Uncovering ACT UP: the Queer Community and the HIV/AIDS Crisis in Edinburgh

The HIV/AIDS crisis became a profound point of tension between queer communities and the state. Much of the existing scholarship on this has focused on hotspots such as London and New York. However, Edinburgh—dubbed “the AIDS capital of Europe” by The Telegraph in 1986—has been largely overlooked in historical research [1]. By exploring a range of Edinburgh's archives, a story unfolds of a city in contention between the community and the state, culminating in the state's failure. My undergraduate dissertation project examined the crisis between 1989-1991, focusing on a key moment of activism in 1990. 

This research drew on materials from the Lavender Menace Queer Book Archive, the LGBT Switchboard archive and the LGBT digital magazine archive – of which ‘Gay Scotland’s’ issues narrated much of the story.  I made sure to account for my positionality and highlight how this may impact the project in terms of sources, interpretations and theory. As a queer Scottish person, researching the government's failure to protect my community was challenging and deeply emotional, which I wanted to convey in my work. Thus, I chose to centre on affect and emotion by drawing on the work of scholars Ann Cvetkovich[2] and Jack Halberstam[3], creating a queer emotive framework within which my research is situated. Halberstam discusses how, in the wake of the HIV/AIDS crisis, queer communities experience time outside of heteronormative understandings. The HIV/AIDS crisis changes the life expectancy and life courses of many queer communities where “horizons of possibility had been severely diminished” [3, p1-2]. Cvetkovich, on the other hand, creates a “radical archive of emotion”[8, p748]. Here, the archive is not just a space of historical preservation; it is also a space of emotion where love, grief, intimacy, and activism come together to tell stories of the past. For Cvetkovich, the queer archive is both a site of trauma and of resistance. My project included other ideas and scholars, but these two made a big impact on me and the framework in which I undertook this research. 

At first glance, the Lothian region looked well-prepared to tackle the looming HIV/AIDS epidemic, as throughout 1989 and early 1990, several state-led initiatives and interventions were implemented. Funding was allocated to retrofit the Edinburgh City Hospital with a £1.5 million AIDS hospice, whilst simultaneously, the “Take Care” public health campaign promoted safer sex practices, aiming to engage the public in prevention efforts [4][5]. However, by mid-1990, this commitment began to unravel. The “Take Care” campaign was defunded due to perceived public disinterest; funding for the AIDS hospice was redirected into the general budgets, while fees were introduced to access youth services and STI testing . This was done while  20% of HIV-positive women and nearly 6% of HIV-positive men in the UK lived in the Edinburgh/Lothian area, and with cases set to surpass 300 within the coming 12 months, leading to the declaration of the “Lothian health crisis” [6]. 

ACT UP Edinburgh was most active between 1990 and 1991, with its most significant public action taking place on August 29th, 1990. The protest began outside the Scottish Office and saw support from MPs Gavin Strang and Ron Brown—an exceptionally rare gesture at the time,  due to the stigma and fear surrounding the virus, coupled  with attitudes of moral judgement towards those with HIV/AIDS. Protesters then entered Old St Andrew’s House and staged a  “die-in”: one of ACT UP’s signature protest strategies, lying on the ground to symbolise lives lost due to state neglect (see illustration above, from ACT UP America’s storming of the campus of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland).  From there, they marched through central Edinburgh, blocking roads and contesting public space. Police attempted to intervene, but legal challenges by activists—and even a bus driver refusing to follow police orders—allowed the protest to continue [4][6]. 

This Protest was a turning point for the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Edinburgh. The Work of ACT UP combined affect – mourning, rage, solidarity – with activism, and the contesting of citizenship for the queer community, who were visibly challenging the state and demanding the rights of queer people to live and be cared for. This event generated a wave of media attention to Edinburgh and the cause, and arguably, as a consequence, resulted in a 5% funding boost for HIV/AIDS services in Lothian. However, despite the group's effort, by the end of 1990 in 50 men aged 16–35 in the region were HIV-positive, the hospice remained inadequate, and the “Take Care” campaign was abandoned [7]. 

ACT UP Edinburgh’s actions revealed both the strength and the fragility of queer community response. Archival materials and media coverage focused overwhelmingly on cis, white, gay men. Trans people, non-binary individuals, and people of colour are largely absent or rendered invisible. This reflects Halberstam’s claim that those most marginalised often remain “in the shadows” of AIDS history. Respectability politics also played a role in this protest as the involvement of MPs, while tactically helpful, also centred white, heterosexual authority in what was fundamentally a queer-led crisis [4][6][2, p.3]. 

The HIV/AIDs crisis in Edinburgh was a complex and contested period of memory, emotion , and queer resistance. My research project demonstrated how the crisis exposed fractures between state systems and marginalised communities, and how queer activists publicly contested the state. Moreover, this project documented how the voices of the movement were respected by those in power. It thus excluded those outside the cis white male.  

HIV/AIDS is not simply a chapter in queer history—it underpins so much of what queerness means and how queer politics has taken shape.  Undertaking this project within the city I live in added a deeply personal layer, I was investigating a crisis which is still in living memory, with much of the archival material discussing spaces and places I often frequent now. This project has allowed me to uncover areas of Edinburgh's queer past that are often forgotten.  

Works Cited

[1] Brocklehurst, Steven. 2019. “How Edinburgh Became the Aids Capital of Europe.” BBC News, December 1, 2019. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-50473604.  

[2]Cvetkovich, Ann. 2003. An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures. Durham; London: Duke University Press. 

[3]Halberstam, J. 2005. In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York, USA: New York University Press. https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814790892.001.0001. 

[4] Galford, Ellen, and Ken Wilson. 2006. Rainbow City: Stories from Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Edinburgh. Edinburgh: Word Power Books. P.62;  

[5]“AIDS UPDATE: Nature.” Gay Scotland Issue 45, June 1989. https://www.proquest.com/lgbtma/docview/2216024615/pageview/5E120CCC8FE84A43PQ/5?accountid=10673&sourcetype=Magazines. p.14 

[6] Archer, Rob. “LOTHIAN HEALTH CRISIS.” Gay Scotland Issue 52, August 1990. https://www.proquest.com/lgbtma/docview/2216037104/3139EBB5AE2D4208PQ/10?accountid=10673&sourcetype=Undefined&imgSeq=1. P.3-4 

[7] Gay Scotland. 1991. “ACTING-UP.” Gay Scotland Issue 56, April 1991. https://www.proquest.com/docview/2216046060/1EDF17394BAE4E24PQ/8?accountid=10673&sourcetype=Undefined&imgSeq=2. 

[8] Cifor. Marika. 2016. “Aligning Bodies: Collecting, Arranging, and Describing Hatred for a Critical Queer Archives.” Library Trends 64 (4): 756–75. https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2016.0010. P.758 

Author Bio 

Poppy Watson completed her undergraduate degree in Geography and Sociology at the University of Edinburgh in 2025, and is now undertaking her Masters at the Edinburgh Futures Institute.