GAY & LESBIAN

The 1950s Oppression

During the Second World War the bar under The Ritz was openly gay. Under the Atlee government London's gays were policed lightly. In 1951 the Conservatives won the general election. A serious clampdown on homosexual life ensued. In 1953 the actor John Gielgud was arrested for importuning a man in a lavatory in Chelsea.

However, Michael Schofield (writing as Gordon Westwood) (1919-2014) was able to get his book Society and The Homosexual (1952) published. It was the first non-medical study. Donald West (1924-2020) was a gay hospital physician who had trained at the Maudsley Hospital to be a psychiatrist. His book Homosexuality (1955) addressed its subject in a detached manner using statistical, psychological, and anthropological approaches. It was able to be published because of his medical background and was aided by having a foreword from a respected criminologist. The books played a role in informing considered public dialogue in the years prior to the Wolfenden Report (1957). The long-running Radio 4 magazine programme Woman's Hour has long had a reputation for being progressive on social issues. During the decade it addressed the issue of homosexuality.

Accidental Self-Outing

Barbara Hosking served as a press officer for the Prime Ministers Harold Wilson and Edward Heath. It was only after her memoirs had been published, when she was in her nineties, that she realized that she had outed herself as a lesbian.

Aversion Therapy

In 1935 the psychiatrist Louis Max tried to use aversion therapy to cure a man of his homosexuality. A range of chemical and electrical techniques were to be used over the following decades. The treatment was always voluntary, however, the alternatives were usually deeply unpleasant.

In 1974 aversion therapy stopped being used.

Jeremy Bentham

The influential social theorist Jeremy Bentham wrote an essay in 1785 that he entitled Offences Against Oneself. In it, he argued that gay sex should not be a criminal offence. It was not published for over two centuries.

Location: The Ministry of Justice, 102 Petty France, SW1H 9AJ. The site had been 19 York Street. (blue, brown)

Thomas Cannon

Thomas Cannon was the author of the pamphlet Ancient and Modern Pederasty Investigated and Exemplify d (1749). This was the first known published defence of homosexuality in English.

'Catty' Coward

Sheridan Morley (1941-2007) established his reputation as a biographer with A Talent To Amuse (1969), his book on No l Coward. Upon one occasion, subject and author were talking when the conversation touched upon the adventure movie The Sea Shall Not Have Them (1954), which had starred Dirk Bogarde and Michael Redgrave. The title prompted Coward to remark, I fail to see why not! Everybody else has!

Clause 28

The 1981 coup that ousted Andrew McIntosh as the leader of Labour on the G.L.C., also saw Sir Ashley Bramall superseded by Bryn Davies as the head of the Inner London Education Authority. Two years later Davies was sidelined to make way for the hard-left Labour politician Frances Morrell (n e Galleway) (1937-2010). In that post she had a number of high profile spats with the Conservative government, notably over a book entitled Jenny Lives With Eric and Martin.

Clause 28 prohibited the promotion of homosexuality by schools and local authorities; de facto this meant any impartial discussion of the subject. It passed into law in 1988.

56 Dean Street

56 Dean Street is a sexual health clinic that has served the LGBTQI+ community since 2009.

The clinic played a role in helping the PrEP Group to campaign for the availability of pre-exposure prophylaxis, which prevented H.I.V. contraction. Once the drug became obtainable, new case numbers plummeted.

Location: 56 Dean Street, W1D 6AQ (turquoise, orange)

Website: https: www.dean.st

Gaydar

In 1997 the South African software entrepreneurs Henry Badenhorst and Gary Frisch (1969-2007) moved to Britain, settling in Twickenham. In 1999 they launched the Gaydar website to enable gay people to socialise online. The site had a number of innovative features, notably a who's online page that informed users who was also looking at the site, and instant messaging which enabled people to communicate instantly. In 2002 GaydarRadio, a digital radio station, was launched. In 2003 it emerged that the Labour M.P. had posted a picture of himself, only wearing underpants on the Gaydar site. In 2006 Mark Oaten, who was married and then a contender for the leadership of the Liberal Democrat party, admitted to using the site to find partners for gay sex.

