Click on the newspaper clippings to see them in more detail
The first collective and openly gay presence in Brixton ended in tragedy.
According to the South London Press about thirty Gay Liberationists, many of them dressed in ‘female’ clothes and wearing heavy make-up, 'invaded' Tulse Hill Comprehensive School for boys, South London, in June 1972. This proved to be a traumatic experience for all involved¹.
Number nine Athlone Road, near to the school, had been rented by radical drag queens to provide a shared living space. They all knew each other from the GLF office and had trouble from various homophobic landlords. The Gay Liberationists originally did not intend to form a ‘commune’ as such but with a constant stream of visitors and new arrivals a more collective way of living became established sharing everything from clothes and money to housework, food, shopping and sexual partners. This attempt at building a new life proved to be a baptism of fire.
Having ‘played it cool‘ at the estate agents by looking as ‘straight’ as possible, the deception of respectability being unavoidable having been rejected by several letting agencies, the property was secured for rental. Soon after occupancy the communards experienced hostilities from the neighbours. In Cloud Downey’s own words:
“It was a nice big house, it was well furnished and it had a big back garden. It seemed relatively private as well. We had no idea what we were taking on……The trouble first started when we started to hang our washing out on the line. The neighbours saw pairs of tights and skirts……hanging on the line and they could see us in the garden in our make-up……The neighbours used to yell at us when we went in the garden, homophobic abuse……”
Matters took a more serious turn when boys from the school began to take an interest in the radical drag queens. The younger boys were more curious than hostile about the unusual clothes and make-up but the older ones resorted to violence. Cloud Downey again:
“….someone got attacked with a milk bottle by a teenage boy (Alaric Sumner). It got to the point where we were actually under siege. At one point we were piling wardrobes up against the door.”
Alaric had to attend hospital with his wounds and has clear memories, on returning to the house, of bricks flying through the windows. It was at this point that he could no longer stay in the commune.
One of the ‘local lads‘ came round with a pellet gun and shot at the windows and the attacks continued unabated during school breaks and lunch hours.
Julian Hows was a sixteen year old pupil at the school and one of the gay communards who later became involved in the Brixton Gay Community Centre. At Tulse Hill School he went to the deputy head to complain about the boys‘ hostilities towards the communards. The matter was shrugged off as being outside the jurisdiction of the school. No teachers could be placed on guard at the school gates to stop pupils from going out and committing further abuses because the matter happened outside their sphere of influence and control. The police should be informed instead. Julian pointed out inconsistencies in this attitude as commercial premises near the school had been guarded by teachers on previous occasions to prevent the theft of goods by pupils. A row ensued and Julian retired to consider a different approach.
The gay communards drew upon the resources of friendship and soon other radical drag queens from West London came to support them during the ordeal. On their arrival at the commune more verbal abuse of the ‘hello girls’ and 'are you a man or a woman' kind was heaped upon them and they chased a crowd of boys back into the school playground dressed in drag with warnings not to cause any more trouble. They stayed over several nights at the house in sleeping bags on the floors while studiously avoiding Julian through fear that his youth constituted ‘Jail bait’. The plan was to visit the school on the following day.
The police had already been called to the school as the radical drag queens arrived to explain who they were and to demand that the violence against them stops. In spite of the police presence the ‘demented queens‘ went into the playground and handed out leaflets. The message contained in the leaflet was both conciliatory and challenging:
Radical drag queens confronted by the police and escorted away from pupils at Tulse Hill Comprehensive School for boys (1972). People unknown.
Police were called to the school to deal with the ‘invasion’ by radical drag queens
In keeping with Gay Liberation practices the leaflet is quite frank about sexuality and identity in the style of loudly proclaimed and openly ‘militant confessionals'. No appeals were made to the authorities, the school or the police to use them as legitimate forces to deal with the problems. They were regarded as the enemy and part of the state apparatus of repression and to use them against the school children would simply deepen their mistrust and hostility. It was far better to have a face-to-face encounter and a candid, up-front exchange than to hide behind the machinery of a state that was seen as denying liberation and freedom to gay people, women and youth.
To explain how gay people lived and loved and to be seen as people with nothing to hide had been the aim of the confrontation at Tulse Hill School in order to break down prejudice, misunderstanding and bigotry. That had also been the aim of several gay communards who paid a visit to the school production of the musical Oliver with many parents present.
Radical Drag Queens escorted from the school playground by police (1972). People unknown.
The intention was to be seen in all outrageousness and to disrupt the proceedings but not in a heavy-handed way. With a bunch of men “done up like opera singers, huge dresses and tiaras and furs and long gloves, dripping jewellery...” the staid and soberly-attired South London mums and dads and their kids were outraged. The musical was stopped because of the fracas and the radical drag queens were asked to leave in a torrid exchange of abuse and insults heavily laden with the threat of violence. Objects were thrown at the interlopers.
During the earlier school playground incident all the intruders were herded together and taken down into the administration block basement as far away from the schoolchildren and teachers as possible. The Headmaster was anxious to get ‘these people’ away from the pupils and off the premises. He was also extremely annoyed that the proper channels had not been gone through. Chief Inspector Peter Brooks, community liaison officer at Brixton police station, later stated in calming and neutral tones for public consumption that: "We are aware of the situation at the school and we are keeping an eye on it. " Julian Hows had a seething stand up row with the headmaster on his way out of the school and threatened to 'out' all the gay teachers he knew by handing a list of names to the police. Another radical queen snatched the evidence from Julian and quickly ate it to prevent collaboration with the enemy.
Julian was expelled from Tulse Hill School for being a ‘corrupting’ influence upon the younger pupils. The violent attacks on the gay communards continued and the house had to be abandoned after only a few weeks of occupation.
Radical Drag Queens relaxing in the commune at 9 Athlone Road before the deluge of attacks (1972). People unknown.
The ordinary, comfortable view of life in a working class area had been disrupted by a confounding of expectations. The disturbance caused by exuberant men not dressing, acting or looking like men and living too close for comfort in the neighbourhood laid waste all that was held to be permanently placed in the usual run of life. The Gay Liberation shock-queens had arrived but this avant garde intrusion of gender bending had proved to be too much for both sides. The consequences of taking part in the first uncloseted, collective and public manifestation of radical queens in drag in Brixton forced upon the communards a regrettable but unavoidable retreat. The naive optimism of believing that affability, reason, common sense and a little entertaining outrageousness would be sufficient to dispel deep-seated prejudice ended in failure.
It was an age of confrontation. There seemed to be no other way. Compromise was a word used by queens who really did not know ‘where their heads were at‘. To put on a frock and be pasted up to the eye lids in slap epitomised the ultimate expression of pleasure, power and dissent for some queens who gender-fucked their way into history while others adopted a more sober, plodding approach. To be straight was to be too late and all manifestations of that lamentable human condition were frowned upon by radical queens and inexcusably outside the bounds of radical political and social acceptability.
To the working class mums, dads and kids of Brixton the 'shock of the new' intrusion of radical queens was too much to absorb and comprehend. The hostile and violent reaction to those who didn't look and act 'normal' led to the defeat of the first open appearance of gay people in Brixton and a hurried withdrawal to the marginally safer haven of Colville Terrace and the counterculture of Notting Hill became the order of the day(2)
Sources
South London Press, 7th July 1972
For a fuller account of the radical drag communards see Blowing The Lid: Gay Liberation, Sexual Revolution and Radical Queens pp 431-439 by Stuart Feather, Zero Books 2015 and No Bath but Plenty of Bubbles: An Oral History of the Gay Libertion Front 1970-73 pp 214-220 by Lisa Power, Cassell Press, 1995