Jackie Forster: Who was the news reporter and lesbian activist?

Google Doodle hails accomplished journalist and actress who found her true calling as a campaigner following decriminalisation of homosexuality in Britain in 1967

Today’s Google Doodle celebrates Jackie Forster (1926-98) on what would have been her 91st birthday, a news reporter and actress who became one of Britain’s leading lesbian activists, a woman whose courage in coming out during less enlightened times made her a role model to thousands.

Born in Islington but raised largely in India where her colonel father was stationed with the British Army Medical Corps, Jackie was sent back to Britain in 1932 to attend Wycombe Abbey girl’s boarding school in Buckinghamshire and then St Leonard’s School in Fife, Scotland.

Displaying particular prowess in hockey and lacrosse, Jackie graduated and became an actress with Edinburgh’s Wilson Barrett repertory company, moving to London in 1950. A series of minor roles and bit-parts on film and television followed, most notably in Michael Anderson’s classic war caper The Dam Busters (1955).

Under her maiden name, Jackie Mackenzie, the young actress turned her attention to news reporting, her charismatic approach proving a hit with audiences as she pioneered the straight-to-camera address then rarely deployed in current affairs broadcasting.

Her most eye-catching assignment saw her dispatched to Monte Carlo to cover the wedding of Hollywood star Grace Kelly to Prince Rainier, for which she won the Prix d’Italia in 1956.

Visiting Savannah, Georgia, in 1957 on a lecture tour to discuss her media experiences, Jackie had her first lesbian encounter and realised her true sexuality. She nevertheless married novelist Peter Forster the following year, only for the partnership to be dissolved in 1962.

After two years in Canada to escape the spotlight, Forster returned to Britain and moved in with her girlfriend. In 1969, emboldened by the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Britain two years previously, she formally came out at Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park, bravely overcoming obvious nerves to tell the assembled crowd: “You are looking at a roaring dyke.”

Joining the Campaign for Homosexual Equality, Forster went on to become a “trailblazer” for gay rights (in Peter Tatchell’s phrase), founding the Gay Liberation Front in 1970, taking part in Britain’s first Pride march in 1971 and founding Sappho magazine the following year.

She devoted the final three decades of her life to LGBT activism, providing inexhaustible support for members of the community and regularly appearing on TV to discuss her sexuality.

Addressing the lack of representation and role models for gay women like herself and her partner during their youth, Forster said:

“I didn't see myself as being a lesbian, or her, because I didn't look as I imagined they did, and nor did she. We weren't short back and sides and natty gent's suiting. I got the image from [Radclyffe Hall’s] The Well of Loneliness, like we all did. There were drug stores around the States, with these pulp books, lurid stories about lesbians who smoked cigars and had orgies with young girls. I thought, where are these women? We never met anyone we knew were lesbians. There were no other books that I found about lesbians, no films that we ever saw: nothing at all.”

The year before her death from emphysema in 1998, Jackie Forster took part in a memorable episode of the BBC documentary series The Day That Changed My Life. ‘From High Heels to Sensible Shoes’ saw her speak candidly about the trials and tribulations she endured as the public face of female homosexuality. One contributor to the programme, Gill Hanscombe, speculated that had her activism been devoted to any other cause than gay rights, she would have been honoured as a dame.

Instead, she is remembered today by the LGBT community as “Saint Jackie of the Eternal Mission to Lay Sisters”, a tireless campaigner and icon whose example truly paved a path for others.