Henry Badenhorst (1966-2017) and Frisch (1969-2007) were gay South Africans who became a couple after meeting one another in a cruising bar. In 1997 they moved to London and set up QSoft Consulting, a company that furnished financial management systems for airlines. A visiting Dutch friend told them that he wanted a boyfriend but did not have the time to hang out in bars. The pair began to research online gay dating and concluded that they could create something better. Badenhurst mapped out the strategy and Frisch did the programming. They worked either side of a desk and shared an ashtray. In 1999 they launched Gaydar from their Twickenham home. In 2004 the website started carrying mainstream advertising after a Ford executive, who used it, concluded that it had considerable potential. The features that they developed included G.P.S. (Gaydar Positioning System), which enabled site users to find one another if they were within a mile of one another.

A number of tabloid scandals featured gay and bisexual M.P.s who used the website. The most incident involved the pop singer Boy George, who in 2009 was given a fifteen-month sentence after having been convicted of imprisoning a Norwegian man against his will. In 2006 Badenhorst and Frisch broke up as a couple. Badenhorst opted not to upload a profile to the website because he preferred to use gay bars. The following year Frisch committed suicide from the balcony of his eighth-floor flat in Battersea. In 2013 Badenhorst sold his interest in Gaydar and its associated companies. In 2017 he fell to his death from the 23^rd floor of a Johannesburg hotel.

Gay Papers

See Also: MAGAZINES

Capital Gay

The Gay Liberation Front emerged in the early 1970s. The organisation broke up within a couple of years. However, by then Andrew Lumsden and a number of others had set up Gay News. The publication addressed community and activism. It provided a forum in which homosexuals could debate with one another in public.

The paper's readers often phoned it for information or advice. Michael Mason (1947-2015), the publications news editor, that there was scope for setting up a dedicated helpline. London Lesbian & Gay Switchboard was set up in 1974.

The emergence of nightclubs such as Heaven and Bang, prompted the emphasis of London's gay life to become less politically-orientated and more focused on pleasure. In 1981 Graham McKerrow and Mason broke away from the publication and set up the tabloid Capital Gay. The paper experienced distribution difficulties. The founders response was to make a freesheet that could be picked up in pubs and clubs. When a mysterious new disease emerged in San Francisco, the publication appointed a medical columnist to cover. The first known use of the H.I.V. was in Capital Gay. Under the headline The Challenge of The Century, Capital Gay first drew attention to what became known as Clause 28 in the Local Government Bill. Subsequently, in 1987 the publication s offices were firebombed. The Labour M.P. Chris Smith was openly gay and wrote a column for the paper. He raised the matter in Parliament. The Conservative M.P. Elaine Kellett-Bowman declared of the attack that it had been quite right too . No one within the Conservative government rebuked her for this remark. Soon afterwards she was a Dame.

Boyz was launched in 1991. It was brasher than Capital Gay was. The latter folded four years later.

Gay News

A June 1976 edition of Gay News published a poem entitled The Love That Dares To Speak Its Name. In this James Kirkup (1918-2008) sought to introduce aspects of homosexual desire into the Crucifixion scene. A number of the publication's staff disliked it e.g. Michael Mason. Mary Whitehouse brought prosecutions both against the paper and its editor Denis Lemon (1945-1994). The trial took place the following summer at the Old Bailey. Both prosecutions were successful. Lemon's conviction was subsequently overturned. The matter had lasted two years. It was a major drain upon Denis Lemon's time and energy.

Kirkup came to be of the view that the poem had not been one of his better ones. He objected when gay activists sought to exploit its controversy to forward their own agendas. His other output included a series of well-regarded autobiographies. In his later years he was a prolific author of newspaper obituaries. He was offered the opportunity to make additions to one paper's obituary of Whitehouse. He declined the opportunity.

