1990 – Operation Spanner
Graphic adapted from a leaflet published in 1993 by national protest organisation “Countdown on Spanner”
In December 1990 sixteen gay men were given prison sentences of up to four and a half years or fined for engaging in consensual SM (Sadomasochism) activity. This followed a nationwide police investigation called Operation Spanner, prompted by a chance Finding of a videotape of SM activities. Their convictions have now been upheld by both the Court of Appeal the Law Lords in the UK and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
The investigation leading to these convictions came at the end of the 1980s, a decade in which there was rising prejudice against homosexuality in Britain. In 1987 the British Social Attitudes Survey found that 75% of the population thought that homosexual activity was always or mostly wrong. In that same year, the high profile public information campaign “Don’t Die of Ignorance” delivered an educational leaflet about HIV/AIDS to every household in Britain. The association of gay and bisexual men with the AIDS pandemic added to their ongoing stigmatisation.
The Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher had made opposition to LGBT education a pillar of the 1987 general election campaign, leading to Section 28 of the Local Government Act prohibiting local authorities from “promoting homosexuality”.
Although male homosexuality had been partially decriminalised in England and Wales in 1967, the offence of gross indecency was still widely used to prosecute sexual activity between men. An investigation by Gay Times found that police in England and Wales recorded 2,022 such offences in 1989, the highest rate since decriminalisation.
Operation Spanner, which commenced in 1987 was part of these troubled times…
Shropshire Star 20th Nov 1990
Shropshire Star 19th Feb 1997
The evidence against the men convicted through Operation Spanner comprised of the videotape originally seized and their own statements. When they were questioned by the police, the men were confident that their activities were lawful, because they had consented to them, so they freely admitted to taking part. Without these statements and the videotape, the police would have had no evidence to present against the men and would have found it impossible to bring any prosecutions. The men faced a wide range of charges including assault. Bizarrely, some of the men who participated in the activities as “bottoms” or submissives, were convicted of aiding and abetting assaults upon themselves.
In later appeals The House of Lords ruled that consent was not a legal defence for causing actual bodily harm, a decision that had wide ranging implications and led to a national debate about how consent was defined and how far the government should intervene in sexual encounters between consenting adults.
The original investigation, led by the Obscene Publications Squad of the Metropolitan Police, began in 1987 and ran for three years, during which approximately 100 gay and bisexual men were questioned by the police.
Subsequent investigations by local police forces around the UK continued into the 1990s including raids on homes in Staffordshire and surrounding counties as described in the following account.
A personal account from a local gay man whose home was raided by the police in the early 1990s
My partner and I were into the leather scene and we enjoyed mild consensual bondage and SM as part of our sex lives.
We had an open relationship and my partner also sometimes engaged in these activities with other men. He had been even more active in this regard before we met and when Operation Spanner hit the news, he was worried about how far the police investigations would travel.
He didn’t directly know any of the men who had already been convicted but he did have friends that knew them… and it was becoming clear that police forces around the country were pursuing a classic age old method of “chain prosecution” whereby names were obtained from the address books, correspondence and verbal testimonies of each person they targeted to further add to the list of “suspects” to be investigated.
Sure enough, in the early hours one morning, there was a loud knock on our door and half a dozen policemen entered the house to thoroughly search it and interrogate us both.
Sex toys and BDSM accessories were bundled into bags down to the last cock ring. Completely laughable looking back on it – these items can now easily be bought online from any of the mainstream adult sex toy businesses that openly operate in the UK. But at that time, it was no joke; they spent a whole morning searching our home and we were questioned for hours. The police also confiscated address books, a personal computer and other items. They took photographs around the house, and they looked at household personal objects unrelated to our sex lives, such as silverware, as though they suspected we might have stolen goods.
The police invasion and search of our home had a lasting impact on both of us. For more than a year afterwards my partner lived in fear that he would face prosecution and lose his job. He eventually accepted a caution at the police station for “running a disorderly house” which basically meant the police had evidence of occasions when he had engaged in sexual activity with more than one person present. The items that had been confiscated were all destroyed. The police had said that if he wanted them back, he would have to stand up in court and explain why he needed them.
We got over it eventually. We just replaced the losses by buying everything again.
In modern times BDSM (Bondage and Discipline, Dominance and Submission, Sadism and Masochism) has been popularised, even celebrated through the “Fifty Shades of Grey” book and film. It is highly debateable whether this popular fantasy reflects the reality of the complex relationships that people who are really into BDSM engage in. What is clear, however, is that the general public are more openly broad minded about such things than they were three decades ago.
The protest groups that emerged following the Spanner prosecutions attempted to get the law changed without success. It remains the case that anyone who engages in SM activities that result in marks that are anything more than transient or trifling could be prosecuted. This applies to everyone regardless of their sexual orientation and gender identity. The limits of what can be lawfully consented to remain unclear.
A video called “Lasting Marks” created for The Guardian in 2019 presents the point of view of those originally convicted.
View “Lasting Marks” video on the Guardian Website
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