When were you born?

23rd January 1953.

Where were you born and brought up?

Burton-on-Trent. I was brought up near there. Where did we first live? It was a place called Midway because it was midway between Burton-on Trent and Ashby de la Zouche, in South Derbyshire. Then we transferred to Staffordshire and I went to school in Leicestershire to Ashby de la Zouche where I went to grammar school and passed the eleven plus. I went to school in a county council school in Swaddlingcote where I passed the eleven plus but we actually lived in Midway. It's not the most imaginative name to call a place. Five miles from Ashby and five miles from Burton. Neither here nor there. On a council estate. One of those new fifties council estates. Then we moved down to Eureka Road were we lived with my granddad. He needed Looking after. We moved across the road because they had bought a house. It was a bit more respectable. We joined the quiet side of the street but took our noise with us, I think. My father started to have a mid-life crisis and started to shout as loud as my mother did. That made us all shout.

So you were fairly volatile. What did your dad do?

He was an insurance agent. He always worked in a fairly lowly office and didn't have a lot of money and then when he went into insurance it started to get a bit better. He had to work very hard to scrape money together. He was always very poor. He worked part time as a secretary at the Miners’ Welfare Club. My mother worked part time in shops, department stores. Salts in Swaddlingcote. Eventually she got it into her head that she wanted a shop of her own. We'd moved to Burton Road, still in Midway. She became a small shop keeper. My dad did a lot of work in the shop and I occasionally did a few things. It was very stressful for me because I was going through the pressures of teenage years. We lived on a main road. I hated it. I was a music student and I wanted peace and quiet to listen to it.

I meant to ask you about that. You went to Grammar school and did your ‘A’ levels. Did you then become a music student?

Yes, I went to Birmingham University to do music then I changed to do music and English combined. After university I spent a year teaching in a prep school at Great Charlton near Ashford in Kent. A private school. Strange little place. I think I had this romantic idea that in this small, little job I would be able to do....l had visions of myself becoming a composer or a conductor. Somehow the myth was still there in my head. I would give myself plenty of time and space to develop but it wasn't like that. It was there that I went to my first gay group, the Ashford gay group, and it was there that I met my first boyfriend.

How old were you?

I was 21. I used to go an stay at his place and sort of creep in the morning because I was supposed to live in at the school.

I forgot to ask. Did you have any brothers or sisters?

Yes, I have two brothers. One is 2 years and 8 months older than me and the other is 13 years younger than me.

So did they go into higher education or did they just go out and work?

Robert left school 15 and joined the Royal Air Force. So he didn't do '0' levels or anything. He trained in the RAF. He was there for a number of years but then left. He was about to be transferred to Belize but he had a breakdown, a nervous breakdown and eventually he came out of the air force.

What about the other brother?

Richard? He is thirty now. So he was born when I was thirteen. I was quite excited about that, having a baby brother at that age. I remember him growing up and enjoying having a younger brother, looking after him quite a lot. But when he was five I went away to University at Birmingham. He lived with my parents until a couple of years ago. He still lives near them but he has got his own house. He works in a local truck factory and does bits on the side, you know, sells things on the side, televisions and things. He's quite resourceful really. He's cheerful, different from me and my other brother. He seems to be quieter and a lot more content. Better adjusted, I think, than we were. I think may be it was because my parents were older and they themselves weren't such a neurotic mess as they were when they were bringing me and the other brother up. He is more stable. He has a girlfriend, single mother. I don‘t think he is married to her.

When you were growing up did politics or religion play any big part in your life at all?

Where I grew up was a working class area, a mining area, so people....it was like an old labour area. Everybody would vote labour and you grew up with enemies who would vote conservative but you didn't really know who they were. I suppose those areas were more geographically defined in the 1950s. So, and I remember the election in 1964, my first year at grammar school. I used to make speeches on behalf of the conservative party and urged people to vote conservative. I used to go round telling people that we would win - we being the conservatives (ironic laughter from both of us). I remember once battling this message at home. All of a sudden my dad became very angry with me indeed. He tore a strip off me. He went red in the face and made a speech about how terrible and disgusting these people were and how they kept people in poverty. I felt so ashamed l changed immediately. It was like a game, a game people....you see Harold Macmillan on television. You'd imitate him. it was also in a sense of being a bit different from others because I always wanted to be a Catholic as well. I was brought up a Methodist. I fancied being a Catholic because that was something different, interesting. There was one Catholic church near me and I remember saying to a neighbour across the road, Mrs. Peppy?....because we lived next to the Wilde's. Mrs. Wilde and her three daughters, Mrs. Wilde was what was known as a slut. In other words she kept a very dirty, untidy house. I used to go an play with Christine who I knew from school but Vicky and Kathleen, Kathleen got pregnant when she was sixteen. There were all these tales about this lad from Newall? who used to come and got her pregnant. I think once there was a fight in the street when he came round and Mrs. Wilde about something.