The Glamour Boys

In the 1930s there was a group of homosexual and bisexual Conservative and Liberal M.P.s who took trips to Berlin in order to indulge in the sexual activities that were easily available to them. They included: Ronnie Cartland (1907-1940), Robert Bernays (Liberal), Victor Cazalet, and Jack Macnamara (Conservative). Following Hitler's seizure of power, they became aware of how he was persecuting minorities, including gays. Within Parliament, they became hostile to him. They worked closely with Churchill and Anthony Eden. Chamberlain dismissed them as the Glamour Boys.

Hampstead Heath

An overgrown portion on the western side of Hampstead Heath has long been a place where gay men cruise for one another in order to have anonymous, transient sex in the bushes. The pop singer George Michael sometimes went there. In 2006 the News of The World newspaper ran an expos about his doing so. Norman Kirtland, an unprepossessing, overweight van driver in his late fifties, claimed, to have been the person that Michael had been with when caught . The singer, as part of a damage limitation exercise, he was interviewed on The Richard & Judy Show television chat show. During the programme he declared, with regard to Kirtland's claims, As much as I don t want to be age-ist or fat-ist, it s dark out there but it's not that dark. Subsequently, Michael received a letter of apology from the man.

Laboured Progress

In 1953 William Field, the Labour M.P. for Paddington North, was arrested by a plain clothes policeman after he had been acting suspiciously in a Gents in Piccadilly Circus. He was convicted of importuning for immoral purposes. He resigned from Parliament.

As Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins pushed a libertarian social agenda. His Sexual Offences Bill of 1967 sought to legalise homosexual sex for men in England and Wales. Jenkins had had a homosexual affair while he had been a student at the University of Oxford. His lover had been Tony Crosland, who had also become a Cabinet member as President of the Board of Trade. Within the Labour Party there was a level of opposition to the Bill. George Brown the Deputy Leader declared, This is how Rome fell!

In the 45 years that followed the 1967 Act over 10,000 men were arrested for gross indecency.

In 1977 Maureen Colquhoun (1928-2021), the Labour M.P. for Northampton North, declared that she was a lesbian. She was deselected by her constituency party. In 1984 Chris Smith, the Labour M.P. for Islington, outed himself. He was not deselected.

In 1998 Nick Brown the Labour Agriculture Secretary outed himself while addressing an audience of farmers. He declared, It s a lovely day, the Sun is out - and so am I.

In 2017 Oscar Wilde and 50,000 other gay men who had been convicted of sex offences were pardoned. There was a view that what they were owed was an apology.

The Montagu Case

In 1953 the 3^rd Baron Montagu was prosecuted at Hampshire Assizes for having committed an unnatural offence with a fourteen-year-old boy scout. He was acquitted. The following year he, his cousin Michael Pitt-Rivers, and Peter Wildeblood, who was The Daily Mail newspaper s diplomatic correspondent, were prosecuted at Winchester Assizes under the same charge as Oscar Wilde had been. The trio were convicted for having sexual relations with two aircraftmen. The airmen had turned Queen's evidence. Pitt-Rivers and Wildeblood were both given eighteen-month-long sentences, Montagu twelve. The peer served his time in Wormwood Scrubs and Wakefield. He was released after doing eight months.

While in Wakefield, Montagu had sung a duet of Noel Cowerd's The Stately Homes of England with a former butler of the Duke of Sutherland. The peer owned a Hampshire estate that was centred upon Beaulieu. At the time it was common to view country houses as being a liability rather than an asset. During his imprisonment, he studied books on estate management. Follow his release he turned the house into a tourist. Its best-known feature was to be the Montagu Motor Museum. Originally, he had opened this to honour his father who had been one of the early motoring enthusiasts and who had died when he had been two-years-old. In 1972 it was renamed the National Motor Museum. In 1956 he staged the Beaulieu Jazz Festival, which was Britain's first outdoors music festival. At the 1961 one the 20,000-strong crowd rioted.

