John Standbridge

Interviewed by Jamie Hall 15/10/1984(?)

JH - So how did you first hear about the (gay) community.

JS - Well, through Julian Hows who I worked with very briefly. He was working for a friend of mine who had a restaurant in Lordship Lane, Dulwich. I used to go to the restaurant occasionally and I met him. That's how I heard about the community. I'd never heard about it before then except vaguely by rumour.

JH - What sort of living situation were you in at the time. Where you thinking about change?

JS - Yes I was. I actually lived in the restaurant at Lordship Lane in one of the flats above it for a time. That's where I was living when I moved here and before that I had been living in Kings Road (Chelsea).

JH - Were they mixed households or were you living on your own?

JS - I was sharing with a couple of gay friends both of whom I had know for years and years and years...

JH - So how long was it between hearing about the community and coming to live here and why did you come here and when? That's quite a lot of questions all at once.

JS - Well, the reason I moved in I suppose was because I got fairly involved with Julian (Hows). I was contemplating saying I was actually in love with him but I don't think I was. That's how I came to move in so l‘d heard about it for about nine months. Eventually he asked me if I wanted to share the house with him and Frank Egan (149 RaiIton Road?). On a trial basis for three months. I am just trying to remember whether he actually tried to charge me rent (laughter). That is one con he didn't....I was one of the people he didn't pull that one on. I don't think he succeeded because I don't actually remember paying any rent at alI....So that's how I came to move in, to blend? in. Yes, I suppose it must have been about nine months from when I first heard about it (community).

JH - When was that, what year, can you remember?

JS - I think it must have been 1979. It might have been the year before that. Yes it might have been 1978.

JH - Was it specifically because you wanted to live with Julian or was there any appeal to living with a wider group of gay men?

JS - Oh god, none at all. I hadn't even thought about it at all (laughter). Yes, it was specifically to live with Julian. I mean the Idea of living with a group of gay men absolutely horrified me and I might add that experience has taught me that my initial fears were well justified (laughter). But....yes, I think I was frightened of it, very frightened of it and very frightened of the....l mean JulIan....he had been politically very active and he sold? the place very well and Julian taught me to think about things I had never thought about before. Because of knowing him well before and not knowing anybody else who lived here at alI....yes, I was very frightened. It was very obvious that everybody here led a very different gay life from the one I had led. I suppose that was true of everyone before they came here. Well not true of everyone but true for a lot of people. It was certainly very true for me and yes, I was very frightened of it and I didn't like the idea of living in a community of gay men. I think partly also because, I suppose, it smacks of the ghetto to me. Certainly from my past experience of being in Earl's Court and before that being in Chelsea at the end of the 60s. Ideas about gay men living together in huge groups were very much based on that. I suppose I was frightened of that as well because it is was something I hadn't enjoyed before. I didn't particularly want to enjoy it again. Anyway, my emotional commitment to Julian overrode all these fears and I moved in for three months.

JH - Had you been involved in any politics before you came here? You said Julian taught you a lot about feminism...

JS - I didn't say he taught me a lot about feminism. I said he taught me a lot about sexual politics....When I say teach I mean he made me think about a lot of things. I think I knew the theory fairly well but he did actually make me think about a lot of things, though I hd always moved in fairly nonthinking circles....very right-wing, I suppose.

A lot of the people I knew were very right-wing. I suppose that's why I drifted away from them because I am not particularly right-wing myself. But I had never been up until then particularly left-wing. I suppose I would describe myself then as a liberal. I hadn't really thought about giving myself a tag but looking back upon it then yes, I suppose I was a wishy-washy liberal.

JH - Were you in regular employment? Did you have a career, even.

JS - Not really but everything had been geared to some sort of theatre, writing really. So any employment I had I regarded as regular but during those years....l'm just trying to work out how old I was when I came here. I must have been 29 or 30. So for the last 10 years I have been employed fairly regularly on and off. There have been long periods of unemployment. Two years I spent doing nothing at all.

JH - You were writing during this time?

