Inside the gay museum

London's mayoral candidates agree on one thing: the need for an institution that chronicles our homosexual past. Its proposer, Peter Tatchell, explains what he'd put in it
TE Lawrence of Arabia
TE Lawrence, one of the people Peter Tatchell thinks the museum should celebrate. Photo: PA

Cardinal John Henry Newman is buried in the cemetery adjacent to the country house of the Oratory Fathers at Rednal Hill. Much to the horror of the Catholic establishment, which has tried to suppress all knowledge of Newman's homosexuality, he lies in the same grave as his lifelong male partner, Ambrose St John. Inseparable in death as in life, the two men have a joint memorial stone that is inscribed: "Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem" (From shadow and images into truth). Their epitaph sums up why a lesbian and gay museum is a timely idea: it would help bring the hidden history of queer Britain out of the shadows and into the light.

I first had the idea for a gay museum in 1972, when I was a 20-year-old activist in the Gay Liberation Front (GLF). During those early struggles for queer human rights, it suddenly dawned on me that we were fighting a great liberation struggle handicapped by an almost total lack of knowledge of our own past. Our minds were colonised by a straight version of history, where we queers were invisible.

The battles of those who went before us, like the 19th-century gay rights pioneer Edward Carpenter, were unknown. Even the homosexual law reform campaigns of the 1960s, led by Allan Horsfall and Antony Grey, were (and still are) largely undocumented. Our existence was erased from the historical record. Apart from Oscar Wilde, the only queers who came to public attention were mass murderers, spies, child abusers and men entrapped by the police in public toilets.

Unlike other communities, we had no families, and no stories of tragedies and triumphs to pass from generation to generation. Queers were a people without any sense of a collective past. We were expunged from all official records - except the criminal ones, which documented grisly accounts of trials, imprisonment and executions for the "abominable crime of buggery".

But when a few of us in GLF began scouring libraries and the basement archives of museums and the public record office, we discovered buried fragments of past queer lives. It was shocking to learn that gay men faced the death penalty until 1861, and life imprisonment until 1967. Via contacts with the queer rights movement in Germany, we began to piece together details of the Nazi bid to exterminate homosexuals. From this history of "homocide", we liberated the pink triangle that the Nazis forced gay concentration camp prisoners to wear - turning it into a symbol of pride and defiance.

My GLF colleague Allan Bray made the startling discovery that there had been a vibrant gay subculture in Renaissance England. Using records of criminal trials, Bray, and subsequently Rictor Norton, unearthed details of the bawdy, fun-filled 18th-century molly houses - the forerunners of gay bars - where gay men met to drink and socialise, and sometimes to have sex and stage mock weddings to their dearly beloved.

Jeffrey Weeks, another GLF colleague, researched the inspiring 19th-century homosexual reform campaigners John Addington Symonds, Havelock Ellis and Edward Carpenter, together with the lives of early 20th-century lesbian pioneers such as Radclyffe Hall. These revelations were fascinating and empowering - but were nowhere to be seen in mainstream museums. This absence convinced me we needed a lesbian and gay museum to celebrate the queer contribution to British society.

What would be in a queer museum? The same kinds of thing as in any other museum. Noteworthy letters, diaries, photographs, drawings, sculptures and personal possessions of famous homosexuals and bisexuals, such as Lord Mountbatten, Beverley Nichols, Florence Nightingale, William Pitt the Younger, Catherine Cookson, Lawrence of Arabia, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Winston Churchill, Lord Byron, Daphne du Maurier and William Shakespeare. Some of these people were, of course, celibate and only gay by orientation. Others, like Winston Churchill, who had a fling with musical comedy star Ivor Novello, appear to have had only one-off gay encounters. Providing these distinctions are made, the queer museum should include them all.

How to display the contents? One possibility is thematic exhibitions, along the lines of The Queer Kings of England and Scotland. There are plenty to choose from, including Edward II, Richard the Lionheart, James I and William of Orange.

Another theme might be Gays at War, chronicling the stories of gay soldiers during the second world war and of lesbians who served in the Women's Land Army. Given the long-time ban on homosexuals serving in the armed forces, it might also be fun to reveal the secret gay lives of field marshals Kitchener, Haig and Montgomery. Kitchener caused quite a stir by surrounding himself with beautiful young officers, eventually favouring one, Captain Oswald Fitzgerald, whom he appointed as his aide-de-camp - in more ways than one. They died in each other's arms when the HMS Hampshire struck a mine off Orkney in 1916.

A more recent gay rights history could figure, too, with badges, leaflets, placards and banners - plus photos and video footage - from the campaigns to equalise the age of consent and repeal Section 28.

Significant anniversaries could be commemorated with special events. October is the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the North West Homosexual Law Reform Committee in Manchester. The NWHLRC was the first grassroots gay rights organisation in Britain, and the first to be led by openly gay people. Right now, I am struggling to persuade Manchester City Council and the People's History Museum to organise an event to celebrate this milestone. If we had a gay museum, it could host the celebrations.

The ideal location for the museum is the former Bow Street Police Station, where Oscar Wilde was incarcerated after his arrest in 1895. Perhaps the current owners, the Metropolitan Police, could be persuaded to donate it to the museum project, as a gesture of reconciliation and reparation for more than 100 years of victimisation of the lesbian and gay community.

As well documenting the history of queer Britain, the museum could become the new home of the Hall-Carpenter gay archives, which already has a sizable collection of queer memorabilia but no exhibition facilities. The museum could also provide a gallery space for queer arts and photographic exhibitions.

In addition to the permanent displays, the museum could host a rolling series of guest exhibitions on queer life in different cultures, such as India, Zimbabwe, Mexico, China, Iran and Russia. It's a queer world. Let's celebrate diversity.