Author: David WISEMAN

One of the saving graces of working in this area, at the HEA at this time,

was that the advertising campaign was not the only area of work being developed aimed at ‘MWHSWM’. The HEA had another department at the time, headed by Lee Adams, whose focus was on Professional and Community Development. It had initially been proposed to develop an arm of the work that would not be overseen quite so ‘directly’ by the HEA, with its focus based more on working in different communities of men to develop educational work based on better understanding HIV/AIDS and related safer sex information. This was always to have a less directive approach than the other areas of work and as such should have allowed for a far more nuanced and targeted delivery.

In mid 1989, Lee had gathered a small group of educators committed to the development of community development work in this field . As it was an area that I felt I had at least something of a background, it was usually a mental space that I felt rather more comfortable being in. There were a number of regular meetings initially, with this small working group consisting of Peter Gordon, Hazel Slavin, Russell Caplan (who worked in her area), Lee and myself, in order to develop a strategic rationale for creating what eventually became known as the MESMAC project (MEn who have Sex with Men: Action in the Community). This in many respects was to go on to become the lasting legacy of the HEA’s AIDS Division (later Programme). In fact, some workers who were recruited in the very early days of this community development (CD) programme are still involved with MESMAC projects around the UK today. Whilst it was not something that I ever imagined would be completely free of controversy, it was nevertheless felt likely to be an area where there was less concern that the HEA had to be seen to ‘toe a particular line’. In fact it seemed that the term ‘MWHSWM’ was perhaps preferred, as it was less political than the term ‘gay’, perhaps because the first term was a clinical statement of fact, more in keeping with the health related objectives of the HEA. However, there was clearly even then, a ‘tension’ between the community development angle of the HEA’s work and its target audiences. The HEA (or rather, its funding masters at the DoH) was to attempt to overcome this problem in a few years by abolishing the Professional and Community Development division.

Initially, Peter Aggleton, a researcher at the University of Warwick had been hired as a consultant to develop a proposal for HIV/AIDS related work, where he suggested specifically targeting gay men first and then tackling other MWHSWM, but whilst this approach was used with the advertising campaign and in developing other materials, this was not taken forwards within MESMAC, although in practice much of the initial work by the MESMAC project was in fact with self defined gay men. Peter Aggleton had also made it clear in his development paper that he thought the area would potentially be fraught with difficulties, which should not be underestimated and indeed this proved to be the case. For me personally, the process had involved a steep learning curve in understanding the theories behind the development of the MESMAC work; I had worked in communities for some time without fully understanding relevant and critical theories of engagement. It was this area in retrospect that I think the interview panel had been concerned about, on my initial appointment.  

The reality was that the scope and scale of the project, at least to some extent, was developed in the minds of those involved, as it took shape, in-situ. Initially in what was being developed, I had fed back the idea to my boss Derek, that it would involve safer sex workshops for groups of people but as the complexities of the work and its scale were discussed, the teams thinking recognised that if it were truly to be about ‘community development’ the key words we needed to use were peer education and felt needs. That’s a phrase which came back to haunt me in one way or another for the rest of my life in fact! The reality was that safer sex workshops were an easier thing to get agreed than the rather risky concept of ‘felt needs’ (safer sex workshops were safer..!). I can still imagine the great and good muttering ‘What, ask men what they actually think would be best for them? Heaven help us’!  It is also true, that at that stage I was, at least to some extent, in two minds about how effective peer education was; there were, in my opinion, definite pros and cons to it, which I understand and can articulate now far better than I could back in 1989. 

My initial relationship with the group (especially Peter and Hazel) was quite stormy and strained at times. This is not a surprise however, as I tried to resolve the tensions between the Community Development area and the AIDS Division at the HEA, both very much at the cutting edge in developing the raison d’etre, the ‘nitty gritty’ of the actual work programme. The reality is also that the teams expectations of the type of work that might be developed were greater than the funding body envisaged (or probably wanted). The others saw the possibility of excellent CD work being carried out in the field, whilst I saw sensationalist press headlines in the red tops and anguished meetings at Board level. However, there were always time schedules at the HEA: we had allocated money to be spent in a certain year or lose it, hence speed was essentially of the essence.

There were issues and delays about the development of the research team on the project too, which eventually appointed Alan Prout from the University of Keele, as the key research lead and a project research worker, Katie Deverall (who was, in fact, to go on to produce one of the most interesting and valuable critiques of the early period of the HIV/AIDS response by organisations and communities that has been written, in my opinion, Sex, Work and Professionalism in 2001). I was happy with the way the evaluation was carried forwards though, I always said ‘at least it would be hard for anyone to damn us for not evaluating things properly’ (which is not to say there weren’t issues to resolve from time to time).

In the initial development meeting, we had invited forty people representing concerned groups across the UK to meet together to discuss potential ways forward for MESMAC. However, as the group discussion size was limited, only 2-3 black representatives were invited and they were unhappy that more black and minority ethnic (BAME) people had not been included. The agreed way forwards was to convene a second supplementary development forum, especially for representatives of BAME groups a few months later. This latter meeting was very stormy though, as many people there expressed concern at the HEA’s past performance in adequately representing these groups (in all its work) and trust was very limited. However, it wasn’t a disaster, as after much discussion and compromises from all sides the group accepted the proposal for a MESMAC group working with BAME men in a community development (CD) format. It was also agreed that a BAME development subgroup would be developed and  two BAME men from this group would join the main men’s advisory group also, to bring their suggestions and concerns forward, to feed into the main body of the work.

In the proposal there had been three sites that it was suggested that be funded, and the HEA had always wanted London to be one of the sites, run from the THT, recognising its key role in working with the affected communities in the past five years. However, there was a strong feeling from the advisory group that London was always where things were ‘at’ and that it was important that the project worked with other more northern based and rural communities instead. As a result and because it was strongly felt that London should not be left out of this important CD project, particularly by myself and Derek, it was agreed to increase the budget substantially to allow for London to be included as well, allowing for four sites in all. 