JS — Well, I was on and off but I didn't start that ‘till much later. That was just an idea in the back of my mind so that sort of gave my life continuity. It wasn't my employment but it gave me continuity. (It was) my gay life that gave me continuity. That (writing) was just one idea that I had. So....and the people when I first came out....when I first came out I had got involved with the Samaritans for reasons that should be quite obvious and I have no intentions of going into (laughter). And....fascinating bit of sexual history for you here. I can't remember the name of the guy who ran the Samaritans, the gay side of the Samaritans. He was called Michael something.

JH -- Was it Michael Brown?

JS - The Reverend Michael Brown, that's right, and he ran....what happened was that once you had come to terms with your sexuality and he'd made the regulation pass? and you'd either say ‘yes’ or 'no', you were invited to join this group of young homosexuals who used to meet socially and the idea was that it was a group of young homosexual men coming to terms with the dreadful disease they'd got. So there was this desperate group of hung up young men who had the most dreadful, I mean really dreadful, hang ups. Things like that, and one of them, just about the most hung up of all, was Dennis Lemon. That's how I first got to know Dennis Lemon.

JH - Were the meetings held at the centre?

JS - No, they were held in people's houses and actually the reason why the group was set up was because the principle meeting place was Dennis‘s and a lover he had then called Peter. Something like, I can't remember, Peter Wright? I should think that was about ‘69. Dennis was working in a record shop....somewhere over here (Brixton?) I think. He was in a real state. The group had basically, as far as I could work it out, been set up to help him and subsequently to help the other people who went along. It worked very well for everybody actually except for Dennis (laughter). But I mean once he had sorted himself out the group started to split up because he hadn't got any real need of it anymore. He started to become very politically active which is something that never happened to me. He went on to found an empire through collectivism which we all know about but that's another story (i.e. Gay News (laughter)). Anyway. so that was it.

At the same time I'd met this guy who became my lover, who was Rhodesian, white Rhodesian. I went to live with him and I lost contact with the group which was falling apart anyway. I went through this very cosy life in Chelsea. I think what I was introduced to there was Judy Garland, all the shows, Marilyn (Monroe?), drag which I had never been to, well, perhaps a couple of shows and, sort of, the tail end of the 50s/60s camp style that was slowly coming to a halt. That was it. The first gay pub that I went into was the Colville actually which promptly closed down.

JH - The Colville?

JS - It was in the Kings Road, the most famous gay pub in London. It is now ?

JH - A boutique? So....I am going to go back to the actual period when you moved in here and you went thought this trial period with Julian Hows. What was unexpected about living here. How did it effect your life, your ideas?

JS - (Pause). Well, in two ways actually. First of all It was the first time I had ever lived with a group of gay people, there were women here as well as men, who were very politically active and had totally different gay experiences to mine. So that was one level. The other level was that it was the first time I had ever lived in a working class area and had actually had any contact with working class people. Apart from odd sexual encounters....That was an enormous shock, actually.

JH - In what way?

JS - Well, it was the first time practically that I had ever had to question the way I had been brought up I suppose, the life that I had led. It was the first time I had ever had to think about myself as a gay person since I'd come out. I think I had only one period of difficulty in coming out and that was actually accepting that I was gay. But I've been very lucky all the way along the line really. I'd got a very supportive family and I had very supportive friends I had not had any problems. Most of the people I lived with or had contact with actually did lead fairly closeted lives. They were very comfortable upper middle class or middle class people and they were one thing at work I suppose and then very camp and everything when they got home.

Now, as it happened, I'd never actually hidden my sexuality when I was at work or anywhere simply because it had never occurred to me to do so. I had led a charmed life. Nobody ever threw anything in my way. After I came out people were beginning to talk about it a lot. The one thing about working and living with fairly liberal people, I suppose one of the ethics of liberalism, is that whatever you think about what anybody does you never tell them to their face. You always say it behind their back. Consequently, being a fairly innocent, naïve person (laughter), it never occurred to me that people might dislike me for being gay. As I said, nobody actually did....The first, funnily enough, the first really anti-gay thing that ever happened to me was about six months before I moved in here. I was coming up to see Julian one night and I was queer-bashed on Coldharbour Lane (Brixton) and that was the first time it had ever occurred to me that queer-bashing was something that happened rather than something you read about in Gay News or newspapers and things like that.

