On 9 September 1971 the UK Gay Liberation Front (GLF) undertook an action to disrupt the launch of the Church-based morality campaign Nationwide Festival of Light at the Methodist Central Hall, Westminster.

[3] The Festival of Light included several notable people of that time, such as Cliff Richard, Mary Whitehouse, Malcolm Muggeridge and Lord Longford.

[3] Drawing on the gay tradition of camp, GLF developed a new style of political campaigning, "protest as performance", where the claim for human rights was projected through creativity, using imagination, daring and wit, rather than marches and rallies.

One of those who embraced this style of activism was Bette Bourne, the message of gay liberation being couched in comedy, song, tap routines and make-up.

[5] Another figure who was involved in the disruption was Martin Corbett, who walked into the basement of Westminster Central Hall, ordered the staff to leave with an assumed authority, and plunged the Festival into darkness by disconnecting the electrical and broadcasting cables.

After the demise of GLF, Peter Tatchell went on to form OutRage!, which still performs strategic actions in which individuals, organisations and countries identified as homophobic are openly confronted in provocative ways, such as at the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest.

[7] Other actions and acts of civil disobedience confronting discrimination and homophobia at the time included a picket at Pan Books in protest at the publication of a book by David Reuben, which claimed that gay men were obsessed with the anal insertion of vegetables, freedom rides and sit-ins at pubs that refused to serve 'poofs' and 'dykes', the occupation of Coutts Bank because of their holding the Maudsley Hospital account (where aversion therapy was still being practiced in the early 1970s) and the confrontation of Professor Hans Eysenck during a lecture in which he advocated electric-shock and aversion therapy to "cure" homosexuality.

[8] Tatchell talks of this time, "As well as being politics with fun, this activism helped banish our internalised shame, repairing much of the damage that homophobia had done to us.