before their need to work, go under. So Merrill's best friend, unremarkably named Buddy (wittily played by George Wendt from Cheers), seems to collapse under the pressure.
Horsome the choices are more limited. They, like Martin Scorsese's hugely sympathetic character, nave to leave for Europe, or will never work. For, as Scorsese's character proudly announces; I am a Communist, and I have always been a Eventually, Merrill leaves for New York and the film sags as he fails to find work there. But when he returns to Hollywood the pace speeds up to an explosive finale.
Guilty By Suspicion can be easily dismissed as no more han a typical Hollywoo‹ hriller with some nice comi touches. Indeed, for the most part, the film is one about a quasi-religious moral choice, rather than political commitment.
Only at the end does the film question the idea that people have the right to be Communists. Certainly, it never really explains why anyone should make that choice. Indeed, apart from one mention of the Rosenbergs, the film does not set itself in any the wider context of the Cold War.
Nonetheless, the use of contemporaneous Hollywood sets and people gives the audience the feeling that this film is more than saccharin fiction. Equally, the fact that this is a mainstream Hollywood film means the issues which it partially deals with cannot be sidelined.
In short, this is a genuinely radical liberal film. Compared with other liberal films of our time, such as Dead Poets Society there is no contest. Merrill's final outbursts are far more political than standing on a table, even if De Niro doesn't say 'Hey, fuck you, McCarthy', once.
Peers, Queers
and Commons by Stephen jeffery-Poulter Published by Routledge Peers, Queers and Commons is a readable and detailed survey of the battles for change in the legal situation of gay men across Britain. It covers the period from the struggle for liberalising reforms in the 1950s and '60s, to the fight against the reactionary measures of the Thatcher era.
Based on contemporary materials, the book communicates both a general impression of the shifting attitudes of the press, the lawmakers and the gay community, and gives many tasty morsels of information.
Thatcher
or example, it is revealer that one of the very small minority of 22 Tories who in 1960 backed a motion calling on the Government to speedily implement the recommendations of the Wolfenden Report regarding homosexuality was Margaret Thatcher! And we are treated to a pertinent quote from a Socialist Outlook supporter in moving the first successful lesbian and jay rights resolution at abour Party Conference ir 1985.
The specific struggles in Scotland and the North of Ireland, ifter thev were exemoted from he 1967 Sexual Offences Act, are thoroughly documented, with a welcome focus on the vicious harassment of lesbian and RUC activists in Belfast by the as a prelude to the Democratic Unionist Party's flamboyant 'Save Ulster from However, neither repression, brute reaction, nor the hand of God was able to prevent Jeff Dudgeon of the Northern Ireland Gay Rights Association taking the British government to the European Court of Human Discrimination He claimed that the refusal to legalise homosexual activity in the North of Ireland was an invasion of his privacy and discrimination against him in relation to heterosexuals, thus breaching Articles 8 and 14 of the European Convention of Human Rights His victory in 1981, nificantly on the grounds of invasion of privacy, not discrimination, finally forced the Government to extend the 1967 Act to the North of Ireland, one year after they had grudgingly brought Scotland within its ambit.
The other limitations of the 1967 Act are also clearly laid down, summed up in a quote from Norman St John Stevas:
'If this Bill were passed, homosexuality would remain unlawful, although rights resolution at Labour Party Conference in 1985" criminal. The Bill would create no recognised status of homosexuality. It would remain contrary to public policy!
However, the central flaw of the book is that it fundamentally remains a narrative, shying away from analysis, judgement and the central question of Why did the political climat hange in the 1950s and '60s Why are lesbians and gay men discriminated against, why has No. 3 there been and is there a differentiated response to the demand for lesbian and gay equality from the different ganisations campaigning forso cial or legal change been more successful than others?
The progression is carefully charted - from the softly-softly tactics of the Homosexual Law Reform Society in the '50s and '60s, through the radical assertion of Gay Pride articulated br the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) in the 1970s, to the peculiar hybrid of respectability, activity and self-confidence initially represented by the Campaign for Homosexual Equality, before its decline.
So is the fragmentation of the movement into the kaleidoscopic range of lesbian and gay organisations, both politicaland social which exist today. But that is all.
We are left with no sense of the author's views and therefore no grasp of the lessons he thinks the lesbian and gay movement should learn from its history.
The final passages of the book do come close to explicitly advocating a particular political strategy for the period to come when Jeffery-Poulter writes that: Stonewall 'The emergence of the Stonewall Groupas an uncompromisingly self-selected, polished and tightly knit professional organisation marks a hopeful new start..!
And he seems to be proposing a kind of lesbian and gay multi-culturalism, a 'concern for the value of diversity', however, even this rather dubious approach remains implicit and unclear to the end.
Thus, Peers, Queers and Commons is accessible and informative, but ultimately frustrating June 8, 1991
"a Socialist Outlook supporter moved the first successful lesbian and gay
political parties and forces? Why have certain groups or or-