JH - So do you think that charmed life was something to do with the context of being gay in the class that you moved in? The charm was the class realisations that happened to you. But the environment in which things are not always said behind your back but more often to your face in contrary and sometimes violent ways changed all that?

JS - Yes, I think that must have been probably very first time that I noticed.

JH - Was that In the context of actually living in a working class area. There were confrontations that happened in the street. Were there actually confrontations that also happened within the community? People broaching problems....

JS - Well, that subsequently developed. I assume you have some knowledge of that. Yes, people did. But also people were very tolerant. I didn't actually have a great deal of confrontation here and I don't think....Not when I first moved in. I was very quiet. I kept myself to myself. Then gradually I started getting to know people. People would talk to me. That was it. My, the whole world? was In a virtual state of conflict with Julian but somehow that wasn't relevant to anything. That's Julian all the time. Anyway, what subsequently happened was after three months I came to live in 152 (Mayall Road). What had actually happened was that things between (me and) Julian had gone really bad and so at the end of the three months I was going to go and I had the choice of either finding somewhere else in the community to live or else moving out. Much to my surprise I stayed. Much to my surprise because I don't think I'd thought very much about it up until then In terms of actually living in the community. I was living in 149 (Railton Road), that horrendous atmosphere of....Julian's nightmare life really (laughter). Anyway, I decided to stay.

At the same time Don Mllligan had moved in and he was living in 152. He started to take an interest in me. Non-sexual. I started to get to know him and I'd got to know Matthew. Then all sorts of things started to happen. It was really interesting....because I'd also got to know Anna (Duhlg) and Veronica who was living with Anna. Veronica had been living here and 159 (Rallton) had become vacant and Anna was living in 157 with Malcolm (Watson). The power struggle in 157 of course was enormous. Absolutely dreadful. Then it would be resolved by one of them moving to another Monarchy. Another empire somewhere else (laughter). Anyway, Anna and Veronica decided that 159 was going to be a women's house that grew in the rest of the community. Someone? moved In there, I moved in here and I think John Lloyd moved into 157. That was that. So I got to know Anna quite well. So now I was well versed in feminism. I got to know Don.

It was quite an extraordinary period for me really because I suppose it was....l suppose in a way it was the first time I was ever really aware of myself as a person at all and realised I had strong views about all sorts of things that I never thought I had views on at all. I mean really, really strong views and I had been discovering over a few months to my horror that I didn't like left-wing politics very much more than I liked right-wing politics. In fact I was beginning to discover that I didn't like organised politics at all very much. It suddenly started to occur to me, I think over this time, that the only reason people are very keen on political theories and political philosophies is because they always imagine that they are always going to be leading when the revolution happens (laughter). I think I'd always suspected this for a number of years, from about the age of five actually.

One thing I do not like. I have no desire to lead anybody else and I have no desire to be led. I think coming here was the one thing that hardened me very much in terms of working out what I thought and what sort of world I wanted to live In. I guess, patriarch that I am, I thought about the world other people should live in as well. But that brought me into political conflict straight away with people like Don Mllligan and has continued to do so ever since. I have not a very well thought out view of Patriarchy but I do have an innate distaste of it. I have met a number of people since I moved into this community, and not just in this community, and lived with a number of people who have spent most of their politically active life decrying Patriarchy and purporting to support feminist aims and ideals and consequently bringing in their own revolution in sexual politics. I think I have managed to fall out with most of them at various times. Because the people who cry about It most I think tend to be people who are preserving their own patriarchal status within the gay community I suppose. I'm keeping my hand over my mouth because I am not actually quite sure I should be saying any of this. I feel very uncomfortable saying this even though it's true.

JH - Do you think your position in the struggle, your position with leaders and your ideas about leaders, what perhaps their basic motives were - did it have any effect on them and their concept of leadership and their power over people.

