Peter Tatchell's acceptance speech for Honorary Doctorate at Sussex University, awarded for 43 years of human rights activism
Dedicated to the people of Iran fighting for democracy and freedom
23 July 2010 – Brighton
Full text of Peter Tatchell’s acceptance speech, on receipt of his
Honorary Doctorate of Letters, conferred by Sussex University and
presented by the university’s Chancellor, Sanjeev Bhaskar, in a
ceremony at Brighton Dome on 23 July 2010.
Peter Tatchell, who is human rights spokesperson for the Green Party
of England & Wales, and the most courageous person I know, said:
Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor, members of faculty, family and friends,
and fellow graduands, to whom I offer my congratulations.
Congratulations on your hard work – and success.
My gratitude to Prof Morely for her most generous oration, and to the
University of Sussex for conferring on me such a high award.
I was hesitant about accepting this honour. After all, my doctorate
has not been earned by academic study, and my contribution to human
rights is very modest. Many others are much more deserving than me.
Nevertheless, after so many years of demonisation by the tabloid
press, right-wingers, homophobes and even by some people on the left
and in the LGBT community, this recognition is much appreciated.
In accepting this award, I pay tribute to the heroic, inspirational
activists I have worked alongside, including activists in Uganda,
Somaliland, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Baluchistan, Nigeria,
Zimbabwe, Western Sahara, Iraq, Palestine and West Papua.
The greatest honour I’ve had in my life is the privilege to know and
support so many amazing, courageous human rights defenders around the
world. I walk in their shadow, humbled by their bravery and sacrifice.
I dedicate my acceptance of this honorary doctorate to the people of
Iran who are struggling against clerical dictatorship, for democracy
and freedom.
In particular, Mansour Osanloo, the jailed Iranian trade union leader,
and Sakineh Ashtiani, who has been sentenced to be stoned to death,
along with more than 20 other Iranians.
I express my solidarity with Iran’s persecuted Sunni Muslims and its
oppressed national minorities: including the Arab, Kurdish and Baluch
peoples.
I’m not special or unique. I do my bit for social justice, but so do
many others. Together, through our collective efforts, we are slowly,
but surely, helping make a better world – a world more just and free.
My key political inspirations are Mohandas Gandhi, Sylvia Pankhurst,
Martin Luther King and, to some extent, Malcolm X and Rosa Luxemburg.
I’ve adapted many of their ideas and methods to the contemporary
struggle for human rights – and invented a few of my own.
I began campaigning in my home town of Melbourne, Australia, in 1967, aged 15.
My first human rights campaign was against the death penalty, followed
by campaigns in support of Aboriginal rights and in opposition to
conscription and the Australian and US war against the people of
Vietnam.
In 1969, on realising that I was gay, the struggle for queer freedom
became an increasing focus of my activism.
After moving to London in 1971, I became an activist in the Gay
Liberation Front; organising sit-ins at pubs that refused to serve
queers, and organising protests against police harassment and the
medical classification of homosexuality as an illness.
I was roughed up and forcibly ejected when I challenged the world
famous psychologist, Professor Hans Eysenck, during a lecture in 1972,
where he advocated electric shock aversion therapy to supposedly
‘cure’ homosexuality.
The following year, in East Berlin, I was arrested and interrogated by
the secret police - the Stasi - after staging the first gay rights
protest in a communist country.
I have continued in the same vein for four decades, with many
controversial protests: such as taking over the pulpit and condemning
the Archbishop of Canterbury on Easer Sunday 1998, two attempted
citizen’s arrests of President Mugabe of Zimbabwe, confronting Mike
Tyson over his homophobia, and outing 10 Church of England Bishops in
1994.
The bishops were outed, not because they were gay but because they
were hypocrites. They colluded with the church’s anti-gay stance in
public but were gay in private. They were outed because of their
homophobia and hypocrisy, not because of their homosexuality.
I was widely criticised at the time. Critics said I had no real
evidence that the bishops were gay. Not true. I had the evidence. I
was gratified some years later when a doctor approached me to confirm
that he knew one of the bishops was definitely gay. He told me that
the unnamed bishop was a patient and once came to his surgery with a
rectal problem. The doctor asked the bishop to show him where the
problem was. Dropping his trousers and pointing to his bottom the
bishop said: “It’s here, just by the entrance.” To which the doctor
replied: “Excuse me bishop, most us call it the exit.”
Looking back on my 43 years of human rights campaigning, my advice,
for what it’s worth, is this:
Be sceptical, question authority, be a rebel. Do not conform and don’t
be ordinary.
Remember, all human progress is the result of far-sighted people
challenging orthodoxy, tradition and rich, powerful, vested interests.
Be daring, show imagination, take risks.
Fight against the greatest human rights violation of all: free market
capitalism, which has created a world divided into rich and poor,
where hundreds of millions of people are malnourished, homeless,
without clean drinking water and dying from hunger and preventable
diseases.
Don’t accept the world as it is. Dream about what the world could be –
then help make it happen.
In whatever field of endeavour you work, be a change-maker for the
upliftment of humanity.
To quote my fellow sodomite and socialist Oscar Wilde:
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
Read more about Peter Tatchell’s four decades of human rights
campaigning here:
http://www.petertatchell.net/biography/biography2007.htm
And about his current campaigns here:
www.petertatchell.net
