Dennis Simmonds

Interviewed by Ian Townson 14/05/1997

You can read more of Dennis’ memories of the Gay Centre here

Dennis Simmonds was born in 1956 and grew up on Loughborough council estate in Brixton. He had no brothers or sisters and attended Loughborough primary school, later Tulse Hill Comprehensive school for boys. Towards the end of his secondary school education he spent much of his time truanting. He would get 'signed in' on the school register and bunk off for the rest of the day:

"....l learned the word ‘queer’ and l stopped. That was when l was 14. There was a big kind of moment of....'Oh, god!' and there was a lot of personal problems related to that and...the effect it had was l refused to be educated anymore so l would just not go to school. From that point on l stopped being educated. But it was CSE level. l was there until 16 but l stopped going at 14."

His dad worked as a van removal man, later a property master in the film industry. His mother, besides being an unpaid housewife and household carer, worked in "everyday kind of jobs like working in Sainsbury's to get money."

Politics and religion played no part in his family when he was growing up:

"No political awareness at all. l always had my own spiritual beliefs which were mine from dot and l distinguish them from religion. Religion again was frowned upon because my mother had an Irish catholic background and she had experienced a lot of abuse through that system. So she was determined to ensure that they wouldn't get me in their clutches. She was anti catholic church with a passion and so anti-religion. So there was no religious or political awareness in the family of any kind. Yet I had my own spiritual voice."

Dennis was aware of being 'different' at a very early age but did not have the 'language' to make sense of the quality that set him apart from others. It was only when he heard the word 'queer' as a thirteen or fourteen year old at Tulse Hill Comprehensive that awareness of his gay identity had been triggered. He had fleeting memories of the intervention of radical drag queens at his school:

"Yeah, if my memory serves me right, I think it was the sixth form conference room used to be the setting for the sixth form debate. Different debating societies or groups would be interested so they would be invited along and I was told that one of them being invited along that evening was people from Gay Liberation from South London. I presume that was related to Julian (Hows), that he had organised that and got that going. I didn't know of anyone else who was so frighteningly over the top 'out'. I presume he got that going but as I was a fourth year I wouldn't have had access to it."

While still living at home he found out about the South London Gay Community Centre via the local press which had run an article on the Centre's Gay Liberation Front candidates in the 1974 general and local elections:

"I'd seen pictures of Alistair (Kerr) and Malcolm (Greatbanks) in the South London Press standing for some political office. The address of the Gay Centre, Railton Road, was there. There was a photo of them outside it. So that's how I placed it....I popped in. I must have been about seventeen which was about 1974..."

He eventually plucked up courage to enter and likened discovering the Centre to a 'flood of light' that dispelled the dark gloom of the closet:

"When the pressure was really difficult enough, great enough, l was forced out and I dared to look at this place to see what it was like. I took a walk up Railton Road to have a look but I couldn't bring myself to go in. That was on Saturday evenings when the need to be with other people, to be with other males, was felt to be very pressing. So I kind of scouted round and checked it out and promised I would go in and all that. Then one Saturday evening I pushed myself through the front door. On my first visit I met Andreas (Demetriou), a very predatory Julian (laughter) and John (Lloyd) who claims he only ever had long hair but I distinctly remember him having hair only down to here (shoulder length). So it was short. Malcolm Greatbanks was also there."

His parents moved away from the run down council estate in London to Farnborough from where he made weekend trips to London:

"I just popped into the Gay Centre every now and again. I began going on marches. There was an early march about 1975 and I'd read about that in Gay News....It wasn't until my actual return to London, I think I was about 20, that I began to go on a really regular basis. Then I moved back into a squatting community in Vauxhall. They had been there for a year or two. One had just become available and I just accidentally happened to bump into these people and discover them. There was a house at the back of us which had Bernie and a couple of people there and Jamie (?) with the big beard and another guy. I knew John Lloyd lived on South Lambeth Road (Tradescant Road - all gay men).

Dennis eventually moved to a gay squat at St George's Residences in June '76 with Alex Beyer, his partner for over 20 years, just as the Centre was winding down:

"We lived with Ken Fuller. Crazy Ken and his keys. What happened for me was I was squatting in Vauxhall and then I met Al. We began to spend time together and we kind of got together and he was living in one of the Residences. In the place that Ken Fuller had squatted. Ken had let him have a room. l had got hepatitis and became very unwell at the end of that summer. The squat in Vauxhall closed down and so I moved then into number 19 St. George's Residences with Al and Ken. Then mad Marie, Ken's girlfriend, turned up (see Alex Beyer's interview for an account about Ken and Marie)"

"There was Chris Langan and Lloyd Vanata living in number three. There was another squat somewhere....I even remember I think earlier Aunty Alice (Alistair Kerr) may even have lived over the Centre at some point. I remember them coming out of there. So there were in the Residences probably about 3 gay squats which mushroomed later to about perhaps 8. But at that time there were 3. There was also the one on the other side of the Residences (Railton Road?) which had Michael Cotton and his boyfriend Stefan (living there) who was also Alex's boyfriend before I met him. Michael Cotton was in the wrestling group and had something to do with the Battersea Arts Centre."

