The UK needed Bronski Beat in 1984. Forty years on, their pop and politics remind us to be strong

Bronski Beat were the ‘first real gay group in the history of pop’ and their repertoire, lyrics, sound and press coverage raised awareness, challenged discrimination, raised funds for strikers, supported international solidarity and activist campaigns and communities and called for a better future. 

Their debut album The Age of Consent was released in October 1984, the year of the miners’ strike, eviction of Greenham Common Peace Camp, violent tensions over Northern Ireland and unemployment levels at 11.9 %. 

The amendment to regulations around local government funding, later known as Section 28, that would stop the funding of content seen to ‘promote’ homosexuality, was in development. London’s Gay’s The Word bookshop was raided for importing ‘obscene’ books that were readily available in other book sellers. The raid, combined with discussion of police entrapment of gay men, encouraged Britain’s first openly gay MP Chris Smith to announce his sexuality in parliament. 

It was three years after the first identified case of AIDS in the UK and still a year away from the development of a reliable test for the HIV virus. This was a world that needed Bronski Beat’s activism, music and commentary to connect the complex ecology of activism and politics at the height of Thatcher’s Britain.

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The album tied together gay lives, union struggles, international solidarity, peace movements and the cold war, combining politics of the left with gay politics – from the pink triangle symbol on the cover design, to the lyrics and content. In the process the album and its tracks changed lives. 

Smalltown Boy allowed gay audiences to see themselves for the first time in many cases. The album’s tracks also introduced their listeners to a gay heritage playlist. It tips a hat to those who had gone before, blending together torch songs, classics of the early UK rock and roll scene, the Great American Songbook, and disco central to the gay club scene and culture. It Ain’t Necessarily So reminded listeners that, like Somerville himself, David was small and he slew Goliath and not to believe things they read (in the Bible). Why? confronts the gay basher and calls the church, medical professionals and politicians to account. 

The I Feel Love/Johnny Remember Me medley, tied together Donna Summer’s iconic disco pedigree with the haunting song of mourning and loss Johnny Remember Me by John Leyton and The Outlaws from 1961. Significantly the original Outlaws track was produced by Joe Meek, one of the key gay men behind the scenes of the early British rock and roll scene. Meek populated a particular moment in British gay history prior to the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967. Meek, who shared his life with his partner was a victim of blackmail, arrested for ‘importuning’ while cottaging who then committed suicide having murdered his landlady.

As well as reminding us how far we might have come since 1984, The Age of Consent also reminds us that we need to continue to be brave and strong however small we might be, and to connect our individual experiences with the big political picture.

The album’s cover art combined symbols of the politics of the left and gay activism and the global context when it included the relative ages of consent across the world. At this point it was still 21 for gay couples in the UK and 16 for straight couples. 

This was enough for some American radio stations to return the album. It took until 2001 for the age of consent to be equalised in England and Scotland and a further seven years for Northern Ireland to follow suit. 

We celebrate this 40th anniversary of Bronski Beat’s The Age of Consent in a world where there are still attempts to remove LGBTQ+ content or education from schools, there are narratives of danger around drag queens reading children story books and international conspiracies around a global LGBTQ+ agenda.

Lucy Robinson is a professor of collaborative history at the University of Sussex, resident historian at Blitzed magazine and author of Gay Men and the Left in post-war Britain and Now That’s What I Call A History of the 80s.

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