Bill Thornycroft
Interviewed by Ian Townson on 11/02/1995
“I always remember odd people who used to turn up at these meetings (South London GLF) who obviously thought they were either going to be sexual orgies or at any rate exciting in some way and they'd not come again because they found how boring it was. They were just people talking earnestly about life.”
How I got involved in gay liberation politics? I think this whole business of coming out for me started slightly before GLF because I saw a letter in either the Evening Standard of the Evening News from an actor, I think it was, who came out. I remember thinking this is very brave of him and I wish I was that brave. It's the first time I'd though about coming out as a conception. I think this was about 1967. I think it was around the time of the homosexual reform type thing. The next stage was seeing a thing on the front page of one of these new freebie newspapers which I think was called the Streatham something or other and it came through the door. The front page news item was the first meeting of the South London Gay Liberation Front and they told me that the third meeting would be held at the Minet library. I think it was a Monday. I went...except I had difficulty getting through the door. I walked about outside and then...I think it was Lee Hughes who came outside and said 'Are you looking for the GLF meeting?' and I said 'yes' and he took me through the door for which I shall be eternally grateful. Assuming there is an after life. So that was my introduction to GLF.
I think some of the people who were instrumental in setting up SLGLF were not from South London. Some where. I think it grew out of the Notting Hill Gate meetings. I think but I wasn't there. Lee was a South Londoner. He was in at the beginning. I think he'd been to Notting Hill. There was There was Howard.....Sue's husband (Wakeling?). He was a South Londoner and he was involved and a bloke who worked at Burtons (Tailors?).
From the second or third meeting they were at the Minet library and they continued for quite some time. They were usually attended by quite a lot of people, 40 or 50. We all sat in a circle and tried to be unstructured...so dominated by one or two people. Afterwards we used to go to the Paulet Arms all in a great bunch. The Paulet Arms was a little back street working class pub that was overwhelmed by....because we were mostly middle class, noisy, mouthy types. Whenever we asked the landlady if we could use the room upstairs she always found an excuse why we couldn't. I think it might have been dry rot and she was worried about having us.
I am not quite sure of the timetable but certainly we did discuss outside activities at these meetings. They were very political in those early days. Everybody was into discussing the politics of it all. There was another mile stone in my development when somebody said 'I think we should talk about the advantages of being gay' and I thought 'really these people go too far. How can there be any advantages.' I had always thought that at the very best we were second best. Then we started thinking about it and then we discovered that there were advantages. So that was important, a lot of the ideas that we thought about and chewed over. Also we organised awareness groups. We split up and went off and had awareness groups where we talked about our navals.
I always remember odd people who used to turn up at these meetings who obviously thought they were either going to be sexual orgies or at any rate exciting in some way and they's not come again because they found how boring it was. They were just people talking earnestly about life.
Again I am not sure about the order of things. We decided to run discos and we go the Crypt under St. Matthews church because the vicar was friendly. We started running weekly discos which were very successful. Packed very often. People from all over London would come. North Londoners would come. There we experienced a fair amount of bother from local youths throwing milk bottles and things and on one or two occasions we got trapped downstairs because of this phalanx of angry young men at the top of the steps wielding milk bottles and things. It was frightening. That was one reason why we moved from the Crypt to the Hanover Arms for our discos. It was upstairs for one thing so you didn't get trapped in a basement. There was a lot less aggro in the streets around the Oval. I don't think we really had very much. I think it was at that time that the meetings moved to the Oval House. I can't remember why. I think it might have been because the council put the rent up or something. I can't really remember why we left the Minet library. It may have been because it was just inconvenient. It was a long walk. It's not near trains or buses.
Your jumping ahead regarding organising gay pride. We used to have weekly discos at the Hanover Arms and weekly meetings at the Oval House. I don't remember much about them except the one where the local police force turned up. They were invited. We had the police officer and his side kick to talk about policing and things and he was challenged about harassing cottages and so on. His stock response to everything was 'It wouldn't happen in 'L' division'. I think the Camberwell police had just shut down the Father Redcap which was which was one of the first discos and they didn't want that sort of thing in their neck of the woods. Our man just said well it wasn't in 'L' division so he couldn't comment and any way they wouldn't do anything like that. Kay went for him because she said she was always harassed by the police and kept on being arrested in Manchester. He said couldn't possibly answer for that and it wouldn't happen in 'L' division (laughter)
The other thing I remember was dear Pete Freer who ran the cafe at the Oval House being rather overwhelmed by all these gay people coming in and he hadn't really come out. I think he would have something to say about that. He was always very sweet.
