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1967 and All That
The Sexual Offences Act and the Gay Community

a London Region Archives 4 All project

Our domain name is www.1967andallthat.org.uk

The project marks the 40th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of male homosexuality by the Sexual Offences Act 1967, and the project focusses on the crucial period leading up to this Act, including the Wolfenden Report published in 1957. See the Timeline.

This is a joint project between LAGNA and the Hall-Carpenter Archives at the London School of Economics (LSE) Library. The project is part of the Archives 4 All programme, run by The National Archives. The project ran until January 2008. Here is a link to our Project webpage at LSE.

The 1967 and All That project is generous funded by The Heritage Lottery Fund.

Find out more about project Events and Press coverage.

The key activities of the project were:

• A touring exhibition using material from the Hall-Carpenter Archives and LAGNA about the period leading up to the 1967 Act and what life was like for gay people before and after this watershed year. The exhibition toured the Greater London area throughout 2007 and reached a diverse range of communities, to raise awareness of gay history and the significance of the 1967 Act. Further dates in 2008 are being planned.
  
  • Our blog of the Exhibition contains the full-text of the exhibition



The exhibition in Trafalgar Square

Judy, Robert & Rebecca at Pride 2007

Our stall outside the National Gallery

A "sister" visits

• HLF funding enables the cataloguing of important historical material that was previously inaccessible. Tamsin Bookey was appointed as the project archivist at LSE to catalogue archives of the Homosexual Law Reform Society & the Albany Trust, the Campaign for Homosexual Equality, plus the papers of Peter Tatchell and Bob Mellors. Her post ends in January 2008. The final catalogues will be made available online via the National Archives A2A website and the LSE Archives Division website.



• Research at the British Library Newspaper Collection identified newspaper articles in the British press in the period leading up to the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, and beyond. This research, by Peter Kelley and Norena Shopland, was important for LAGNA as this period was under-represented in our collection. Results of this work has provided a fascinating and invaluable resource to researchers, by creating a picture of how the debate about the decriminalisation of homosexuality was represented in the mainstream press.


• Project officer Robert Thompson ran an outreach programme to include illustrated talks on the 1967 and All That project across the London boroughs and to interested community groups. We also participated in LGBT events throughout 2007 including Pride, LGBT History Month and relevant conferences.



• Robert Thompson carried out a mapping project to identify previously hidden archival lesbian & gay archival collections in the London area. Through a leaflet and information provided by LAGNA, guidance was made available to individuals, organisations and businesses on the preservation and safe deposit of their collections.



• A volunteer programme has been run both at LAGNA and at the Hall-Carpenter Archives at LSE, and Volunteer Coordinator Robert Thompson recruited a volunteer team to undertake important sorting and classification work. This volunteer work continues. If you are interested in doing some volunteer work for LAGNA, please contact Robert at the above address. No experience is necessary and travel expenses will be reimbursed.

The 1967 and All That project is being managed by Rebecca Forsey.

Oliver Merrington is Webmaster for this project, and for LAGNA in general.

Judy Vaknin is the Middlesex University Archivist, provides local support to LAGNA and assists users wishing to use the archive on days when Robert is not at Cat Hill.

Robert was previously employed as Outreach officer for LAGNA’s Queer Britain 1953-1988 project, which also received HLF funding.

Other LGBT archive projects

Another recently funded Archives 4 All project is
"Queer arts, artists, and culture: the queerupnorth archive"
led by queerupnorth, in partnership with Manchester Archives and Local Studies.
Now approaching its 15th anniversary, queerupnorth was the UK's first queer arts festival, and remains the largest and longest running event of its kind in Europe. Hidden in its archive are the history of the organisation, and an extensive collection of information on queer arts and artists.

Text by Judy Vaknin, Rebecca Forsey and Oliver Merrington
Updated: April 2008