Read more
Fifty years ago in the UK, sex between men was a crime. The 1967 Sexual Offences Act changed that in part, but it was only the beginning of the long fight for equality in the eyes of the law, in society and in millions of private lives.
This vital new oral history - to accompany a Channel 4 documentary of the same title - tells that story through the lives of gay men who lived through those years. Built around the intimate testimonies of some exceptional but largely unknown characters, it tells previously untold stories of denial, deceit and subterfuge, public pain and secret pleasure through the ten tumultuous decades before and since that watershed Act.
The human variety of gay experience is all here: lives lived in joyous defiance of the law and a repressive society; others always in fear of a prurient tabloid press. Those committed to love and others to licence: lifelong affairs alongside casual sex.
Young gay men may now take for granted the equal treatment denied those who went before. This anniversary year is a good time to record the past, celebrate achievements and remember that hard-won freedoms can so easily be eroded in uncertain times.
List of contents
Introduction ix
One George 1
Two Origins of Prejudice 1918 to 1939 13
Three War 1939 to 1945 47
Four Under Cover 1945 to 1957 73
Five Struggle 1957 to 1967 109
Six Pride 1968 to 1974 139
Seven Fall 1975 to 1983 171
Eight Backlash 1984 to 92 207
Nine Fightback 1992 to 96 241
Ten Almost Equal 1997 to 2016 271
Eleven Not Guilty 2017 to 307
Acknowledgements 325
Index 329
About the author
Sue Elliott is the author of Love Child (2012), The Children Who Fought Hitler (2009), Britain's Greatest Generation (2015), I Heard My Country Calling (2015), and Surviving Aberfan: The People's Story (2016). She has worked in collaboration with Steve Humphries for more than a decade and four of her books have accompanied Testimony documentaries for BBC and ITV.
Summary
Released to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the UK, Not Guilty accompanies a major Channel 4 documentary, to be screened in July, 2017.
