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| | + | Following material by [[Nick Billingham]] in the ''CHE Annual Report 2013-2014'' to be incorporated as appropriate. --[[User:Ross Burgess|Ross Burgess]] ([[User talk:Ross Burgess|talk]]) 03:01, 2 May 2014 (CDT) |
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| | Peter Ashman (1950-2014) | | Peter Ashman (1950-2014) |
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| | + | Peter Ashman joined CHE in the mid-1970s as a young, newly-qualified lawyer with a strong interest in gay rights. |
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| − | Peter Ashman, who died on 21 February 2014 of pancreatic cancer, joined CHE in the mid-1970s as a young newly-qualified lawyer with a strong interest in gay rights. He quickly became an active campaigner involved in setting up CHE's law reform committee of which he was a leading member throughout the late 70s and 80s and also became a well-known figure at CHE conferences. The work of the law reform committee involved drafting policy papers including CHE's evidence to the Crimonal Law Revision Committee's inquiry into the age of consent and lobbying Parliament on various pieces of legislation affecting lesbians and gay men such as the Police and Criminal Evidence Act of 1984 which covered the offence of soliciting. The committee met regularly each month from 1977 to 1989 and Peter's contribution and legal expertise was central to this work.
| + | Such a record of activity and achievement is remarkable for anyone, but in Peter’s case it was com-bined with a wonderful and engaging capacity for friendship and fun for which his many friends in CHE and outside will always remember him. |
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| − | But Peter's work for lesbian and gay rights went much wider than this. He was a member of the legal team in the case taken by Jeff Dudgeon to the European Court of Human Rights to challenge the criminalisation of male homosexual acts in Northern Ireland which remained in force after the partial decriminalisation in England and Wales. Together with Paul Crane, another lawyer and CHE member, he was responsible for the preparation of the legal arguments underlying the case. After four years of argument culminating in the presentation to the court in Strasbourg by barristers Lord Gifford and Terry Munyard (another CHE member) this resulted in the historic judgment in 1981 that the right to a private life under Article 8 of the European Convention includes the right to a private sex life, the first time that gay rights were recognised by any international human rights tribunal. Not only did this force the British Government to change the law in Northern Ireland, it has paved the way for a number of other highly significant judgments in the ECHR. In the following 20 years some 23 jurisdictions in Council of Europe member states including Ireland and Greece decriminalised homosexual relations.
| + | Peter’s death at the comparatively early age of 63 is a cruel blow to his civil partner Poramate Jitsopas, to whom we send our condolences and to all those for whom he was a true friend and inspiration. |
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| − | In 1978 Peter was contacted by the Dutch gay group COC to discuss setting up an international gay rights association. This resulted in a meeting at CHE's annual conference in Coventry in August 1978 attended by activists from 14 different countries. It led to the setting up of the International Gay Association – now the International Lesbian Gay Bisexual Trans and Intersex Association known as ILGA with offices in Brussels and Geneva. Peter played a leading part in defining its goals and work programme which involved lobbying the European Commission, MEPs, members of the Council of Europe and other bodies and he continued to provide advice and support through the 80s and 90s. ILGA is now a genuinely international organisation recognised by both the European Union and the United Nations as a respected and effective advocate for lgbt rights.
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| − | Peter's other work for gay rights included taking further cases to the European Court on the armed forces, privacy and arguing for an equal age of consent (for which CHE member Richard Desmond bravely put himself forward as a seventeen year old test case). While none of these cases were successful in the 80s, later cases have succeeded in advancing equality in these and other areas. Peter was involved in persuading the UK Charity Commission to agree that explicitly gay charities could be given charitable status in law: London Friend was one of the first charities to benefit from this. In 1989 he played a significant part in setting up Stonewall as a full-time lobbying organisation in response to the passing of Section 28: for the first six months of its existence it operated from the front room of his house in Islington.
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| − | Outside the field of gay rights, Peter worked for several years for Justice, the organisation dealing with miscarriages of justice and took up cases of immigration and prisoners' rights among others. In 1982 he put forward the idea for a television documentary series investigating such
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| − | miscarriages which led to the BBC series 'Rough Justice' for which he provided a number of case studies and became a familiar figure on the programme. It played a role in securing the release from prison of 18 people and is widely credited with the eventual establishment of the official body to review miscarriages of justice. Subsequently, Peter's career took him to Brussels where he set up the European Human Rights Foundation and was an adviser to the European Commission before in 2004 returning to London as a human rights adviser to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. In that capacity he drafted a programme for British embassies abroad to promote the rights of lgbt people around the world. It was another important innovation and provided an example for the development of similar programmes by the EU anf US State Department.
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| − | Such a record of activity and achievement is remarkable for anyone, but in Peter's case it was combined with a wonderful and engaging capacity for friendship and fun for which his many friends in CHE and outside will always remember him. His friend and long-term collaborator in CHE and ILGA, Nigel Warner, has written:
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| − | “Looking back over Peter's human rights work several things spring to mind. One was his
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| − | extraordinary understanding of how things worked and how to get things done. His encyc-
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| − | lopaedic knowledge of the law, legal procedures, international human rights instruments
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| − | and how institutions work meant he could quickly determine the most effective approach to
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| − | a particular campaign.
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| − | “Another quality was a quite irrepressible optimism that however worrying the immediate
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| − | circumstances or however bleak the outlook eventually things would come right. This kept
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| − | him working patiently and positively for lgbt rights all through the dark years of the 1980s
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| − | “A third was his extraordinary generosity and patience in supporting and mentoring others
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| − | “And fourth was the all-encompassing nature of his personal commitment to fighting
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| − | injustice. This could go well beyond just providing legal support: he was willing if need be
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| − | to take significant personal risks to help others.”
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| − | His death at the comparatively early age of 63 is a cruel blow to his civil partner Poramate
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| − | Jitsopas to whom we send our condolences and to all those for whom he was a true friend and inspiration. | + | |
Peter Ashman joined CHE in the mid-1970s as a young, newly-qualified lawyer with a strong interest in gay rights.
Such a record of activity and achievement is remarkable for anyone, but in Peter’s case it was com-bined with a wonderful and engaging capacity for friendship and fun for which his many friends in CHE and outside will always remember him.
Peter’s death at the comparatively early age of 63 is a cruel blow to his civil partner Poramate Jitsopas, to whom we send our condolences and to all those for whom he was a true friend and inspiration.