Claiming the baby and everything. Uproar was occasionally caused in the street. I remember going round there once and having something to eat out of a saucepan and my parents being horrified that it was such a dirty house. Then I was stopped from going round and playing there and erm, because my parents had a row with them across the garden fence. They threatened my mother and father, this young bloke that got Kathleen pregnant. I used to go across the road to Mr. Peppy? and they always used to ask what religion you were. They were church of England and I said I was Methodist. I thought that was almost Catholic.

(short break to answer telephone)

I was interested in the differences between those things. Why there were dIfferences....there was this Catholic church in Newall?... very elaborate. I would have liked to have gone in and seen that kind of thing. It was quite pretty and quite plain as welI... erm, so I said to Mrs. Peppy (re: Methodism) that's almost Catholic isn't it. She said it most certainly is not. We've had enough of catholics over the road. So Catholics were identified as disreputable, people who got pregnant and things like that.

A bit more about the gay group in Ashford. Was it a kind of Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE) group?

No. It called itself the Ashford Gay Group and it vied to distinguish itself from CHE. It was run by this one man who was actually a Tory but he felt that CHE was too conservative. In his own way he was quite together and quite radical. I don't know, it may have been because of his personality that he didn't get on with people in CHE. There wasn't a CHE in Ashford anyway. There was one in Canterbury, I think. So he formed the Ashford Gay Group which in a way, I suppose, was a bit bolder in those days because CHE, what does that mean? At least with Ashford Gay Group you‘ve got to say gay haven't you. In 1974 to use the word 'gay' rather than homosexual was a bit more radical but we didn't engage in any public demonstrations or open street campaigning. I began to read literature on homosexuality such as 'Society and the Healthy Homosexual' by George Weinberg.

That's really leading into the next question. How did you become involved in Brixton?

Well, l think I got hold of a copy of Gay News or Gay Times or something and I just looked up what was where. That was quite near to where I lived and I liked the idea of it. So I got the number 3 bus to Railton Road.

When did you actually move into Brixton?

In the summer of 1976 l squatted in various places in and around Railton Road which was very adventurous. It would be nightmarish now.

When you moved into the squats did you have any expectations from that situation or did you just find it easier to live there than anywhere else?

Did I have any expectations? Yes, l suppose I did, really. There was quite a lot of excitement around the centre. l gradually became friendly with people. I suppose there were a number of expectations really because things were still developing. You come out and then in a situation like Brixton you begin to live life a bit more fully. You know, meeting more gay people and also there is this sort of, still this party atmosphere that we were.... you know....just by expressing ourselves openly as gay people we became fearless, I think. Also just living for....not living just for the moment but you were against this, that and the other. It was joyfully defiant, I suppose. So in a sense what were the

expectations? I don't mink there were kind expectations were you would say now that I am 21 or 22 it is time to build your career or anything like that. There weren't those kind of expectations because life was quite full in a way with what was there. You went off demonstrating and things like that.

What I meant by that was some people had very definite ideas about building a gay community whereas other people desperately needed somewhere to live.

Oh yes. I needed somewhere to live and l think all kinds of things started to be redefined, I suppose. Although there was a certain extremist element to it which looking back was probably a bit unrealistic. The speed of change and what was changing within oneself, I think that was the expectation. You were freed up and going to stay that way. I suppose that was a bit unrealistic considering what has happened since anyway and as you get older you find that parts of you have not changed at all.