He highlighted the problem of heterosexuality and bisexuality at the centre and, as it was nearing closure, the lack of a firm policy of who should use the centre after the departure of those who were principally involved in organising and running it:

"l mean, it was a Gay Centre and l remember an issue of the heterosexual couple downstairs on the mattresses snogging on Saturday night just before the disco was about to start at about 9 or 10pm or something. People protested that they shouldn't be allowed in there because it wasn't right....People going down (into the basement) and looking at them like specimens. They were doing it on the mattress. Why are they doing it here? l also felt offended. I also felt at the time, you know, that they oughtn't to be allowed in."

"...the point was they had drifted in off the street. l swear some people were in the Gay Centre because they couldn't sit in the bus shelter all night and snog. lt was easier to sit in the Gay Centre and snog with their girlfriend than in the bus shelter. So they drifted in because it was an open door. There was nothing saying ‘not admitted‘. So all sorts of people were in there for all sorts of reasons. The lost, the lonely and you know,..."

"People who identified as gay also had a bisexual side to them. Having girlfriends appearing. This was sort of challenging the idea of true blue. Gay through and through. As I understand it that hadn't really been addressed and resolved in a way that did justice to people who identified themselves as gay yet at the same time can have a bisexual side. All that stuff hadn't been worked out so when these girlfriends started appearing it brought a lot of stuff up for people. They were appearing and people like Graham (Mumford) had a girlfriend and Ken had this girlfriend. Then other people that walked by brought girlfriends along. The division between the gay-identified bisexual people and the people that identified totally as gay just grew and grew and grew and then exploded. So Marie was just one of these people who just turned up. I mean, at the time I used to feel like a bit of a snob. I used to think ‘where have these people come from. Who threw them up?’ It was as if they had been dragged off the street from somewhere. Marie was one of those people."

"Again another thing I was thinking of....l don't think the concept of being ‘gay friendly‘ was as well rooted then as it is now. There was still this kind of either/or. You're in or you're out. You're straight or you're gay. There was a lot of that black and white thinking going on in people's divisions. I'm sure many gay people, as I did, had straight friends but the concept of ‘gay friendly‘ with lots of room....and the possibility that gay friendly people could be people that are cheerleaders and supportive and friends, people on the journey, that wasn't really established then. So when these people floated in, these girlfriends, it caused a lot of difficulties."

In keeping with the spirit of the times there was a considerable culture of drug consumption among gay people around the squats and at the Gay Centre. This mostly consisted of smoking dope but also hard drugs were involved. Dennis gave his views on the appearance of heroin on the scene and the origins of his addiction to the drug:

"I think heroin use came about when more of the criminal element sub-culture part of the gay world moved in. People that were possibly professional thieves and ponces and various types. They brought the heroin habit with them. The understanding that people took heroin. Up until then, as you said, it had been dope and perhaps hallucinogenics. They were sort of expressive and exploratory and possibly even artistic. They had value and all the rest of it. That was partly true and part of the overall experience."

"I think the more criminal element that started to move in....they were much more the sophisticated criminal gay underworld from Central London, the West End. When they came along one or two people from that group came along with heroin use and began to suggest that it was all part of the broader picture. You know, like a bit of joint, someone took acid or something and now there is this. There is heroin and morphine. So that came along just as the Centre had finished. It had actually finished. Actually l hadn't thought about this before but l think it was significant that it came along when the Centre had finished because it had closed, just completely closed, just fucked up and dwindled. Dwindled and then it just went out."

"The thing is, as l see it, the gay liberation vision, the ideology and the methods used by Alistair (Kerr) and all the rest of it, hadn't been able to embrace and bring with it in its vision all those that were the ‘nerds’, the ‘baby bios‘. Because their voice had been completely disrespected and oppressed, shouted down and denied, they then thought that they could take over and run a so-called Gay Centre as good as the (departed) 'hierarchy' without the spirit, the vision of gay liberation. Without that vision there was no real Gay Centre to last very long. lt was when that went that heroin moved in. So it is significant."

