Alex on our left with Dennis Simmonds his long-time partner of over 20 years (deceased)

ALEX BEYER was born in Cheltenham on the 20th October 1941. His father was German and came to England to escape the Nazi regime because his mother was Jewish. It was revealed later that she had died in Auschwitz concentration camp. His father was interned as an enemy alien before joining the British Army in the Pioneer Corps a position open to internees who were not felt to be a threat. 

"He wanted to study under Eric Gill the famous sculptor. In some of his work he designed typefaces and also he (Eric Gill) did some sculpture above the BBC in London, Portland Place. He was apprenticed to him for I don't know how long but he lived with Eric Gill for some time. I think he came to this country when he was about sixteen or seventeen."

Alex's three sisters worked at various occupations ranging from odd jobs in a paper shop, a nursing auxiliary, clerical work and teaching languages, alternative medicine and owning a sheep farm in Wales. His parents both became teachers in private schools and later his father became involved in masonry and sculpture. He was clear that religion and politics did not play any prominent part in family life.

Alex first became aware of being gay when he lived in Cambridge at about the age of twelve or thirteen when he met boys that he fancied and "played around with".

After living in several different towns and cities in the Midlands and South the family moved to Bellingham in London around 1952/3 later switching to Dulwich in 1954 on another council house exchange. At this time family life became less harmonious when his father deserted them:

"... my dad had a bit of a roving eye. He was looking at other women and left home a couple of times. Obviously that upset my mother but she had him back once or twice. The third time he went off again and she didn't have him back the third time."

Alex lived in Dulwich from 1954 to 1970 and it was here that he had his first gay relationship though he was unaware of any gay politics and remained closeted:

"From 1954 I did all sorts of jobs as diverse as a farm hand, I worked in factories and did clerical work. I met a guy who lived on the estate where we lived. I fell madly in love with Peter? In 1959 his father was working on the buildings. His stepmother wasn't really interested in him. She buggered off back to Yorkshire where she came from. He invited me to move in with him. So we moved in to a flat together. We lived there for about a couple of years. That was quite pleasant in some ways but it was bit stormy....He didn't acknowledge it as a gay relationship. The term hadn't even been invented really in 1959. It was just two guys living together that liked each other. We used to have sex and that. It was very pleasant but we had a lot of rows. He didn't go to work. He didn't really want to work but he was very clever at technical things and he used to occupy himself doing that to get money and I used to work which caused envy? because I was working and he wasn't. So that was '59 to about '61/'62." 

"Then I moved to another flat in Gypsy Hill, near Crystal Palace, and lived there on my own for about another 8 years. All my gay experiences sort of were furtive. Perhaps a bit of cottaging, picking people up there. But funnily enough the girl who let the flat to me, she was an impoverished painter, was a lesbian. Through her I met some gay people who were involved in amateur drama. In 1962 when I moved there I was only 21. Some of these guys in the drama group, they were all gay, and took a fancy to me. They encouraged me to join the group which I did. I enjoyed being in the group. I could identify with them as being gay and that. That was quite interesting. So I met some gay people through that."

"... I took to them and I got involved in the plays. There were l think a few straight people but it was predominantly gay and it was a lot of fun. I didn't think of myself as an actor. First of all I started doing back stage work and then they said, look, we need bodies for Shakespeare. I said that I'd never acted and they just said, well give it a try. From then I've never looked back. From that point onwards I used to everything from pantomime to Shakespeare. We used to perform at Lambeth Town Hall and Southwark and ... it was a lot of fun really. Also the social life, being gay, l took to that like a duck to water. Even though many of them were much older ... there weren't that many young people. I was only in my early twenties and they were in their late 30s early 40s."