JS - I'm not so sure. Perhaps....l mean, Don thought very carefully about why we had fallen out and had all sorts of..., I mean I have met him since and we talked. It was very violent falling out with Don and it was even....l mean, it happened so often to Don that I suppose it was one more relationship that he couldn't sustain because it didn't work, the way he saw the world, it didn't do it. But it was a much less bitter fall out than I've had with other people. The last fall out I had with somebody, which happened over a period of months, got very nasty. It has influenced them very much. It has actually made them redefine their position and go hell for leather for it. I think that's a shame really.

JH - You mean it's consolidated their original ideas.

JS - Oh, absolutely. They are much more open about being leaders now than they ever were before. Absolutely. I'm just throwing away the gossip? and throwing away the hypocrisy? of that particular tailor's dummy.

JH - I'm not sure we are going with that line anyway. it's a bit distant from the community and its effects...

JS - Well not in the effect it had on me.

JH - ifs difficult to put it in a concise way the effect of the community on your ideas... Would you say that it was an understanding, or a reviewed understanding of the dynamics of cooperation or....

JS - it all depends on what you mean by that.

JH - Well, as opposed to the dynamics of power and conflict in leadership struggles.

JS - Well, yes it has obviously had some effect on me living cooperatively with people. But there have been other gay co-ops and other gay communities where things like that have been very carefully defined. People have deliberately set up cooperative living situations and they have come and gone. This community has actually gone on for 10 years. I mean now the structure is going to change and it is going to change in a very formal way. A lot of what the community has stood for and has been will change. it has always been....l mean, people from the outside and people who lived In it and people who are living In it now see it as very dead, very dead end.

The people come here as a last resort and everything. Well, so fucking what actually? Yes people do come here as a last resort and perhaps that is its only purpose. You know, after this there's the brick wall. So you do, you have to tum around and think about yourself for a change and you do have to think about yourself In relationship to what's going on in the world. Like for me certainly I went, my god this is a much more realistic idea of the world than the one I'd come from. I didn't come here the first time as a last resort. I didn't come her the second time as a last resort. But if I had done so bloody what? The same for a lot of people. Okay, it's trapped a few people into living here for decades, actually not moving out of it. Perhaps that is a very unrealistic way of living. Perhaps it's their choice. Perhaps they found that they enjoy living here.

But one of the things that has made this place survive for so long is the fact that there are no rules, no regulations, no leaders. On the couple of attempts that people have tried to take it over it has failed disastrously. I think that is one of the most important things about the place is that, you know, you come here and it you are broke and unemployed at the end of it there are people here who will talk with you. They are not particularly going to interfere with you or shout at you and tell you what to do. Unless you are unfortunate enough to live in 157 (laughter). You can quote me on that.

I think this being my second time round that has changed slightly. It is not as open, this community, as it was the first time I lived here. People keep themselves to themselves a bit more. But people still are available to talk to and the houses have all sorts of political philosophies. You know, people who have come here, it hasn't just been a horror story for everybody who has come here. People come here for all sorts of reasons and people have moved on to better things, to worse things. But, my god, for most people who talk about the time they have spent here, they probably have sorted something out about themselves even if it is to discover that they fucking well are junkies or you know, they are screwed up. At least you have got resting space to work it all out.

It just seems to have that timeless quality about it where, because it's so unstructured and so un-thought out the only thing that people do, I think that the only thing that people really have in common around here is that they actually do, despite what actually appears on the surface, they really do care about each other in this community. Now it's spread out a bit more into Brixton because so many people from here have moved out and live in the area. I say that despite my personal experience of my first time in the community and how I came to leave it. That (community) I think was important for me and I think it was important for an awful lot of other people as well. It was one of the things really that shook? a lot of people that lived here a long time. That was when I started a relationship with a woman at the time as a member of the gay community. She was also a member of the gay community. All of a sudden people discovered that they didn't quite believe in what they'd been preaching. I felt then and I still feel in now.

JH - Do you think it was that they didn't believe or that the time for absolute belief, absolute polarity of their politics, had passed and that what had actually happened was an evolution and people were left with the residue of a very strong beliefs which were very hard to let go of.