The Montagu Case led the establishment of the Wolfenden Committee in 1957.

In 1958 Montagu resumed his seat in the Lords. He was deeply touched when Hugh Gaitskell, the Leader of the Labour Party, sought him out, shook warmly by the hand and stated Glad to see you back! The peer was to marry twice and have children.

In 1984 the peer was appointed to be the inaugural chairman of English Heritage.

In 1999 Montagu was one of the 99 hereditary peers who retained their seats in the Lords.

The 2^nd Baron's mistress Eleanor Thornton had been the model for the Rolls-Royce Spirit of Ecstasy.

Location: Flat 11, Wyndham House, 24 Bryanston Square, W1H 2DS (blue, yellow)

Website: www.beaulieu.co.uk

Nightclubs

See Also: NIGHTCLUBS

The Gateways

The Gateways started its life as a Bohemian nightclub. In 1943 it was acquired by the on-course bookmaker Ted Ware, reputedly during a poker game at The Dorchester. Socially, he was friendly with a group of lesbians. They frequented a club in Soho. When its management changed and made it clear that it wished to develop a new clientele, Mr Ware told the women that they were welcome to use The Gateways.

In the early 1950s The Gateways had a reputation for being tweedy.

Maureen Duffy's novel The Microcosm (1966) portrayed a positive experience of life as a lesbian woman. The book portrayed The Gateways club as The House of Shades. Up until then Radcliffe Hall's novel had provided the only British literary model. Ware assigned the management of the club to his wife Gina, a former actress. She appointed Smithy, a former member of the U.S.A.F., as its manager. In 1967 The Gateways became a women-only club.

The club was used for a scene in the movie The Killing of Sister George (1968); 80 regulars served as extras. Gina Ware was insistent that The Gateways should not be used to serve the cause of politicised lesbians

The poet U.A. Fanthorpe (1929-2009) tried to visit the club. However, upon arriving there she found herself unable to enter and instead turned back.

The Gateways closed in 1987. By then, it had long been an anachronism.

Location: 239 The King's Road, SW3 5EJ. The entrance was in Bramerton Street. (red, turquoise)

3 Oakley Street, SW3 5NN. The basement. (red, grey)

See Also: NIGHTCLUBS, DISAPPEARED

Heaven

In the mid-1970s Bang, Catacombs, Napoleons, and Scandal were small discreet nightclubs.

Jeremy Norman had spent time in New York where he had participated in the city s vibrant nightlife. He decided that there was potential for a livelier more brazen style of nightclub in London. In 1978 he opened The Embassy on Old Bond Street. The following year he acquired a much larger space beneath Charing Cross Railway Station. He opened Heaven in it. At the time, it was the largest gay nightclub in Europe. On some weekday nights it was rented out for non-gay events, such as bands playing. In 1982 Norman sold the venue to Virgin Group, which owned it for over two decades. Jeremy Joseph, the founder of the G-A-Y nights at the Astoria Theatre first became involved with Heaven in 2008, acquiring full control of it five years later.

Location: 180-182 Hungerford Lane, WC2N 6NG. In the arches underneath Charing Cross Railway Station. (yellow, brown)

Website: https://heaven-live.co.uk

Old Compton Street

The West End's principal gay area is centred upon Old Compton Street. In the 1970s there were a number of small discreet clubs; the people who used them were either either affluent or good-looking. During the the following decade much of Soho was gentrified to a certain extent as the sex trade was curtailed. As a resuly, Old Compton Street became more openly gay. The recession of the early 1990s hit the heterosexual leisure pound harder than the pink one. As a result, gay businesses had a better chance of survival and so the road's gay aspect became more apparent.

(In 2010 it was reported that the pink un was being undermined by the fact that an increasing proportion of gay people were opting to raise children.)