Alex moved from Gypsy Hill further afield to Sydenham:

"Then the lesbian woman who let the flat....l left for some reason and then l decided I didn't like where I was living and I wanted to go back but in the interim she'd let the room and couldn't re-let it to me. Her brother had a room and l was so keen to get back into the house because it was a bit of a bohemian atmosphere, she being a painter, and it was all very laid back. So he said, I'll let you use my room. But that was a bad move because of her limited income. She was just living on the poverty line. Just existing on what paintings she could sell. She wasn't deriving any income from me anymore so then there was a lot of friction and resentment because her brother didn't give the rent to her which l think he should have done. He was working. He could have said, look you've got no income, you have the rent. He kept the money and she was so resentful that there was a lot of friction and then she used to start on me. She used to take drugs and drink. She was alright when she wasn't drinking. When she drank she used to get very, very aggressive and she threatened me with a knife one day. I said, well that's it. I'm not staying here any longer. I asked a friend....most of my friends at that time were gay....and he knew someone who had a room in Sydenham, a gay fellah. He asked him if it was vacant and as it happened it was. He said he was happy to let it. l went along and took it. That was around 1972 and was there until about 1975."

Alex clearly remembers his first encounters with the Gay Centre in the Autumn of 1975. He started as a taxi driver in the Croydon area in I972 and from 1974 earned his green badge after doing the 'knowledge' and became a fully-fledged all London black cab driver. The Croydon period afforded interesting and fruitful encounters in certain of the boroughs cottages which stayed open all night:

"... I was an inveterate cottager. All their cottages for some reason were open all night ... so you could go out at night and do the rounds of the cottages which were pretty active at the time. So that's what I used to do during the night (laughter)."

On one or two occasions he had passed the Centre on his way along Railton Road. But it was his meeting with Malcolm Greatbanks at Waterloo Station that clinched his interest in the Centre. He had stopped at a stall for a cup of tea and had just pulled out when Malcolm hailed him. In those days it was almost impossible to get taxi drivers to take anyone to Brixton. Such was the media portrayal of Brixton as a violent, crime-ridden area and the characterisation of black people as muggers and rapists that the only possibility of travelling there by public transport late at night was either by a limited night bus service or the very few taxi drivers willing to take the risk.

Alex had no problems about taking his fare to Brixton. As soon as he saw ‘Yes, I'm Homosexual Too‘ emblazoned on the badge Malcolm had pinned to his chest he felt able to acknowledge his own gayness and established an easy rapport about gay life and his his travels to Morocco. With Malcolm as a friendly contact at the Centre Alex went there a week or two later.

Prior to that The Boltons and The Coleherne in Earls Court and the Union Tavern on the Lambeth/Southwark border were the main places he visited but at that time the Union Tavern was restricted to Sunday nights only. Without romanticising the past by suggesting that things were better then than now Alex still experienced his first taste of the gay scene as in some way uplifting and visited it practically every night even although upstairs at the Boltons people met in a furtive atmosphere of secrecy. He was aware that rent boys often hung around in the downstairs bar. He also visited the nearby Catacombs. His visits to the gay scene were tempered somewhat by the need to observe the rule that "Once you stepped out into the big outside world then you had to watch what you were doing." 

He was not attracted to the leather, denim and SM scene at the Coleherne or the "... cloney sort of image. Moustaches and all that" though he grew one for his boyfriend Dennis later. He was somewhat bemused at the incongruous set up of leather queens 'mincing around‘ while a woman played tunes on a grand piano as though she was at a tea dance. Sunday night at the Union Tavern in the era of black popular music saw gay skinheads congregating there in the late 1960s:

"Yeah. It was the era of the ska-reggae and the skinheads with the braces and faded denim jeans ... with their socks up to here and Ben Sherman shirts. They all used to dance to this ska-reggae music but they were all gay. They were!"

At the tender age of 23 he paid regular visits to a cottage called the ‘Iron Lung‘ round by the boats on Chelsea Embankment near Lotts Road. People would go straight from the Hustler pub on Kings Road to play out the discreetly choreographed movements of cottaging behind the pierced screen enclosure of Victorian cast iron work that shielded the occupants from view in the local Gents. Large queues formed in the ‘Iron Lung‘ until the lock ups were vacated at variable intervals.

"That was enjoyable ... in 1964 ... it really was enjoyable."