JS - I think they are. I mean, I am fairly sure that is what happened to me. At the time I was very bitter about it but I have had lots of time to think about it. As your bitterness lessens the same thing happens as with the other people involved, you acknowledge your own mistakes in it. Everything, Don Milligan and everybody, handled the situation very badly as it happened. Me and Anna included. But that was quite an amazing time for me and I think it had a lot of effect on other people and people have certainly thought about that over the intervening years. People who have not spoken to me for years have now started speaking to me about it. Some people will still not speak. They still think it is the most unspeakable thing ever. Even though, surprisingly enough, the people who are doing that are the people who attacked us on the grounds that it was heterosexual and yet are still, this is one of the ironies I find about this, are still with partners they were with then (referring to monogamy) in a very closed relationship. I am not going to say who because everybody is going to know who anyway. I find the hypocrisy quite stunning. I still find that stunning.

JH - You are making this connection between adopted orthodox monogamy as being a reflection of heterosexual values.

JS - No, I'm saying that those perhaps with accusations that were made against me at the time, I mean all sorts of things were said about me at the time, far worse than were actually said about Anna....but one of the things I think was that in explaining their feelings of horror about it happening....one of the things that was said was that it threatened people round here because it was bringing heterosexuality off the streets and into the community and people didn't want to live with that which might actually have been quite right and....the usual things about monogamy, not that it particularly was. The ironic thing was that the relationship....Anna and I were very close friends but the actual physical relationship itself wouldn't have lasted nearly as long if people had felt any pressure. That's taught me one thing about relationships which I have never forgotten and I still think about it now. I think about it particularly now because of having a relationship with Paulo (Bazzoni) certainly, is that there is an enormous pressure, even from gay people, even from gay men in this community, is that if they see a relationship they have to define that relationship in terms that they can understand and usually they will be fairly negative terms. I think because I had never come into open conflict with such a large number of people before, when I was having a relationship with Anna I think both of us allowed that very much to happen. We both began to believe that what people said about our relationship was true and of course that is never true. Only you and the other person can define your relationship. iI is a difficult enough business and nobody else has a clue what is going on. But, my god, people are bloody quick to start telling you (laughter).

JH - Well let's leave that there because l mean what I'll do with these tapes if I'm going to. I don't know how deeply I am going to get involved in doing a larger document but I may come back to several points at another stage. I think this is a really interesting aspect of the community in its effects on people's relationships and the way those relationships are defined and how the community in some way has a bearing in what you eventually come up with. But I think it's too, it's not something I would go into now with this. But there are a couple of other things I want to ask.

JS - I am actually finding this whole thing quite stressful..

JS - l do think that moving into the community is probably the most important thing for me in my life. The most important decision I made in my life. Innocently at the time but in retrospect it certainly was.

JH - I think a lot of people would say that. I would say it myself. But lets go onto what you feel about the form of the community now. Are we living here now as more or less than just each other's neighbours and what is a community anyway. I mean it's a word we use and throw around a lot with a lot of different meanings and contexts but obviously the physical conditions of our community are quite uppermost in people's minds at the moment. The relative squalor of our present conditions and the relative luxury of what we are anticipating (Brixton Housing Cooperative Development). How do you see the change. How do you see the change in itself that people have elected for a lot of different reasons and a lot of the factors concerning the decisions have been economic ones. Determined in fact by the Housing Corporation. But in fact also about moving away from sharing housing to single person units, flats.

JS - Well, I think it had to be because that is the outside world dictating conditions upon us. Even though Brixton Housing Coop was started by people in this community (gay involvement in) it has a very formal structure and it has rules and disciplines. How it came into being was through people needing to get away from the squalor of this community. But the two things go hand in hand you see. Squalor brings you all sorts of freedoms that you will not get with central organisation? In that context, yes people here, especially people who have lived here for a long time like Malcolm (Watson), Henry (Pim) and Andreas (Demetriou), you know, everybody reaches a point in their lives where they do want some sort of material security like a not leaking roof and fixtures and fittings I suppose. But with that you lose it. Now the community, well yes, we're more than neighbours but much less than a very carefully thought out co~op. Living in this squalid, decaying environment, which as I have said gives you all kinds of freedoms, gives you time to think. You don't have to do anything except make sure that you don't wake up in 6 inches of water.