We were bringing gay liberation to the masses of South London. We planned to have them (demos/parades) in all kinds of shopping centres like Clapham and Balham and so on but we ran out of steam. I think we only did Norbury, Croydon, Streatham and Brixton. I think the others never happened for one reason or another. Gary, Colm, me and Mary Evans were very much involved and some others. There should be photographs of some of these were you can pick out the people. The Brixton one was the first but I didn't go on it. I think it was also the biggest. It had a big impact. There was more response from the public. Not all of it negative though it did include rotten tomatoes being thrown at us from some of the stalls. I think there was some kind of street theatre involved on the foot bridge, there used to be a foot bridge, across the road where the tube station is now. There was some sort of street theatre done on that. The subsequent demos were merely poster and placard parades.
Hendon Times? That was one of the biggest demos. Probably about 100 people on it whereas the South London ones were usually only about a dozen or so. We marched through Hendon protesting about the Hendon Times I think. I think we deliberately included several cottages on the route. We also passed the police station and I remember all the police people hanging out of the windows and we were always blowing them kisses and shouting and telling them to 'come out' and so on. I think they were rather embarrassed. This demo was very successful. It got quite a lot of publicity.
Squatting the GC? Very easy to get in. It was handed to us on a plate. It has already been squatted by a straight squatting group operating around Railton Road. There was this man who lived opposite the GC, whose name I have forgotten, who was a key person in the squatting movement and he was also I think a plumber. He kept his equipment in the building, in the GC, and he said 'I'll clear my stuff out and you can have it.' I think he had already changed the locks and given us the key and that sort of thing. The difficulties beforehand is that some of the people in SLGLF disapproved of the idea of squatting. I particular the treasurer who was Trevor and thought it was bad and we shouldn't do it. But he was outnumbered and we decided to do it.
We moved in and I think it was either the first or second meeting we had in the GC when Trevor and Anna Duhig had a row. He said he head never been so insulted in all his life. He went away and became treasurer of the North Battersea Conservative Association. We never saw him again. Well I saw him again but the never came to GLF again. There were one or two people who didn't really approve and dropped out as a result of the squatting.
GC accommodation? There was the flat upstairs and the basement, ground floor, first floor. The ground floor was occupied by a very dubious solicitor. The bottom had been occupied by a firm of solicitors but it disappeared and left all their files and we got onto the law Society and they took the files away. We also put in a couple of sinks. So there was one for washing up in the coffee bar. We built a coffee bar. Then another sink upstairs in the flat that I think initially two people lived in. They were sort of caretakers in a way. Initially I think it was David Callow and that bloke who worked kidney machines in St. Hellier hospital. He got us a telephone because he said he had to be on call. In those days you couldn't get a telephone for months and months and months unless you were a priority. So he got us a telephone. They lived upstairs but we had to barricade off the upstairs from the down stairs because we found that people bashed in the side door then came in and smashed up the centre. So we made it totally separate so that the upstairs was totally self contained.
We had trouble with the man upstairs who said he was about to occupy it and he said he wanted to take over and we said 'tough shit'. We were here first. Eventually he left. He couldn't stand it I think. His customers having to walk past the SLGC was too much for him.
We opened every day initially and every evening the was a rota of people who ran the coffee bar and welcomed people. There was a steady stream of people coming in. The initial trouble was having the windows broken. People going past and throwing things through the windows and they were big plate glass windows because it had been a shop. So very quickly we had to board them up. Initially we had a little display of books and pamphlets in the window but that soon had to go because all the glass got broken. There was some harassment in the street when you were going too and fro but not an awful lot unless you were like Kay and very 'noticeably' dressed in outrageous gear. I never had much harassment but the I looked very respectable and straight. So it was mainly just people throwing things through the windows.
