YouSaid · the spoken record

Peter Tatchell

lines on the record: 35
first: 2017-12-08
most recent: 2017-12-08
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Thirty years. I've given myself a target of another 30 years. My grandfather lived to be ninety seven, he was very active until his last three years, so I think I've got a fair good chance. And I'm looking forward to it. Sometimes I'm exhausted and I'm sure I exhaust other people, but I am passionate about human rights and I want to see a better world and do my little bit. It's only a little bit, but every little bit helps and we together collectively do make change.”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What now? Where to start? Well, climate change, or as I prefer to call it, climate destruction, is probably the single greatest threat to our security in the long term, and for hundreds of millions of people in developing countries, it is critical because if temperatures rise and sea levels rise, vast areas of the planet will disappear under sea water. And many of those areas are some of the most heavily populated and productive delta regions on this planet. It's going to force hundreds of millions of climate refugees. Where they're going to go, where they're going to live, how they're going to get jobs.”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, social justice is something I have been campaigning on all my life, right from the get-go. I've never been solely involved in LGBT campaigning. It's important and a central part, but I've also been campaigning about women's rights, free speech, greater economic equality and democracy in our workplaces, a whole range of issues, which sometimes fall off the agenda. My thinking is very simple. We all expect political democracy. Why can't we have economic democracy as well? I mean, basically Britain is an economic dictatorship. The major shareholders, managers and directors decide all the crucial decisions, and that includes also public services like the National Health Service, ordinary employees and consumers are completely locked out of decision making power.”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Debate and vote. And at this time last year, when Aleppo was under siege, there was clearly a majority in Parliament who would have voted for British aid drops of food and medicine and blankets to civilians in Aleppo. But Jeremy Corbyn did not go to Parliament and demand a debate and vote. And he should have done that. And that's why, and that's the only reason why I interrupted his press conference on Human Rights Day last year, because he'd been ignoring the request that Syrian activists had been making for over one year to support and do something practical to get aid drops to besiege cities.”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I stayed in the Labour Party until 2000, then I left, and a few years later I joined the Green Party because I didn't like the way Tony Blair was taking Labour. To me, it lost out on both social justice, human rights, and democracy. But I worked with Jeremy for 40 years. He is a very great, sincere guy. I think on some issues he has made some misjudgments. For example, you know some of his remarks about Hamas and Hezbollah, I think, were ill judged. I mean, that these are anti human rights organizations. Also, he has made some criticisms of Putin's Russia, but he's not really supporting political prisoners in Russia, which include many left-wingers and trade unionists, or have included left-wingers and trade unionists. On Syria, he is demonstrably failed to support humanitarian aid drops. I mean, he'll say he supports them, but he hasn't used labour time in parliament to demand a”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some, I mean, I can't quantify it, but to me, perhaps to my own emotional damage, I listen to my critics very acutely, and I do ponder. Did I get it wrong? Are they right? Is this criticism valid? Do I need to change? Did I say the wrong thing? And sometimes it'll go over in my head for days. I won't be able to sleep at night, you know. But I think that's a good thing. It's quite emotionally and psychologically straining, but it's a good thing because it keeps me on my toes. I don't become complacent and arrogant and think, oh, I know it all. I mean, I am following my conscience. I'm doing what I believe to be right. But I'm always open to the possibility I might be wrong.”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I haven't even my harsh screws. I don't wantonly abuse them or fabricate things about them. I argue against them in a rational, evidence-based way. And I think it's really important that we do that.”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I was equally appalled that he could get a criminal record for expressing an opinion in a non threatening, non insulting way. You know, the language was wrong and everything, but he didn't say gay should burn in hell. He didn't say kill gays. He didn't say gay people should be sacked from their jobs. He expressed an opinion. So I offered to stand as a defence witness in his appeal against conviction. In the end, Harry died before it came to trial, but before that happened, he was so homophobic he didn't want me as his defence witness. But I was ready to do it.”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, a very small minority of students may most students and most student unions do not know platform people like me. So this is just an exceptional, tiny, zealous minority who have to be stood up to because they in the name of good intentions are using the tactics of the far right, although they claim they're speaking from a left wing point of view. I lived through in my homeland of Australia in the sixties I lived through our own version of McCarthyism I don't believe I should therefore use the same tactics against others. So a good example is about two decades ago, the Christian street preacher Harry Hammond was arrested and convicted for holding a sign saying homosexuality is immoral, homosexuality is sinful. Now of course I totally agree that what Harry said was homophobic and wrong.”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'll just change the scenario. In the 1970s, eighties and nineties, I went on every TV and radio program that I was invited to face up to homophobic bigots who are saying vile things about LGBT people, completely disgusting vile things. I didn't turn around and say those people are so vile and so offensive are not going to debate them. I said I want to do that program to challenge their point of view because I know that their view is shared sadly by some members of the wider public, and if I can go on this program and debate and show why they're wrong, to demonstrate their arguments to produce the counter evidence, I'll not only be putting them in their place and showing them for the homophobes and dishonest people they are, but are also more importantly be speaking to an audience of millions of people who perhaps share their views and might be persuaded by”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Those are not free speech. That's an abuse of free speech because if that kind of free speech is allowed, it will actually undermine free speech because the victims or the people who are being targeted will be too afraid to speak out. So for example, in the case of the Jamaican reggae dancel singers who advocated the murder of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, a lot of critics said we were wrong to stop their concerts and to try and get them banned from putting out those records. They said it's a free speech issue. But we said no. Their message was so intimidating and so threatening that Jamaican LGBT people were too afraid to go on radio programs or to speak in public because they feared that those incitements would get them killed.”