In the autumn of 1970, two young gay sociology students returned to the UK inspired by the radical gay rights and Black rights movements they’d seen in the US.
Bob Mellors and Aubrey Walter had met by chance in America, and both had become interested in the burgeoning Gay Liberation Front that rose from the ashes of the Stonewall riots in New York. They came home determined to start a parallel movement in London that would reflect conditions here.
On 27 November, six weeks after holding its inaugural meeting at the London School of Economics, the UK’s Gay Liberation Front (GLF) held the first public gay and lesbian demonstration in the country. It was a protest against the use of ‘pretty policemen’ in public toilets, who solicited sexual advances from men who were then arrested, fined, incarcerated and even outed in the press.