Recruitment of those to work in the project was hampered by the fact that very little was really understood about the process of CD within these communities, there simply weren’t the people around at the time with experience of putting this relatively new ideology into practise in the field. As a result, four training weekends were set up to explain the theory and processes to those involved. This resulted in further delays in getting the project up and running in the field. To make things more complicated , half way through this process it was decided to abolish P&CD section of the HEA and Lee Adams left the HEA to work in Sheffield, where the work was less of a political hot potato (although because of her vital expertise she was kept on as a consultant). We also had heard that the AIDS division itself might be going and funding withdrawn, due partly to restructuring at the DOH, partly due to a controversial (heterosexual) ‘good sex guide’ it had published, which the papers had picked up on (‘Goverment agency produces smutty porn at taxpayers expense scandal etc) and partly due to the nature of the work it was doing, which was felt to be, to put it bluntly, too radical. All of these things made the initiation of the CD project very difficult, as it pressed a lot of alarm bells in the HEA Board’s minds. At the time I wondered if such a convoluted set of circumstances was ever likely to occur again.

Actually, I was being a little naive here, as I have come to realise since then, that the development of such progressive, ‘forward thinking’ pieces of work often requires constant, intense determined energy to push past the difficulties and challenges it faces on all sides to get things rolling. The commitment of the team involved was substantial and sustained. Derek & I had to fight a rearguard action during the uncertain period when the AIDS division looked like it might be mothballed, particularly from the team & community who wanted greater commitment that the project would be funded and go ahead as planned. Derek also started to pull away from MESMAC somewhat too, as his work in developing and supporting other areas became more necessary. It was a very difficult and uncertain period for all involved. I started to give more time to MESMAC along with the development of all the other work and felt I was being pulled in all directions.

By this stage the four sites had been agreed, based in Newcastle, Leeds, Leicester and London. Hazel & Peter started to become very involved with the sites development and to take on their concerns, which they brought up with me, which led to friction in our professional relationships. In meeting after meeting I was placed in the position of defending the HEA and its actions, whilst I often felt that I agreed more with the concerns of the workers at the project sites. I often privately felt in an intolerable position, putting the views of the HEA across, which I disagreed personally with, and was hence treated as the ‘Big Bad Daddy.’ That sense that when you come into a room everyone suddenly stops talking and stares. I felt however that I played the role of a ‘scapegoat’, as that is what the situation needed, someone people could pin the faults of the project onto and feel annoyed or angry with.

In fact, I felt that throughout the project there had been too little time spent supporting each other. As project managers we were after all only human with friends, colleagues even partners, who were affected by, often dying of HIV/AIDS and the pressure at times was simply immense and intense. There were some meetings after which I locked myself into a toilet and just cried. There was not enough discussion that what we were doing, facing, was difficult and problematic: it was a new, sensitive area in many ways, pulling together sexuality, the men we were working with, the relationships between voluntary and statutory sectors, the way that the workers, the target groups, felt about Central Government and its power and of course all the personal relationships that were involved. Being an AIDS project too it had tremendous sensitivity for those afflicted with the disease; everyone felt so strongly about it, fear, grief for those who had died. The whole situation was very potent and we hadn’t spent enough time admitting this and discussing it with each other. As I’ve mentioned before, at no time was the idea of grief counselling muted in the HEA’s wider campaign and I regret not trying to develop this more now, at this stage.

Mention should particularly go to Katie Deverall, as the evaluator, who did indeed express these concerns in the reports she made, although to some extent they were ‘lost off’ the final report, due to the need for brevity in feeding back the vast body of knowledge and work undertaken by the sites eventually. Interestingly, I think I may have been in the ‘Norman Fowler position’ here, being seen to represent the ‘big bad HEA,’ whilst feeling very  deeply about the issues involved in it.  

Since then I’ve realised  this is quite a regular thing for people working in positions where their personal views are at a mismatch with their public voice on the matter. In government this is usually what happens when mInisters resign, where the relief of no longer being in that ‘difficult position’ is greater than any considerations for career or job security. I certainly wasn’t the first person to be in that situation nor the last but it did feel profoundly isolating and deeply painful at times, causing a great amount of stress for me (and indeed many others working in this challenging area at that time). In the future, as the project continued into the 1990s, we were able to resolve some of these difficult issues and I was to feel less pressured by it all, feel less the scapegoat (though that role would then fall onto others still heavily involved..) but by the end of 1989 that was still some way off yet. My role felt like it was still ‘just getting through each day’ and managing damage limitation when necessary. But for MESMAC as a whole, just getting it through the first year was at least a positive, as it seemed at times a very unlikely possibility. Thirty years later projects like MESMAC Leeds (now Yorkshire MESMAC) still continue their outreach and support work with MWHSWM (though the acronym is outmoded and outdated now). If you had said to me in 1989 that MESMAC would still be going in the 202o´s I would I think, have been shocked, both by its longevity but also the painful realisation that the work would still be necessary three decades on, as well.  

Sex, love and life (The Sacrifice) 3.06 One month in, heads down..

Sex. love and life: an Index

So it had been, with a natty black briefcase and some trepidation,

that I went through the front doors of Hamilton House into the HEA in the first week at its brand new base,  just off London’s Euston Road. One consolation was, that as I lived in Somerstown, just behind what would soon be the rapidly ascending new British Library, I was a mere five minute walk away.

As I had not come up through the ranks of a commercial advertising agency, it was initially somewhat of a surprise to me to get to grips with the process by which we would need to plan national advertising campaigns. Like the campaigns for the AIDS tombstones and the Pregnant man, the creative process was quite a complex one between the agency (in this case Boase Massimi Pollitt or ‘BMP‘ as everyone called it) and the client (us).

BMP was founded in October 1968 by Martin Boase, Gabe Massimi and Stanley Pollitt, who had previously worked at the Pritchard Wood agency. They tried to buy it out, failed, and so created their own new agency in 1968. Massimi left the firm in 1971 (due in part to an internal row about what went on to become its most famous commercial) and Stanley Pollitt died, following a heart attack in 1979, leaving just Martin Boase of the original team in the 1980s. In 1988 BMP had a very good pedigree, as ad agencies go. They had produced some very well known, even, it is fair to say, much loved work in the previous decade, from 1973 onwards for Cadbury’s Smash, a powdered mashed-potato mix with martian robots like the ‘K9’ dog in Doctor Who at that time. In fact it was voiced by Peter Hawkins, who was indeed the voice of Doctor Who’s ‘Daleks’, amongst other creations.

