About LGBT History Month
February is LGBT History Month, an annual event which recognises the history of gay rights and related civil rights movements. The theme this year is ‘Body, Mind, Spirit’.

While the event originated in the US in 1994, it began in the UK 11 years later following on from an initiative created by teachers.

In 2005, educators and activists Sue Sanders and Paul Patrick organised LGBT History Month as part of a School’s Out project, a programme which aims to educate young people about the issues that members of the LGBT community face and make schools feel inclusive for everyone, regardless of their gender identity or sexual orientation.

LBGT History Month was held in February to coincide with the 2003 abolition of Section 28 of the 1988 Local Government Act.

About the event
The Working Class Movement Library, based in Salford, marks LGBT History Month with an online talk by Ray Woolford on ‘The importance of working class LGBTQ woman in history, and why we need to reclaim this LGBT History Month our icons and our heroes‘.

Ray writes: “Kath Duncan was the most important UK civil rights leader of the past 100 years & yet until my 5 years’ research into writing my biography of her, The Last Queen of Scotland, almost nothing was known. As a gay man, it was all the more shocking to me not to find any LGBT icons in history who led real struggle which often cost them their lives.

Many ask why is so little known about Kath Duncan? The answer is that a humble primary school teacher born into poverty, who became a communist, and who happened to be LGBTQ when it was a crime, was something still not cool.

Newspapers of the day dedicated countless column inches to the activities of the Scot, who was involved at the highest level in campaigns such as the 1920s hunger marches and the fight against Oswald Mosley’s fascists. She took on slum landlords, rallied against gas price rises for the poor and, later, acted as a recruiter and fundraiser for the Spanish Civil War. She was also a suffragette. But her legacy has been largely airbrushed out of history…”.

watch live

* This event will be facilitated by The Working Class Movement Library.

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