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At UCL, Jamie found the community that sparked his lifelong activism - from founding one of the first student societies for gay students in the UK to transforming equality laws in Australia.
When Jamie Gardiner arrived at UCL in 1971 to study a PhD in Applied Mathematics, he knew he was ‘camp’. He grew up in Melbourne, Australia, when the word ‘gay’ wasn’t used, and he’d never been part of a community of other gay people.
The early 1970s saw the beginnings of gay activism in the UK. Jamie attended a Gay Liberation Front meeting in London and found himself among 150 people he didn’t know – until he spotted a friend from Melbourne. He was not alone, and it was the start of a transformative journey.
If you're feeling inspired, why not put yourself forward to become one of our student leaders this year in the Leadership Race? Find out more about representing the LGBTQI+ community at UCL here by browsing the role and it's requirements. Anyone can be a student leader, like Jamie.
Activists at the time were trying to persuade the University of London’s students’ union to let them set up a gay group. Jamie decided to speed up the process by setting up a society at UCL: GaySoc. It would be one of the first student societies for gay students in the UK.
He was surprised by how easy it was to set up – but he didn’t know (until many years later) about the backlash from academics, who wrote to the Provost to complain. One letter read: ‘Well really, have we come to that?’
Years later, Jamie reflected:
What I thought was an easy victory was actually a hard-fought victory, but in secret behind closed doors.
Soon, Jamie was elected to the UCL Union’s delegation to the National Union of Students (NUS) conference. In 1973, the group successfully passed a motion at NUS in support of gay people – making NUS the first national non-LGBTQ+ organisation to do so.
He took his experiences back to Melbourne in 1974. He spearheaded the campaign to decriminalise consensual sex between men in the state of Victoria, and the law changed in 1981.
Jamie’s activism began here at UCL – and continues today. He later became a human rights activist, political lobbyist and community lawyer and, in 2019, he was awarded the Order of Australia Medal (OAM) for his pivotal role in Australia’s LGBTQ+ rights movement.
What's next?
- Browse through all the Faces of UCL using the search page.
- Learn about the history of the Students' Union through the past 130 years.
- If you're feeling inspired by the impact our students have made, put yourself forward in the Leadership Race and help us shape the next 200 years by nominating yourself to become a student leader.
- Explore what we have planned this year for UCL200
- Sign up to updates about the UCL200 Summer Festival, 2-6 June
Sources and explore further
- Sam Blaxland, Interview with Jamie Gardiner, Generation UCL (2022)
- Jamie Gardiner, UCL Campaign (2019)
- Dr Luciano Rila on the UK’s First Gaysoc, Episode 4, UCL The Greatest Good (2024)
- Sarah Pipkin, ‘Well really, have we come to that?’: Excerpts from UCL’s LGBT History (2021)
- Bent TV, Bent TV: Quests By Community: Historic Challenges, Jamie Gardiner OAM, Human Rights Activist (2024)