The scene at the Gay Centre was something different. With an open door policy the front door in the summer months was literally left open. On balmy summer evenings Alex could see right into the Centre. He had always had an affinity with hippies and freaks living alternative lifestyles and marvelled at the long haired males inside who lounged around in old armchairs. "I didn't want anything posh" was Alex's thoughts on first seeing the inside of the Centre and his attraction to long-haired men secured any future interest in it. He was pleased to see a place that was very relaxed and that catered for young gay people living an alternative lifestyle. A friendly cup of coffee and introductions greeted him on his first visit:

"Yes, I liked the atmosphere. It was infinitely preferable to the straight gay scene because people were more ... l mean I liked that element ... peopIe were more politicised, there was a message, there was a cause. They were much more my sort of people than the straight gay scene. The straight gay scene was amusing and everything with the polari, I mean people used to go around saying 'Nanty measures? dear’ and ‘Ooh, vada the lallies' and 'Vada the eek' ... 'Bona Riah, dear‘. That was all very amusing but they weren't very aware. It was much preferable the Gay Centre and I didn't really look back after that. I didn't really want to go to straight gay pubs after that."

"Well, I seem to remember that John Lloyd was on duty and he was very welcoming. He made me a cup of coffee and that and introduced me to a couple of people. Probably Graham Mumford. Oh, and Chris Langan and Lloyd Vanata. I made friends with them I think from the outset...oh yeah, and Rowland and his boyfriend Gary. We hit it off right from the start. Those were the first members at the Centre. I think Mark Carroll probably."

He did not entirely disqualify the ‘straight‘ gay scene. The amusement he derived from Polari the outrageously camp language of the homosexual underground from pre gay liberation days when it was dangerous to be obviously gay in speech or writing stayed in his memory and allowed him to recall days of friendly if closeted social gatherings.

But life wasn't always a carefree weaving in and out of the social round. The episode of the ‘Mad Axe Man‘ showed that the problems of a public presence and an open door policy could attract hostilities as well as provide a friendly social centre for gay people even though the friendliness was dampened by the political animosities that grew to a head in the summer of 1976. Alex reported his feelings of unabated terror as he fled into a back room of the Centre. The fracas began when a '"big, rough-looking" man came into the Centre. His observation that "Oh, your gay" followed by "What's it like being gay?" was given the somewhat condescending reply of "Well, if you want to find out what it's like to be gay sleep with a man." This did not bring out the best in him. He freaked out and went away returning with an axe in his hand. With the battle cry "I'll kill the fucking lot of you" he brandished the axe as though he meant it. He pointed to someone and said "Your're dead!" Alex ran off into the back. "I could visualise him burying the bloody axe in my head."

"He was a very big guy and he looked very, very angry. He pointed to somebody and said ‘You're dead!‘ Bill Thornycroft....I disappeared into the back of the Centre and I didn't really know how I was gong to get out of the Centre, you know, because ... I remember ... I have this vivid memory of Bill smashing the man over the head with a chair to stop him which was very courageous. I don't know what happened. He went off and I think he was going to get a posse of people to do us all in. The police were called and a number of people were taken down to Brixton police station. I wasn't one of them. I was absolutely petrified."

Alex first encountered politicised gay people through the gay centre:

"I admired a lot of people, the politicised ones. I mean, not everyone was politicised. What became known as the Hierarchy - Alistair (Kerr), Colm (Clifford), Gary (de Vere), Stephen Gee, Tony Smith, Edwin Henshaw - I took to them. l really liked them. I thought they were all interesting people. It was marvellous. Politicised gays were a new thing for me. The political angle." 

But problems arose between the 'hierarchy' and those who were less able to clearly articulate their thoughts and feelings. Described derisively by those in the know as 'nerds' they were given a hard time. Also controversies arose over non-gay politics at the GC:

"... I used to enjoy the Wednesday (weekly) meetings ... fairly democratic. People could put their grievances...they are aired and discussed. Unfortunately I think the less articulate people got a bashing from the more articulate ones. They shouted them down. Well, I mean, I suppose we did our best with the Wednesday meetings. To try and make it as democratic as possible. Things were sorted out. Price of coffee and all that. It used to be five pence a cup in those days."

