Derek Cohen
Written by Derek, August 2020
Derek (on the right) and Hans Klabbers enjoying a sunny day in the communal garden
How I came to know the BGC men
I first came across the Brixton Gay Community around 1973 when I occasionally visited the Brixton Gay Centre on my weekly trips up to London from Southampton for weekly in-service training – I was a residential social worker. After the training I’d sometimes go down there, though in my timid barely come-out state I found the flamboyant gender-fuck dressing of some quite intimidating. But everyone was welcoming and it was a start. On the way back to the hostel where I worked and lived, I’d buy a copy of Gay News which I’d hide under my bed. It would be another couple of years until I actually “came out”.
In the late seventies, well and truly “out and proud”, I started attending an informal gay meet up at The Oval House Theatre opposite the Oval cricket ground in South London. This was held every Sunday afternoon.
Many of the guys at the Oval House lived in South London, and some I’d already come across at the Brixton Gay Centre. But others came from further afield – I was living off South End Green near Hampstead Heath in London at the time and the Sunday afternoon was, I suppose, the closest there was to a non-commercial gay community meeting place.
It was very friendly and relaxed. Much of the time we sat around drinking coffee, eating and chatting. But there were practical workshops put on by various guys. There was movement and dance, and massage. And some of the men were part of something called Homosexual Posters (Colm Clifford and Ian Townson), which produced agitprop (there’s a word from the past) at the nearby Union Place community resource centre. In the early eighties I worked with some of them to produce a couple of Gay Men’s Diaries for 1983 and 1984.
Derek in 2022, he hasn't changed much over the years
Derek in the late 70s
Why I moved there
In 1978 I started sharing a flat in Hampstead Heath with a straight guy - Patrick. It was at the top of a house owned by Sally, a school chum of my friend Cordelia. It was for two people and Cordelia said Patrick, a friend from her work, was looking for somewhere to live as well. And as I needed to move from where I was living (my big “fucking queer” badges were too much for the owner of the place I was living in) I agreed to both the flat and sharing it with Patrick.
I’ve never been one for outdoor cruising, so I never took advantage of the private gate from the house’s back garden gate which opened directly onto Hampstead Heath and its gay cruising grounds.
Patrick and I got on fine for a year or so. I had my own bedroom where I often had sex, either with friends or the occasional “straight” man from the pub I frequented at the bottom of the street.
But one day Patrick told me “You know I can’t take all this sex you’re having seriously.” I was shocked and upset at the homophobia that emerged.
The next Sunday I discussed it with my friends at the Oval House and they said I needed to move. There was an empty house suitable for squatting down on Railton Road in Brixton. It wasn’t joined to the rest of the gay community, but there was only one house in between.
So, like alternative estate agents, they met me down there to look over 145 Railton Road. They all had experience of squatting and doing up abandoned houses and could help me assess whether it was habitable.
The roof and floorboards were sound, but many of the windows were missing and there was no electricity or gas around the house, though there were meters in the cellar.
Finding windows was easy. There was some rehab going on in the neighbouring streets and the skips contained suitable windows. The windows and frames for the houses seemed to have been mass produced. When you put in a window frame from the skip the screw and nail holes in the frames lined up perfectly with the holes in the walls.
If the glass was broken I already knew how to glaze windows from my residential social work days where residents were often having tantrums and throwing things through the windows.
Sorting out the electricity and gas was a bit harder as I had no plumbing skills, and my electrical skills in the past had regularly resulted in nasty shocks. But friends and squatter neighbours were on hand always willing to help.
One showed me how to solder copper tubing into the lead inbound gas pipe and how to plumb the gas into the kitchen, and I think, a gas fire. The plumbing skills were handy for piping water to a salvaged kitchen sink (which doubled as a washbasin) and the toilet. There was no bath and so I used the bath in other people’s houses.
Another helped me install an electrical ring main around the house so we had lighting and power sockets. Skips were always full of useful stuff, and sheets of wood and wall studs were soon fashioned into a kitchen worktop. I’m afraid my experiences fitting a house out from skips has left me with a life-long obsession for never throwing away today something that might be useful in the future.
Some of the doors were missing, noticeably on the (only) ground floor toilet and, being radical people, none was fitted. I shared the house initially with a Dutch work colleague – Hans (Klabbers) – who I was having sex with and who wanted to move from his parents’ home. Soon after two other men joined us. Colm (Clifford), a veteran Brixton squatter, moved in after one of the frequent bust-ups that occurred in the various gay squats, and an Australian, Paul (Coyle), joined us around the same time. Colm and I did work on Homosexual Posters together and there were sometimes planning meetings at 145 if not Union Place where Colm worked. Colm and I had sex on occasions while we lived together. He was from Ireland and was very sensitive to the British oppression of the Irish. However my Jewish background meant that I was the only Brit who he would let fuck him, he claimed. It was a time when you had sex with someone because it was fun and you felt like it; not because it meant anything significant.
The Hans crisis
My friend Cordelia went to live in Japan for two years and in 1979 I went to stay in Tokyo and Kyoto for four weeks to see her and explore the country. On my return it wasn’t quite folded arms and rolling pins on the doorstep but not far off. Colm and Paul were outraged. Colm had been hunting around the house looking for some fresh porn and had found some straight porn under Hans’ bed. This was a gay squat and a straight man didn’t have a place there. Hans wasn’t apologetic and said he’d always had an interest in women as well as men. This was a time when “bisexual” was usually equated with “closeted”. Hans had to move out and, after much discussion and heart searching, I decided to move out as well and we found another abandoned house on Mayall Road which we occupied. This one was in much better condition and had running water, gas and electricity. My mother in Manchester bemoaned the move, saying I should find somewhere proper to live. I replied that I was on the way up, as this one had a bath.