Senate House Library has launched an online exhibition marking the 40th anniversary of the 1984 ‘Operation Tiger’ raids on London’s famous Gay’s the Word bookshop, when UK Customs and Excise officers confiscated over 140 titles, and thousands of pounds worth of stock, deeming the books “indecent or obscene”.
Through the confiscated titles and the subsequent legal battle to defend them, ‘Seized Books!’ opens up vital conversations about queer literature, reading cultures and censorship over the decades. The raids ignited a fierce legal battle and a nationwide defence campaign that united publishers, bookshops, writers and activists in a fight against state censorship. Following a two-year legal battle all charges against the defendants were dropped.
You can explore the confiscated titles, the legal battle and queer reading cultures at the online exhibition.
To support the anniversary, we’ve released a new enhanced edition of our book Queer Between the Covers, one of whose editors, Leila Kassir, has been involved in creating the exhibition. The book was published Open Access, and is available to read for free on our instance of the Manifold platform. This updated Manifold edition surfaces all the figures published in the book, as well as new links and resources including an updated list of the titles seized from Gay’s the Word bookshop as part of the 1984 Operation Tiger raid, drawing on work from the new online exhibition Seized Books!
“Customs sustained this campaign of harassment for more than two years and brought 100 charges against nine staff and volunteer directors of the shop and threatened them with jail. Within days of the ‘Operation Tiger’ raids, a defence campaign and fund were launched and as Customs escalated their seizures and brought criminal charges, so the campaign and fund had to escalate its response until they won an important victory for an oppressed community and for free speech.
If Gay’s the Word had not fought back, Customs would have destroyed thousands of volumes of hundreds of titles and no one would have been able to import queer fiction or non-fiction, poetry or sociological works. I am delighted that the seized books are now available for all to see in the gallery of the Seized Books! website.
This exhibition exposes an extraordinary attempt at state censorship that has been largely ignored for 40 years.”
Graham McKerrow, Editor of Capital Gay, a weekly newspaper, from 1981 to 1989 and a co-ordinator of the Defend Gay’s the Word campaign in 1986
The University of London Press is supported by the School of Advanced Study, University of London.
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