Hello, part two of the wonderful Lisa Power talking to us for our LGBT history month special.

Here we go.

Tell me about the founding of Stonewall because, know that's the next big step and it was it was

set up directly in response to section 28 right?

Well the thing about section 28 is we lost hands down.

And the major reason that we lost hands down was we had not nearly enough friends in

Parliament and we were not understood nearly well enough.

And one of the things about the lesbian and gay movement at that time was it was incredibly insular.

It was very much about a hierarchy of oppressions and everybody was claiming how

oppressed they were in various ways and they were. But actually we talked about what kept

us apart, not what kept us together, and it was an absolute article of faith that if you were any kind of gay activist you wouldn't speak to the Tories.

It was politically aligned with labour to some extent, but also with the further left, which was all very well, but actually the Tories had a massive walloping majority in Parliament and there was nothing we could do about Section 28 because we didn't want to talk to them.

So that was one of the observations that I made going through Section 28.

I mean we all acted like if enough of us marched

enough times through a major city,

it would go away.

And it didn't.

And the people who made the most impact

beyond a shadow of a doubt, were the arts lobby people.

Because they brought in famous people, they brought in their allies, they talked about

gays in a family setting and they talked to the Tories even though they weren't supposed to.

That was a big part of the beginning of Stonewall. Before it was Stonewall the idea for something was created by half a

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