I am trying to map things out a bit more. There seem to be a number of different ways of looking at things. There were people trying to live together in households but then there also were people trying to live together in that slightly wider community with the communal garden and everything. Then there is a third aspect to it. There are things we did outside like for example the various campaigns that we went on and all that kind of thing. l think one approach is to think about who you actually lived with difficult though that may be because there was so much swapping around. We were never in one house for more than a few months or a year or so at a time. The difficulties with this is that because it is not based on events but on people living together and the difficulties of doing that and also the unexpected pleasures as well, I am trying to get people to talk about things that are difficult to remember.

His first experience of the Gay Centre:

When I first arrived in the Centre I was struck by... l went in there quite boldly and it was all very laid back. There was a person there dressed in yellow with fuzzy black hair and one or two other people sitting around. He stirred himself, got up and asked me if I wanted a cup of tea or something. That was what's his-name, Collis Brown, because he was addicted to cough mixture. He's dead isn't he? He lost both his legs didn't he?

He lost a leg in France and was killed in a road accident.

So, l mean, he struck me I suppose as everybody did really. We were still uncovering this queer thing called homosexual and uncovering myself. You project onto everybody else the image of the queer, really, so everything was strange. You (Ian Townson) with your long hair. You were with a group of people.

I wandered in one Saturday night and there were various people slumped around. I'd had just had enough, I think....but l was okay just to wait and a few more people came in. I didn't go there for politics so much although I knew a bit about it because I had been to the NUS Gay Rights conference. There was a Gay Soc at GoIdsmith's College where I was, you see. It was a bit more to do with social/sexual reasons that I went (to the Gay Centre) than the desire to realise myself as a sexual being. That was the main reason I think. But I was sufficiently clued up and interested in other things to carry me on to more (political) things."

I mean I had to make a decision after leaving GoIdsmith's College whether I was going to get a job in a school. A comprehensive school and all that kind of thing. I got to know people in the Centre, and I could get on with certain people... and the divisions within the Centre. I was on... in one sense... I was on the right side of the division... the hierarchy, the bears as they were called.

I remember Alice, Auntie Alice, Alistair with his made-up eyes. Actually before I went to the Gay Centre l had gone to a NUS conference in Warwick where I had met Malcolm Greatbanks and Alistair. Alistair was on the desk and he had these long nails and was registering people. l remember Malcolm Greatbanks going on about, he was a bit pompous really, going on about language, how they were getting keener on language at the Gay Centre. People using 'she' and things like that. 'Ooh, listen to ‘er'. You know, they were sort of cleaning all that up. All that kind of thing came out. We've regressed to that kind of thing again now (political correctness?). So I remember him there. Then I suppose I remember meetings. Actually I remember before the summer. Alex the taxi driver used to give me lifts back to Gypsy Hill occasionally and then there were meetings at which various people were present.

Did you go to any of Andreas‘ dance classes?

Yes, I remember those vividly. They were very good. Henry was always there but I was struck by them because l had not done anything like that before. That was good because it was like an environment in which you could do a dance class and they were very good those classes. In the summer of 1976 there were also bits of theatre. There was an Irish theatre group there. Margaretta D'Arcy turned up for a discussion about Ireland with us all. There were other people around the Centre who weren't always in the Centre I think. Eventually you saw them like Gary de Vere and Colm Clifford and l remember Kay there. The person had been preceded by the legend when we talked about her and when she (he) arrived she seemed to live up to it. Julian I remember as slightly intimidating. John Lloyd. They were people who just seemed to flounce into the place. it's not a way people would carry on now. People would be a lot gentler than they were then. I remember recently in the Rue Keller? in Paris just going down the street. There was this little gay centre there and I went in. You were greeted just very gently, very graciously and given a cup of coffee. There were some cakes there. It wasn't gentle then really. It was very brittle (at the Gay Centre). You had to....most people would have been alienated (nowadays) by that so you would have to have wanted to stick in there with people who were hostile.

What kind of divisions were there at the Centre:

I just became aware of them. It appeared at the time that it was just between people who could run things but didn‘t bother about it much and people who couldn't but, you know, obstructed....made trouble because....the Gay Centre was used really as a bit of a place where people who had not got anything else to do could hang out. But I suppose really... there were divisions along class lines weren‘t there. Between people who were getting into squatting in the Railton Road houses who'd got some kind of....they'd got staying power through certain educational advantages and things. Cultural things which bound them together more. And there were street people into drugs and....god knows what. Anyway, they just didn't get it together as well, whatever the explanations were for it. But I decided I would move into Brixton anyway. But that was very difficult. I had to find a house to live in."

