The 'gay mafia' row

Jim heartfield jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk
Sun Nov 15 05:41:27 PST 1998


A big row broke out in Britain after the largest selling tabloid daily, the Sun, suggested that the Cabinet was dominated by a 'gay mafia' following the revelations of the private lives of Ministers Peter Mandelson, Nick Brown and Ron Davies. The Sun was roundly condemned on all sides and forced to make an embarrassing climbdown, promising never again to 'out' anyone. Leading the campaign against the Sun was the liberal broadsheet newspapers, The Guardian.

The Guardian has made much of the Sun's climbdown after calling the cabinet a 'gay mafia'. According to the Guardian such views are reprehensible in this day and age.

And yet when writing about the imagined conspiracies in the Tory Party, journalists David Henke and Ed Vulliamy deployed a similar explanation in the book of the Guardian investigation, Sleaze:

p 23

'[Lobbyist Ian] Greer had another cross to bear: he was gay ... In the Conservative party, homosexuality was a meeting point between men like Greer, who came as new arrivals into the establishment and teh capital city, and the stalwarts of beating and buggery at the better schools of England. Throughout his career Greer was to develop connections with a number of Gay MPs, in a circle with a marked - often overt - homosexual flavour. This may well have been cogent to his eventual system of payments to politicians - not because the ethics of homsexuals vary from those of others, but because a sense of shared secrets can sometimes make a special bond. British politicians and homosexuals from that period sometimes found there was also a professional suvival value in lying. A politician learns automatically to obscure the awkward truth, just as gay men did.'

p120

'how Greer must have loved this boisterous occasion [a tug-of war contest to promote Taylor Woodrow]. There was an undercurrent of schoolboy jinks about it - a suggestion of Billy Bunter and steamy showers after rugger. The team of men wore shorts and packed against one another along the rope, heaving and grunting, while the ladies looked on.'

Copyright 1997 Guardian Newspapers

4th estate, London 1997, first edition -- Jim heartfield



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list