Letter Transcription

My first visit to the gay squats on Railton Road was on Boxing Day 1978. At the time I had been in England for six months having arrived from Australia the previous June. I was 23. After spending a few months on the continent I had discovered I wasn't really much of a traveller, that travel is perhaps better in anticipation and recall than it is in the experience. I was ripe for something more settled. When I had arrived in London I had stayed with my brother (who is gay) in Hammersmith. I had been involved in gay liberation in Sydney and although I am close to my brother he was not as gay political as I was. This did not cause any particular friction between us but it did highlight my need to find a place where I felt a greater sense of belonging. 

I knew some Australians who were squatting in Brixton and although I did not know them well I gravitated towards their society. None of them was gay with the exception of Neal, a man I had known for several years. For a number of those years we were lovers in what was an untidy polygamous relationship which was in its final throes as a sexual liaison. In the month before Christmas I was squat-sitting a house in Effra Parade for one of these Australians. I wasn't very happy. My first English winter was closing in and I still felt isolated. Neal was disentangling himself from me but for me it was a monkey grip. The more I tried to pull away the more pathetically attached I felt. 

I knew of the gay squats in Railton Road but had no contact with them. I can't remember where I spent Christmas Day that year. Boxing day on the other hand stands out like a beacon. I visited Neal (he was squatting in Mayall Road). I was hang dog, a real drag I expect. No doubt thinking he had to do something with me, perhaps even for me, Neal took me in tow to visit the Railton Road squats. We first went to 157. I think Malcolm, John, Stephen and Ian lived there at the time. We stayed for about half an hour, sitting in the kitchen making conversation with Malcolm and Ian. 

It wasn't comfortable for me and when Neal made the move to leave I joined him even though I felt I should stay if anything about my situation was going to change. I reckoned Neal felt this too. He took me next door to 159. Peter, Peter((AKA as Petal or PC to differentiate the Peters), Robbie and David lived there at the time. Their squat had a different feel, somehow more established. There was also a 'homeyness' as if these queens baked bread. I remember Peter there and I think Robbie was fluttering around. Again we sat in the kitchen chatting. When Neal made his move to leave I had a flush of panic but decided to stay. I can't remember what was talked about (as Peter is also Australian I imagine we touched on things Australian) but I stayed for a couple of hours, perhaps even for a meal and then made a move to leave. Peter saw me to the front  door. While we stood at the open door he asked if I'd like to spend the night with him. I said yes. That was the beginning.

I spent the night with Peter. It established a relationship that continues to this day, seventeen years later. It continued as a sexual relationship for the two and half years I remained in England but more significantly it survived because of our friendship. Peter's primary relationship was with PC who was out of town on that Boxing Day. Ironically what has threatened our relationship has been what in some ways drew us together - being Australian. I chose to return to. Australia, accepting its shortcomings and celebrating its uniqueness. Peter chose to stay in England for reasons that I can only suppose weren't good enough to convince me to stay. He still lives in Brixton.

I continued to stay in Effra Parade. I made subsequent visits to 159 getting to know the others who lived there. My tenure at Effra Parade was coming to an end and I needed a place to live. Peter told me of two queens who were setting up a squat at 145 Railton Road and who were looking for someone to move in. I went down to introduce myself. I was met by Derek, a short fierce-looking man who shared the place with Hans, a not so short, not so fierce-looking man. Hans and Derek were lovers in what always seemed to me to be a mentor-pupil relationship - Derek, the older of the two, appeared to me to be guiding Hans through territory of which Hans was quite unsure, to a place he didn't want to go. Hans was not a completely passive participant in this journey but at times he certainly presented a picture of inertia. Derek and Hans both worked for a left-wing publishing organisation the name of which eludes me today. Derek was also a member of the Gay Left collective, a group of serious intellectuals who published a bi-monthly (as I recall) magazine of political analysis. I was intimidated by these people. Every so often they would have their collective meeting at 145. They would take over the living room for several hours. The rest of us would scatter until the coast was clear. It was definitely not the politics of inclusion.

At about the time I moved into 145 Colm also moved in. He was a tall, vehemently Irish man who had been involved in the South London community for some time although I think this was the first time he had lived on Railton Road. He worked at Union Place Resource Centre. We became good friends, united among other things by our personal political feelings which included a distaste for English jingoism. We always remained seated and scowling when the drag show at the Union Tavern was capped off with a rowsing unquestioned rendition of the "Pomp and Circumstance March". 