Despite this we seemed to produce a considerable amount of theatre.

Yes, there was a sort of energy to get that together. Street theatre, Mr. Polly and the Nuclear Family was it?

Mr. Punch's Nuclear Family.

Oh yes, Mr. Polly is H G Wells. Mr. Punch's Nuclear Family worked quite well. We were a bit like kids who would get together to design a play. It's funny in a way because I suppose that is what we were doing. In a way an important part of your life had been left out. The equation of growing up. So you always have to start as though you are having your childhood reclaimed. Integrated.

But it was also about shadowing events. The Jeremy Thorpe thing. As the trial was going on we sort of....

Well yes, that's the excitement of it all. You know you are involved with events kind of thing. Things were stirring up in the 1970s, historically, for gay people. We were moving things along and going with it really and insisting that you needed to be out and you had to write to be an out gay person. Now that's probably much more commonplace, it's accepted. Culturally that's what the bottom line is. The minimum is that people should be as open as they can in as many situations as they can. It's much more accepted.

Though the position for young gay people is quite grim.

Well there's a process that people have to go out to. They have to run some kind of gauntlet. It's not the situation where you have to be weak like CHE and end up like an old grannie at the age of 19.

You mean gayness is in the ether nowadays.

Well, you look at gay pride marches now. The modern gay and lesbian identity now is very confident. It's there. People can identify with its confidence and certain aspects of it. You may say that is superficial. Perhaps in some ways it is but there are areas of the city which people can go to which are not oppressed? Like the West End (London). There are lots of people involved in it, the way they come out. (conversation followed about in the early days how the grim edifices of the Royal Vauxhall Tavern and the Elephant and Castle plus Father Redcap provided the meagre and unwelcoming social/cruising places. Also bit about the closure of the FR by the police in 1974 and its triumphant reopening in late 1980s)

Where did you live:

"I started teaching English as a foreign language but that wasn't a career....a proper job. I found it was quite difficult. It was a very hot summer when I moved to Brixton in 1976. I moved into 94 Railton Road for a while....and that was attacked by some of those people....those white, National Front types. Anyway they were certainly anti-gay. I moved across the road and then it was difficult. I mean there was support and there wasn't support in a sense. You really did in a way have to prove yourself with the people on Railton Road. The together ones...the cluster In I59 (Railton) and 146 Mayall Road...it was difficult to kind of do It....to be self-reliant in a certain way. It was hard because we were all being attacked (extemally). Eventually it settled down and we opened up 152 (Mayall Road) and gradually the 152/159 houses expanded. When the Gay Centre closed everything became centred on the houses. Life became a lot more settled and I got involved in things in a more organised way. Except that living, looking back, living was a bit chaotic. I used to live in 152 with Ian (Townson) and Terry Stewart and it was just, you know, it had its difficulties. ....and then John Lloyd...."

What effect did living in the squats have on your lifestyle:

"l didn't think of it as a Iifestyle. I feel slightly irritated at that kind of categorising really. l‘ve never seen myself as a lifestyle person. Style as being a defining thing. l suppose there is a style to it but that's not the most important thing. There's a polymixture of really kind of thinking to myself: well, I'm really getting to grips with things and l think I did. I think l began to feel more kind of powerful."

"I think from that summer (1976) all the way through....there was generally a sort of very convivial atmosphere with people. Like people being in and out of each others houses. There were arguments but they didn't seem to be the kind of devastating things that they became later. People didn't freeze and everything. It was fluid among people. That must have been something to do with the general age group of everybody in the houses at the time."

"I think it was a time when it was still 159 and 157 were one church really when they sort of cut a hole in the wall (to join the two houses together as one) and it wasn't just for confession (laughter). I think it was already fairly established. It was a very established house. There were lots of things happening in the back gardens which always seemed very nice. I enjoyed the atmosphere and everything. That seemed to continue for me, really, all the way through. lt was very lively. l know I felt very lively at that time..."

"....but there were already certain things starting to happen, I think, that I couldn't have carried on with. Like being surrounded by people who were totally dependent. Well, I mean, we were all dependent on each other for different things but some people just proved to be a total dead weight....I think that was the problem really....people got weighed down, bogged down and challenges to people became very sharp and very mannered and confrontational. There was either too much care or too much confrontation. Not really anything which could transform both those things into something that could be used positively. The confronting ones, the activists, became separated from the caring ones at l59....it was a real division between people. But I suppose I allied myself with confrontation really."