But the houses are falling down so we have been faced with decisions about whether to live cooperatively as we've been going along or to go into single person units. Well, there is no way when you are paying rent, when you are going to have to start paying electricity bills, gas bills, rates bills regularly, there is no way the community could have gone on within that formal structure in the way that it has done over the last 10 years. So that is why I think people elected to go to single person units. I don't think people are very aware of what they are actually saying. It is the end of it.

I think a lot of people still think it is going to go on the same way when everybody is in single person units. It isn't. It's never going to be that way again. If we all woke up tomorrow morning in single person units it might have been possible but there is going to be such a huge gap and people who are involved in it now who are very keen on the idea might now move in in two years time. They might have found somewhere else, moved on somewhere else. They might even be dead, my god, they might even be in a concentration camp. That's more likely (reference to Thatcherite authoritarian state?). I just cannot conceive of it going on at all in the same way. Even though I will fight against it myself very, very much, I think gradually the whole thing will become absorbed into Brixton Housing Co-op. The whole thing will lose its sense of identity completely within the next 3 or 4 years. But that is because, I mean, they are squats and they're decaying. The world outside is decaying as well. Everything that we thought about, everything that everybody fought for, except me, in the 70s....well, it just ain‘t going to happen. That's decaying as well. So, perhaps as everybody goes back to entrenched middle class families, and I think they are doing that, perhaps it's as good a time as any to wind it all up. No doubt somewhere else something will spring up and do exactly the same thing. I suppose one likes to think that one has been part of something unique in history but what we're in really is....

JH - Do you think it would be optimistic to think that, though obviously the gay community is coming to an end and the rehabilitation of the houses does signify the end of something which is very identifiable at the moment....but that what will be constructed may not be particularly relevant for the people who live here now but as a gay community it might go on through the agencies....l mean, it will be a problem for Brixton Housing Co-op but as long as BHC maintains, as it has at the moment, a fairly large gay membership, there is a possibility that these houses will always have that criterion that they are always tenanted by gay people. Do you think there is a value in the community that could continue here? Even people living in single person units and being no more to each other than neighbours, but they are gay neighbours, do you think that would have a value?

JS ~ With the changes in the area that are now going to occur....The reason the community Is here is because it is in a very socially volatile area and that area is no longer socially volatile. You see, I think what was really the death knell for the gay community and it was probably the death knell for Brixton as well was the riots. Seeing how people reacted to the whole thing in relation to the riots and the government and the way that politics are going....You see the thing that the riots taught everybody around here, if it taught them anything at all, was that revolutions actually change nothing. They just change leaders really or reinforce the ones that are in which is what happened in that case and a very good cosmetic job has been done on Brixton. it has been torn apart. It has been absolutely torn down. There will be no blue plaque to the riot ever. They'll be forgotten. The place will be tidied up and will become a very middle class area. When these houses are done up it will be a gay community but it will be, in a few years time it will be a very middle class community. Very meaningless as a community. Whether I am here or whether l am not I will feel very strongly as though I am living in a block of mansion flats in Earl's Court. It will have the same significance. It seems very pessimistic but I don't thing the same value could possibly come out of it. It has already come out of it because the reason why there was value here in the first place was because for a lot of people this was the last resort. However negative anybody else might think that is, if It's the last resort in housing, which It is really, I mean you couldn't get much worse unless you actually did build a mud hut in the garden....in this country....when it's the last resort, I think. and when you actually get that close to being against a wall, socially and economically and politically, that's when you start to think about yourself. l think that is the one thing this community has done. it allows people to think. Even if it has made them think negatively. Some people thought about and opted for middle class values. I strongly suspect I will do the same as l get older. I shall keep my central heating on for most of the time (laughter). But that (community) I cant ever see happening again here. It will happen somewhere else. This area will go up, another area will go down and the same thing will happen all over again. If we aren't all nuked.

