Peter Tatchell is once more in the news today which reminds me to write the blogpost I have had in my mind for a few weeks now. Normally, one would have to be careful here, as Peter Tatchell is an active member of another political party (the Greens), and may even be a parliamentary candidate, so this post should not be read in any way as an urge for readers to vote for him!
No, the reasons I have admired Peter Tatchell for some years are these: his consistency of approach to the issues which are important to him (notably gay rights, but human rights more widely as well), how his principles help him avoid the other tangles other Leftists seem to get themselves into (e.g. unlike, say, Ken Livingstone, Peter Tatchell speaks out strongly against homophobic Islamists) and his fearlessness (for example when trying to arrest Robert Mugabe.).
Peter Tatchell regularly emails all MPs with his campaigns. Most MPs will tell you they never read round-robin emails addressed to all MPs, but I almost always read those coming from Peter Tatchell, and he has recently highlighted the appalling new laws in Uganda against gays, as well as a myriad of other causes in recent years. I can't say I've agreed with every one of his campaigns, but he is often there first to highlight a forgotten injustice somewhere in the world.
Most of these campaigns have been in the public domain.
What I can tell readers is that this campaigning zeal has been going on for 30 years or more. ConHome readers will know that I have had my own run ins with the East German authorities in the years 1985-1990. Indeed, I still owe the East German government over 400 Deutschmarks for breaking their rules.
Published and unpublished information in various East German archives has in recent years been of some embarrassment to British politicians, and not all of the Labour Party. The GDR kept substantial files on a surprisingly large number of influential people in Britain.
Few emerge with much credit. One Leftist who did was Peter Tatchell. According to the archives of SAPMO (die Stiftung der Partei und Massenorganisationen der DDR), now housed at the Bundesarchiv, there were many British left-wing visitors to the 1973 Weltfestspiele (World Festival Games) in East Berlin, and the Stasi were hard at work ingratiating themselves. One Leftist who, the archives record (SAPMO/FDJ DY 2/11333), did not please their hosts was one Peter Tatchell. Tatchell was decried for his support for "bourgeois democratic rights" and the hosts recorded that "the group of homosexuals, under Peter Tachel (sic), claimed to have been discriminated against at the Weltfestspiele and spread insults about the FDJ (Free German Youth, East German youth movement) and the GDR". His Wikipedia entry records, (from the "Gay Marxist" magazine, 1973, seemingly not online) that he was also beaten up by other deelgeates and had his leaflets burned, but I cannot directly verify this.
Contrast this for a moment with what the same archives (of the East German "Free German Youth" or FDJ, part of SAPMO) record about one Peter Mandelson. Mandelson, when he was Chairman of the British Youth Council (BYC) between 24th and 29th February 1980 welcomed a delegation from the FDJ to Britain. The BYC organised a tour (from document DY 24/11333 Zusammenarbeit mit Jugendorganisationen aus, u.a. GB 1979-80) for their East German visitors, at least one of which was a Stasi operative, to "historic Shropshire", including the birthplace of the industrial revolution (presumably Ironbridge). Mandelson's name appears at the bottom of a joint communique agreeing to "strengthen relations between the BYC and the FDJ" and in which the BYC spoke "for defending the achievements of detente and against a return to the Cold War and arms race". The file records proudly that "there were open discussions on current problems of international relations, questions of co-operation between youth in socialism and capitalism, and their work in their respective countries".
Now, don't get me wrong, I am not suggesting that Mandelson was neccessarily sympathetic to East Germany; what I am saying is that there is no record of him protesting in the same way that there is about Tatchell. Mandelson did condemn the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in private discussions, for example, but nevertheless the overall impression from these archives is one of a friendly meeting, with pledges of future co-operation. They even agreed to "energise" their mutual relations - but no differences over "bourgeois democratic rights" (=gay rights, I assume).
So, for many of us on the Centre Right, Tatchell might seem like a man more famed for his extremism as Labour's candidate at Bermondsey By Election in 1983, three years to the day after the Stasi came to see Peter Mandelson. I would urge all readers to look beyond that memory and consider for a moment that, actually, Peter Tatchell might be something of a hero for his overall contribution to human rights in the last 40 years.
