For the recorded interviews and written accounts gathered many years ago by myself, Peter Bradley, Jamie Hall and Bill Thornycroft thanks are due to all those who participated for their patience in repeatedly enduring sometimes tedious questions and furnishing this history with their fond and critical memories of those radical times.

Bill Thornycroft is no longer with us but thankfully he had the foresight to hang on to a mountain of archive material in what must have been at times a forlorn hope that one day it would all be used productively.

A big thank you to Taha Hassan for the video Brixton Fairies: Made Possible by Squatting which allowed myself, Edwin Henshaw, Terry Stewart, Tony Smith, Bill Thornycroft and John Lloyd to rabbit on about our experiences of the South London Gay Community Centre and the Brixton gay squats with critical comments from Dr. Matt Cook.

Peter Cross, also no longer alive, has given us his memories in Goodbye to London, edited by Astrid Proll, in the chapter on Revolting Queers. The book accompanied an exhibition in Berlin of the editor's memories of London in the 1970s.

Thanks to Don Milligan for his advice on improvements to the written material.

A special thanks to Colin Lievens and Joe Lawn for setting up the website and helping me to avoid some mind-boggling complications.

I deposited all of the material for this history at the Bishopsgate Institute. Thanks are due to Stefan Dickers and archivists there who patiently worked through thousands of items to create a great resource for future research.

Finally I would like to have spoken to Alastair Kerr, Barry Prothero, Tim Lunn, Colm Clifford, David Callow, Gary de Vere, Jamie Hall, Steve Anders, Mathew Jones, Kevin Taylor, Paul Coyle, Jim Ennis and Michael O’Dwyer. To have listened to their voices once again would have refreshed memories and immeasurably enhanced the flavour of this history. All of their lives were taken by AIDS related illnesses. My hope is that the collective memories of those who are still contactable and the taped audio interviews have gone at least some way towards a truthful reconstruction of their attitudes, views, passions and ideas. It is to them that I dedicate this website.

Ian Townson, June 2022

Sources:

(1)' ‘Brixton Fairies: Made Possible By Squatting’, Laundrette Films, https://laundrettefilms.wordpress.com

(2) ‘Goodbye to London’, Radical Art & Politics in the 1970s. Edited by Astrid Proll, Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2010

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