Next door at number 80? That was called the Women's Place and it was sort of an offshoot or rival to the Women's Centre that was further up the road. They were slightly different from that Women's Centre. They moved in after we had moved in. In fact I think we helped them to do that. I don't remember very much about them except when we and they applied for a grant from the council they got theirs and we didn't get ours. One of the reasons put forward for not giving us ours was that there were so many people using the place that we could afford to run it ourselves. Whereas there were so few people using the Women's Centre that they needed a grant. Sounded like a very peculiar piece of logic.
We had weekly discos in the basement which used to get packed. It must have been at that time that we started to run regular dances at the Town Hall. In fac they weren't always at the (Lambeth) Town Hall. We did one at Fulham, two in fact at Fulham (town hall). The had previously been organised by the Notting Hill group and when that faded out we took over and did a couple at Fulham and one at Hammersmith. At Hammersmith we had the Bradford Gay Theatre Group in 'All Het Up'. That was wonderful. There was a wonderful incident there when the caretaker there said we hadn't got a license for theatre therefore it couldn't go on and I threw up my hand in horror thinking what can we do. Jamie (Hall) disappeared with the caretaker and said 'That's alright'. I discovered afterwards that he had given him £10 (laughter). It just shows you how worldly Mr. Hall was compared with me.
The theatre we did at Fulham was 'Bill and Ben'. We have photographs of it. Vera Lynn was in it. I was Vera Lynn. Stephen Gee, Edwin Henshaw. Edwin was Bill and I was Ben or the other way round and Peter Cross was the BBC lady who introduced it. David Simpson was Andy Pandy. No, no. Bill and Ben were me and Colm and Edwin was little weed. I can't quite remember how Vera Lynn got into it.
Stefan's threatened deportation? I went to the court case. I was one of the guarantors or sureties or whatever you call them and Gary was. There was this wonderful meeting with the adjudicator or whatever you call him. Sort of judge who decides. Stefan made this incredible speech about how he was in danger if he went back to Spain. How he loved England and England was the most wonderful place. The most wonderful place and the only place more wonderful than England was perhaps, but only perhaps, heaven. I thought...my god, he's going rather over the top on this. It worked. He was allowed to stay (laughter). It was an immigration court or something maybe in the Strand.
Mad axe man? That was the most serious attack we had really. He'd been in a couple of times before because he lived or worked just down the road. A few doors down. I think he used to put his head in the door and hurl a bit of abuse. Then one early evening he came in and there were three or four of us there. He was very, very drunk. I felt that really, although he was being not sort of very nice, he'd come in because he really wanted to talk to us. I go the feeling that he was very screwed up and we ahd a very great attraction for him. We started chatting and then he quite suddenly turned very nasty. He got more and more aggressive. The more we tried to calm him the worse he got and the he picked up a chair and started attacking people and smashing up furniture. He was very, very violent and i was absolutely terrified. Eventually we overpowered him. I think we knocked him out. By then I think someone had phoned the police and they turned up. They took him to hospital because he had cut his head. I might say it was totally in self defence. Then they arrested all of us. 6 or 8 of us they took down to the police station and locked us all up. They kept us there I think until about midnight. Something like 4 or 5 hours.
The solicitor from the Law Centre came down but was refused access and told we weren't there. She was fobbed off. We weren't allowed to contact her and she wasn't allowed to see us. Some of us were interrogated. Philip Alvarez was somehow selected to be interrogated. He was taken off on his own and slightly roughed up. Physically hit. I was put on my own in a cell because originally we were all put in one cell and the bloke who used to be the projectionist at the ABC cinema (Graham Mumford) was very distressed and shaking and I gave him a cuddle. A policeman looked through the spy hole and said 'Get Thornycroft out of there. He's touching them up.' So I was put in a cell on my own which I found pretty awful. Much worse than being with people. Then at midnight we were told to go and if we show our faces again we'd be in trouble. I went home but some people went back to the GC and an hour later the mad axe man with a bandage around his head came back with a meat cleaver. He started being threatening. By the time the police came he had run away and gone into the place where either worked or lived a few doors down. When the police were told this they said we can't go in there because we haven't got a warrant.
