Ordinary in Brighton?: LGBT, Activisms and the City by Kath Browne Leela Bakshi

Author:Kath Browne, Leela Bakshi [Kath Browne, Leela Bakshi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, Cultural & Social
ISBN: 9781317085157
Google: f8ooDAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-05-13T03:22:32+00:00

Ordinary Activism: Partnerships and the Possibilities of Working With and Within

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, partnership working between LGBT communities and ‘the state’ in Brighton meant that it became difficult to segregate and target ‘enemies’. This was not because there was an absence of evidence of abuses and discriminations and other violences from those who provided state services such as the police, local government and others (see Spade 2011). Rather, LGBT activists addressed these and other LGBT issues through partnership working with the understanding that Brighton was failing to achieve what it should and should be better.

‘Partnership working’ was not new or unique to New Labour’s approach (see Rummery 2002; Craig and Taylor 2002),4 but it did draw on an expanded understanding of ‘social exclusion’. This moved from poverty and deprivation to a broader focus on marginalisation and integration, and extended the remit of the community and voluntary sector from delivery to strategy and policy development (Craig and Taylor: 2002). Gender and sexual difference was encompassed in new definitions of social exclusion. In Brighton the accepted LGBT population figures meant that services such as housing, police, health and others were legally required to work in partnership with LGBT communities. In establishing and developing LGBT partnerships, certain LGBT people and groups became part of the ‘ordinary people’ who should be involved in democratic processes, rather than excluded from them, as threats to the heteronormative state.

Partnership initiatives included a wide range of stakeholders such as private sector businesses, public service providers, service users, commissioners and those who were seen as experts in a variety of ways. Here we focus on UK welfare that was delivered through intersections of public, private and community and/or voluntary collaborations (Powell and Glendinning 2006). In Brighton LGBT individuals and groups were incorporated into policy planning, training of staff and consultations, alongside provision of financial support for certain LGBT groups in the city. Activisms were possible ‘from within’ and changing ‘enemies’ into partners, who worked officially and openly with gender and sexual difference to cater for LGBT people. This made it difficult (and at time unnecessary) to oppose public sector providers or politicians either through lobbying efforts within, or angry protests outside. This contrasts with Cooper’s (2004) research which noted that in the 1980s local government staff felt blocked in their abilities to engage with lesbian and gay work and operated in informal and unofficial ways.

It is possible to read LGBT activisms in Brighton through partnership, cooperation and working together for LGBT people. Thus, where enemies were not easily located, or popularly recognised as such, LGBT politics were not necessarily absent, normative or indeed ineffectual, nor were the structures of institutions only or necessarily normalising and regulatory. Instead, LGBT politics were found inside as well as outside the gates of power, and tackled prejudice against LGBT people from within state based public organisations with the support of those organisations. This contrasts with other eras and places, where direct injustices perpetrated by influential state organisations provided

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