One of the notable outcomes from this month’s UK General Election was the ousting of Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes from the seat of Bermondsey. Hughes had been the sitting MP since over-turning a 63% Labour majority at a controversial by-election in 1983.

Central to the controversy was the homophobic campaign waged against Labour candidate Peter Tatchell by the tabloid media as well as Tatchell’s election opponents. This included Simon Hughes’ campaign releasing a leaflet headed “Simon Hughes: the straight choice” and male Liberal canvassers wearing badges declaring “I have not been kissed by Peter Tatchell yet.”

In March 1983, Britain’s Gay News ran the following brief article, headed ‘Libgay’s “error of judgement”‘:

“Perhaps it was an error in judgement on our part, however it was intended. We probably didn’t give it enough consideration as to how it would be received.”

This is the afterthought of Alan Mead, general secretary of Libgay and a former chair of Croydon North West Liberal Association, on the badges which he and several others wore during the final days of the Bermondsey by-election campaign.

All the badges but one read “I have not been kissed by Peter Tatchell yet”. The exception read: “I have been kissed by Peter Tatchell”.

“It was intended as a send-up”, says Mead. “The intent was to criticise his stance, not his sexuality”. All the Liberal workers wearing the badges also wore Gay Pride badges, Mead claims. Peter Tatchell was the defeated Labour candidate.

But it should be noted that Gay News – and, indeed, other queer activists – were not entirely uncritical of Tatchell. In an article titled ‘The most homophobic by-election of our times’, the paper argued that he should have been open about his sexuality from the outset.

“Late in 1981, as strongly as we knew how, we urged Peter Tatchell to come out…If you don’t take that step now, we said to him on the phone, the innuendoes that have already begun will become worse and worse…”

But, as if to give an indication of the political climate of the time, they also wrote:

“We offered the advice in the full knowledge that in Bermondsey he faced an elderly, economically-depressed and substantially Catholic constituency.”

And, of course, the leadership of his own party were, at best, lukewarm with their support for him.

Thirty-two years later, Labour have re-taken the seat of Bermondsey, without the need to mention that Simon Hughes – the ‘straight’ choice of 1983 – actually came out as bisexual not too long after that. And, apparently, the new British Parliament now has more openly LGBT members than any other national legislative body in the world.

Perhaps Hughes’ departure from Bermondsey will now draw a line under the unfortunate legacy that began in 1983.