Does activism make any difference?

I was asked "Does activism really make any difference?". Now, I ask you 'When you go to a fetish club, are you afraid of the Police?' Because I remember that fear.

I remember the fear when the Police arrested sixteen gay men in 1990 for consensual SM, and our enemies the Tabloid Press pilloried them as "The Most Evil Men in Britain".

I recall the fear that silenced every voice that might have been raised in the defence of right and sanity, from that of the BBC to that of every SMer who darkly murmured that the defendants had really gone to far.

I remember the courage of one man, Kellan Farshea, who raised his voice and said that it was wrong, cruel and mad.

I remember the brave people who stood up shoulder to shoulder, with Kellan, and they fought back. It had never happened before.

The Spanner Case, as it was called, jailled all sixteen men, they all lost their jobs and two are now dead. The pressure group Countdown on Spanner challenged that verdict to Appeal the House of Lords and the European Court of Human Rights for the palpable legal nonsense that it was.

It was their courage, their determination, that caused a reappraisal of the Law. There has never been a repeat of "Operation Spanner".

Still, to my shame, the Heterosexual SM Scene hid it's face and whispered that surely the authorities were only after the Homosexual SM community.

Then on the 12th of October 1994 sixty police, descending like the Assyrian, raided Club Whiplash in Putney and prosecuted both the event promoter and the club manager under the Disorderly House Act.

The architect of the raid that night, Inspector James Madden, expected both defendants to submit, to plead guilty and go to prison. He expected a test case that would see him into happy retirement safe in the knowledge that he had forced the closure of every SM club in London, destroying that thing called The Scene.

He did not envisage, I am sure, when he stepped mob handed accross the threshold of Club Whiplash, to be confronted by an activist from the National Coucil for Civil Liberties, Nettie Pollard - demanding his name and number. He did not conceive that the perverts he meant to persecute would take the stand in open court and denounce his pile of sixty statements for the tissue of peevish lies that they were.

He never foresaw a Southwark Jury returning from their conclave with a verdict of 'Not Guilty'. He never thought of being taken to Court for the return of property stolen by his officers.

When you dressed to come here today did any one of you think fearfully of the Police? The bully does not go away. Even now he demands that we stop smoking, drinking, eating chocolate. "It's not good for you" he says.

Each diktat louder and more arrogant than the one before. When the Prince of Nice comes insinuating into your playrooms and your parties, will there be those brave enough to defy, disobey, and ridicule? If there are not, our time here is wasted.

For The Scene's heart, it's soul and it's guts is it's readiness to stand and fight. Sorry am I that such spirit has been allowed, with such callow complacency, to atrophy over the past five years.

SM Pride, founded from the remains of Spanner to protect and educate, has been allowed to mutate into a membership club squabbling over it's own poisoned chalice of constitution.

The vital business of campaigning has fallen to a series of individuals selflessly and heroically fighting the fight alone. The fight that demands to be fought by us all.

In five years, The Scene, forgetful of it's fights in the new freedom has fallen prey to those who see it not as a community, but as thousands of pockets ready to be picked. A marketplace ripe for fresh competition. In train, as sure as decay follows death, come division, bitching and backbiting.

"There is...", they reassure themselves "no such thing as society". For all the trinkets and gewgaws none of that competition is worth one jot against co-operation. The helping hand replacing the unkind word, solidarity replacing division. Friendship and the desire for it replacing the mindless pursuit of prestige.

For that is activism : Comradeship and common purpose, in the cause of freedom and right, itself begets freedom and right.

On Internet message boards cowards may scoff and traitors may sneer. Compared to that, your coming here today and talking face to face, their words are but dross and dung. Before we meet again here in 2005 we may have got bruises and we may have got marks, but we, and not those that gave them will be better off for it.

When we march again, showing every Blair Bully that we will fight them, we will all be there together, proud for the cause that is our right. This great job has gone too long undone; let us all, for the good of every SM'er not here today, get back to work.

Ishmael Skyes first made this address in 2004. Backlash has emphasised his universal points. His original speech had this preamble.

I'm very pleased to be able to welcome you to the 2004 celebration of SM rights here at Conway Hall. When I attended my first SM party in 1986, an event of this kind, and for the reasons it takes place, would never have seemed possible.

Last weekend Nikki and I spent a very happy night at Club Subversion, which I heartily recommend to every one of you. A line on their flyer caught my eye, "run by fetish people for fetish people".

Why, I wondered, did the organisers think that so unusual? It was certainly the rule in 1983 when the Skin Two Club was founded in Falconberg Court, down the road by Centrepoint where the Scene began. It was because it was run by enthusiasts rather than the capitalists of the sex industry that made it the truly revolutionary phenomenon that it was.

No longer was SM an activity conducted by furtive, fearful pairs, often with a fee changing hands, forced to behave like criminals. The Scene meant that there was comradeship, support, exitement, advice, new ideas and new playmates. Friendship replaced the relationship of client and provider. Some of the friends that I made at that party are still friends to this day.