Martian robot 1: Humans clean, then peel -then boil and then smash up -real potatoes to make their mash! All robots: Hahaha. Robot 2: They- are- clearly- a- most- primitive -race)

followed by the jingle that will still resonate with anyone alive, in that era: 

Family, all together: ‘For mash, get Smash’.

It won the advertising magazine bible ‘Campaign’s award for the ‘Advert of the century’. As a product, well, it still tasted pretty disgusting but that was the seventies for you and we all bought it. They also created the Cresta bear (‘it’s frothy, man’), the Hofmeister bear, the Humphreys for Unigate Dairy and for John Smith’s beer ‘Arkwright’. These were all the work of its most famous creative director, John Webster (1934-2006). The Independent newspaper later described him as “the best TV commercials creator in Britain, when Britain was the best in the world” and The Guardian described him as “the greatest TV advertising author of the late 20th century”.

As well as these creative gems in their portfolio, the company also had a history of having a strong relationship with the Labour Party, which had dated  from the early 1970s, when it placed press advertisements for the TUC, attacking the then-Conservative government’s Industrial Relations Bill. It also created the advertising for the Labour Party in several successive general election campaigns and Chris Powell, (BMP DDB Needham’s chief executive until 2004) is the brother of Jonathon Powell, who was Tony Blair’s Chief of staff to the PM. Suffice to say none of this went down terribly well with Conservative Central Office at the time; some might even think it was a recipe for potential confrontation. Actually I knew nothing of this relationship for some time but when I realised it, my heart sank. Adverts on sex were already notoriously controversial, the government was planning section 28 to stop kids being taught about ‘gay sex’, we were planning to be doing explicit ad campaigns for young gay men. Again, what could possibly go wrong? 

Given the complexity of the ideas we wanted to get across, the very targeted nature of the audience and the fact we, as a team, had no relationship whatsoever with them initially, it was likely to be an ‘interesting’ experience, to say the least. Still I was genuinely keen: enthused about the nature of getting on with it, as I always was with other projects I had developed in the last decade, although clearly this was on another scale.

At that time, such agencies were lavish affairs, with large expense accounts, lavish premises and a whole culture built up within them. If you’ve seen Mad Men you’ll have some idea, though this was a decade or so on from that and in the UK but, essentially, not a huge amount had changed. The budgets they worked with were huge, as this was the age of the ‘grand vision’, when the importance and effect of advertising a product could be almost (but not quite) budgetless. Millions of pounds were often spent creating spectacular commercials for TV and cinematic consumption. It was the age of Schweppes and of Cinzano Rosso, with Joan Collins and Leonard Rossiter on a plane, of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, and of those people patterns from the air in the glitzy advertising created for British Airways. However, we were looking for something a little less glitzy but that would still potentially stand out and be effective- though not through promoting fear, as we genuinely believed the TBWA Tombstone ads had.

In terms of process, first, we would draft a creative brief for the agency to work with; this would then go over to the creative team in Paddington, at BMP’s swanky offices, who were assigned to our account. They would come up with a number of creative ideas to respond to the brief and draw up some rough representations of the advertising concept to present to us, the client. We would then be expected to choose one of the concepts and they would then develop a strap, write the body copy and create the image to go with it, which they would then present to us. We would then say ‘yes, marvellous’, they would book the space for it, in an agreed list of publications and we would all sit back, happy with a job well done. That, at least, is how it was meant to go but it was seldom quite as simple.

The issue was that there were a lot of people with their fingers in the pie. It had to go to the DoH for agreement too and often, given the sensitivity of the material and topic this would require changes with both the proposed image and the text. Added to this, we had decided that it was necessary to get the opinion from an advisory group of around ten gay & bisexual men, representing the great and good in their respective communities: from Body Positive, the Bisexual Group, Gay Switchboard, the THT and so on. They could also ask for changes or suggest additional things, which they felt would enhance the advert or equally, based on their knowledge of the target audience, suggest why it would not be appropriate and how it might be tweaked to make it so. Using all this feedback, the creative team at BMP would try and make it work and still ‘more or less’ fit the creative brief.   

This tended to mean that the original concept would often be ‘watered down’ to make it fit  the demands which were being made of it. Along with that, we were initially working with a Department that was often being carefully checked by others within the government to ensure that not too many feathers would be ruffled. When you are selling cat food, this doesn’t matter especially. When you are trying to affect people’s behaviour and to please a baying crowd this all becomes just a touch more difficult. Essentially, we often needed to fit a complex, rounded concept into a square hole. Without a doubt, some of the ideas we were trying to impart, were the most complex ones the agency had ever dealt with. They were trying to write body copy around methodologies for selling product, selling ideas that needed to appeal to a picky and often hostile audience, with very specific tastes. No one, at least initially, was quite sure how explicit we could be, hence often we started by being  fairly explicit and then watered that down, on demand. Many hours (actually days) were spent deliberating on the construction of a single sentence, trying to use appropriate language that still conveyed the concepts we were trying to get across. It was truly the lexicon of love.

By Monday 10th October I wrote in my diary: 

‘We (Derek and I) had a meeting today with the creatives from BMP. I was quite nervous and I think it must have showed. I got rather angry at one stage, with one of the creative team who seemed very resistant to our insistence that it was important to use positive images of gay men in the campaign. Nevertheless, I restrained myself as best I could’.

However, as with a lovers tiff, things blew over and by the 13th October I was writing: 

..a much better creative brief in today from the agency BMP. They seem to have grasped the hang of it better now. I think they will have problems though, when it comes to finding photographers and models for the campaign. Would it be best to simply go to an experienced gay photographers agency?

But my diary from the following day, the 14th, tells a different story:

Today was busy, I had to rewrite the BMP brief yet again.Nevertheless, I feel I’m generally working quite well there now, though.

It sometimes felt like we took two steps forwards and one step back. On bad days, one step forward and two back. Quite quickly, the agency came up with the ‘strap’ that we returned to again and again: ‘Choose safer sex’. It was fairly bland and presented sex as a commodity, a kind of ‘Omo washes whiter’, something negotiable- we had not wanted to be too prescriptive, in terms of assuming or demanding monogamy, but we wanted to be clear that this action (safer sex) was the key takeaway, the key message in the advert. The ‘body copy’ (the rest of the text, usually placed underneath the visual image) then expanded on that idea, to enable a better understanding of what and why safer sex was important.   

