If you happened to be walking on the shingle beach of Dungeness on 22 September 1991, you may have witnessed a curious event: a group of gay men dressed as nuns preforming a ceremony with the visual artist Derek Jarman, an alumnus of the Slade School of Fine Art. During this ritual, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a direct-action group of gay men, declared Jarman ‘Saint Derek of Dungeness of the Order of Celluloid Knights’, the first patron saint of gay men in the UK. The service was more than just camp performance. It served both as an act of protest, and to recognise Jarman, who died in 1994 and was outspoken about his HIV status, for his activism. 

Whilst Jarman is probably the best-known campaigner, there is a rich history within UCL’s student and alumni community of activism in response to HIV and AIDS during the 1980s and 1990s. The death of Terry Higgins in 1982, one of the first confirmed case of AIDS in Britain, sparked the formation of a series of self-help organisations by what the historian Virginia Berridge described as ‘AIDS missionaries’. Several UCL alumni were active amongst these. Tony Whitehead, the first chair of the Terrence Higgins Trust (THT), for example, attended the Institute of Education in the 1970s. 

For the student movement across Britain, HIV and AIDS was largely framed as a fringe issue for lesbian and gay students. The initial wider response was slow. ‘Gaysocs’ had formed on campuses throughout Britain in the 1970s, and were successful in raising awareness of lesbian and gay rights within the student movement but by the 1980s such activity had waned. Writing in one of London’s leading gay newspapers Capital Gay in 1983members of the University of London Union (ULU) and LSE Gaysocs called for a return to radical lesbian and gay student activism proclaiming ‘[p]olitical activities by the Gaysoc now tend to be limited strictly to the student sphere’. Matters were not helped by cuts to government funding to higher education in the early 1980s, which saw resources for Gaysocs significantly reduced by students’ unions across Britain. 

Although UCL is acknowledged for having one of the very first university Gaysoc in Britain, its students rarely made the headlines of lesbian and gay media at the time. Their counterparts at ULU’s Lesbian and Gay Society, however, were more radical. Until 1984, ULU’s Malet Street headquarters was the official endpoint of the Summer London Pride event. It hosted fundraisers and events in collaboration with organisations working on the frontline of HIV and AIDS in London, such as London Lesbian and Gay Switchboard and THT. 

The passing of the Local Government Act 1988 (section 28) and proposed changes to the Criminal Justice Act (clause 25) in 1990, which would have introduced tougher sentences for cruising, galvanised lesbian, gay and the emerging queer activism on campuses across Britain. In April 1989, Capital Gay reported that Colchester Institute had banned the formation of a lesbian and gay society under section 28, with other examples across England, Scotland and Wales. Protests against the suppression of queer activism had positive consequences on HIV and AIDS campaigning too. In May 1989, for instance, an HIV positive student won a legal battle to attend an Open University summer school held at the University of Reading. 

A renewed interest in queer activism also took place in Bloomsbury. From 1989, ULU hosted Winter Pride and, from 1991, SM Pride following Operation Spanner and the proposed Clause 25 of the Criminal Justice Act. In December 1989, UCL’s Lesbian and Gay Society staged a ‘zap’ at a talk by Lord Kilbracken, a Labour peer, at the Bloomsbury Theatre following his (incorrect) claim that heterosexual people could not contract HIV, which had been quoted in The Sun. Part of the zap included students staging a filibuster to challenge Kilbracken – Capital Gay reported he was ‘unrepentant’. 

Unfortunately, not all London students were supportive of this progress. A history of HIV and AIDS student activism would be incomplete without acknowledging homophobia. In 1986, medical students from St George’s Hospital Medical School were forced to apologise for publishing homophobic ‘jokes’ about  people with AIDS in their student magazine. This was later followed up with an apologetic donation of £1,000 to THT. In 1989, ULU’s Lesbian and Gay Society posters were defaced with death threats shortly after four members of the Portsmouth rugby society were suspended from the students’ union for wearing homophobic t-shirts in ‘protest’ over Lesbian and Gay Awareness Week.

Since the 1990s, there have been numerous medical breakthroughs in the treatment of HIV and AIDS such as highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) in the mid-1990s, post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) in the 2000s and Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in the 2010s. Whilst UCL was at the front line of treatment via its hospitals, and its students and alumni have long been active in HIV and AIDS activism, this history has yet to be commemorated or fully acknowledged on campus. 

Further Reading

Berridge, Virginia. AIDS in the UK: the making of policy, 1981-1994. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996.

Cook, Matt and Alison Oram. Queer Beyond London. Manchester, Manchester UP, 2022.

Cook, Matt. A gay history of Britain: love and sex between men since the middle ages. Oxford, Greenwood World Publishing, 2007.

Jennings, Rebecca. A lesbian history of Britain: love and sex between women since 1500. Oxford, Greenwood World Publishing, 2007.

Jennings, Rebecca. Lesbian Intimacies and Family Life: Desire, domesticity and kinship in Britain and Australia, 1945-2000. London, Bloomsbury, 2023.

Severs, George. Radical Acts: HIV/AIDS Activism in Late Twentieth-Century England. London: Bloomsbury, 2024.