LGBT Foreign Office staff suffered from a deeply unjust policy – the time for personal apologies is now
4 min read
In January 1987, 26-year-old Gareth Williams, second secretary at the British Embassy in Stockholm, sat opposite the head of the personnel department in the then Foreign Office to be told that while his honesty about his sexuality was appreciated, he would have to leave the Diplomatic Service because he was gay.
In January 1987, 26-year-old Gareth Williams, second secretary at the British Embassy in Stockholm, sat opposite the head of the personnel department in the then Foreign Office to be told that while his honesty about his sexuality was appreciated, he would have to leave the Diplomatic Service because he was gay. A year later (despite his managers’ view that he would have had a brilliant career) he had to resign from the FCO. To add insult to injury, a promising opportunity to be seconded to the private office of an EU Commissioner – a way of providing a ‘soft landing’ – was withdrawn because of his sexuality.
The justification was that being homosexual automatically made someone a security risk even though, as Gareth argued, any risk came from the pressure to stay in the closet to avoid losing a prestigious career.
Homosexuality had been decriminalised 20 years earlier but ‘homosexual inclinations or relationships’ remained an ‘automatic bar’ to a career in the Diplomatic Service, a policy reconfirmed by the Thatcher government in 1982 – and only lifted in 1991. Yet by 2004, less than 20 years after Gareth’s dismissal, the first openly gay ambassador was able to take his partner to an overseas post on the same basis as a married couple.
Fast forward to 2021. After a highly successful career (with no security risks!) in public service, following the Ministry of Defence’s recognition of the injustices done to gays in the military – and with a similar acknowledgement from the Secret Intelligence Service – Gareth decided an apology was also due from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), and he enlisted my help.
Our aim was to get a collective and individual apology, not score political points. On 5 July 2021 following cross-party working in the Lords, the head of the Diplomatic Service issued a public apology for “the misguided view” that “LGBT people were more susceptible to blackmail than their straight colleagues”, which had resulted in “careers [being] ended, cut short or stopped before they could even begin”.
So far so good. But despite being told that individual apologies would be forthcoming, not one has been issued – even to Gareth. For five years I have been asking Conservative and Labour ministers in Written and Oral Questions what they are doing to identify and contact those damaged by this deeply unjust policy. But I have been met with prevarication and obfuscation, informed that no relevant records are held – but then told that it was too difficult to search through them. It was even implied that the policy was less clear cut in the FCO than in the military, despite our archival evidence from 1982 and Gareth’s own testimony.
Despite being told that individual apologies would be forthcoming, not one has been issued
In April 2025 an FCDO Written Answer told me: “FCDO officials have continued looking into this and I am eager to bring this to a resolution further to the apology for the ban from the Permanent Under-Secretary in 2021… The FCDO are currently looking at the best way to address this.” In April this year, an MoD minister wrote “to reassure” me that this was still “under consideration since the FCDO rightly apologised in 2021 and that work continues in this area”. I wrote to the FCDO on 10 August. I await a reply.
Meanwhile, those who suffered between 1967 and 1991 are ageing and even dying. It is difficult not to accuse the government of stonewalling.
As my friend Gareth says, while his life has turned out well despite the hurtful and damaging experience, others were probably much less fortunate and “if the FCDO are serious in wanting to know how many individuals suffered between the decriminalisation of homosexuality and the lifting of the ban, and what the consequences were for them, the government could, as with the armed services, make a public appeal for those affected to provide their own testimony and be given the apology due to them”. It’s time to act now.
Baroness Hayter is as Labour peer
