Remembering Nettie Pollard: pioneering lesbian activist and civil rights campaigner

My friend Nettie Pollard, who died on Christmas Day 2025 aged 76, was one of the dwindling band of pioneer activists involved in the early days of the Gay Liberation Front (1970–74). She went on to be the motor behind the Lesbian and Gay Committee of the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL, now Liberty) 1974–79.

Named Janet, but always known as Nettie, she was the daughter of committed Communist parents Jack and Ursula, a civil servant and feminist. She was a vegetarian from infancy, and lost her sense of smell after being hit by a trolleybus. She followed Jack into King Alfred School, a progressive establishment in Golders Green.

Nettie Pollard discovering her sexuality

She became aware of her lesbian feelings when a gay friend took her to a GLF meeting in April 1971. It “felt like coming home”. She threw herself into the counter-psychiatry group, which campaigned against the idea that homosexuality was a disease. Out of this group came the radical self-help group Icebreakers, of which she was a founder member. Rejecting “objectivity” in counselling, Icebreakers offered instead the positive role model of out and proud homosexuals.

Pollard’s work for the LGBTQ+ community in the Gay Liberation Front

When the women in GLF staged a walk-out in January 1972, Nettie “broke ranks” and stayed with the mixed GLF. As such, she was one of the planners of the first Gay Pride March in 1972. Her attitudes were always profoundly libertarian and against censorship. She opposed banning even virulently homophobic books, which put her at odds with the LGBT+ mainstream.

After work in a record shop and a stint at the Arts Council, she joined NCCL initially as a receptionist; she had put her GLF experience on her job application and, as a result, landed the embryonic Gay Rights brief. She transformed it. The Lesbian and Gay Committee published the first detailed reports on discrimination in employment, policing and censorship between 1976 and 1979.

In the wake of partial decriminalisation of sex between men, there was much discussion about the anomalies which remained. In April 1976, NCCL adopted proposals for an age of consent of 14, which it submitted to the Criminal Law Revision Commission. When NCCL disavowed this several years later, Nettie became something of a scapegoat and was doorstepped viciously as an alleged paedophile apologist at home by the News of the World while her partner was dying of cancer upstairs.

She was active in the Campaign Against Public Morals, highlighting the absurdity of conspiracy laws. Intensely loyal on a personal level, she supported individuals trapped by these catch-all offences through times of imprisonment and beyond.

She joined Feminists Against Censorship and was prominent in the 1990s Spanner defence campaign, where gay S/M practitioners were prosecuted for consensual sex in a witch-hunt reminiscent of the 1950s. She joined the Campaign for Homosexual Equality’s executive and campaigned for LGBT+ migrants and asylum seekers, personally organising finance and defence for several whose chances of asylum were written off by others.

Pollard’s later years of advocacy and remembering her legacy

In 2018, she became a founder member of HOWL, the Women’s Liberation History Project.

Confined at home first by long Covid and then by undiagnosed colorectal cancer, she maintained a huge friendship network online and an abiding concern with a variety of progressive causes. She became a Queer National Treasure, honoured with awards and by documentaries.

In losing Nettie, we lose someone whose steely resolution and high-mindedness was allied to a heart as big as a barrel.

Janet (Nettie) Marian Mackenzie Pollard: Born 6th September 1949. Died 25th December 2025.