Peter Tatchell branded Ann Widdecombe a ‘bigot’ after news of her death broke (Image: Tim Merry)
Peter Tatchell’s comments following the death of Ann Widdecombe were, in my view, deeply distasteful. To reduce a lifetime of public service to a single word – “bigot” – on the day someone’s death has been revealed is neither courageous nor compassionate. It is simply vindictive. He is, of course, entitled to his views. But he should not imagine that he speaks for all gay people. I am gay. In 2015, standing before the world’s media after my home had been raided during Operation Midland, I uttered words I had never expected to say publicly: “I am a homosexual. I am not a murderer. I am not a paedophile.”
It was not a declaration born of liberation; it was one born of necessity. For decades, I had kept my private life private. I was forced into the open because of the poisonous implication that has haunted homosexual men for generations: the false and deeply offensive conflation of homosexuality with child abuse. Operation Midland resurrected those prejudices in the most devastating way imaginable. One might have expected those who campaign most loudly for equality to recognise what was happening.
Instead, there was silence. When I was prosecuted for gross indecency in 1987, few voices from the organised gay rights movement came to my defence. During Operation Midland, when I described the Metropolitan Police’s conduct as a “homosexual witch-hunt”, there was again little public support. Some LGBT organisations appeared keen to distance themselves from me rather than challenge an investigation that was trampling over the very principles of fairness and due process they so often champion.
I have often wondered why. Would the reaction have been different had I been a left-wing former Member of Parliament rather than a Conservative? It is a question that deserves to be asked.
By contrast, Ann Widdecombe – whose views on homosexuality I did not always share – showed me a humanity that transcended political labels and ideological differences. She stood by me when many others, including people who might have been expected to do so, chose not to. She offered private encouragement, public support and practical help at a time when association with me carried considerable personal and political risk.
That is why Peter Tatchell’s attempt to define her solely by the positions she took on gay rights is so profoundly misleading. Human beings are more complicated than slogans. They should be judged in the round.
Ann and I disagreed on important issues. But when my life was being destroyed by false allegations, she defended justice rather than expediency. That speaks more eloquently about her character than any epithet ever could.
The irony is hard to miss. Those who speak most passionately about tolerance can sometimes prove remarkably intolerant of those whose views differ from their own.
Tatchell has every right to criticise Ann Widdecombe’s political record. He does not have the right to assume that his judgment represents every gay person – least of all those of us whose lives were transformed by injustice, and who remember who stood with us when it truly mattered.
Harvey Proctor is a former Conservative MP for Basildon and Billericay and campaigner for victims of false allegations