"I came out. I told my parents and all that. Being loud and out and open everywhere. On the street. It was a way of life from now on really and it wasn't a style. It was more an explosion really and I supposed that's how things would be from now on....and it did carry on with quite a lot of energy for quite a long time. But politically it went out of Brixton (community). I got involved in the Gay News defence thing and there was a core of people in Brixton who were involved in that and went to the meetings. But I think local activity diminished from that point. But there was still quite a lot of support living there. People kept in touch."

How difficult was it for you to live with people in the community:

"I mean I sort of survived it. I got through it somehow and I moved out of 152 where lan (Townson) and Jim (Townson) were living and I moved into 146 (Mayall) with John Lloyd. But I don't know. It's difficult to interpret all that really. I certainly remember it now. It just got very difficult, very hard but that was partly the relationship with John. Constant demands. I don't think I ever, in the time that I was in the houses at Railton Road, really thought clearly enough about people who give me the sort of support I really needed. It wasn't really their fault. I think it was probably mine. I make demands in different directions. For example the person who....one of the strongest friendships I had then was with Colm (Clifford) and looking back it would have been far better for me and it would have been quite good for Colm for us to have moved in together. We never really did but I think if l had broached him and made the demands, thought of it in that way, it could have happened. I don't know. I suppose I'm a bit self-denying in certain ways."

SG made it Clear that his co-habiting with CC was not as a lover:

"Oh, no. I never saw relationships in the houses in terms of free-floating sexuality. I mean, my relationship with John Lloyd wasn't like that. It certainly wasn't free floating. It wasn't shared with anyone else and if it was It was extremely fraught...I think we were absolutely monogamous and l think that was the dynamic of it. That was what we chose. I don't know there was....I mean, sexuality in the houses where people were sharing sex....there is often a picture of the gay community, how some people pictured us all, of people having continuous orgies. I mean it was....people couldn't cope with that. I don't think so, really. They perhaps could in some of the houses. Perhaps they did in 159 but I think that must have been problematic. It certainly didn't happen in the houses that I lived in. Most people were single but others paired off. There was me and John Lloyd at the time. In 159 there was David (Simpson) and Robbie (Roberto Campagna) and I don't know about the others. Were they all dated pairs. I don't know....Terry Stewart and Jeff (Jeffrey Saynor). Maybe Jamie (Jamie Hall) and Petal (Peter Cross)."

The reasons why SG didn't really get to grips with living in the community:

"What I am trying to say is, that as far as I'm concerned, there were certain things I missed....that l didn't grasp when I was living there in personal terms. That has political significance to do with ways of relating, ways of living in a house. I never gave it enough importance I don't think. Partly, I was always out doing things. I was always acting (theatre) and I think looking back I would have wanted to have been more constructive in terms of relationships in a house at that time.... with people I felt closer to as friends. But those questions were continually overwhelmed by things that were going on like the theatre group and acting in gay festivals. Those things meant being overwhelmed in activity really. There was also the difficulties In doing the houses up and all that kind of thing. I never really got to grips with it. So there are things that I neglected. l'm thinking more now in terms of the earlier part, 1976/77 and early 78. Things began to change after that."

What kind of issues caused heated disputes and splits in the community:

"There was the heterosexual relationship between Anna (Duhig) and John Stanbridge. Earlier than this Alistair (Kerr) thought there were some straight people about to move in to 148 (Mayall Road), where Andreas (Demetriou) and Henry (Pim) lived. There was a generalised panic with T shirts proclaiming 'Castrate Heteros' and things. But it didn‘t really happen. It was never really an issue. Where one of the breaks started to happen was when people in 153 (Railton Road) joined the SWP and started to move away from gay-identified politics and the ideas of gay separatism. Terry Stewart and Colm (Clifford) did to for a while as well. That was a kind of break away and that house became more and more isolated. The houses did start to become more singular as time went on around the end of 1978. A bit later than that probably. I think I got annoyed with all of that kind of thing. Being stuck with gay politics. I think in some ways they were right. In personal terms the co-op (Brixton Housing Co-op) has killed people there."