Next day we went to the police station to complain and they said 'You haven't been arrested. You have nothing to complain about. Go away otherwise you will be in trouble.' We got nowhere with that. I never understood how, if you are detained in a police station for several hours against your will, they can say you haven't been arrested. We then went to the law Centre and they said all you can do is to ask for a police report and then we will take it further. Six months later or so we were told the police refused to issue a report on the incident and so they couldn't take it any further. So what with the police and the Law Centre we were buggered and to nowhere at all. I don't think the mad axe man came back after that. I don't know why. Don't remember him coming back but I always worried that he would because it was the most frightening thing of my life. Certainly the nearest I ever came to killing anyone.
There is a memorable occasion at the GC when Ron Peck organised a film show. That was packed and he showed Chant d'Amour in 16 millimetre and several other films I think. I'd never heard of Chant d'Amour before that and was very moved by it.
There were these mass prosecutions for non payment of rates. We were refusing to pay rates because the council refused to give the GC a grant. In any case we said that as council services were geared towards heterosexuals we weren't getting a fair proportion of services. It also coincided with a lot of other people not paying rates for various reasons. There were so many people being prosecuted they took six at a time. So you had six people standing in the accused position and you had Gary de Vere who was going to speak for David Callow because he had a speech impediment. When David and his six stood up Gary said 'I don't know where I should stand because I am speaking for Mr. Callow.' He was standing at one end and David the other of this row of people. He said to the magistrate 'Am I in the right place?' and she said 'Oh no Mr. de Vere. I don't think you are. I think you should come up here. It is very important in this court that we should all know our places and be in the right place' (posh, haughty voice). This was so wonderful. An unconscious bit of truth that we should all know our places (in the class hierarchy). Of course we had packed the gallery and they all collapsed in hysterics and the court was threatened to be cleared. Camberwell magistrates court. That's where we all flounced out in our dreadful fur coats that were practically down to the ground. It's a good thing there weren't any animal liberationists about. We'd have been done.
I remember the PAL prosecution. The closing of the PAL centre in Railton Road. A much earlier thing I remember was that bloke who use to run that photographic studio at 200 Railton Road. He used to come trotting down to the GC when it first opened. I think looking for dishy young men he could lure to photograph. We were fairly puritanical and chased him away and said we didn't want the likes of him because he would bring us into disrepute.
Bill Thornycroft next to a bare-chested Gary de Vere, with Eric Eagle (wearing glasses) behind him at unknown demonstration. Since publishing the site, Eric has reached out and confirmed that he also can’t remember what the demonstration was!
PART TWO
....It was a GLF meeting at the Oval House which means it was after the Minet library. We had invited the Lambeth police, 'L' division, to come and Talk. There was an Inspector and a sort of lesser one. They made speeches about how lovely they were, tolerant and never nasty. I think it was just about the time they were harassing or closing the Father Redcap, the gay disco. His answer to that it was never 'L' division and they would never do anything like that. Everything one brought up as a complaint was always it was outside 'L' division and they would never do anything like that (laughter). It got to be pretty silly and the Kay lost her rag and went into a great tirade about...she didn't care a fuck about 'L' division but in Manchester...she went into a great convoluted thing about how she had been harassed by police in Manchester and the man kept on saying 'That isn't 'L' division' and she went for him. She practically dragged him off the chair and sadi 'You fucking.....' and the sidekick said 'You mustn't speak to the Inspector like that.' She said 'I'll fucking speak to him.....' etc. It more or less finished the meeting. But what I felt afterwards was it was only because of her outburst that we made any points at all because before that we had been so polite. Accepting all this stone walling about it wasn't his patch. It was a bit like people criticising Peter Tatchell today. You could criticise Kay in lots of ways for being irrelevant and irreverent and everything else but she did actually make some points. Otherwise it would just have been a cosy little meeting and everybody would have gone away and nothing would have been achieved. We were all so polite and middle class. (was this the same meeting with Inspector Owen Kelly which apparently was held at the GC rather than the Oval House).
Don Black and the wrestling group. Well, there were endless debates about whether we should allow the gay wrestlers to use the GC. Many people thought that wrestling was politically unacceptable because it was to do with violence and things. Eventually it was allowed. The entire basement was paved in old mattresses some of which were full of fleas. No, I think it was the carpet that had fleas. I can't remember any details really. It was quite successful and one of the best attended events at that time. On Wednesday evenings.