers in uniform.’
In a raid on a bar in 1971, I was made to strip to my underpants in the street on a freezing cold October night and an officer squeezed my testicles until I screamed. It was deliberate humiliation and degradation. Another time, I was stopped at a train station and quizzed and sneered at because I was wearing a gay badge. This was typical of the everyday petty police harassment that LGBTs often endured.
Police waged witch-hunts motivated by personal, and sometimes religious, prejudice against gay and bisexual men. They selected young, good-looking officers and got them to dress in a gay style, with tight fitting jeans and leather jackets. These so-called ‘pretty police’ were deployed to act as agent provocateurs in parks and public toilets. They would lure and entrap gay men into committing offences. Then a hidden snatch squad would swoop and arrest the hapless gay victims.
Some forces had a vindictive policy of releasing the names, addresses and workplaces of arrested men to the media, which then printed them; leading to public humiliation, ostracism and marriage break ups. These men were sometimes sacked from their jobs and evicted from their homes; leaving them destitute and homeless. With the shame and stigma of a criminal conviction for a homosexual offence, those outed by the police often had great difficulty in getting new jobs and housing. Some were beaten up and had their homes and cars vandalised by homophobic mobs. Others turned to drink or were driven to mental breakdowns and attempted suicide. Their lives were wrecked by the police.
As well as disputing the existence of this widespread homophobic persecution, some of the remaining 24 Chief Constables who have turned down my request for an apology, claim these abuses happened a long time ago and that an apology would be a pointless gesture.
The victims think otherwise. A formal apology would demonstrate moral leadership, humility and humanity. It would send a powerful message to those who endured oppression at the hands of the police—showing that their suffering has been heard, and that the police of today reject the abuses of the past.
Apologies are not symbolic gestures. They are acts of justice. They affirm that change has occurred, and that the police now stand alongside the communities they once harmed. For many LGBT+ people, hearing their Chief Constable acknowledge historic mistreatment would be profoundly healing.
The apologies issued by 21 forces have not undermined current officers but have strengthened LGBT+ trust. They have helped to rebuild bridges with marginalised LGBT+ people; showing that policing today is informed by compassion, accountability and truth. This has boosted LGBT+ confidence in the police, encouraging more to report hate crimes, domestic violence and sexual assaults, which is what we all want.
Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley, head of the Metropolitan Police, had no hesitation in saying sorry; accepting it was the right thing to do, to atone for years of systemic abuse, harassment and entrapment of LGBT+ communities. He freely acknowledged that the Met had harboured “systems and processes … which have led to bias and discrimination … over many decades” and apologised unreservedly to those “we have let down.” Rowley showed true leadership and won huge respect among LGBTs. When will GMP, WMP and the 22 other refusing Chief Constables show the same contrition and leadership?