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Basically And saying that they have a right to speak unless, of course, there are for me three red lines when it comes to free speech. Free speech is one of the most important of all human rights. In decades and centuries past, people went to prison. We even executed for speaking their mind, for what was perceived to be statements offensive to the church or the monarch or the establishment of the time. So there has to be really strong compelling reasons, and I can only see three reasons why free speech can be legitimately restricted. First of all, if someone makes false damaging allegations, like saying someone's a child sex abuser, a tax fraudster, a rapist, etc. incite violence against other human beings.”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“will not quite know platform there have been attempts to know platforming, but they haven't succeeded. There was an occasion where a national universe representative refused to appear on a platform if I was also on the panel. So that's not quite no platforming.”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nowadays, sadly, this tiny minority throw allegations left, right and centre they don't think you need evidence. They think that's a bourgeois concept. On the issue of transphobia eventually it drilled down to the fact that I had signed a letter where although I strongly disagree with people or antitrans and have protested against them many times, I said that they should not be no platform, that they have a right to speak, and we have a right to protest against them, and that the best way to defeat transphobic ideas is by challenge them in open debate, providing the counter evidence, the counter arguments to show why that is wrong.”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, as someone who has been campaigning against racism in support of black communities and against transphobia in support of trans people for nearly fifty years, of course that was deeply hurtful, and particularly when it was coming from people on the so called left and progressive spectrum of opinion, maybe if this was coming from the far right, I'd sort of laugh it off. But when it comes from people who I have seen as my allies and colleagues, that is tough to bear. And my distress was not just for me, it's because I know that these tactics are driving many liberal left and progressive people out of politics. There are good people who are falsely accused of racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and they are being driven out of politics because of the abusive”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. Absolutely. But when people make false allegations against me, of racism or transphobia or whatever, quite clearly they wouldn't want those kind of allegations put to them. So they've lost sight of the principle due unto others as you'd have them do unto you. They've also lost sight of the fact that without love there can be no liberation movement worthy of the name. To me love is the beginning, the middle, and the end of liberation.”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“have lost sight of love. If love is not the anchor of what you do, if love of other human beings and of human rights is not the anchor in what you do, you can so easily end up with the rationale that the ends justify the means.”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For me it's very simple. What motivates me is love. I love freedom, liberty, equality, justice. I love other people. I don't like to see other people suffering because I wouldn't like to suffer. And if I wouldn't like to suffer and I'd want others to help me, then surely I should reciprocate. And I see a lot of love in the world, a lot of good people doing good things, often not recognised, but their good things are changing things.”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You tell me. There are certain mannerisms and certain vibes. I mean, obviously, deeply repressed. I can remember in 1997 at the Africa 40 conference at Westminster Central Hall, I managed to sneak into his private meeting with a sky camera crew. They were struggling with their cameras. I effort to carry them for them, and the security thought I was with Sky and they wake me through. I got to meet him and talked to him, and I introduced myself, and he didn't know who I was from Adam at that stage. And he said, I was very pleased to meet him. I said, when I was a student, I used to help fundraise to buy medical kits for Zimbabwe that's living in the liberated areas. And he said, oh, thank you so much. It's people like you who helped us win the freedom struggle. And then he said, and what do you do now? He was just sipping a cup of tea. And I said, among other things, I work and support LGBT rights. And he coughed and spluttered, and the tea went everywhere.”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think you have to ask why is that? I mean, meeting him face to face, which I have done, you would think he was gay.”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes and no. I mean, the leader is gone, but the system is still intact. Since Robert Mugabe ceased to be president, no political prisoners have been released. The secret police have not been disbanded, and there is still state censorship of the media. So it is clear that much more needs to happen before we can say that Zimbabwe is anywhere near a democracy. And the key thing, of course, there has to be internationally supervised free and fair elections.”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In order to raise awareness about the scale of discrimination. So until we did the kiss in in Piccoli Circus in 1990, most British people, most London people didn't know that a same-sex couple could be arrested and convicted for merely holding hands or giving each other good night kiss at a bus stop. That happened until nineteen ninety in London, and if we hadn't done that kiss in a particular circus, most people wouldn't have known that, but our protest bought it to their attention and so embarrassed and shamed the Metro police that even one hour before the protests were due to take place, the mass kissing of three hundred couples, one hour beforehand, the Metro police agreed that they would stop. There will be no arrest. So we won before the protest began.”