Over the next few years, Colm and I spent a lot of time together, not only at 145 but also out and about. We vacationed in Spain and in Wales (two of the most happily memorable times of my life); we'd hit the Union Tavern regularly and occasionally the bars in the West End and Gay Pride dances at the University of London; and Colm accompanied me on my one and only visit to Pearl's. There I was, a terrified little white boy being sensually samba-ed around by a gorgeous black man who of course was having great fun mocking me and, at the end of the dark basement room, Pearl ensconced with her little record player playing 45s, seeming so much like some magnificent African queen. 

I guess in many ways my visit to Pearl's symbolises my relationship to the black community in Brixton. I never connected in any personal sense. My contact was limited to commercial transactions (shopping, buying Tube or bus tickets) or the occasional Rasta stopping me to ask "D'ya wanna score, mon?". And it seems to me that I was not alone in this alienation, this division - in the two and a half years I lived in the Railton Road community I recall only one black person living there; and the drag nights at the Union Tavern were hardly multiracial. 

I did sense a change in this separation when I returned to Brixton for a visit in 1985 after having been back in Australia for four years. I went to the disco at the pub on the corner of Brixton Road and Coldharbour Lane, diagonally opposite the town hall. The atmosphere was without tension. People were having a good time. And these were black and white people together. Not just a group of white people and a group of black people in the same room but people of different race mixing. Perhaps this one night signified nothing about race relations but I remember thinking it could be generational, that the people in that disco had come to maturity together, gone to the same schools, shared South London life. So it was easier, more relaxed in 1985 than in 1980.

Colm, Derek, Hans and I lived together amiably for about twelve months. The squat was liveable if not entirely comfortable. Derek had done a lot of the basic work to get it established (wiring, repairs, getting the utilities connected - I don't think Hans had much of a hand in this). He was a competent, efficient person and in many ways we relied on that, especially Hans and I. We slapped on a few coats of paint and called it home. As Derek and Hans were a couple, Colm and I gravitated towards each other's company. But Derek and Colm also developed a closer friendship than I did with Derek and I became more friendly with Hans than did Colm. This was the dynamic of our household and it worked well enough until the arrival of an Australian friend of mine which put the cat among the pidgeons. 

Debbie was a former lover of mine who arrived on the doorstep unannounced one day. This was not an entirely pleasant surprise for me but she had brought her bags and, after getting over the initial shock, I invited her to stay. She fitted into the house well for a while. Then a sexual relationship developed between her and Hans. In retrospect it seems like this was a bombshell that just exploded in the house but I'm sure there must have been some prior intimation of what was happening. Debbie returned to Australia and we were left in disarray, trying to work out what affect this development had on our household. I wish I could say that it was just a storm in a teacup (or not even that) but it created tensions which affected our day to day life with each other. 

Eventually we met to discuss the problem. At this meeting I surprised myself by suggesting that Hans move out. After more discussion he agreed. After yet more discussion, Derek decided that he would move out with Hans. So that was it, a resolution that in many ways felt like it resolved very little. Hans and Derek moved to a squat in Mayall Road. Hans continued to be in contact with Debbie and eventually moved to Australia where they lived for a number of years in the depths of Tasmania, had two children then went their separate ways. Hans still lives in Australia as far as I know. Derek continues to live in Brixton.

Colm and I were left to rattle around 145 like two empty vessels. Both of us were restless, dissatisfied. Andy moved in, compounding the dissatifaction we felt as neither Colm nor I were exactly enamoured with him. Maybe it was time to go back to Australia. I booked my ticket. Colm decided it was time to go to Barcelona. He booked his ticket. I didn't go home, not then anyway, but Colm did go to Spain. He spent four or five years there - learnt Spanish, found love, had fun (so he told me). I never saw him again after he went to Spain although we kept in touch right to the end. He died of AIDS in London in 1989. I've heard it was a great funeral.

What stopped me going back to Australia at that time was Clemens. He was German,, a psychiatric nurse working for the Richmond Fellowship. He had had a short affair with Jim who lived next door in 143 with Jamie (these- incomparable Jim whose drag was legendary although it wasn't really drag per more like performance cross dressing). I had spoken to Clemens when taking calls for Jim (they had no phone) and had thought him abrupt and rude.