A week later on the 20th October I was meeting Nick Partridge, (now Sir Nick Partridge)  from the THT for lunch. He had been on the panel at the HEA when I was interviewed. I wrote:

‘He agreed that I‘d done a bad interview but also that they had thought I was not intellectual enough for the job (my words not his, he was kinder!). I was tempted to say ‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn’. I held my breath.‘

The very first adverts we put together were quite simple in concept; we developed a brief to simply explain the necessity for, and practice of, safer sex with a (same sex) sexual partner. Whilst the agency knew it could not be very explicit with the text or image, however the ad was going into the gay press, so it clearly needed to show men engaging with each other together in some way.

On the 26th October, we all met the BMP creative team as they presented the ‘rough’s’ for the first MWSWM campaign. In the meeting itself I was calmer this time, having soon learnt that losing your temper was not a useful way forward. In my diary though, I don’t hold back.

Rather poor headline straps I thought. ‘They used to say masturbation was bad for you, now it could save your life’. And ‘if you thought safer sex was boring this could change your position’. Tacky in the extreme in my opinion. But our lot thought ‘it was a good stab’ (politeness wins the day). Bruce Weber’ ish photography. I just smiled and said ‘there was a lot of food for thought’.

Which there certainly was.

Sex, love and life: (The Sacrifice) 3.05 MESMAC strides out and continues..

Sex, love and life: An index

At that time I was working a supervisor for the fledgling ‘National AIDS Helpline’

which had expanded in the previous year to be funded by the DoH and to run for around 12 hours each day from two bases, in Glasgow and London. In fact it wasn’t officially opened as such though, for some five months, on World AIDS day on the 1st December 1988, by David Mellor (the Minister for Health by that time) with the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Donald Acheson also present (whom like Lord Wolfenden I have been reliably told by sources, always ‘stood up’ for the gay community).

Based on the experience that I had had, in the field, over the past decade or so, I considered applying for the job. My concern remained, that as our experience with Clause 28 had shown, we would never get very far if we remained ‘on the sidelines’; or ‘outside the door’; we needed to be influencing opinion from the inside to really effect any change. I was really worried that the government were going to go down the ‘Iceberg’ and ‘Volcano’ route by producing something equally shocking for gay men and that this would have a hugely negative effect on the community, if it did so. I knew from my personal day to day experience and my work at Lesbian and Gay Switchboard and NAH by then, that gay men were struggling. Even I was struggling and I was meant to be the one being supportive, for heaven’s sake!  Should I apply for it and try and work ‘from the inside’ to develop something that would be more positive, more supportive, more useful to gay and bisexual men, in the messages and information it supplied?

My diary for the 16th July 1988 gives very little away though. It briefly notes that: 

‘I decided to at least apply for the HEA job on Thursday, it’s called a ‘Men who have Sex with Men’ post (somewhat strange terminology?!) and has a two year contract. I might get an interview. An interesting, very challenging job in theory, probably hindered by rules, regulations and red tape (and potentially naff campaigns?)’.  

And that was it, I wasn’t exactly overwhelmingly positive about it was I? However, by the 1st September I was writing:

Went for the job interview at the HEA today,for the project officer job for ‘Men who have sex with Men‘ (god, that really is so unwieldy!). Seems that I got the job. A huge challenge for me to cope with it but as it‘s more or less what I‘ve decided I needed to do, I guess I‘m happy about taking on the post. I feel I should write more about such a ‘momentous‘ occasion but I think it can wait. I‘ll probably start sometime around the end of September‘.

And that’s it. If I’d had any idea at all then, just how it was going to take over the next decade of my life, I’d probably have written a lot more. I think somewhere at the back of my mind was the idea that if it went wrong I could always resign and walk away. And my brain was also occupied by a million other things at the time, related to how I thought we should be progressing messages around safer sex education. I went on to write:

‘The rushes back from the studio today for’ Kiss’ (this was the second of what became the Sex Love & Life trilogy). They look quite good, better than the others did. They are slightly overexposed for the black background we used but nothing we can’t correct in post processing production. I’m relieved and pleased again. My confidence in the actors and crew was sound. Now onto number three as soon as possible, provisionally entitled ‘Taste‘. Lots of bodies in this one!‘

My boss Derek, when we knew each other well enough, eventually told me that I did not do a very good interview, others did a lot better. Perhaps, unwittingly, my slight reticence at the idea of taking on the work was showing. However, my experience was very wide by that time and I was no longer a youngster. The panel decided to take something of a risk by inviting me to take up the position, which in my recollection now, after some thought, I accepted.  The diary tends to suggest otherwise!

The reticence I do show, however, was not altogether surprising, I knew that it was likely to be a challenge. We were going to be developing campaigns in the middle of an epidemic, we were going to be targeting groups that had not been specifically approached by the Health Authority (and by implication the Government) in this way before, there would be extremely high expectations from many health organisations (both in the statutory and non statutory sectors) in relation to the work we would present and my peers within the community and it was a new division within the HEA, with no previous history or record of achievement. What could possibly go wrong?

On the 1st September, an official letter from the personnel Department at the HEA, was drafted, duly confirming my appointment. The starting salary was to be £13,250 annually plus £1,267 London Weighting Allowance. However, it seems that it was not sent out immediately, as I didn’t receive (and accept the post) until the 22nd September, three full weeks later. I already wondered if they were having cold feet about me! The first contract was for two years, with a three to six month probationary period. In fact, if I had known the challenges we would face, I might well have hesitated even longer before ringing Teresa Norman in the HEA’s HR Department and saying ‘yes, I’ll take the job’.

On my second day there (October 4th) I wrote:

‘Today has been better than my first day at the HEA, which felt rather odd. I thought that it might be difficult to fit into the place and with the people there but today was certainly better. I’m rather out on a limb, as the office I’ve been allocated is away from the rest of the AIDS division and consequently I feel a bit cut off from it. I suppose I‘ll get used to it.

It had its uses in fact though, as I was right next door to the Chief Executive’s office, Spencer Hagard at the time and it was surprising what you could glean from the comings and goings into it. 

Also, a bit annoyed as my contract is in fact only 18 months now, as the job was supposed to be advertised in April and was postponed for some time. I feel I’ll get along with people though. Whilst I shouldn’t moan, I’ve do have a feeling it’s going to be quite arduous at times.

