LGBT History: Allan Horsfall Has Died

Allan Horsfall has died.

Don't know who he is? Neither do I; well, neither did I. But a quick Google and some interwebz browsing, and I soon discovered that Allan Horsfall was one of Great Britain's most important LGBT rights pioneers.

Way back in 1964, practically the Dark Ages of the LGBT Rights movement, Horsfall helped set up the first grassroots, gay-led rights organization, the Homosexual Law Reform Committee. That group later became the Campaign for Homosexual Equality, a group still in operation today and widely seen as a forerunner of modern gay rights groups like Stonewall.

In the 1950s, Allan Horsfall became a local councilor in Nelson, England, and soon became aware of the inconsistencies in the way the laws against homosexuality in Britain was applied. He discovered one public lavatory that had been used by men to meet other men and have sex for over thirty years and though it was a well-known cruising spot the police and magistrates basically overlooked it. 

But, in other places police would arrest a man for simply being suspected of being gay or bisexual, and they would go through those men's address books and round up the men whose names they discovered. These men would then be forced to appear in court, accused of being part of a ‘homosexual ring’, even though many of them didn’t know each other.

This inspired Horsfall to set up the Homosexual Law Reform Society, which became the Campaign for Homosexual Equality; at one point, the group had several thousand members all through the United Kingdom,.

Horsfall's work in shining a light on the treatment, often illegal treatment, of gay men, spanned some fifty years. Even after homosexuality was decriminalized in Britain in 1967, with an age of consent set at 21 for gay men in private, Horsfall continued his campaign for equality.

In 1998 he worked on the case of the Bolton Seven--a group of men who had sex with one another and were prosecuted for it; although homosexuality was legal in 1998, group sex between men was not.

The Bolton Seven case was the last major case to come to court before British sexual offences laws were completely reviewed and equalized for gay and straight people alike; with, of course, the exception of sex in public toilets which remains criminal and is mainly targeted at men who have sex with men.

Peter Tatchell, one of the UK’s most well-known LGBT rights advocates: 

‘Allan was arguably the grandfather of the modern gay rights movement in Britain. We all walk in Allan's shadow. He was active in LGBT campaigning until a few months before his death. Allan deserves a Queer State Funeral.’

George Broadhead, veteran LGBT campaigner:

‘Like another prominent gay Humanist Anthony Grey who died in 2010, Alan made an invaluable contribution to the campaign for LGBT rights. Very few people nowadays have heard of him. But in those days to put your head above the parapet was very brave. He got into a great deal of trouble with the Labour Party for getting involved in gay rights but somebody has got to start these things.’

Ray Gosling, who campaigned alongside Horsfall, is more direct:

‘Allan’s contribution to gay rights is he invented it. Allan was the founder of it all.'

And now I know. And so do you.

Rest in peace, Allan, you deserve it.

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