Dear All,

A final reminder that our second paper in the ‘Emotions in Modern British History’ series is taking place tomorrow, 22 November, at 1pm and the speaker is James Southern (QMUL). James’s paper is titled ‘The ‘Spotting a Homosexual Checklist’: Masculinity, Homosexuality, and the British Foreign Office, 1965-1991’.

Abstract:

At the end of the 1960s, the sexual revolution arrived at the doors of the British Foreign Office. The partial decriminalisation of homosexual acts between men in 1967 meant that diplomats would have to decide whether or not to allow openly gay men to join the Diplomatic Service. Wary of recent high-profile diplomatic scandals associated with homosexuality like those of Guy Burgess in 1951 and John Vassall in 1962, the Foreign Office decided that homosexuality represented a security risk and therefore an automatic bar to employment in the Diplomatic Service – a policy which lasted until 1991. This paper uses Foreign Office files and oral history interviews to chart policymakers’ discussion around the introduction of the bar, analysing what definitions of “homosexuality” were used, why gay men were deemed unfit for service, and how the Foreign Office understood its policy in relation to the shifting social context of postwar Britain. The history of gender, sexuality and emotions within social elites is still a burgeoning field, and this paper draws on work by Martin Francis and Michael Roper in its approach. In its analysis of the Diplomatic Service sexuality bar, the paper aims to identify the types of emotional ‘communities’ institutionalised at the FCO which facilitated the maintenance of such an exclusionary policy. Heavily influenced by the gendering of Cold War diplomatic culture by the U.S. State Department, the Foreign Office hastily created an ill-defined and unenforceable bar on gay men and lesbians, from which much can be learned about the emotional economy of diplomacy, and the relationship between masculinity and elite professional life, in 1960s Britain.

No need to book. Lunch is provided.

The talk will take place in room 3.16, Arts Two, Mile End Campus, London E1 4NS. For directions to Mile End and a campus map, see bit.ly/QMcampusmap.

Best wishes

Helen

 


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