"Well, they were more politicised and more articulate, the so-called hierarchy. That was a bit of a shock for me because there were things about ... the Irish business. There were posters about that. It was a bit of a shock for me because I felt that ... One might argue that the people in Ireland are being oppressed by the British and we could identity with them. Subjugation and all that by the British. I was never really into politics and there were these posters. I felt, Oh I don't know about this. I don't think they should be telling me how to think about the Irish business. Troops out of Ireland and everything. Leaving aside what I feel now about it at the time I felt as thought they were laying this on me. I just ignored it."

"I suppose what you are saying is that the big divide was the less articulate and less politicised ones were there and the more articulate and more politicised whoever they were ... not being particularly politicised myself it was quite a new thing...that was where the gulf was I think."

He remembers the gay wrestling group and the controversy surrounding it with a knitting circle set up in opposition to it:

"Yes. I wasn't particularly interested in wrestling. A lot of people were and this guy Don Black came along. He was gay and said that he was interested in starting a wrestling group and asked if any other people were interested. A lot of people expressed an interest. But there was that position from some people...they thought it was a very macho thing, wrestling, and they opposed it. I was sort of indifferent really. I didn't particularly oppose it. We had a lot of meetings about it. It was quite democratic and he was allowed to have his wrestling."

The bitter disputes around the question of bisexuals using the gay centre, labelled by the more militant gay liberationists as 'baby bios' or semi-breeders, dragged on for many months but what annoyed Alex more than this was the use of the Centre by straight (bisexual?) couples for sexual purposes:

"... I mean, they were labelled baby bios and people felt that they shouldn't really be allowed in the Centre. My feeling was that if you are bisexual then part of you is gay. So why not? I think I actually said to two people once ... they clearly weren't bisexual. They were a straight couple who came in and were just using the disco downstairs ... the mattresses that were around for people to sit on. They were just snogging away and I felt they've got the big wide world outside. I think I said to them ‘Did you know this is a gay centre?‘ It wasn't a question of being down on straights. It was a question of they were using our little space. The only little space we had in the world. Yet they had the big wide world outside. That was my feeling but bisexuals were put down by certain people around. I thought it was valid to be bisexual. It was one of those things. People are bisexual. They have got a gay and a straight side to them. So, yes l recall all that."

The catchment area for the Gay Centre was mainly South London with one or two visitors from North London and further afield. In terms of using the Gay Centre Alex gave up on the commercial gay scene and was captivated by the people who went there:

"No. I really took to the Gay Centre. In actual fact l was going to mention that. In '72 I was living in Sydenham and l was so enamoured with the Gay Centre ... l wasn't actually working as a taxi driver now I recall. l was chauffeuring. I used to do my chauffeuring and then any time after ten or eleven and l used to get to the Gay Centre and stay ‘till two knowing that I had to be up at six o'clock in the morning. So I literally got four hours sleep because I was so enamoured with the place. I subsequently moved in. I met someone in the Gay Centre, Dennis (Simmonds), and he had a squat off South Lambeth Road. But then he moved to a squat in the gay community in the Mayall Road and I moved in with them. I really took to it like a duck to water. I was spending all my time at the Centre when I wasn‘t working. So I really had to be in the area."

"Lloyd Vanata and Chris Langan, my two buddies, used to stay late. Graham (Mumford)l think. I often used to walk home with Graham to South Lambeth Road. They were the ones I remember mostly. Mark Carroll of course. Some people were working and had to get up. Then of course I moved into the Residences (St. George's). I moved into the Residences before I moved into the squat with Dennis ... "

He recalls Pearl's shebeen run by a black woman specifically for black gay men in an area with little social facilities for them. White gay friends were also welcome:

"Malcolm (Greatbanks) used to drink there. Possibly John (Lloyd). I remember Big Jack, a West Indian guy, who sadly died. He used to go there and a lot of black guys obviously. Presumably they were closeted. But a lot of people from the gay community used to go there. I remember Stephen Gee used to go there. I saw him there once or twice."

Alex remembers the real ‘characters' around the gay centre. There were the 'scatty queens‘ who flounced in and out of the centre. But two people in particular stick out in his mind. One with the nickname ‘Mercy Dash‘ (Ken Fuller) suggesting a fussy insistence on 'taking charge' and immediate action and the other named ‘Collis Browne‘ (David Fuller) denoting an addiction to drinking a particular brand of morphine-based cough mixture. He died later in France after losing a leg in a car accident.