Further thoughts on hard drugs and the demise of the gay liberation ethos:

"Hard drugs moved in when the actual vision of gay liberation moved out of the Centre. Then it was where did people go from here. People moved up the road to those squats....159 (Railton Road) and all that. They carried on a sort of daring and very playful gender fucking type stuff. They carried that on. The vision, the spiritual side of what the Centre was about, if you like, didn't exist any longer for the other people. Drugs became another option. They seemed attractive and so hard drugs were then introduced. They weren't previously. l never knew anybody that was using heroin before then. As the Centre was gone a whole collective vision for me had fallen away and something happened. l think for many people....what would replace it? There was this other lifestyle, gay lifestyle, that people would tell me about that involved the West End. That involved Earls Court and hob knobbing with rich queens and ripping them off. l never knew about that. lt wasn't really me anyway. But there was a whole sub-culture rent scene. lt started to spring up. There is a sort of illusion of camaraderie in the druggy sub-culture. But I say it is an illusion because it doesn't go very far beyond competing for the punter. Competing for the same punter, the same drug."

Dennis lived in St. George's Residences for about a year before moving to a another squat at 140 Mayall Road with Alex. The place had already been occupied by Edwin Henshaw. Despite separating from the drug culture his heroin habit still persisted:

"I continually went back to the same thing. lt was a funny thing because we were kind of like....it was....Edwin was part of that other group (hierarchy/gay liberation) and here l was this mad junkie with a lot of awareness but definitely becoming increasingly unwell.”

"A foot in each camp. The sub-culture. Hard sell. If it moves sell it and if it doesn't sell it around the corner. Then there was what l saw as the original (gay liberation) inspiration for why I moved there in the first place. But not really feeling as though l belonged there. The squat really never came together as a groovy sort of Gay Liberation South London squat because l was into drugs and l didn't really cooperate and do things. We backed on to the gardens (communal gardens) but by then l felt really very alienated from everybody but also from the 159 lot because there was a....l had become seedy. l was very ill psychologically. l'd had another lot of hepatitis....l had my second lot in two years so yeah, l was getting quite ill."

He lived in this squat for about two and a half years before moving with Alex to a council flat with fears about moving out from the relative sociability of having other gay people in the area to relate to:

"....l got one of those council flats that had come up. lt was very frightening because I hadn't the sense of sheltering in this community that had lots of gay people. There were many gay faces on the street for there to be many gay people to be acquainted to if only in afternoon and morning times. l didn't realise how much of a sense of safety that created and to be moving out of that and to be going away to a council estate way down on Wandsworth Road or whatever. It was very scary. l didn't realise there was....even though it was all fragmented....at least for a time there was the feeling of a sheltered haven. I wasn't totally alone at the mercy of the straight world and this illness."

On the positive value of squatting and how unemployment was less of a burden than it is now because welfare benefits were 'sufficient' to live on:

"l mean l think that the squatting was part of....it was like an alternative....for me it was like an alternative to everything. Alternative diet to my parents, alternative beliefs to my parents, alternative sexuality to my parents to....try my own form of expression in the world. That was what Aunty Alice (Alastair Kerr) personified for me and people like that....and the Gay Centre personified. Enough freedom to express that individuality. Maybe a lot was able to happen because people didn't have to work. lt was alright to get by. l could get by. People could get by on unemployment benefit and grants. There were grants. It was there to be milked. Clothing grants and furniture grants and all that. Every twelve months l was writing off for my new linoleum grant, you know....it was about my idealism."

"lt wasn't just about being gay....being gay is much broader anyway. It is about many, many things apart from just sex. That's all part of the nine to five job thing isn't it. Get you in quick, get you in deep, get you in so a far up to your neck that you can't even fucking think for yourself. That's part of the deal isn't it. The machine just sucks you in and it's hard to get out. That's the way they like it."

Dennis spoke further about memorable people and events:

"Yeah, the actual event of the take over. l just saw the front page of Gay News or whatever it was called with Ken Fuller and Marie and Graham Mumford and Skippy who was his girlfriend. A local girl from Brixton. Mark Carroll was there also. That and the announcement that there had been a 'coup' at the Centre and that it had been taken over by these people. That sticks in my mind."

"Things like the Captain Morgan's Rum campaign. Going around South London with a bag full of these stickers and sticking them on bus stops and adverts and all those things."