He elaborated further on what he meant by gay-identified politics:

"Well, the idea that there is some unity which will come out of all gay people, which will transform them and the rest....you've just got to build it and let it work away and we'll all come together. You know, Gay Centres everywhere and people on the streets....it will build towards some kind of confrontation....which was the sort of picture I had and I don't believe in that anymore. I don't think it's true. I actually don't think it was ever really true but it was how we felt. I don't think it was really about what was possible. Even In better times (than now) I think we misconceived certain of the questions. They were misconceived because I suppose we were very full of ourselves which had its good sides and its bad sides and I think there was a kind of chauvinism about it in a very negative way which didn't relate enough to other questions. It didn't take into account the difficulties of people living outside of the sort of sheltered environment of Railton Road. Railton Road isn't sheltered in lots of ways. There's bloody holes in the roof (laughter). In other ways, to me, it was a very internalised thing. At its heaviest it's just really deadly because people just don't move outside of their own backyard at all and it's a dulling kind of thing."

Where the splits mainly political or because of personality differences:

"It's difficult to say. I think to sort of make them very grand and say they were all about huge principles would be making it very grand really. It's because people couldn't really talk very directly to each other on a personal level that they happened and....l suppose there are lots of reasons for that really. You can't really pin any single one down. But I don't think it was....I don't think there was any great kind of political, decisive significant battle being fought out between certain houses on Railton Rd of heterosexuality versus homosexuality or tensely internalised personal politics versus street politics. There were those influences at work but they weren't decisive in Railton/Mayall Road. People may have thought they were at certain times. l don't know."

Was it because the high hopes and euphoric expectations in the early days were crumbling and people were beginning to go off in different directions:

"I think so, yes. That was influenced by the political climate of the time that they were able to sustain that (euphoria) in the first place. Certainly it is connected with that but I think among the high hopes there were high claims as well. High handedness at times. People couldn't live up to it really. Not enough criticisms of how we thought about things I suppose. People would be critical with each other at times in a very confronting, heavy way which enabled people to avoid other issues then because they'd have a few scars. The contradiction between the givers and takers. The poor state of the houses and outside aggro were contributory factors to community tensions but they were not decisive. No, l think it's more complicated than that. I don't think it's a question of if only we had decent housing we'd have had decent relationships....l don't think it's necessarily as simple as that."

On the redevelopment of the gay squats into Brixton Housing Co-operative flats:

"Now that the houses are going to be done up it's interesting that people are choosing to live as individuals, totally. It's going to be, as far as I can make out, single person units. lt then no longer exists, the idea of living together. l don't think it will be the total end. You don't know what that might bring about....

There will still be the communal garden:

"Yes, but it's not the same. That's not to say that it should stay as it is... that people should be forced to live together or anything like that. But there's a whole mixture between choice and circumstance and putting up with things and, you know, enjoying things. I don't think people have really ever had an idealised community. It was always referred to as the community. it was more flexible so that there could be more variation in the way people lived. There could be privacy and things. A commune is supposed to be free-flowing. That is... if you are forced to be free-flowing at times that can be quite rigid. There's flexibility and there's room... space... for people. l suppose that is partly why it lasted "

In response to changed circumstances:

"Attitudes in the council (Lambeth) changed. There was a change of Labour council (to the left) and there weren't the evictions kind of thing. Now that the houses have been bought and because people lived longer than they expected to, you know, the big bang hasn't come. lt neither became the gay revolution nor the gay massacre in the way that people sometimes luridly expected it to be. So of course it lasted. I mean, most people moved in there in their early twenties (implying youthful resilience)."

What did the Brixton gay community mean to you in terms of self-confidence and coming out:

"Well for me it did give me a lot more confidence. It's certainly given me that. You didn't do things about it. You didn't say you were gay because you were frightened of those kinds of things. Coming out in Brixton was a great help with that. You did get people all around you, you know. You got that support and people did talk about their lives.There was an openness in that sense and.... boisterous and party-like most of the time and that's what l needed for a few years."

In response to activities at the Gay Centre including Andreas Demetriou's dance classes:

"Yes, they were very good. Really positive. I remember that. I really enjoyed those....and I really think that. ...the gay centre had a few of those things which made it realIy....we should have had more of that kind of thing. It might have have sustained itself more. It was quite exciting."

