IngentaConnect Who Needs a Prosecution to Make a Point? The Forgotten British Cu...

Abstract:

The aim of this paper is to revisit questions of censorship in the arts in the UK under the introduction of Clause 28, also known as Section 28. Section 28 of the local government act was passed into law in the United Kingdom on 24 May 1988 and then subsequently repealed on 18 November 2003. The section states that: 28. - (1) The following shall be inserted after section 2 of the [1986c. 10] Local Government Act 1986 (prohibition of political publicity) - 2A. - (1) A local authority shall not - intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality; promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship. In particular I will tell the story of how an artwork I made in the summer of 1988 was censored in the heyday of Mrs Thatcher's Britain, not as a direct effect of the law but as a result of the prevailing atmosphere of the time. In setting out to tell this story I seek to explore and assess the situation to determine what effects are still being felt over ten years on. The politics of the 1980s have been assessed at length and the implications for gay lifestyles have likewise been the project of a number of very eminent sociologists (Chetan Bhatt, Stuart Hall, Stuart Marshall, Ken Plummer, Simon Watney, and Jeffrey Weeks), so at the expense of being repetitious one of my aims here is to retell the story of Clause 28 as I saw it. I have no wish to repeat a chronology, moreover this can be gleaned effectively from popular sources like Wikipedia. Rather, I aim to describe the context in order to locate a discussion around the artwork in question and to position this as part of a peer group on both sides of the Atlantic. Even though the clause has since been repealed (this was delivered as part of Tony Blair's second term election pledges) its effects were nonetheless as devastating for the UK arts community as the Helms amendment and the Reagan years proved to be for the arts in the USA. The implications for both the British and the US experience are equally significant, possibly the main difference for the UK is that it was less visible and ultimately no prosecutions were brought. Professional links were established at the time through 'Burning the Flag', a conference organized by Projects UK in the early spring of 1992. Significantly a meeting took place between artists affected by the NEA grant withdrawal and a significant group of people from the British arts community who were likewise effected by Clause 28. My aim here is to revisit the conditions of the time, and the effects of Clause 28 as I experienced them and to illustrate how the threat of censorship was as effective as actual censorship itself in curtailing a set of visual investigations into identity and sexuality.

Who Needs a Prosecution to Make a Point? The Forgotten British Culture Wars