JH - Perhaps. Perhaps not. I think it was very much a product of its political time, of its epoch, and it is probably fairly unique. I don't think the same thing will ever happen again anywhere else because the politics are different. The sense of optimism has gone. There's a lot more cynicism and pessimism. But it struck me the other night while I was at a friend of mine's flat, he has got a single person unit flat in the house which is split into three, and there were several people there, it was his birthday party. We were talking about living situations, violence and everybody in the room agreed that Peter, this man, had the perfect living situation. A space, a single person unit with neighbours he trusted and knew. That's what they saw as being ideal because they could define absolutely their movements. They saw that as a freedom that they had gained by losing the freedom of being in this situation (Brixton) where you have the freedom of having nothing to lose in the sense of like, being the last resort.

JS - But you see it is only in situations like this....it is only when you have lost everything that you can actually start to define yourself in any way at all or be aware of yourself as a person. I don‘t think you.... you see the answer to that would be that it is a very bourgeois attitude to take because not very many people have the time to sit around thinking about themselves. They're too busy finding jobs, doing work and this, that and the other. What is the point of coming into a community like this unless you suddenly realise, yes but why do those people spend all their lives looking for work and doing this, that and the other. It's actually a bloody waste of time (laughter). They'd be far better off with nothing and thinking about the sort of world they wanted to live in rather than them voting Conservative or Labour and be told that if they work they will be given a nice place to live.

JH - Living on the front line.

J3 - What a front line! A step into the unknown, perhaps. Perhaps joining BHC and doing these houses up is a step backwards and not a stop into the unknown. Perhaps it's the last sign of defeat in the area.

JH - The unknown has become too exhausting.

JS - Yes, perhaps. Perhaps it's just my middle class values reasserting themselves.

JH - That as a newly auto-defined individual only you can decide. I think, let's leave it at that. Unless there is anything else in particularly you want to say about it now.

JS - No, I'll think about it. I don't really feel that I am giving you what I want. I just seem to be using the whole thing as an excuse for therapy (laughter).

JH - I'm not so sure it is important to find out why it has been important for so many people. I think just the fact that It has been, and a lot of people would say that it has been, a totally cathartic experience for them. That is enough in itself.

JS - I am certainly a very different person than when I first moved in. Once you have made that step I think there is no going back. It's a ? experience and you can't really wipe it out, I mean I still have contact with people I knew 10 or 15 years ago and there is now just this huge, huge gap between us. If you set out looking for security then you will never change. I find it horrifying that people I knew 10 or 15 years ago haven't changed at all, They haven't thought about anything. They have just got more and more entrenched in their own personaI....it‘s not the security of their jobs, it's the security of their unexplored egos. Does that make sense? Because they have never looked at themselves then there is nothing to be frightened of. They've never had to question anything. For a lot of people I know, being gay has been....the end of the 60s and glossy, semi-closeted clubs. Pretty clothes, dolly boys. When I look back at that to quote Hartley?, I mean that really is a foreign country,. The Past really is a foreign country. When I look back at that person as me then, its like looking at a stranger. Those people who l knew then, they still are dolly boys, aging dolly boys. It's very sad and very pathetic and their lives have just been dominated by sex rather than sexuality.

JH - So few of those people would ever have had this kind of opportunity. Would ever see it as an opportunity to take what I think Nigel (Young) and Stephen (Gee) meant when they used the word the ‘Risk’. You take that risk but a lot of people would not find that risk desirable to take or even see it as being an option in their lives. Because the identity they grasped is a safe one.

JS - I think I'd be very happy if, In the next 5 years, l change as progressively as I have done over the past 5 years. That would make me a very happy person indeed....and if you are going to change society....that’s why every movement falls apart and changes nothing. You cannot have, on the left or on the right, you cannot have e leader telling a group of people how they should live. It just doesn't work. People have got to find out for themselves.

JH - It has to be assimilated experience. Your own knowledge.

JS - Far from destroying class individualism we should perhaps be encouraging everybody to become class individuals in a non-economic way.

JH - individuality rather than individualism.

JS - Yes, Individuality. It's the only way I can think of contributing anything to society anyway. My one fear is that they (Ieft and right-wing Ieaderships?) are no longer prepared to let individuals contribute anything. With thousands of years of history of people being sheep, it's about time they stopped being sheep and shepherds. More shepherds should come into the shelter’? of the cottage (laughter).

Back to Personal Testimonies