Former British PM recalls lifting ban on gay diplomats and ‘vile’ letters from bigots

Although same-sex activity between men was partially decriminalized in England 50 years ago, it was only in 1991 that the bar on gay people serving in the UK’s diplomatic service was lifted.

In the run up to Pride in London this week, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has published an insight into the treatment of gay employees by the Foreign Office between 1967 and 1991.

The report documents how between those years gay men and lesbians were routinely denied promotion, dismissed or moved to other government departments if their sexuality became known.

Following scandals involving the spies Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean the FCO and security forces regarded gay people as a security risk and prone to blackmail.

An official lifting of the ban took place in 1991. The British Prime Minister to oversee that change, Sir John Major, was the special guest at the report’s launch yesterday at the FCO headquarters in Whitehall.

‘Fearful that their careers would be ended and their lives ruined’

The former Conservative PM gave a passionate speech to an assembled crowd of FCO employees and invited guests on the lifting of the ban and the advance of LGBTI rights.

Major said that the publication of such a report just a few decades ago would have been ‘inconceivable.’

‘Any meeting advocating for the change we’ve seen would probably have been held in private, behind locked doors, with many of the participants perhaps fearful that their careers would be ended and their lives ruined if their own personal sexual preferences were known.’

He said shifting public attitudes had made change inevitable.

‘There is, of course, much still to be done, but the progress we’ve made in the last few decades dwarves that of past centuries. And I make this point because in fashioning the public mood, we need to acknowledge successes as well as challenges.

‘Bigotry hasn’t gone. It’s been with us since the dawn of time, and at any age there will be people left behind who engage in what most of the rest of us would call bigotry.

‘Witness some of the things said, the shameful hostility that was shown and sometimes whipped up during the recent [Brexit] referendum, raising irrational fears about the levels and effect of immigration.

‘But overall, when you take it all in all, and look across the broad field of what’s happening these days, some sentiments are genuinely in retreat and out of time.’

‘I would far rather have an excess of liberalism than of bigotry’

He went on to say that he favored liberalism over bigotry: ‘Some people would argue that our nation has become too liberal, too permissive, too prepared to junk all standards, and many here may sympathize with one or other aspect of that. Certainly, on occasions, I admit that I do myself.

‘But… and it’s a big but, I would far rather have an excess of liberalism than of bigotry, and so, I believe, would most people in our country.’

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