"But the infamous Ken Fuller....this character walked into the Centre one night and he said that he was the caretaker of NACRO which is the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders in Milkwood Road ... He was in charge of the hostel there. He didn't actually say he was gay but he came in and we presumed he was gay. l think it turned out later that he wasn‘t the caretaker but he was an ex-con who was in the hostel for ex offenders. He made himself busy in the Centre. He was one of those people who wanted to get really involved with a lot of duties behind the counter. I'd moved in to the Residences (St. George's) with Dennis. John Thornton was living there with Twiggy. Do you remember Twiggy? A very skinny young guy. We lived there ... it was a bit of a difficult time. We weren't really compatible. So there was Dennis and l and Twiggy and John Thornton. Ken Fuller had to disappear to go to Switzerland for some reason. He was a bit of a slippery character. There were some unexplained things. Anyway he had to leave rather hurriedly to go to Switzerland and for £50 he sold the rights to the squat to John Thornton. l never had any say in the matter. l mean, l was living there in a squat but the rights to the place were sold on to someone else."

"Well l think Ken was bisexual. That's undeniable. He used to take a shine to different young guys that came in to the centre. I don't know where she (Marie - described by Alex as a 'funny little Geordie girl') came from. She just appeared like a lot of these people used to float in and he struck up a relationship with her. Sunday night a lot of people used the place. It was open and it was somewhere to go. You could get a cup of coffee and some company. The discos were good. They didn't care that they weren't l gay. I suppose we didn't really mind. I mean, we thought they were gay. So we got that sort of transient population."

Alex met his long-time dearly beloved Dennis at the gay centre. Their relationship lasted for over twenty years:

" My Dennis? Oh yeah, this is the big thing. This is how the Centre functioned so well for me. l came in there and it was a social centre for me. So l spent a lot of time there and....l was 35 at the time and there was this young guy there who was 20 who was holding hands with another that was his first boyfriend. He was called Duarte? He was a Portuguese guy. They had met on one of the marches. So I thought this is really lovely. l mean, l thought l'm over the hill at 35, one of the elder statesmen of the gay world looking benignly at these two and I thought, ‘Oh lovely. They're holding hands and they're 20. I wish I'd enjoyed that but never mind. There's still time even though l am 35.‘ 

I learned later that it never really happened, his relationship with Duarte. Duarte sort of ended it. He said he didn't really feel as though it was going to happen. Obviously that was traumatic for Dennis and we got talking. I didn't realise he was interested in me. l was very friendly with Graham (Mumford) and Dennis was quite friendly with Graham because they used to go out together and smoke. A lot of their life revolved around scoring dope and smoking it as you know. One day Graham said to me look....l'd already spoken to Dennis but l didn't have an inkling he was interested in me at all....Graham said, look we're going back for a smoke to my place in South Lambeth Road, do you want to come. I said, well l don't really smoke you know. He said, well Dennis is coming, very pointedly. So I said, Oh well perhaps I'll come along. He'd said it to Den because l think I'd intimated that I was quite attracted to Den. The rest is sort of history. 

We got to know each other and got it together. Yes, it functioned so well for me because I met someone I would never have met in any other context. He didn't do the straight gay scene. I think he'd been to the Union a couple of times but I suppose it's true to say that we're both quite shy. I mean the chances of meeting in any other context were very, very low. So I started having a relationship with him and it was wonderful, absolutely wonderful. I have got no regrets whatsoever. So that's something really marvellous that came out of the Centre for me."

Alex was aware of the people living together in the Railton Road and Mayall Road gay squats but had little interaction with them apart from at the centre. On the occasion when he was aware of critical comments on he and Dennis' being a couple and 'monogamous' his answer was straight forward and practical without the baggage of ideological purity:

"My view is you can have a relationship and provided both parties agree, you can have a stable relationship, but you can have sex and little flings with people outside of the relationship. The fact that you choose to live together, even if it is aping married couples, what's wrong with that?" 

