The FT (I’ll refrain from belaboring the irony, apart from saying I’m refraining) does a profile of Peter Tatchell.
Tatchell’s campaigns for gay rights, racial equality, civil liberties and democracy have attracted death threats, bullets and bombs from an unsavoury mixture of homophobes, neo-Nazis and Islamic fundamentalists.
“The bricks now bounce off the windows,” Tatchell jokes, “although I can’t walk outside and feel totally relaxed.” Nonetheless, the man who made front pages around the world in 1999 by attempting a citizen’s arrest on Robert Mugabe remains an indomitable campaigner. He has just returned from addressing the Occupy London camp outside St Paul’s Cathedral, which is the kind of “tent city” protest that he proposed three decades ago.
He lives in a Council flat in Southwark. The building has a blue plaque.
As it should.
Isn’t it a bit odd to have the plaque up already though? He’s still alive. It also makes him even less safe from Nazi thugs than he was already.
What Musical Atheist said. But well deserved, nonetheless. Go, Tatchell!
A comment at the FT site reads “Integrity Personified. A hero of our times.” That seems exactly right.
Maybe a bit odd but it’s an ad for human rights, gay freedom and social justice, so…worth doing anyway.
Ophelia,
Why the little snark at the FT?
Behind that off putting financial facade it’s actually quite a good balanced newspaper. I’d put in on a par with the NYT.
MC
Michael – oh, I didn’t intend it as real snark – just a little aside smile, given Tatchell’s obvious lack of interest in matters financial. Really just about the title rather than the paper itself. I agree about its quality. I’d say it’s better than the NYT; it’s much less shy of gen-yoo-wine intellectuals.