And yet it’s funny too how people come into your life , when you have no idea quite how large an influence they’ll go on to have in it. I wrote: ‘I have a consultant sitting opposite me, Amanda Bradshaw, who is also working here on the AIDS programme. She seems pretty sharp actually and I think could be really useful for the AIDS Division in future’. Little did I know that Amanda would go on to be a key component of the programme, overseeing and developing so much of the work we were doing and in the process became a great personal, lifelong friend, as I, in turn, became a godfather to her son, Joseph.  

Remarkably, (given how much paper I collected, in the time I was there) I still have the sketch that Derek made for me that very first day, as to how he saw the programme area developing over the next six months. He produced a draft taken from a strategy paper that had been written for how they expected my job to go forwards. He assumed that there would be four key areas I’d need to be working on. The first, ‘Education’ would be a ‘nose to the ground’ area, working with the experience of an advisory panel, this feeding into my planning, and allowing the formulation of ideas into concrete proposals. The second area would be of developing relevant ‘materials’ for the target audience, (MWHSWM) by drafting them, allowing for an  amendment process in consultation with the DoH and the advisory group, then arranging for their publication and distribution to the target groups.

The third area would be to develop advertising aimed at the target group, by developing proposals for briefs  by looking at gaps, working on research responses again with reference to the advisory groups current and past experience, then developing & amending the brief as necessary, to allow for the creation of concept boards by the advertising agency and then for these to go through a process of internal review & discussion to ensure everyone involved was satisfied, looking at legal issues where necessary and seeking the DOH’s final external agreement to proceed. The final area would be on day to day tasks: admin, answering calls, writing letters, filing paper cuttings, attending meetings and involvement and input as needed, with the rest of the work that the AIDS Division was going to be producing.

Retrospectively and with the benefit of hindsight, I can see a range of issues, concerns and potential problems that would be likely to develop from working in these areas but at the time, especially given what seemed to be the important role being asked of the advisory group, it all seemed a reasonable way forward. Clearly, I had never had to work with such complexities on so many issues before when I’d been giving advice and producing safer sex work but given the nature of the work and the budget involved it all seemed reasonable. And so, by as soon as the 6th October, I’ve written in my diary: 

Feeling quite settled at work now, I think I’ll get along with people there ok and cope quite well with the work and working patterns. Looking back, it is a little strange that I wrote so little about getting the job at the HEA, because it is a fairly dramatic job change to have to handle. Perhaps I’m too blase about these things?

I think my assessment was probably true. I was.

Sex, love and life (The Sacrifice) 3.04 BMP and the ‘Ritts’ men

BACK to Sex, love and life: an index

The new minister replacing Fowler, John Moore was not in fact to have a particularly auspicious

period at the Department of Health and Social Security. Up until that time he had been very much seen as a rising star within the Conservative Party, even being tipped for the premiership role at one time. He was very successful as a facilitator for the Thatcher government’s privatisation programme but when he then tried to extend this into the management of the National Health Service, he begun to encounter opposition from all sides. He was effectively demoted in 1988, through loss of the health portfolio and then finally sacked from his cabinet post in 1989.

Kenneth (Ken) Clarke followed, when he was appointed the first Secretary of State for Health when the department was created, out of the former Department of Health and Social Security in July 1988. Clarke, with backing from John Major, persuaded Thatcher to accept the controversial “internal market” concept to the NHS. Clarke claimed that he had persuaded Thatcher to introduce internal competition in the NHS as an alternative to her preference for introducing a system of compulsory health insurance, which he opposed.

He told his biographer Malcolm Balen: “John Moore was pursuing a line which Margaret [Thatcher] was very keen on, which made everything rely (on having) compulsory medical insurance. I was bitterly opposed to that…The American system is…the world’s worst health service – expensive, inadequate and with a lot of rich doctors”. However, in her memoirs, Thatcher claimed that Clarke, although “a firm believer in state provision”, was “an extremely effective Health minister – tough in dealing with vested interests and trade unions, direct and persuasive in his exposition of government policy”.

However, there was a lot going on, on his watch; enough to keep him very occupied and the targeted wide scale campaigns around HIV/AIDS were not repeated by the Department. It was clear by then that in reality the main communities being affected were gay men & drug users. Whilst it was recognised that important work needed to be carried out in terms of preventative messages to these groups, it was felt that these would be better placed if overseen from a ‘distance’.

In that period there was only one national agency that could really have taken on this role. It was the Health Education Authority. Previously The Health Education Council, (HEC) it had developed national advertising campaigns based around a range of specific health issues, working in tandem with several advertising agencies and been responsible for a number of very successful adverts. In particular, the most famous is probably the ‘Pregnant Man’ advert. This advert celebrated its 50th birthday recently and is still fondly remembered by old timers as being one of the most effective health messages ever. The issue it tackled (challenging men to take responsibility for casual sex and treating women with respect,) is almost as relevant today in its way, than in 1970 when it appeared. In fact the advert was conceived by the agency Satchi & Satchi in 1969 but its press based image of an apparently pregnant man, sent shock waves through the establishment of the time. Government advertising had never tackled the subject of sexual health with such bold frankness before. 

Since its first appearance on 12 March 1970, ‘The Pregnant Man’ has become one of the most iconic adverts ever created. Receiving many accolades (and often on display at the V&A museum as part of its cultural collection) it is widely recognised for promoting a significant shift in men’s attitudes towards contraception. And its message is as thought-provoking today as it was fifty years ago.

However, by 1987 that was seventeen years previously, with little work completed since then that had been quite as good or well received, having been produced. The HEC had developed a leaflet about ‘AIDS: What everybody needs to know‘ (inter departmental memos about the proposed leaflet from February 1986) by 1986 which was reasonably clear and factual, talking about the disease mainly affecting ‘homosexual men’ but not doing so in a excessively stigmatising way. In April 1987, the Council’s functions were transferred to the new ‘Health Education Authority’, (HEA) which was created as a special health authority of the National Health Service and it continued in existence until it too was wound up in March 2000 (and most of its functions, (apart from the public information function, which went to Health Promotion England), were passed to the newly-created Health Development Agency.