Location: Old Compton Street, W1D 4TQ

See Also: SOHO; STREETS, SPECIALISED

The Order of Chaeronea

In his twenties George Cecil Ives (1867-1950) was both wealthy enough and self-assured enough that he felt able to be open in campaigning for The Cause, that society to be more tolerant of homosexuality. In 1892 Oscar Wilde took the trouble to introduce himself to the man at the Authors Club. However, by the late 1890s Ives had concluded that such an approach was having little success. Therefore, he changed tact. He set up the Order of Chaeronea, a secret gay organisation that developed a global reach.

. Chaeronea was in reference to Thebes's elite warriors group, which composed of 300 coupled gay men. They were annihilated at the Battle of Chaeronea (338 B.C.) by the army of Philip of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great.

Location: 196 Adelaide Road, NW3 3NY

See Also: FREEMASONRY

Organisations

The Campaign for Homosexual Equality

The Committee for Homosexual Equality was launched in 1969.

Website: www.c-h-e.org.uk

The Gay Liberation Front

In 1970 the GayliBeration Front was founded at a meeting that held at the London School of Economics that had been convened by Bob Members and Aubrey Walters. The movie of The Boys In The Band was released in the U.K. later that year. Many homosexual men were depressed by the way in which its protagonists were self-hating. The British branch of the Gay Liberation Front actively leafleted against it.

Two years later the G.L.F. organised the first Pride event. The organisation fractured within a couple of years.

Gay Pride (Week)

The opinion has been expressed within the gay community that perhaps there should be a Gay Humility Week. However, the consensus is that its time has not yet come.

Tom Robinson wrote the song Sing If You re Glad to Be Gay (1978) as a response to the heavy-handed policing of Earl's Court gay scene.

Website: www.pride.com

The Homosexual Law Reform Society

The Wolfenden Report was published in 1957. The following year the Homosexual Law Reform Society was founded in 1958 by A.E. Dyson to campaign for report's findings to be implemented. In 1962 Antony Grey was appointed to be the part-time Secretary of the Society. Two years later he went full-time. His income was supplemented by David Astor appointing him to a sub-editor's position on The Observer. He was also aided by his partner Eric Thomson, a civil servant.

In 1963 Grey met the Earl of Arran who was open to the cause. In 1965 the peer raised the issue in the Lords and a Bill to decriminalise consensual adult homosexual relations passed the House. In 1966 Humphrey Berkeley introduced a similar Bill to the Commons. In 1967 Arran reintroduced his measure. Leo Abse introduced an identical item into the Commons. Home Secretary Jenkins aided the measure s passage into law. Attempts were made to raise the proposed age of consent from 21. Viscount Montgomery of Alamein proposed that it should be 80. Scotland, Northern Ireland, the armed services, and the merchant marine were excluded from the measure.

In 1977 Grey stepped down as the Trust's director.

¹. Dyson had also set up the Albany Trust, which seeks to promote psychosexual health. It was the first agency to provide counselling for gay people.

Location: H.L.R.S., 32 Shaftesbury Avenue, W1D 7EG (orange, pink)

The Albert Kennedy Trust

The Albert Kennedy Trust supports young L.B.G.T. people.

Location: N1 7GW.

Website: www.akt.org.uk

The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgendered Advisory Group

The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgendered Advisory Group was formed in the wake of David Copeland's bombing of The Admiral Duncan pub. In 2007 the Group published the LGBT Murder Review, which made 22 recommendations that were taken up by the Met.

Website: www.lgbtag.org.uk

London Gay Switchboard

London Gay Switchboard was founded in 1974.

Location: P.O. Box 7324, N1 9QS

Website: https://switchboard.lgbt

The London Gay Teenage Group

Following the Sexual Offences Act of 1967, it continued to be illegal for men aged under 21 to have gay sex. The London Gay Teenage Group was set up. The Group moved to Manor Gardens in order to have larger premises.

Matthew Bourne and Jimmy Somerville were attendees. The organisation appears to have stopped functioning at around the turn of the millennium.

