Why we need to study LGBTQ+ history

LGBTQ+ History Month is an education initiative. Launched for the first time in the UK in February 2005 by Schools Out, an education charity that started as The Gay Teachers Association in 1974, LGBTQ+ History Month began as a reminder and undoing of recent UK history – in particular, Section 28 of the 1988 Local Government Act.

Section 28 had banned local authorities from ‘promoting homosexuality’ and schools from teaching that homosexuality is acceptable as a family relationship. Thatcher famously argued in her speech to the Conservative Party Conference on 9 October 1987 that children who are being taught that they have an ‘inalienable right to be gay’ are cheated of a sound start in life.

But Thatcher not only attacked LGBTQ+ education. Her speech ridiculed LGBTQ+ and race equality policies and talked about young people as if they don’t have their own agency. This is the legacy that is to still be undone completely.

Section 28 was abolished in February 2003. Now, LGBTQ+ History Month is a time to rethink education and history.

LGBTQ+ History Month has learned from Black History Month, which came before it, and works to undo the effects of Section 28.

Alongside Black History Month, it carries on the legacy of radical municipal histories, in which local authorities have taken the lead in decision making over local issues – for example, those of the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) and Greater London Council (GLC), which were attacked and eventually abolished by Thatcher’s Conservative government.

Grassroots activism, in turn, influenced municipal strategies. For example, we can look towards feminist, queer, and Black housing activism in the 70s and 80s to get an idea of how family relations were queered (challenged heteronormative structures) and how ideas of childhood and education were being rethought at the time Section 28 was introduced.

Given this history, what’s the role of the higher education sector 20 years after the abolition of Section 28?

Universities today celebrate LGBTQ+ histories in February, but could still further materially and institutionally support queer history programmes, centres, teachers and students all year round. The higher education sector needs to be better at engaging students in all decision-making processes to actively build their learning environments. This is another part of the legacy of Section 28 to be undone.

But there is still more to do. Race, disability and gender pay gaps, and casualisation in higher education, disproportionately impact LGBTQ+ teachers. Cuts to the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences mean cuts to the spaces where research into sexual and gender diversity takes place. Underfunding means that these programmes, their teachers, and students are pushed to leaving the sector.

Goldsmiths’ MA in Queer History is the first of its kind, and one of the many spaces for learning and engaging with queer histories. But time and time again, courses in Queer History and Black British History have come under threat, affecting their teachers and students.

While queer history work is therefore mostly done outside of the university, the Centre for Queer History offers an important space within the higher education sector. It also forms collaborations and partnerships with other public queer history initiatives.

Whether within or outside the university, doing queer history relies on working together collectively.

LGBTQ+ History Month continues the work of undoing the legacy of Section 28 and its silencing of education on LGBTQ+ histories, identities, and politics. The higher education sector can do more to work towards this goal.

Queer histories are lived and teaching and learning queer histories is an open collaborative practice. Engaging with questions of the queer past also promotes the value of sexual and gender diversity today.

This has urgency. On January 16 2023, for the first time in history, the UK Government used Section 35 of the Scotland Act 1998 to block Scotland's Gender Recognition Act. LGBTQ+ History Month this year should be all about trans liberation.

Isabell is a Lecturer in Queer History at Goldsmiths, University of London. She co-convenes the MA Queer History course at Goldsmiths and co-teaches the adult evening course ‘Queer London’ at the Bishopsgate Institute.