Joe Orton
A NEW Museum exhibition celebrates the 50th anniversary of Sexual Offences Act, which decriminalised sex between gay men over 21 in private.
Islington Museum’s free exhibition marks the passing of the Act, seen as a turning point in British gay liberation history, as it commemorates the 50th anniversary of the deaths of the playwright Joe Orton and his murderer, collage artist Kenneth Halliwell.
Up Against It: Islington 1967, which runs from July 22 until October 21 at Islington Museum in Clerkenwell, explores the lives of well-known members of the local gay community before and after the passing of the Act on July 27, 1967.
Orton was killed by his partner Halliwell two weeks later. At the time he was working on a screenplay for The Beatles called Up Against It – a title that reflects the challenges for the LGBT+ community up to the present day.
Kenneth Halliwell
Through the stories of well-known gay men living in Islington before and after the Act, the exhibition seeks to reflect the experience of men who could not declare their love freely, and the difference the 1967 Act made to their lives.
Stories featured include those of Oscar Wilde, imprisoned at Holloway and Pentonville prisons; composer Benjamin Britten who shared an Islington studio with his partner; Bob Crossman – the country’s first gay mayor; and Baron Chris Smith of Finsbury, who was the first MP to announce he was gay.
Only a few years after the Act was passed a number of organisations chose Islington as their base to carry on the foundation it had laid down. These included the Gay Liberation Front, London Friend and London Gay Switchboard.
The exhibition comes after Islington Council announced it is to create a major new archive of the borough’s LGBT+ history, thanks to an award of £329,500 from the Heritage Lottery Fund.
