Other programmes have been of a less contentious nature. A common demand has been for space to enable lesbians and gay men to develop their own lifestyles and their own cultures away, temporarily at least, from the constraints of heterosexism. Greenwich has given funding to a community centre and similar plans are underway in Nottingham. Cultural policy has been an important means of providing space, as the GLC showed, and last June Hackney gave funding to a two week long cultural festival. The need for residential space has been acknowledged by Stirling through its housing policy which permits joint tenancies between two or more people regardless of family or pseudo-marital ties.

The continuing invisibility of most members of the lesbian and gay communities is a problem which needs to be challenged if these projects are to reflect their needs properly. Manchester has, in this context, done imaginative outreach work in gay clubs making contact with countless people, particularly working class gay men, who would never have felt able to attend more traditionally organised meetings; such outreach has also been able to engage with the issue of AIDS in a setting that feels safe and non-judgemental. Haringey has attempted to maximise community involvement by the creation of a sub-committee structure which includes representation from different sub-groups – lesbians, gay men, black and minority ethnic groups, the disabled, the unemployed, trade unionists.

The mode of provision of council services and the ways in which they perpetuate heterosexism is particularly difficult, because it involves changes in current working practices of council employees. A number of councils, most notably Manchester, have developed training programmes for their staff to highlight and challenge the, often unconscious, ways in which heterosexism excludes lesbians and gay men.

New policies require additional resources and this is particularly problematic in a period of rate-capping. Furthermore, their implementation often implies the need for changes in the conditions of service of council workers. Some unions, even those which, nationally, have policies in favour of lesbian and gay rights have been less than enthusiastic in their response. The defence of their custom and practice is clearly important to their collective survival but when that custom and practice has denied the needs and demands of their lesbian and gay members for decades then it has to change. This is most effectively done if the demand for change comes from within the union itself from lesbian and gay members. One of the indirect effects of training programmes has been to encourage more lesbians and gay men to join such groups and, where they do not exist, to set them up. Just as there have been serious conflicts between members in a number of unions over racism, so too can we expect a growing number of conflicts over heterosexism. Trade unions which do not respond to the changes in the expressed needs of their members can hardly be effective and may not even survive.