"Kay throwing her weight around. Going off to....Again things that I thought were unfair like, people would go off to a dance or something in West London or North London or somewhere and insist on about ten of us getting onto a carriage (tube train) and breaking up into pairs and sort of snogging in front of a single straight couple as an act. lt was a real kind of 'freak ‘em out thing'. I used to think that these poor individuals...these straight people were being freaked out. Then there would be a straight couple at the bus stop on their way home from somewhere. There would be three guys standing in a row all doing the same deep snogging. Goodnight snogging to freak them out. Those kind of things I remember. All the things that were powerful, exciting and what have you."

His observations on the Gay Wrestling Group:

"I remember the wrestling group, yes. I sort of saw the Sissy as the hero, if there is one, of the gay movement and the enemy, the bad guy, as being the macho gay. I was shocked when I actually found out they were handing out copies of Zipper. I was really, really shocked. The discrepancy between that and their fucking ideals - I was shocked that the people who were espousing the Sissy as the hero and then finding copies of Zipper with these great big hunky, over the top, overloaded, over everything.... men"

He was attacked for his monogamous relationship with Alex and criticised the authoritarian methods used by Gay Liberationists who 'encouraged' couple busting and shamed those who were felt to be aping 'straight', heterosexual relationships:

"I think Alex and I got some of that. Some of that married couple syndrome. Having to apologise to people (I met) in the market (Brixton). The methods used were as authoritarian and oppressive and the bid for freedom (by Gay Liberationists) was often at the expense of other people's freedom. It was justified because it this was Gay Liberation South London. lt was just as authoritarian and just as disrespectful of the totality of all people and all things and everything having its place."

"Some of the homophobic, oppressive, anti-gay stuff that was in the culture we had grown up in was being recycled and re-fed to other gay people because of individuals personal hang ups which most people hadn't dealt with. lt was re-wounding and re-infecting gay people in the community with the same culturally oppressive attitudes and shit thus leaving people wounded again instead of empowered. So we ended up being ‘the married couple"

"l would see Colm (Clifford) and it would be like seeing the neighbour you didn't want to see coming down the road. He'd say "How are you" and I'd say "We're still together". Then l used to start apologising and then....this is the fucking shit you get. He would then tap you on the arm and say "That's okay". lt's like someone else always tells you who it is you can be and when you can be it and will define it for you. Then when it's not okay they'll tell you. But when it's been corrected according to their whim there into it being okay. After they had put all this forward about married couples."

His views on interaction with the wider 'straight' community:

"There were places that were sympathetic like the housing place up the road (Brixton Housing Co-operative), Maureen Boyle (Brixton Advice Centre). There were various people like that and Veggie restaurants and places that were kind of...alternative ways of living and gayness was seen as it is, another one of those forms of individualism. An expression of how it is done by us; not by you or by them but by us. So there were people like the Veggie restaurants that were about. The Grain Barn place (Bangladesh food co-op?). A few people who worked for Advice Centres and that kind of stuff."

"There was very little contact with the black community. Very little as I remember. Apart from Pearl's, l think the political thing between blacks and gays was too much for black people....they seemed to be claiming that being gay was weakening their blackness. Gayness was diluting blackness, black consciousness. The strength of gayness is that it cuts across everything. That's its strength. lt's a bridge between everything. So it breaks all of those things up. That's its great strength in my opinion. So the black community, the political people at the Black Bookshop, they were always intimidating. l had some hostile stuff from them"

On the observation that some black radicals viewed homosexuality as a white man's disease and that black gays were a traitor to their race for not producing black children:

"lt's just an outgrowth of catholicism and all the rest of that nonsense. Yeah, that's right. But the commercial places like Pearl‘s said something different which is an interesting point. When people get away from the ideals...a lot of that conceptualising was dropped. People, human beings, gays make connections which is gay strength way beyond all the concepts. The black guys....we went down there and made contact. No doubt some more than others."

On the observation that some people around the Gay Centre engaged in mysticism, the Tarot and the occult he gave his views on spiritual traditions:

"From my own point of view l actually believe that gayness is a spiritual tradition. One that has been buried for hundreds and hundreds and thousands of years possibly. lt‘s a new path to understanding. lt’s the path between us and everywhere. There are many mystical schools that have begrudgingly made room for gayness. Yet in fact it is a path in itself. My own personal belief is that the shamans in our culture....we are a people without a stage. There is something in the quality of gay energy that can be in some people. It's something odd. It is shaped by an experience that you listen....that you find out your own truth. Because no other fucker around you will confirm the truth. Your own fucking truth. A lot of straight people just rely on their senses and information that is given to them directly. Many gay people from my understanding, myself included, have had to rely on other sources. Have had to develop other senses that came out of the experience of having no other fucker around you, around me, that was mirroring my essence. Mirroring me. That translates into a spiritual perspective.”

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