Four decades later, Bermondsey still holds the record for being the largest by-election swing in British political history. Simon Hughes of the Liberal Party emerged victorious with 17,017 votes, while Tatchell finished second with just 7,698. Despite the loss, he says he’s still “glad” he ran for office, though notes that his election could have helped advance certain legislation more quickly. “I think I could have, with other members of parliament, made a difference,” Tatchell adds. “There are so many issues that I wanted and planned to raise, and I think, maybe, that I could have helped perhaps push forward things like the Equality Act much sooner than in 2010.” He continues: “It’s extraordinary that in 1983, in the by-election, I was advocating a broad based, comprehensive Equality Act to protect everyone that was widely denounced as extremist. It took until 2010 for that legislation to be enshrined in the Equality Act. If I’d been elected in 1983, I would have pushed and hopefully been able to get that statute on the books much, much sooner.”
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Things like the so-called ‘trans debate’ and the government’s failure to ban ‘conversion therapy’ for all years after initially promising to do so show that anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric still exists in politics today, which Tatchell acknowledges. “There is still plenty of prejudice, no doubt about it, and politics is often quite toxic,” he says. “But to be frank, it’s nothing on the scale of what I went through 40 years ago. You know, the Batley and Spen by-election was pretty bad, but even that was minor by significance in comparison to what I went through. It is hard to imagine today just how bad it was.” He does, however, believe that “one of the really positive things” to come out of the Bermondsey by-election was that it “made it easier for subsequent LGBT+ candidates” to run for office. “After it was all over, when people realised the horrendous abuse that I’d suffered, it provoked widespread revulsion, not just among the public, but even among many of the journalists who had been party to it,” Tatchell states. “And this meant that when subsequent gay candidates stood or came out, like Chris Smith, who declared his sexuality a year later in 1984, they did not suffer the abuse and vilification that I did.”
Since losing the by-election in 1983, Tatchell has become a name synonymous with LGBTQ+ activism in the UK and he has “been able to contribute to many of the changes that our community has won” in the 40 years since then. “The extreme vicious homophobia of the Bermondsey by-election reminded me and the whole community of the scale of prejudice that still existed and that prompted me to reignite my previous campaigning work on LGBT+ issues,” he says, adding: “I think that having not been elected has given me the freedom and flexibility to say exactly what I feel, to campaign passionately for the issues I care about in a way that wouldn’t have been possible on the same scale if I’d been elected an MP.” With LGBTQ+ representation in politics reaching record highs across the UK in recent years, there’s no denying that things have come a long way since that fateful by-election. In the next four decades, Tatchell wants to see this go even further given that the community still has “battles to fight and win”. He continues: “I would love to see an openly lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender Prime Minister and Archbishop of Canterbury. I would also love to see us achieve a situation where no one cared about anyone’s sexual orientation or gender identity, where all we cared about was love and respect for each other.”
Hating Peter Tatchell, the documentary which follows Peter Tatchell from his early life to his fight for justice amid controversy and political turmoil, is streaming now on Netflix.