Origin Story

Hello and welcome to a bonus episode of Origin Story. This time we tell the story of Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988, the legislation that prohibited local councils from funding the “promotion” of homosexuality and cast a chilling shadow over the lives of gay men and lesbians in the UK for the next 15 years. How did it come about, what were the consequences, and is something similar happening to trans people today?

The 1980s were a decade of rampant homophobia, fed by conservative anxieties about progressive education, “loony left” councils and the emergence of HIV/AIDS. One book (Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin) and one London council (Haringey) became the focus of a moral panic that spread like wildfire through the right-wing press and Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government, with all the hysteria, bigotry and misinformation you would expect. Opposition to children learning about homosexuality in any way featured in the 1987 election campaign and led to the amendment that became Section 28: local authorities were forbidden to “intentionally promote homosexuality,” whatever that meant.

While nobody was ever prosecuted under Section 28, these few vague and provocative lines created a climate of fear and self-censorship, from schools to broadcasters, and effectively legitimised homophobia. But the campaign against it mobilised gay men and lesbians like never before. Figures such as Ian McKellen, Michael Cashman and Peter Tatchell initiated a new era of activism, including the foundation of Stonewall, to ensure that something like this never happened again.

Tony Blair’s Labour government finally repealed Section 28 in 2003, amid a slew of progressive reforms, and multiple Tory leaders apologised for ever supporting it. Now, though, government guidelines on the teaching of gender identity are echoing the intolerant logic of Section 28 and the media’s moral panic around trans people feels grimly familiar.

How did a single copy of a Danish picture book lead to the most homophobic legislation in a century? Was the newspapers’ vicious campaign against the “loony left” Britain’s first experience of an “anti-woke” culture war? Who were the politicians, many of them still around today, who supported and opposed Section 28? How did the battle over it give birth to modern LGBTQ activism? How did Section 28 damage ordinary lives and why did it take so long to repeal? And why are some of the people who fought so hard against Section 28 now supporting its transphobic equivalent?
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•⁠ ⁠⁠⁠See Origin Story live at the Union Chapel⁠⁠, London on September the 1st

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Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Producer: Chris Jones. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production

⁠⁠www.podmasters.co.uk⁠⁠

Books and articles

Paul Baker – Outrageous! The Story of Section 28 and Britain’s Battle for LGBT Education (2022)

Susanne Bosche – ‘Jenny, Eric, Martin… and Me’, Guardian (31 January 2000)

Faye Brown – ‘Claims of oral sex and choking lessons prompt government review into sex education critic says is “politically motivated”’, Sky News (8 March 2023)

Michael Cashman – One of Them: From Albert Square to Parliament Square (2020)

Colin Clews – Gay in the 80s: From Fighting for Our Rights to Fighting for Our Lives (2017)

James Curran, Ivor Gaber and Julian Petley – Culture Wars: The Media & the British Left (2005)

Ryan Gilbey – It Used to Be Witches: Under the Spell of Queer Cinema (Faber, 2025)

Audrey Gillan – ‘Section 28 gone… but not forgotten’, Guardian (17 November 2003)

Chris Godfrey – Section 28 protesters 30 years on: ‘We were arrested and put in a cell up by Big Ben’, Guardian (27 May 2018)

Ian Lucas – OutRage! An Oral History (1998)

Kelly Ann Cecilia McGhee – ‘The Destruction Caused by Clause 28’, Glasgow Women’s Library

Adam Mars-Jones – ‘The book that launched Clause 28’, Index on Censorship, Vol. 17, Issue 8 (September 1988)

Michelle O’Toole – ‘I’m a trans woman who grew up under section 28 — I worry it could make a comeback’, the i Paper (11 May 2020)

Ruth Pearce – ‘Labour’s Section 28 is here — act now’, ruthpearce.net (14 February 2026)

‘Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex education (RSE)’

Peter Tatchell – The Battle for Bermondsey (1983)

Jamie Wareham – ‘“Section 28 2.0”: New “transphobic” curriculum restricts teachers from teaching Trans+ pupils to understand their identity’, QueerAF (19 July 2025)

Nicholas Watt – ‘David Cameron apologises to gay people for section 28’, Guardian (2 July 2009)

Ian Youngs – ‘Blue Jean: the lesbian teachers who inspired film about Section 28’, BBC (10 February 2023)

Radio and film

Archive on 4: Section 28: Right to Be Gay, Radio 4 (22 March 2025)

Blue Jean, written and directed by Georgia Oakley (2022)

The Reunion: Stonewall, Radio 4 (20 September 2009)

Parliamentary debates

Schools: Investment in Education and Science, Hansard (7 May 1986)

Education Bill HL, Hansard (20 May 1986)

Local Government Act 1986 (Amendment) Bill HL, Hansard (18 December 1986)

Amendment of Local Government Act 1986, Hansard (8 May 1987)

Prohibition on Promoting Homosexuality by Teaching or by Publishing Material, Hansard (15 December 1987)

Local Government Bill, Hansard (1 February 1988)

Local Government Bill, Hansard (16 February 1988)

Clause 28, Hansard (9 March 1988)

Repeal of Section 2A of Local Government Act 1986 (10 March 2003)

Engagements, Hansard (18 March 2023)
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Welcome to another bonus episode of Origin Story, where we look at the short and extraordinary life of the Duke of Buckingham (1592–1628). It's a bizarre, tragic tale which weaves together queer history, courtly romance, unending war and the early resistance of parliament against royal power.

