We Are Revolting: 40 Years of Queer Activism

Robert Thompson, Chair of the LAGNA committe

The Lesbian and Gay News media Archive (LAGNA), based at Bishopsgate Institute, held a free event today to acknowledge and commemorate the unsung heroes and heroines of LGBT activism, protest and cultural resistance, over the last four decades. It was a fantastic afternoon balanced with historical, critical, entertaining and sometimes humorous accounts of the gains and losses encountered by LGBT activists.

Dr Matt Cook gave a detailed talk on the history of queer protest attempting to arrive at a definition of grass-roots activism, making some interesting observations along the way. Oscar Wilde defied the Victorian trend for ‘respectable’ males to wear beards, while pointing out the present day fashion for gay men to sport facial hair. Weaving through this vast subject of activism, Cook concluded that while there is an obvious dependency on the prevailing cultural conditions to solicit certain types of activism, occasionally there are specific events that create a ground-swell of support. In 1988 Section 28 of the local government act banning ‘the promotion of homosexuality as a pretend family relationship’ was instrumental in the founding of gay rights organisations such as Stonewall and Outrage. This discriminatory, vague and ideologically naive piece of Tory legislation was repealed in England in 2003.

Performer and Activist Lindsay River gave an anecdotal talk on protests in the lesbian-feminist movement in the 1970s. Formerly director of Polari, Lindsay has recently launched a new organisation Age of Diversity to promote the issues facing older LGBT people. Ajamu X Photographer and Curator of Rukus! - Black LGBT Archive spoke and showed us a film of a panel discussion on Black LGBT activism in the 1980s and beyond. Author and activist Ian Lucas enlightened us on the politics and operations of OutRage! and Act-Up in the 1990s. Ian’s lighthearted approach saw him handing out a small purse to the audience filled with post-it notes that contained subjects for him to speak about, he called it his random question generator.

Serge Nicholson and Jason Barker spoke about Transfabulous, the organisation they founded to champion transgender arts and culture through festivals, conferences, parties and events. Introducing Serge and Jason was Royal College of Art lecturer and filmmaker Mike Wyeld. Mike showed us the trailer for his film The Lovers and Fighters Convention a live concert film covering just one night of London’s Transfabulous festival.

Completing the event was a village-hall style raffle with complementary wine and nibbles. I then went off to the Retro bar to celebrate the birthday of my dear friend and sensational illustrator Sina Evil. Altogether a fantastically queer day.

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Out in the Archives

Tonight I went to an event hosted by Spectrum, the gay and lesbian staff network at LSE. I was joined by friends Sina and Kevin where we spent two hours learning about the Hall Carpenter Archives. LSE archivist Sue Donnelly introduced us to the origins, development and content of the Archives. Sue had extracted a range of documents and ephemera from the Archive for us to view and the images below show a few gems that caught my eye. I especially like the simplicity of the Sappho magazine covers and the display of badges worn by anyone who wanted to raise consciousness about lesbian and gay liberation and equality. People don’t wear badges often enough these days!

Although the Archive is named after Marguerite Radclyffe Hall and Edward Carpenter it does not contain any material about or by them! The Archive is split in two, over 1000 boxes of material is housed at the LSE, the remaining collection of newspapers and other ephemera comprising the Lesbian and Gay Newsmedia Archive has recently relocated to the Bishopsgate Institute in the City of London. This one I haven’t visited yet, but Sue remarked that it was a suitable home for this half of the collection.

Both Archives are accessible to the public, anyone interested in gay and lesbian history should pay this wonderful resource a visit.

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Walking Proud in East London

Walking Proud in East London

Tonight I attended ‘Walking Proud in East London‘ an oral history project conducted for LGBT History Month. River Cultures‘ project director Hi Ching amassed fifty one oral histories from LGBT individuals living in east London. My dearest friends Ronnie del Barrio and Henrik Bodilsen gave their histories and if it hadn’t of been for MA pressures last year I would have loved to have made my contribution.

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The Yokel’s Preceptor

This evening I attended another Untold London writing workshop at The British Library, a free workshop part of the Write Queer London competition.

The event was framed around an obscure Victorian publication: ’19th century pornographer, publisher and jailbird William Dugdale wrote the Yokel’s Preceptor as a guide to gay cruising spots in Victorian London – very thinly disguised as a terrible warning to countryfolk’ (Untold London).

Cover of the Yokels Preceptor

The effervescent librarian Bart Smith explained the history of this rare work, of which there are only two known copies in the world, one under level 3 security at The British Library and one in a library in Boston, MA.

Bart photocopied a few pages and gave us a handout, the cover of the work is a typographic jumble, making a visual reference to bill posters of the same period (the book was printed and published in 1855 by H. Smith, 37 Holywell Street, Strand). The language is colloquial by today’s English, floral, florid, titillating and ostentatious. The twentieth century gay underground language of Polari comes to mind. The book attempts to make current slang accessible to the poor unsuspecting countryfolk so as their visit to the city should not be met with debauched and torrid incidents involving prostitutes, marjories (slang term for gay) and unsavory types of all persuasions:

‘Or, More Sprees in London! Being a … show-up of all the rigs and doings of the flash cribs in this great metropolis … To which is added a Joskin’s vocabulary of the various slang words now in constant use, etc. London’ (Yokel’s Preceptor).

Of typographic note was &c. used for etc. It is charming to see the ampersand used in such a meaningful way, even the etc. is a lazy device.

After Bart’s introduction, the founding editor of Chroma Journal,  Shaun Levin, ran a workshop. We split into groups and spend some time writing a contemporary version, based in different areas of London. I enjoyed the discussion more with my fellow group members and couldn’t find any hook with which to begin writing. Unlike Kevin Maxwell (whom I met on the way in) who composed a delightfully humorous poem that made me think about where my writing strengths and interests lie.

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Spectrum at LSE

I attended the Spectrum launch event, the new network for LGBT staff at the London School of Economics, King’s and UCL. I had a great time meeting new people and listened to an inspiring and resonating talk by Professor Jeffrey Weeks (you can just make him out in the image above), an original member of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and the Gay Left collective.

Jeffrey stated there were four main strands to the development of the LGBT struggle for liberation, I didn’t manage to write down the fourth because of the pace of his talking, but the first three were: IDENTITY, WIDER BELONGING and AGENCY of which he said was a critical acheivement in a wider sense, it was US doing it for OURSELVES (a reminder of Annie Lennox singing Sister’s are doing it for themselves, standing on their own two feet and ringing on their own bells’. Jeffrey’s stated since the 1970s there has been a move away from IDENTITY to RELATIONSHIP politics, with the advent of civil partnerships, parenting rights coming to the fore.

It was inspiring to listen to Jeffrey especially as he was part of the original Gay Liberation Front meetings at the LSE in October 1970. He said the best metaphor he could find was ‘from acorns large Oak trees grow’  casting a large shadow from which we can flourish. The lesson from the GLF cause was to assert our basic humanity  and solidarity, it started at the LSE.

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