He later told me this manner of speaking was due to his uncertainty with English. But we actually met when a group of Brixton queens decided to take a mini-bus to Brighton for the day. Sociable bus trips weren't the norm for Brixton as far as I recall but this one was attacked with panache and a camp sense of fun. Afterall it was Brighton. We shrieked our way around the town, doing the Pavillion and the pier and ending up at the sauna, Brighton's luxury compared to London but hardly luxurious. 

As the day had progressed Clemens and I had been edging closer to each other. We came together like excited teenagers, breathless and insatiable, in the darkness of the bus trip home. I believe we are given only a certain number of love and passion coupons for our lives. I used up a fair number of mine in the brief incadescence of my affair with Clemens. It was all over in four months. In that time I had cashed in my ticket back to Australia, had spent two marvellous weeks in Italy with Clemens, had returned to the desolation of being without him in London, and gone to Munich to be with him, to live with him. It didn't work out. 

I returned to London in November 1980. I was devastated. Clemens remains an object of passion in my life. I don't think it can ever be any other way. After I left Munich he studied medicine and became a doctor. I visited him in 1985 and he came to Australia in 1988. In 1993 he married. I went to the wedding. He still lives in Munich with his wife, two stepsons and his son and daughter.

I returned to London but not to Railton Road. I went to live on the other side of Brixton tube station near the police station in a large house with four other people - three Australians and a Brit. There is little I want to say about this period of my life - I worked waiting tables to barely pay my way; I moped a lot; and I drove the people I was living with up the wall. I was irritating. Also I no longer felt part of the gay community in Brixton, at least not in the way I had when I lived in Railton Road. There seemed little to do but to go home, back to Australia. I was tired of being poor, tired of being cold and the idea of wide blue merciless skies appealed to me. So I came back home. As a vision fulfilled, it remains appealing.

But before I left Brixton there were the riots. I can't say I sensed anything coming, anything different to indicate trouble was brewing. I suppose Brixton was volatile but no more than it had been for years. I guess some things converged and ignited the mixture - the weather, a police arrest. I don't know. The whys and wherefores were nebulous to me even then. After fifteen years they're more so. What I remember of my reaction to the riot was the desire to witness it. Not to participate - not to loot or throw rocks or smash windows - but to observe, to see from the centre of the tempest what was happening. I was a spectator. Perhaps it epitomised my time in Brixton - I was the uncommitted tourist.

Realising by the billowing plumes of smoke what was going on on the other side of Brixton, several of us in the houehold set off to go and see for ourselves what was happening. We left the house and walked the back way to Brixton, behind the police station. We did so with some feeling of excitement. We came out near Tesco's, near the corner of Electric Avenue and Railton Road. People were running in all directions. A girl ran past clutching a vacuum cleaner and ebulliently shouting "Tesco's!" to let us know it was being looted. We decided to pass on that one. I wasn't caught up in any desire to loot or throw stones. I wanted to see. 

We thought it would be safer to skirt the centre of Brixton so we again cut around the back coming out on Mayall Road just down from the Windsor Castle. Here things seemed to be more serious. A phalanx of police had positioned itself near the Windsor Castle and was advancing down Mayall Road towards a group of stone throwers. There seemed to be far more police than rioters but this may have been just a brief impression of that place and that moment. I certainly didn't get to see what was happening in the rest of Brixton and there were many flashpoints. 

Quite suddenly the Windsor Castle burst into flames. There seemed to be no preamble. One moment it was standing their inviolate and the next it was engulfed. We moved further down Mayall Road, away from the fire and the rioters and the police. We got to Peter and Derek's place and stood with them on the front stoop watching the blaze. There was a feeling of nervous excitement. We wanted to watch. Eventually the feeling faded and we went inside. I have no recollection of how long I stayed there or when I went home; whether or not the streets were quiet when I did. 

Of later events, I recall only the story I heard about Annie. She was the licensee of the Windsor Castle, a regal figure in the style of Pearl, who would sit at the end of the bar each evening, her waist length salt and pepper hair recently brushed out and over one shoulder. She brooked no-one giving her staff trouble, a stream of well- aimed invective usually sufficient to silence the troublemakers. I heard after the riots that Annie, a not insubstantial woman, had to be carried forcibly from the fire. For some reason this stood out for me as a memory of the riot even though it was not something I witnessed. In fact it could have been total hearsay.

After the riots it was obvious I was finished with Brixton. Or it was finished with me. I felt uncommitted to the place, to the country. I was even beyond being a tourist. I was sick of being poor, sick of being cold. The riots happened in April. I was home in June.