1987. Police plan to close London’s gay pubs?

Copyright Cath Jackson. Used with permission.
On December 17th, 1986, police raided the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, a long-established gay pub in South London.
In the course of the raid, police seized boxes of amyl nitrite (“poppers”). The landlord, Pat McConnon, and various members of his staff were then charged with “conspiracy to adminster noxious substances with intent to injure”, under Section 24 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1961.
It was a spurious and vexatious charge, made possible only by the ambiguous legal status of poppers and the deliberate exploitation of that ambiguity. In other words, it was only an issue if the police chose to make it so, which they did.
Then just over a month later, on 24th January, the police undertook an even more vexatious raid on the pub. Thirty five police officers conducted the raid – an extraordinary waste of police resources – and some forty men were arrested for the ridiculous offence of ‘being drunk on licensed premises’. To establish their intoxication, the men were lined up in front of a police doctor who simply looked at them and, one by one, declared them drunk.
They were held for more than twelve hours in police cells before being released without charge. Some of them were required to sign caution forms admitting that they were drunk and had been sold alcohol in the pub. And one man required hospital treatment for an injured arm, sustained after a police officer had bent it up his back a little too enthusiastically during his arrest. *
As if to further exacerbate the situation, many of the police officers had worn rubber gloves in the course of the raid. It was a further indication of their AIDS-phobia – the notion that all gay men had AIDS and, furthermore, that it was highly infectious. For many customers it was also a veiled threat that blood was about to be spilled, since police had a reputation for ‘roughing up’ queers.
The police subsequently claimed that the rubber gloves had been used because there was a risk that amyl nitrite might have been spilled onto their officers skin. The fact that they made no attempt to locate amyl nitrite during the raid rather undermined this claim.
At a subsequent public meeting convened to discuss the two raids, MP Chris Smith advised the audience of rumours circulating at Westminster. Specifically, these were that the Metropolitan Police were trying to close down London’s gay pubs to the point where there would be only one in each police district.
The 1984 Metropolitan Police Commissioner’s Report talked of “symbolic locations…where a very place name has become associated with confrontation.” By way of illustration, the Report talked of, “any of the now quite well-known public houses which have become gathering places for homosexuals.” It was a disturbing insight into the police view of gays and lesbians.
The public outcry and wide media attention generated by these two raids are widely held to be responsible for the absence of further police actions at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern.
But this was not an end to the Met’s harassment of queer venues. In September 1987, the Frolic nightclub in South East London became the subject of police attention when it began organising lesbian and gay nights. As well as a raid on one such night – again involving more than 30 officers, some wearing rubber gloves – police undertook a range of other actions against the club and its owner. These included opposition to the renewal of the club’s license, even though they failed to produce any evidence to support their objections.
This resulted in prolonged legal proceedings which, ultimately, proved too costly for the club owner. In the end he gave up and closed the club.
- I am grateful to Chris Ferguson for this account, as he was one of the men arrested.
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