Gay Noise right from the word go was clear about what it was not going to be. It was not going to be a porn mag or a chronicle of the gay great and good or a cultured expression of liberal sentiments pleading for tolerance and acceptance.

Gay Noise distinguished itself from Gay News, the main LGBT+ publication of the day, by abandoning simple reportage, rejecting features on gay orientated culture and personal contact ads for a more urgent activist role in directly challenging and campaigning against all aspects of oppression. The important distinction to be drawn here is that Gay Noise had a clear policy of linking LGBT+ struggles with the wider working class, feminist and anti-imperialist struggles against Capitalist Patriarchy. Seeing those struggles as inseparable, with revolutionary socialists, drag queens and anarchists involved in producing the paper the content was clearly marked by uncompromisingly radical politics to challenge the tame approach of the usual liberal publications.

Astonishingly, with very limited resources, the Gay Noise collective managed to publish editions once every two weeks at 149 Railton Road and lasted for a hectic and staggering 13 issues. The project had to be abandoned through lack of adequate funding and disputes within the collective about new ownership. Zipper magazine offered to take over the publication. There were those who wished to take up the offer and continue with their creative artistic endeavours and others who were vigorously opposed to the whole notion of concessions to the commercial gay scene especially to owners of a magazine with no political content. Eventually the more artistically creative people drifted away and the paper folded rather than compromise on its radical political principles.

Read and enjoy each edition as a reminder of the days of militant struggles against oppression and exploitation in a challenge to those who believe that gay liberation has been secured and as an antidote to the current toxic 'debates' on transgender issues.

click on the images to be taken to that issue of Gay Noise