ABSTRACT
It’s 1.55 a.m. on a June morning; it could be this year but in fact it’s 1984. We are on Oxford Street in London. A couple stand at a bus stop. They are cuddling each other and kissing each other on the lips. The hand of one rubs the back of the other. The hand travels further down the body. A scene of passion. Two other couples walking along Oxford Street notice this passionate event. They point and shout, neither words of encouragement nor support but words of abuse. ‘You filthy sods. How dare you in front of our girls’. The police arrive. The kissing and cuddling stop. The couple are arrested and removed from the street, charged and found guilty of an offence (s.54(13) Metropolitan Police Act 1839) of using ‘Threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour with intent to provoke a breach of the peace.’ Their appeal to the High Court (Masterson, Cooper v. Holden 1986) fails. The court decides that the magistrates’ finding of guilt was perfectly lawful: the ordinary everyday embrace criminalized. Is this another example of the law being an ass? Is this the Orwellian ‘1984’ fantasy made 1984 reality? No. This is the everyday tale of the law responding to two men, to relations between men, to their public display: an otherwise ordinary everyday event, the passionate embrace, transformed into crime when undertaken between two men.