So for thirteen years, the HEA had a budget assigned to it from the Department of Health and responsibility for the promotion of related advertising and information campaigns in a  variety of different health related areas. It had produced its first generic ‘AIDS’ leaflet in 1985 in fact but just before it transferred, there had been agreement that the new HEA would also have responsibility for a new area of expertise, that of HIV/AIDS.

It was also agreed that there would be specific parts of its yearly budget set aside for campaigns based at particular target groups affected by HIV/AIDS, and specifically at gay and bisexual men. At the time, fully five years into the pandemic, there had still been no nationally targeted campaigns anywhere in the world, aimed at gay men. In the same way that the ‘Cleancut’ safer sex video Protective Gear for the Terence Higgins Trust had been the first video aimed at gay men in the world in November 1986, it is hard to believe now that after years of this dreadful illness affecting the gay community, with so many deaths, nothing of this nature had yet been attempted by governments. 

It was not thought that any community organisation was ready to take on the challenge of producing such nuanced campaigns; in practice the obvious one would have been the Terence Higgins Trust I suppose. Despite some delving, I have not managed to ascertain exactly how much thought was given to this possibility within the DoH at the time. If discussions occurred, it is possible they may not have been minuted. It is however true that at the time they had no history of producing national campaigns of the scale envisaged and I also suspect there was concern about the successful management of content that was likely to be produced. The only ‘communication organisation’ THT had worked with at that point was in fact ‘Cleancut’, my own video company (though they went on to work with others like Mike Esser’s ‘Pride’ Productions in the next few years). In the event, given what I know now, it was probably for the best that this did not immediately happen (indeed THT went on to host and manage innovative local work aimed at gay men, funded through the HEA in a few years, by hosting the London young gay men’s MESMAC project, of which more later) but I am willing to stand corrected and open to debate on this- still sensitive- subject.  

The HEA Aids programme team consisted then of its slightly formidable Director, Susan Perl, who had a robust CV with a history of planned Parenthood work for many years, her Deputy Dr Mukesh Kupila, to offer medical expertise and knowledge to the team and also under her leadership, a number of project managers, of whom the one assigned to the ‘MWHSWM’ area, the gay and bisexual men’s work, was Derek Bodell. The plan however was to recruit a further full time worker, a project officer, to assist in the rollout of this area of work and this was duly advertised in the gay press in July 1988.

Sex, love and life (The Sacrifice) 3.03 Rolling in the deep- stepping into the HEA

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Sacrifice, originally Elton John (1989)

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As Cleancut got on with the business of producing films: a video for a London Health Authority..

called ‘So you think you know about AIDS and safer sex’, a couple of pop videos for bands and a promotional video for Philips in car radios for the Birmingham Motor show, were some of the things that got made in the next year, we had noticed that the number of reasoned clear minded mainstream programmes about HIV and AIDS was sklowly increasing.    

In 1987, the BBC in particular, showed a number of programmes about the HIV and AIDS crisis affecting the UK. As part of its commitment to offering related support and information post programme, it usually provided a telephone help advice line at the end of the programme, where people affected by the issues discussed in it, could ring for further advice, help and information.

It turned to several organisations at the time to ask if they could provide experienced people to staff the phones after the programmes, including Lesbian & Gay switchboard. As a result a number of switchboard volunteers, including myself, took calls from offices initially in BBC premises after such programmes with a number trail at the end of them. The first few were generally perceived as having been quite successful with a large number of calls taken after the programmes. Unlike the calls Switchboard received, they were often, usually in fact, from members of the general public, including a large group of what we termed the ‘worried well’, anxious about contracting HIV/AIDS, often under the assumption that it could be contracted from airborne germs, toilet seats, by sitting on bus seats and so on. 

After a while, the service was thought to be so useful that it began to be operated regularly throughout the day, with funding secured from the government for its development and expansion. The rota usually consisted of about a dozen people on shift at any one time and the service was pretty busy usually, especially in the evenings. A large part of peoples worry about contracting the virus was still being fuelled by the irresponsibility of various red top newspapers at the time but also to some extent the governments own campaign, ‘Dont Die of ignorance’, the information leaflets it sent to every home and the television adverts ‘Iceberg’ and ‘Volcano’, (video below) which was predicated on working, by installing a sense of fear in people.

The distinctive forty second television advertisement, was voiced by John Hurt and directed by Nicolas Roeg. Both should have known better. A volcano features in the most notable advertisement and an iceberg in the second. Roeg was chosen for his signature “doom and gloom sci-fi aesthetic” with the volcano reinforcing the apocalyptic tone. Evidently it was originally intended that a civil defense siren would sound at the start of the advert, (rather like the ‘Frankie Goes to Hollywood’ video) but (thank god) this was actually rejected by the PM, Margaret Thatcher as being overdramatic. The adverts went down like a lead balloon with most of us on Lesbian and Gay Switchboard and this was a feeling that generally also transferred across to the fledgling ‘National AIDS Helpline’ (NAH) staff as well.

However, the health secretary at the time in Thatcher’s cabinet, from 1981-87, Norman Fowler claimed that “90% of the public recognised the advert and a vast number changed their behaviour because of it” and as it was a “life and death situation. What he didn’t say was that this was primarily because a large number of people were scared shitless about ever having sex again. So the purpose of the National Aids Helpline as well as providing advice on safer sexual practices, was also to calm the most worried and anxious people down, and try to reassure them that there was little risk attached to their activities, on a day to day basis. Norman Fowler was so sure of the usefulness of the campaign and of his role in it, that he even wrote a book in 2014 called ‘AIDS, Don’t die of prejudice’ (link with book previews). To be fair, I think his heart was -more or less- in the right place and in fact he has kept involved in the subject ever since, by being on the board of the International AIDS vaccine initiatives and vice chair of the ‘All party Parliamentary group on HIV and AIDS’.

He talks in the book of how he proposed that the government ran a Sexual Health campaign about the dangers of HIV/AIDS in national newspapers, with information about risky sex practices and protective condom use.  However Mrs T was back to her usual response when backed up against a corner: ‘No, no, no’. She felt that information about such practices as anal sex, would actually encourage people to try it. We are back to some extent here of her later concern, voiced in relation to Section 28, that teaching people about the possibility of gay sex, would encourage the take up of such practices, that people would assume ‘a god given right to try it’.