Occasionally Alex visited the Oval House Theatre, mostly for the cafe, but he remembers seeing Stephen Gee playing the piano in a Brixton Faeries production and was 'knocked out' by their play 'Gents' about cottaging and 'Minehead Revisited: The Warts That Dared To Speak Their Name' about the Jeremy Thorpe trial.

After the squat at nineteen St. George's Terrace was 'sold' Alex was left with the strangest of co-squatters:

"... We were left with John Thornton and Twiggy. l mean, John Thornton was another strange character. He was the straightest of straight gays you could ever meet. He worked in a meat packing factory in Croydon or somewhere. Oh, London Transport. Packing meat or packing food for their canteens. Because he had a day job he kept conventional hours. He used to crash out at midnight l suppose but he was one of those people who could fall asleep with the radio blaring. In fact it helped him to stay asleep. We had to tell him that he was keeping us awake. This bloody radio on all through the night. Quite bizarre because it threw people together from such totally different backgrounds who would never have lived together out of choice. But because of the availability of gay accommodation if you like, mainly squats, you just had to take what you could find. So we were thrown together with this bizarre couple one who was the straightest of straight gays you could ever meet, not very politicised or aware ..."

Alex recalled two more people who particularly stood out in his memory, Rowland and Graham Mumford:

"Well, you know he (Rowland) started off as a delivery driver for R White's the lemonade people and he graduated to become a delivery driver for Currys and then he went on to become a manager for one of the big stores. Comet. He's was head hunted. He'd done very well for himself. He started off as being a van delivery driver and graduated to being a manager, a shop manager. He's a bit of a trouble shooter. They send him to any of the shops where the takings are down. So he's got a good job. Well paid with bonuses and a company car and all that. His gay life ... I mean, he couldn't come out. You know, it would be over simplifying it to say that anybody can come out."   

"Yeah, getting on to Graham. Sadly Graham died last November, the 7th November 1996, of a heart attack. He was one of the catches at the Centre that Den and l made friends with. Probably the best friend of the lot, of all the people who ever went to the Centre. Cinema projectionist. He did work at the Ritzy at one time, for a short time. NATKE, the union projectionists belonged to, were not very good at fighting for rights. Cinema projectionists were grossly underpaid. That was the only trade Graham knew. He came from Aston, Birmingham. He came to London probably because he thought the streets were paved with gold. He got to know a few people and took to it. Yeah, he worked at different cinemas. The Ritzy and what is now the Fridge which used to be an ABC. For ten years he worked at the Screen on the Green at lslington. The Screen on the Hill I think he worked at. Part of the same group in Hampstead. So he did move about a bit but he did settle at the Screen on the Green for twelve years from about '84 to '96. Oh yeah, he did have one little stint as a security guard for about six weeks but he didn't like it. He went back to being a cinema projectionist. That was his life. That was the only thing he knew and that's what he did. He was very much one for the scene. He used to go to the Market Tavern, the Vauxhall and the Elephant and Castle."

Alex social life became focused on the Centre so much so that he spent most of his time there when he wasn't working often staying until early morning which left him with only a few hours sleep before getting up for work. After the Centre closed he went back to visiting his old gay haunts again ‘to fill the void’ mostly the Two Brewers, The Royal Vauxhall Tavern and the Elephant & Castle. He made a lot of friends through the Centre including the dances organised from there at Lambeth Town Hall. The social setting of the Centre and the ease with which gay people could greet each other on the streets and speak to each other did not alter the fact that as a cab driver it was still impossible for Alex to come out in his profession. He was able to relate to the gay community centre and other gay people but the cab drivers he saw on the road and regularly met at tea places would not have tolerated his gay identity:

"To be frank I was frightened. In my world I couldn’t come out as a taxi driver. I mean they'd just be unmerciful if I was to come out. So I had to stay in the closet. If I had been brave I could (have come out) but I wasn’t that brave. I was afraid quite often that people would discover that I was gay..."

Though mercifully this did not stop Alex from braving those first steps into the gay centre and discovering the adventure of living and loving a more open and generous life than he had ever experienced or thought possible.