In this episode, Phil Tinline asks Professor Frank Mort about the journalist Peter Wildeblood's prosecution for homosexual offences in 1954, Wildeblood's risky decision to be open about his homosexuality - and how this intersected with the work of the committee appointed by Churchill's last government to explore the possibility of changing the law.

Stonewall founder Lisa Power recalls how it was only after male homosexual acts were partly decriminalised in 1967 that the movement for gay liberation took off. And how, after the failure to stop Section 28, the late 1980s saw the birth of a new approach - which began a mainstream political struggle to win the freedoms of today.

First broadcast in 2019.

Producer: Phil Tinline Show less