Queer Strike – From our archive*: lesbian visibility in the 70s
On lesbian visibility day, let’s remember Maureen Colquhoun. Ms Colquhoun was the Labour MP for Northampton North from 1974-1979, a time when there were only about 30 women in Parliament. In 1977 she was outed (with her life partner Babs Todd) as a lesbian by the tabloid press and accused among other things of having an “obsession with trivialities such as women’s rights”. When she was shamefully de-selected by her local Labour constituency party, Wages Due Lesbians (now Queer Strike) joined with others to form the Maureen Colquhoun Action Committee (MCAC) to campaign for her reinstatement. As part of the MCAC, we picketed the Labour Party National Executive Committee (see photo) when it met to decide whether she should be reinstated. Her constituency was forced to take her back so she fought the 1979 election but lost her seat when the reactionary and homophobic Thatcher government got in.
Ms Colquhoun was a fearless and principled MP when it came to women’s rights. In 1979, she presented the Protection of Prostitutes Bill at a time when no other prominent feminist would stand up in defence of sex workers – even today few women MPs have supported the sex worker led movement for decriminalisation. After she lost her seat she continued to stand with the grassroots. She joined the picket outside the Old Bailey called by the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP) and Women Against Rape during the Yorkshire Ripper trial after the Attorney General (prosecuting) made his infamous statement about the victims: “Some were prostitutes but perhaps the saddest part of the case is that some were not. The last six attacks were on totally respectable women.” Maureen Colquhoun knew what it was like to be treated as an outcast.
Wages Due Lesbians’ comment in 1977 “No-one trusts political parties any more, especially women, for our interests have never been a priority for them” is as timely today as it was then. Women politicians who have followed her into the House would do well to remember Maureen Colquhoun’s principled courage and commitment in coming out and speaking on behalf of her sisters who were criminalised because they fought their poverty by doing sex work. She never forgot the movement which enabled her to enter the corridors of power, and the grassroots women’s movement will never forget her.
*The 1972-2022 archives of the International Wages for Housework Campaign (including Queer Strike) and the English Collective of Prostitutes are at the Bishopsgate Institute and also at the Crossroads Women’s Centre, 25 Wolsey Mews, London NW5 2DX.