Portrait
Peter Tatchell
Born
25 January 1952Melbourne, Australia
Human rights campaignerUnited Kingdom

Peter Tatchell

Beaten, arrested and vilified for decades, the campaigner has fought for LGBTQ rights from Bermondsey to Moscow.

Peter Tatchell grew up in a working-class evangelical family in Melbourne. As a teenager he campaigned against the death penalty and Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War. In 1971 he moved to London to avoid being drafted, and joined the Gay Liberation Front.

In 1983 he stood as the Labour candidate in a by-election in Bermondsey. The campaign against him was one of the most homophobic in British political history: tabloids mocked him, leaflets attacked him, and he received death threats. He lost heavily. In 1990 he co-founded the direct-action group OutRage!, which used provocative protests against homophobia, among other things in the Church of England.

Tatchell became known internationally for daring actions: in 1999 he tried to make a citizen’s arrest of Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe in London; in 2007 he was beaten by far-right attackers at a banned Pride march in Moscow. In 2018 he was briefly detained in Moscow during the football World Cup after a protest against the persecution of gay men in Chechnya.

He continues to campaign through the Peter Tatchell Foundation for human rights around the world.

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