Gary de Vere’s Memories of The Gay Centre
Gary de Vere
Gary de Vere had high hopes that the gay centre would serve, among other things, as a refuge for gay people. A place to go where there was a guarantee to meet other gay people without the intruding pressures of heterosexism and a hostile environment. Within a day or so of opening the gay centre came under attack as a fusillade of bricks and bottles were thrown at the windows by a passing street gang. Gary was surprised by the ferocity of the attack but correctly predicted that the hostilities would subside fairly quickly:
"I remember when we first moved in there thinking that we might as well write off the plate glass windows right at the beginning and be prepared to have some sort of external war.....there would be trouble when we go public and it would last for a couple of months. Until in fact people got bored with it and we ceased to be a novelty. The heaviness was a little bit heavier than I expected from the street gangs outside....that was unfortunately because we were placed in the same street as that particular youth centre (Methodist church) just further up (from the gay centre). If it had been somewhere else then a lot of the real heaviness would have been avoided."
According to Gary, within months, the gay centre had just become another landmark like a pub or a post office where people would give directions to the nearest bus stop.
Gary identifies several reasons why the gay centre failed. In the first year it was nominated as group of the year by Gay News but after that accolade decline began to set in through a mix of destructive infighting between different groups of people and the pull of a growing alternative, more secure and welcoming gay community in the squatted households.
He stressed the positive effect that the more radical and militant gay men had on others. Using the Lambeth Town Hall 1974 general election count as an example, with Colm Clifford in full drag and beard impersonating Brenda Hancock the Conservative candidate as a spoof, he saw this as a means of getting people to come out loud and proud as gay:
"....I think some of those things were good for some of the people who drifted into the gay centre or who came there occasionally....who lacked the courage to be as upfront as some other people. With them being present when this was going on they could see that you could be as cheeky as you like and you could survive and come home laughing. I think that must have been very good for them."
He gave another example of a gay centre user who was too shy or inhibited to venture any kind of opinion when asked for his views. Someone who kept very much to himself and full of doubts. After contact with the more out gay men at the centre he had changed completely: