A British society and its historic push for gay rights

Our latest release marks Pride month with a deeply researched project that explores a little known chapter of British gay history. In 1992, the Isle of Man was one of the last places in western Europe to decriminalise homosexual acts. Through verbatim reconstruction and newly discovered archives, we understand the impact of discriminatory parliamentary debates, controversial media coverage and overreaching police surveillance. In a short period, this corner of the British Isles went on to create some of the most progressive legislation in the world. Do people change, or do laws change people?

I spoke to the film’s director John Craine about the making of this unique project, including the theme of social shaming and what that looks like thirty years on, in an age of social media.

We welcome your feedback on this film and invite you to explore our rich archive of documentaries. Do get in touch with your reflections.

Jess Gormley

Executive producer, Guardian Documentaries

jess.gormley@theguardian.com

Why did you want to make No Man Is an Island?

No Man Is an Island is very much not my story. I grew up on the Isle of Man in the 1990s and 2000s not experiencing any significant homophobia. I married my husband there. All of that is because of the work and sacrifices made by people including Alan Shea and the other campaigners who brought about a change in the law. Had they not campaigned, often at enormous expense to themselves, my life could have been very different. Had I been born 10 years earlier I could easily have been one of those men arrested and shamed. My generation and all the ones that followed owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the people who helped bring about change.

Why did you decide on this creative format, using verbatim reconstruction?

In telling a story, fiction or non-fiction, it’s important to make sure that you’re using the right form for that story. The way that the research presented itself was in all these different media (radio archive, newspapers, news clips, parliamentary transcripts, etc) so it seemed obvious that a film was a good way to combine them into something cohesive. The verbatim method came from sometimes having amazing quoted speech but no recording of it, so we decided to have actors reconstruct it. Even the non-verbal stuff depicted in the film is researched, none of it is imagined, it’s all based on something told to us or contained in interviews.

What was your most memorable filming day?

That would have to be the day we shot in the House of Keys, which is loosely analogous to the House of Commons in the UK. Reconstructing the debate from the parliamentary transcripts in the place where they happened 30 years previously was really uncanny. There’s something ghostly about re-enacting an event in the space where it happened. We invited some of the real people to come and watch the filming: Alan Shea, Hazel Hannan and Allan Bell, all of whom had spent time with the actors playing them. It was emotional having them there, and I think quite difficult for them to relive. We used the real public toilets where the surveillance happened, too. I hope it’s a sign of how far the island has come that we were welcomed into the House of Keys to do it, they didn’t try and exert any control over what we filmed there; their only notes to us were how to make it more period-accurate. The same goes for the financial backing we got from the Isle of Man Arts Council: no notes and no interference. They’re not afraid of interrogating the history and that’s commendable.

What has been the response from audiences so far?

The reactions have been really interesting. It does seem to resonate hardest with a Manx [Isle of Man] audience in the sense that they often seem more emotional and angry than non-Manx people. I get that. It’s hard to look starkly at our own community. It’s been very heartening to see young people respond so well to it, and humbling to receive messages from gay men who were forced to leave the island in the 80s and 90s because of the law.

One point of discussion that came up from one of the campaigners who we depict in the film was that they thought we should have named and shamed some of the homophobic politicians. We discussed that quite a lot in the edit and and came to the conclusion that if we’re making a film about the evils of public shaming, we can’t turn the film into a big public shaming exercise. I also hope that those people are embarrassed by what they said and wouldn’t say it now. If we want change, we’ve got to allow for it.

NMIAI looks at how far the Isle of Man has come in terms of legislation and attitudes towards the LGBTQ+ community, but what further progress is needed?

The island has really progressive legislation now, for example they banned conversion therapy which came into law in 2020, something that still hasn’t been outlawed in the UK. There’s always more to do though, and you do see some hangovers from the bad old days. Like everywhere else, it feels like the heat is on trans people now, and the island is in no way immune from the inflamed culture wars being cynically exploited mainly by the right. Now, as then, people forget that there are real human beings at the centre of these issues and whatever one might think about where the law stands we should always treat people with dignity as an absolute bare minimum.

What do you hope international audiences will take away from NMIAI?

I hope the film highlights how destructive public shaming is. The story we tell is squarely in the pre-internet age, but social shaming feels more prevalent than ever thanks to the internet and social media. Sadly the practices shown in the film still exist around the world today. In Russia, now that the government is cracking down on LGBTQ venues, it takes the press with them when nightclubs are raided. That kind of shaming is especially cruel because it means that not only people are rejected from official society but also from within their own families. Shame has always been a weapon deployed against LGBTQ people – that’s why we have Pride, right?

For as much as the story is devastating, it does offer a glimmer of hope: that radical change of social attitude is possible in a relatively short time. It’s easy to say that from the end of the story, but if you’re the young man writing the letter that our film ends with – about how the world might be in 30 years – it’s a hell of a long time to wait.

Sheffield Doc Fest – Guardian Documentaries team (Lindsay Poulton, Jess Gormley and Katya Ochagavia) will be attending this UK festival, including the Meet Market. Please come and say hi!

Sunnyside of the Doc – Katya Ochagavia will be attending this festival in La Rochelle, France, and looks forward to meeting film-makers there.

We appreciate your feedback on each of our releases. Here are some of our favourite comments on YouTube from No Man Is an Island.

‘Heartbreaking history, but the ending fills me with hope. And people wonder why we ever needed Pride month celebrations. Well, this is why, and the struggle for acceptance continues. Nowadays it is our transgender brothers and sisters who are being ruthlessly demonized and persecuted.’ (@valsainking)

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