Would these activities have 'blossomed' more with better run, more secure and spacious premises:

"Yes, but then again if you seemed to have a better equipped, better place it would have made more demands on people to be more committed to it. It would (need to be) a different sort of people running it then because people living in Railton/Mayall Roads weren't living in such a way as to make long term commitments to things outside the houses (difficult). Even if they were doing things for a long time l didn't feel as though I could commit myself. The gay centre in Birmingham that I visited was properly run, properly organised with rotas and there was a gay switchboard on the premises and all that kind of stuff. It was different kinds of people living in different kinds of ways running that. I think it would have demanded that, really. But the politics of the Centre on Railton Road were characterised by certain Ideas that people had coming from early gay liberation and sixties counter culture. People thought it would run itself spontaneously.

On the observation that there were those who were aware that the Gay Centre could not run itself:

"Yeah, but the ideal was that it should be open all the time every day until 1 o'clock, 2 o'clock, kind of thing and there was a lot of....flexibility and there were a lot of people who just used it and abused It... lt was the situation as well wasn't it in the middle of the city. I mean it happens in Gay's The Word because you get people who come and sit in there all day who can't look after themselves. They just go on and on and on and on. Total pressure of weight on you that....What do you do when you open yourself out as a social outlet in this society, you know where so many people have problems. Broken lives in a complete mess. How do you deal with it? That was a lot of the problem with the Gay Centre wasn't it. We thought it would solve itself. Walking through the Gay Centre you would enter a specially charmed place which would begin to dissolve what society had imposed on something like that. There was that sort of atmosphere about it anyway."

"I mean certain people did sort of grow enormously from it. From being in terrible states. But the level of support and continued support and the growth that was needed couldn't have happened in the four walls of that building no matter who was around. D'you know what I mean? It's funny looking back on it all and thinking about it, I don't feel clear at all and I don't know when I will or if I ever will."

SG moved out of the houses because of irreconcilable hostilities between people and lack of personal growth:

"Well, I ran out, didn't I (laughter). It's partly a problem I'm still trying to work through in personal terms... having sufficient control in my own life. Partly it was, you know, l was leaving anyway. What happened to me was my exhaustion with the place anyway and wanting to move. l'd been there for four and a half years... my own lack of grip I suppose on personal things. Patterns which had run on and are still with me in some ways... just left me with a horror of the place really which has taken me quite a time to recover from. So I literally moved out just... hating it really. It doesn't, you know, jaundice all of my experience there. That was the end of 1980 that I left, yeah."

On the various theatre productions that we wrote and performed. See the section on theatre for descriptions of each play:

"That was the end of 1980 and we'd had performed 'Sexual Outlaws' and Brixton Faeries 'Minehead Revisited' in 1979. You see that's interesting because that was important really. We've not talked about that. It's funny the way you talk about some things but you don't talk about others. That was important. It still is. Especially 'Minehead Revisited'. lt was enjoyable and it worked. It was important and....people really got things from it and....for me, I found there were certain things that I could do then in terms of like shaping dramatic events. Writing, a certain amount of writing and things....that was good. Before that I had done 'Out of It'."

"We did all those workshops didn't we. Ian (Townson) and Bill (Thornycroft) wrote things in the workshops. It was good. It was creative for all the bloody rows and door-slammings and all that sort of nonsense (laughter). It was alright. I used to do these workshops at the Oval (Oval House Theatre), 'Sexual Outlaws' and things, which Pete Freer had asked me to take up. Julian (Hows) was not involved in the production and was annoyed about it. I should have discussed it with him more. But then there was the thing with Colm (Clifford) whereby I pulled out of being Involved with 'Gents'. I personally couldn't have done both that and 'Sexual Outlaws' anyway but....l decided to do the SO thing because it was away from the community. I don't know....with that kind of community....that sort of interlocking...it gets very sort of incestuous really and the tensions build up and they became anti-creative for me after a while. For me, anyway, working at the Oval was much more....was much better because it was different people and it was going out, it was pushing out. You came away at night so that there was a freshness and things but sort of living among it all the time it wore me down in a way and that was happening with 'Gents'. I wasn't prepared to battle through the power trips with Colm about it all."