More than anything, it is the story of the Favourite, that strange underdiscussed role of the leader's key ally. In our modern era, we've seen figures like Dominic Cummings and Morgan McSweeney take this position – operating as the prime minister's chief loyalist and then being used as a sacrificial pawn to placate their critics. We see a very similar arrangement in the 17th Century, albeit in a significantly more sexy way.

As Sir Francis Bacon said: The favourite is a "shadow" who can be "offered as a sacrifice to appease the multitude". Come with us back to an era where the modern world is slowly being formed, and see how exuberant, unpredictable, emotional and dramatic the early days of the English parliament truly were.

Books

Lucy Hughes-Hallett – The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham (4th Estate, 2024)

Roger Lockyer - Buckingham: The Life and Political Career of George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham 1592-1628 (Routledge, 1981)



• Find out if you’re owed on car finance at refundclub.co.uk/originstory

• Refund Club is a trading style of Sandsford Law Limited, authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA no. 8008114). Checking is free. A fee is payable only if your claim is successful. Eligibility: car finance taken out in the UK between 2007 and 2021. The average claim is around £829 per agreement; this is an average and not a guarantee of the amount you will receive. You can also claim yourself for free by contacting your lender or the Financial Ombudsman Service. refundclub.co.uk/originstory

• ⁠See Origin Story live at the Union Chapel⁠, London on September the 1st

• Support Origin Story on ⁠Patreon⁠

Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Producer: Chris Jones. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production

⁠www.podmasters.co.uk⁠
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Tickets are flying out of the door for Ian and Dorian’s biggest live show yet at the stunning Union Chapel in London’s sophisticated Islington on Tue 1 Sept.

A spectacular Gothic Revival church on Upper Street, the Union Chapel is a breathtaking venue just a few moments’ stroll from Highbury & Islington Tube – and therefore close to Euston and King’s Cross for the Not-London crowd. As well as the Victoria Line, it’s on the Mildmay Overground so whether you’re in leafy West London or sourdough-and-cold-drip-coffee East London you can be there and home with ease.You can buy tickets here, or Patreon supporters get exclusive discount, so now is as good a time as any to sign up: https://www.patreon.com/c/originstorypod

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Tickets are flying out of the door for Ian and Dorian’s biggest live show yet at the stunning Union Chapel in London’s sophisticated Islington on Tue 1 Sept.

A spectacular Gothic Revival church on Upper Street, the Union Chapel is a breathtaking venue just a few moments’ stroll from Highbury & Islington Tube – and therefore close to Euston and King’s Cross for the Not-London crowd. As well as the Victoria Line, it’s on the Mildmay Overground so whether you’re in leafy West London or sourdough-and-cold-drip-coffee East London you can be there and home with ease.You can buy tickets here, or Patreon supporters get exclusive discount, so now is as good a time as any to sign up: https://www.patreon.com/c/originstorypod
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Welcome to a bonus episode of Origin Story. For the first time, we’re revisiting an earlier episode to ask what we got right and what we got wrong about the subject. Just before the July 2024 election we profiled Labour’s PM-in-waiting Keir Starmer and made some cautiously optimistic guesses as to what his government might look like — the promise and the pitfalls. Well, it turned out to be mostly pitfalls. As Starmer steps down and Andy Burnham steps up, we perform the autopsy.

Did Starmer have fundamental personal weaknesses that doomed him to failure? What happened to the moral principles and managerial competence that defined his career before he became Labour leader? What mistakes did he make and what opportunities did he miss? Has Starmer killed the theory that a boring technocrat is the antidote to right-wing populism? How did he become so hated? What legacy has he bequeathed to Burnham (it wasn’t all bad news)? How much of this can we blame on Morgan McSweeney? And is it fair to call Keir Starmer the worst Labour prime minister ever? The ghost of Ramsay MacDonald certainly hopes so.

Join us for an in-depth reflection on what went wrong for Starmer and the lessons we can learn about what it takes to be a successful prime minister in the 2020s.

• See Origin Story live at the Union Chapel, London on September the 1st

• Support Origin Story on Patreon

Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Producer: Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production

www.podmasters.co.uk

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