Nevertheless a committee (the H committee) convened by Fowler, recommended it go ahead anyway, despite her reservations. He talks about how it ‘brought us up against some basic questions about any AIDS educational awareness campaign. Were we to muffle our message so that the chance of causing offence was minimised’? It was agreed to proceed anyway, along with extending the advertising to produce a TV campaign as well but Thatchers’ view was always that such a campaign actually exacerbated concern and worry from those who did not need to feel worried about it. In retrospect, I have to say that I’m afraid I’m with Mrs T on this one. That is what many of our phone calls bore out. She felt that more targeted advertising was a better idea (such as poster ads in sexual health clinics and toilets), though her prime concern does seem more about the discussion of anal sex in mass media, encouraging experimentation. 

This does rather corroborate the view that Thatcher felt that people could be led in or lured into homosexuality, as a way of life: this was still quite a mainstream view then, that of the deviant (in the form of a person or in literature) luring others into a web of vice and sin. The prime minister’s requests for amended copy were ignored however and the adverts went ahead. There were very few complaints Fowler notes from the public at the time, by the sexual language used in them. However, many in the party sided with Thatcher, Norman Tebbit being one. There was also protestation from other grandees in the national Press. Woodrow Wyatt in the ‘News of the World’ was particularly obnoxious, both to Fowler at the time and just about everyone else I knew. He wrote:

‘The start of AIDS was homosexual love making. Promiscuous women are vulnerable making love to promiscuous bisexuals. They then pass it on to normal men’. He went on to add : Labour councils give grants to homosexual centres who encourage children to experiment with sex. This is Murder!’ 

Further negative comments came from close supporters of Thatcher, Lord Sherman and Christopher (now Lord) Moncton. In an article in the American Spectator, he proposed everyone be screened regularly and that HIV ‘carriers’ be quarantined for life. The Conservative Family Group supported this view at the time.

Fowler goes on to say that ‘research showed that the people they needed to convince most were gay men who took an almost cavalier attitude to sex and drug users (transmission can occur through shared needles) who were apathetic to their fate’. I suppose this to some extent goes back to the view I wrote about earlier that was expressed by the Guardian journalist and what was said about places like the ‘LA’.  It refuses to recognise that there was a lifestyle that was adopted by some gay (and bisexual) men that was about living life to the full, of which having sex was a part of it.  This argument went ‘stop it now, change your behaviour, and conform to societies expectations’. It was never going to be an especially popular message within the gay community. Fowler goes on to say that the view from the public was often that ‘the victims of AIDS should be left to their own fates’ and ‘they didn’t know why the government should put out adverts addressed to the public at large when everyone knew it was just a gay disease’.

So here we can see the crucial and critical dilemma faced by those who were developing these general ‘broad brush’ campaigns in 1986 and 1987. They were, essentially, damned if they did and damned if they didn’t. In reality, there was only one obvious way forward. To develop targeted, more specific campaigns aimed at gay and bisexual men, (and others at particular risk) utilising the media that they were used to reading and in places where they congregated for socialising, play, and sometimes sex. However, it took some time for this view to ‘coalesce’ or, shall we say, ‘solidify’ in government. To his credit Fowler expresses irritation, anger even, at people who expressed such views, anger at ‘the rank injustice of it all’, ‘why should gay men be seen as ‘second class citizens” he asks? 

Interestingly, whilst they got the information leaflets out to every household in January 1987, and ran a national billboard campaign too, without any great criticism, the committee’s planning started to come unstuck when they asked the advertising agency who worked with the Department of Health, Tragos Bonnange Wiesendanger Ajroldi (only ever known as TBWA for obvious reasons and now known as ‘the disruption agency‘) at that time to develop a series of adverts. When they showed the Department what they had come up with, as Norman wrote in his diary, it wasn’t just disruption ‘it was Apocalypse Three’ so they were watered down somewhat. Norman Fowler still stands by these ads as doing their job. I still disagree with that. We are clearly not going to change our positions on that, thirty years later. Also, to his credit, Fowler travelled to meet other organisations working on the issue all over the world, to New York, to Berlin, to Amsterdam, picking up advice from those working directly in the field. He was complimented by health workers in San Francisco on taking such a lead, where nobody could remember Reagan as ever saying anything on the issue, despite the serious situation there by then, with young gay men dying on a daily basis.

He came back determined to take more action to support those particularly affected by the disease. He notes in his diary that ‘Tebbit and Thatcher are exasperated by the education campaign’ but writes ‘that if they don’t like it they can lump it’. By July 1987, after the General Election which Thatcher again won, however, he was out of the Department of Health and into Education. He notes how ‘although Thatcher didn’t support his work, nevertheless she allowed him to get on with it’. In the event though, on reflection she may have felt that it was all a little too close to home. There had to be some way that sensitive campaign work could be carried out, that didn’t leave her government quite so open to the hostility that the messages so far had received, particularly from right wing of the party and public. His replacement at the Department of Health in June 1987 was to be John Moore. He had other plans for how to get more targeted specific messages across to the relevant communities.

In the USA meanwhile, things had been going downhill for the Gay Mens Health Crisis (GMHC’s) safer sex programme. In October 1987, Senator Jesse Helms circulated a copy of their Safer Sex Comix on the floor of the Senate, using it to launch an all out attack on their innovative, gay positive AIDS prevention materials. ‘The Comix’ (example of Comix 8, 1987) was designed to be distributed in gay bars and bathhouses as part of their outreach and prevention programs, featuring a range of illustrated safer sex scenes with lines such as “I’d like to get fucked with a tight rubber,” and “Please sir, would you shoot your man-cum on my chest?” Personally I really liked this idea of using visually more interesting styles to get messages across; you might also assume it was possible to be more explicit in these comic strips than when using actual people. Research they did  showed they had proved popular with the target audiences. However, despite the fact that no federal monies had been used to print the Comix, Helms sponsored an amendment to the ‘1988 omnibus appropriations bill’ that passed in a vote of 94-2, preventing federal funding for any AIDS education materials that “promote, encourage, or condone homosexual sexual activities. So unlike the UK government, which was at least starting to think about producing something targeted for gay & bisexual men, those holding the purse strings in the States basically said anything remotely positive would need to be self funded by the gay community or its supporters.