How creative where you after moving away from the houses:

"....since I moved out of Railton Road. Yes, I think I have developed. Partly a lot of It is my relationship with Nigel (Young) who has been very important because we wrote 'Risk' together and we wrote 'Shoot' together and....l think I have in the time I have moved away from Railton Road thought a lot more reflectively about how I am right now. It's been less dramatic I suppose and a bit more realistic in that way. Thinking about theatrical themes, taking as its starting point, gay men who are like us really. They're not stereotypes at all. They're around the lives 0f....they are not the dominant ones. They are not.... upper middle class gay men. They're not....rent boys. They're about something like our lives, trying to make connections with that. Because, in terms of continuing living and growing and not retreating into....not exiling yourself or whatever. We have to keep looking at that really."

Was 'Shoot' too parochial. Too much just about Brixton gays and their situations:

"....I think in terms of my own life, I mean those are the priorities, you know. Actually getting to grips with that and relationships. Trying to get....to get a handle on them in not such a grand way. l think being parochial....well I mean....Dewar (Adair) has just come back from Germany. He's from Scotland and he's saying that restaurants in London won't accept Scottish pound notes because, as you said, they are so bloody parochial down here which I think is true. People in London think they are the centre of the world. Well they are not. Where is the centre? D'you know what I mean?

The acceptable face of theatre versus the radical and challenging forms:

"It's got to be scrubbed hasn't it. Sensible....either Oscar Wilde or one of his bloody rent boys or something. (Radical theatre) gets too close to home. It threatens to break out and grab hold of you perhaps and ....they don't want that to happen and that's partly why there is a lot of disarray, personal and political disarray around, because people aren't looking at their lives in any critical or entertaining or whatever way. It's not lively culturally In that sense."

The mad axe man episode? I think I'd just arrived at the Gay Centre just after everyone had been arrested and I sat in the Gay Centre all evening while people were down at the police station with someone called Frank (Root?). Eventually people came back and it was incredibly hot that night. It was a real Tennessee Williams night. Well he came back very briefly and sort of threatened somebody. I can't remember who. He'd got an axe the second time. I remember seeing him. I remember the police bringing the chair back in bits (that the mad axe man had been with hit to knock him out) saying "Your chair gentlemen" apparently. Yeah, whether any of this was organised or not is anybody's guess. They just sort of came out of the woodwork (referring to the youths who attacked us on other occasions with a possible connection to the Mad axe man and National Front).

National Gay News Defence Committee: Discussing the photographs on a banner on the first demonstration to defend Gay News against prosecution for blasphemous libel:

Mary Whitehouse plus Anita Bryant equals....and then a big photograph of Hitler. Then over the top was Homosexuals Fight Back. We went down Kings Road (Chelsea) and went passed Sloane Square to Redcliffe Square, I think. One of the speakers was Nicholas Walter of the National Secular Society and that was the first immediate response. It was a very good demonstration and then we built the National Gay News Defence Committee out of that. We had a demonstration the following February 1978 in Trafalgar Square. Out of the Gay News Defence Committee, it created a lot of energy and we wanted to carry on, we formed the All London Gay Groups against racism, sexism, and fascism. Then at a conference we decided to become the Gay Activists‘ Alliance. We had lots of conferences all over the country.

Are there any topics that you want to talk about that haven't been covered:

"I don't know. It's just that for me it's the difficulty of placing things. It's not as though history ls over or that it's ever over from the vantage point of the present. D'you know what I mean. If you can say that then that carries on moving as well. It's difficult to define it and say it's in the perfect tense as thought it's the finished article which you can now comment on. Because the comment on it will alter as well. It changes. It is not fixed. it's consequences are not inbred either. I think the very important things that have happened to me were negative things. Living in Brixton has really forced, challenged certain things, that has ....let certain things go to pot and that's not necessarily the fault of anybody. D'you know what I mean? That is my responsibility in the end. I have been able to pick up certain things in the end....l think what became for me one of the easiest things to do was to put things off or not to develop in certain ways or just carry on through the fact that you could always talk to somebody, kind of thing. There's lots of value in that especially when you first move into a place and you are first coming out. But that can be....especially getting your own space....a very difficult thing to do in those circumstances. I mean, not actually giving yourself enough time, is very wearing as well. Sometimes that used to leave me totally worn out and rubbed out. That's one thing I don't really miss now l must say. it's something that l needed for a while but it got too much.

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