tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1928508826592241080.post8565537036959882849..comments2023-10-01T05:51:54.101-04:00Comments on Wake up and LIVE: Forty-Five Years: A Celebration of the SaintsSCGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08162762233972733978noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1928508826592241080.post-56012231509615216262014-06-28T12:29:54.609-04:002014-06-28T12:29:54.609-04:00It is curious how we have progressed in the past t...It is curious how we have progressed in the past two generations. Yet even back in the 1980s I can remember being lined up outside a gay club in Manchester (UK) and having my name and address taken by the police. At that time the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester was the much despised James Anderton - a man who publically stated that homosexuals, drug addicts and prostitutes who had AIDS were "swirling in a cesspit of their own making". He was a staunch Conservative Catholic and much loved by Thatcher, who supported him during the maelstrom his AIDS hate-speech produced – and perhaps supported him to discredit his deputy’s report on Northern Irish Policing... Such was the integrity of Lady Thatcher...<br /><br />Today when I wander through central London, where I work, and see the bars and cafes around Old Compton Street, and the ‘normality’ of gay culture, you wonder what all the fuss was about – particularly when you consider the hypocrisy of many anti-gay activists who, it turned out, didn’t lead squeaky clean lives themselves.<br /><br />But we must not become complacent, many younger people seem to take all this liberty for granted. Which given the present political climate – the rise of UKIP and the hard Right in Europe and the emergence of the Tea Party in the USA, we need to be careful, lest the rights won through blood, sweat and tears are taken away by those eager to enlist blame politics to veil their self-interest and greed.<br /><br /><br />W.B. Yeats’ poem ‘The Second Coming...’ has a marvellous lines that says something about contemporary politics – and it is one we would do well to remember.<br /><br /><br />“The best lack all conviction, while the worst<br /> Are full of passionate intensity...”<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com