16/12/2018
Bill Kidd, an MSP for the Scottish Nationalist Party, writes in the leftist daily paper The Morning Star on efforts to fundraise for a memorial to those men who refused to fight in the First World War. The Opposing War Memorial’s goal of creating a memorial in Princes Street Gardens is he says. a “terrific way” of recognising this wide-ranging group of our fellow citizens. It brings to attention another side of WW1 — one that’s not taught widely or kept in the public eye. The initiative will interest those LGBT people on the pacifist side of the movement’s politics. Important groups such as the Gay Liberation Front and Women’s Liberation Movement took very firm positions against the military and what they termed the industrial complex. In 1995, the well known gay left winger Peter Tatchell summarised these analyses in his influential pamphlet, “We Don’t Want to March Straight”.