Location: 296 Hollway Road, N7 6NJ

9 Manor Gardens, Holloway, N7 6LA

Parent Enquiry

Rose Robertson (1916-2011) was unaware of the existence of homosexuality until during the Second World War she encountered two of her fellow Special Operations Executives locked in a same-sex embrace. Speaking to the couple she learned of how hard it was to be gay within the contemporary mores. In 1965 she rented out rooms to two young men. She realised that they were lovers and from them how hard they had been finding it to be gay. This prompted her to establish Parent Enquiry, a helpline for the parents of gay and bisexual children.

The Spanner Trust

The Spanner Case (1990) involved five men who had engaged in consenting sado-masochistic sex with one another. As such they were found legally guilty for having carried out criminal offences. The matter went before the law lords who upheld the convictions. However, two of their number - Lord Mustill (Michael Mustill) (1931-2015) and Lord Slynn (Gordon Slynn) (1930-2009) - dissented, stating that consent could negate criminality.

The Spanner Trust was set up to campaign for adults to engage in bondage and sado-masochistic sex without fear of prosecution.

Stonewall

Website: www.stonewall.org.uk

Park Life

The large central parks of London that are not surrounded by gates and railings have long had a reputation for being places where some gay men would go to in order have sex. Sir Roger Casement s (1864-1916) Black Diaries record his use of Hyde Park.

There is a story that during the Second World War, a government was caught in flagrante having a sexual encounter in one of the parks. The following morning Winston Churchill was informed of what had happened. The premier was aware that the previous night had been cold. He asked what the temperature had gone down to. He was informed in had gone to -4 . Upon being told this, he remarked It makes you proud to be British.

See Also: ROYAL PARKS

Queer

According to The Oxford English Dictionary, the first known written use of the word queer to mean homosexual was in a diary entry by the writer Arnold Bennett. He used it to describe some of the people who had attended a party that Lady Ottoline Morrell had hosted on 25 March 1915.

Location: 10 Gower Street, WC1E 6HJ

The Royal Vauxhall Tavern

Location: 372 Kennington Lane, SE11 5HY

See Also: NIGHT Night Czar

Website: www.vauxhalltavern.com

Section 28

In 1988 Margaret Thatcher made a speech at the annual Conservative Party Conference that indicated that, for her own political ends, she was going to try to exploit hostility towards gay people. This was an instance of her being profoundly hypocritical. In her working life, she chose to work closely with men who either patently gay or discreetly so.

What the speech presaged was Section 28 of the Local Government Act of 1988. Effectively, this banned any non-negative reference to homosexuality in schools.

Donald West

Donald West (1924-2020) was a gay hospital physician who had trained at the Maudsley Hospital to be a psychiatrist. His book Homosexuality (1955) addressed its subject using statistical, psychological, and anthropological approaches in a detached manner. It was able to be published because of his medical background and was aided by having a foreword from a respected criminologist. However, in Australia copies were confiscated by Customs officers, while in the United States it was entitled The Other Man. The book informed the debates the Wolfenden Report triggered. Its publication gave hope to many people. He became an academic criminologist in the University of Cambridge in 1960. In the 1970s many gay people regarded him as being a fuddy-duddy.

Window Shopping

For much of the 20^thC one of the ways in which gay men went cruising in the West End was standing outside certain shops along Oxford Street and Charing Cross Road and looking in through their front windows as if window shopping.

You Rang, Sir

The actor John Gielgud told the diarist James Lees-Milne a story about Lord Mountbatten having taken a young man to his Belgravia townhouse. He asked the youth to strip him naked and beat him. The man did as he had been bid. However, the beating was conducted with such zest that the peer cried out in agony. As a result, his butler entered the room. Upon witnessing the scene, the servant declared I thought you rang, sir.

Location: 2 Wilton Crescent, SW1X 8RN (blue, yellow)

See Also: CLASS Precedence

David Backhouse 2024