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I used to say if I had been elected I would have ended up rather ineffective, a good man but rather ineffective like Jeremy Corbyn of course so that logic doesn't any longer hold but I do wonder whether perhaps on the outside I perhaps achieved more in the sense that although I've not had direct levers on the handles of power so to speak, I know that I have helped influence ministers in different administrations both labour and conservative and helped with others to get good reforms on the statute book but also very importantly to raise public awareness about these issues so all the protests I did with outrage in the 1990s it had a twofold intention one was to put pressure on people in power to recognize the injustice of discrimination against people because of their sexuality or gender identity but also to generate news coverage”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was threefold. First of all, I was an avowed left-winger. I wanted to see a fundamental change in society and I had some very progressive left-wing ideas, most of which were regarded as extreme then, but are now part of the law of this land. Secondly, I was Australian, so born in Australia, although I can trace my family back to Britain in 1560 in Somerset, near Yeoville. But that stirred up a lot of xenophobia and racism against me. And then, thirdly, obviously, because I was gay and a supporter of LGBT rights, in an era when there was incredible hostility.”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On police advice, I had to board up my flat. I had to install fire extinguishers in every room. I had to put a rope ladder so I could escape out the back window. The police advice was when you go in your flat at night, when it's dark, immediately don't turn on the light, draw the curtains and then turn on the light. There was one point, a report that someone was going to shoot me. That may or may not have been, I don't know what the police intelligence was, but they were seriously concerned that someone might try and fire into my flat.”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“ones not just casual comments no no no no serious death threats you know we are hunt down and going to kill you and often describe in great detail how i'd be killed”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the first thing to say is that most commentators say it was the dirtiest and most violent by-election in Britain in the 20th century. I certainly did go through a hellfire in terms of hate male, death threats and physical violent attacks upon my home and my person.”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was painfully slow until 1999. Until that year Britain had by volume the largest number of anti gay laws of any country in the world, some of them dating back centuries. Here we are less than two decades later, and we have some of the best laws. That is, of course, primarily due to the”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It wasn't enough in the 1970s and 80s because Parliament wouldn't even allow a debate on LGBT issues. Most MPs would not engage with the local LGBT communities. They wouldn't answer questions. They wouldn't meet them. Even to try and find out the scale of homophobic persecution was really difficult. I mean, I got some very great Labour MPs like Audrey Wise and Gavin Strang to ask parliamentary questions about the number of gay and bisexual men who are being arrested and convicted for purely consenting behavior that would have not been a crime between heterosexual men and women. But I knew that getting the facts, the statistics was key to winning the battle.”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. This is the first time I had an opportunity to be engaged in LGBT activism, and so within five days of my arrival on the boat at Southampton, I was at my first gay liberation front meeting, and within a month I was organising many of the spectacular protests that they organize. So in those days, there were pubs, cafes, and restaurants in London that would not serve gay people. So copybook tactics looking at the Black Civil Rights Movement with the sit-ins at lunch counters and beaches and on railway stations where they went into areas that were reserved for white's only and refused to leave they demand to be served, we did the same thing. We went into pubs and cafes and demanded to be served when they refused, we sat in, we were often arrested, sometimes beaten up, but our tactics worked.”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well over three hundred times. Well over I had bricks through the windows in my flat three arson attempts, a bullet through the front door, all my teeth in my mouth are chipped and cracked and reconstructed because of bashings, mostly targeted by what was then the National Front, the far right fascist organization, and its successor group, the British National Party, but also from hardcore Islamists, extremists, who don't like the fact that I support LGBT Muslims and don't like the fact that I support liberal progressive Muslims who reject theocratic dictatorship.”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Somewhere between 100 and 200 But I But only have one standing conviction out of about 3,000 direct action protests, probably half of which technically involve law breaking, but peacefully and nonviolently.”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I couldn't persuade any of my friends they were all afraid because at that time you could get jail for several years for being gay in Melbourne, you could get sent to undergo enforced psychiatric treatment because you were deemed to be mentally ill. So one of my friends were willing to do anything. So I had to do it as a loan campaigner. In great fear that I and my then partner Get a policeman's knock at the door and end up being arrested and jailed. That was a very, very scary time for me as a young, seventeen year old kid. But I was determined to do it because I saw that the black civil rights movement only made progress because people there were willing to take risks. And boy, they took risks and sacrifices.”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My first involvement began back when I was a teenager in my hometown of Melbourne, Australia. I was inspired by the Black Civil Rights Movement in America. As a young person through the nineteen sixties, the Black Civil Rights Movement dominated the news agenda day after day, night after night on TV and radio and the press. And I was appalled at the way African Americans were being treated, and I was full of admiration and inspiration at the heroic struggle for racial justice. So when I realized I was gay in 1969 at the age of seventeen, in my hometown of Melbourne, Australia, there were no gay organisations, not even any helplines or support groups, nothing.”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Eighteen months after the referendum the Prime Minister is unable to answer the question. And on Monday as she thought she was coming here to make a statement, it was vetoed by the leader of the DUP. The tale really is wagging the dog here.”
2017-12-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Peter Tatchell One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source