This was interesting though in some ways, as it did allow for some very ‘creative thinking’ to come out of organisations like GMHC but this was not without its inherent problems. GMHC decided to turn to a similar medium as that which we at Cleancut were using, video shorts to get across short punchy messages about different safer sex practices. As the producers of the short films Carlomusto and Bordowitz explained at the time:

“In the face of increasing censorship amidst a morally conservative climate, we militantly advocate sex – in beds, kitchens, bars, restrooms, taxis, anywhere you want. If it’s safer sex, do it!  

They needed to be careful though, as yet again radical activism and ACT UP didn’t hit the sweet spot for all gay men.

‘The Shorts’ though was a fascinating venture, that drew on a rich American history of countercultural and ‘postcolonial’ media production that saw video as ‘potentially revolutionary’. Of the seven pieces produced in all, its first two shorts, Something Fierce and Midnight Snack, were created by Bordowitz and Carlomusto to appeal to a general (gay) audience, but the remaining five shorts were designed to target specific groups. For example Car Service was geared toward black men, Steam Clean was aimed at Asian Americans, and Gotstabeadrag was aimed at youth of color who were involved in the then- very current -house ball scene (which was to be shortly piggy backed on by Ms Madonna). One, Current Flow was targeted at lesbians (and directed by Carlomusto, who wrote the script in conversation with members of ACT UP’s women’s caucus) and finally, Law and Order was conceived as an S/M video, which, like both Midnight Snack and Current Flow, featured a black/white interracial couple.

Despite its effort to ‘invert’ the racial and sexual hierarchies within gay commercial sexual culture at that time, ultimately post testing revealed that the political messages enclosed may in fact have ‘eclipsed’ the video´s erotic appeal. After interviewing several men who had seen the videos, Fung found that in fact, his target audience did not tend to respond positively. Some of his interviewees just fast-forwarded to the sex scene (thereby missing much of a scene exploring the social critique of racism in bathhouses) while others even fast-forwarded through the sex scene itself. One viewer felt that the video ‘didn’t have enough sex‘, commenting that “it doesn’t disguise itself very well as porn,” while another found the Shorts in general to “carry more of a medical or a social message than a pure porn film, so it was immediately felt to be boring (as erotic expectations were not met). So herein lies the problem of producing information enclosed in a shiny porn wrapper. By doing so we become trapped in stimulating the very cultural notions, perpetuating the tropes that we as ‘creative activists’ are trying to avoid. Porn is inherently ‘disposable’: we fast forward through the bits we don’t like, we soon get tired and look for something new. It satiates us, then we move quickly on. Wrapping your safer sex message up in the same terms, risks people being becoming quickly dismissive and bored. We felt that you needed to try to create witty, aesthetically pleasing and interesting homo-erotic images, that you could watch again & again, without fear of ‘fast forwarding’.

Whilst this was the kind of debate that was clearly needed at a level of community intervention in 1989, it was fairly clear that such notions would just go right over the heads of those in the Department of Health here in England and Wales, (who, lets face it, had clearly thought that it was much ‘safer’ just to scare the shit out of people). And, of course, to make sure that nothing could be construed as too positively ‘promoting homosexuality’. 

Sex, love and Life (The Sacrifice) 3.02 The Creation of a ‘Department of Health’ versus the ‘HEA’

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It was soon a case of being back into the ‘London routine’. On Saturday 15th April, 1989 I was writing:

‘Stoned at the LA last night. Went there after my first shift at LLGS (Lesbian and Gay Switchboard) for years, strange feeling to be back there again, nothing had changed- but I had. Went by myself to the LA but Joe suddenly came out of the crowd with a friend, Paul. I hadn’t expected him to be there. Realised he is a real lynch pin for people though and holds things together, creating a sense of order and purpose in his own way. His banter is as good as Mark S ‘s too. Almost as good anyway. Some bad news though.. it seems the LA is about to be put up for sale and up for redevelopment, which is a great shame, as it’s a real gem on the London scene and very special to many people as a result. Realised that there’s a fascinating and very complex system that operates downstairs there, something like an inner city gyratory. I think I must have been quite stoned’.

Then, a week later, Saturday, April 21st, in much the same vein: 

Went to The Bell tonight with Joe and Sean. Met a lovely guy called Andy, who was pretty inexperienced but we got chatting and had a good time: some kissing. Problem was it all happened in front of Joe and that is not something I‘m very proud of. Sean wasn‘t at all impressed and said so! However, on Sunday evening we (Joe and I both got pretty stoned and had a good old giggle together. Joe really emphasises with me in a way nobody else ever has, in that state, which is great. In fact it‘s like having a different relationship on another plane-a first for me).

On Tuesday May 2nd, I first met with a term that I hadn’t come into contact with before though:

Today at the Burlington (an upmarket gym and sauna in Piccadilly that Switchboarders got in free to) met another nice guy, quite tall, a little thin but nice body nevertheless, called James. He wanted me to go to the ‘Daisychain’ later in Brixton. He said he is into vogueing evidently there and not to worry if he was vogueing and didn’t come straight up to me. Vogueing- so what exactly is that? In the event I didn’t go. On Sunday we all went to the Bell, me, Joe, the two french guys I have staying, Alan, Richie, Jeff and later Michael turned up. Quite fun- but I was both stoned and tired by the end.

On Wednesday May 10th, I was summing up the kind of week when all suddenly seems good and right in the world, and problems seem far away:

Been a great, really summery week. Went up to the Heath three times in this last week (not cruising, just with friends) Sunday with Andy, Monday with Joe and then to the William Fourth (a very well established gay pub in Hampstead, that is, remarkably, still going strong thirty years later) with Steve B. Hampstead Health is a marvellous place: one of London‘s greatest facilities and its best kept secret, in some respects. How can somewhere so green, quiet and wooded be so centrally placed?

Attended the Manchester MESMAC set up meeting too, at the weekend. Good hotel at the Copthorne in Salford Quays. Liverpool FC were playing at Old Trafford on the Sunday and the team were staying there too. Some pretty hunky guys. I swear as I went past a group of them, I heard one joke to another about eyeing up a guys bum again .. though it seems rather unlikely in retrospect.Though maybe not? Am left wondering what stories the waiters and room service could tell? Everybody seems pretty happy at the moment. Summers coming.

But then, as tended to happen fairly regularly, things went downhill. On Thursday May 11th:

Back to earth with a bump. The BMP creatives presented two more creative ideas for the men’s campaign today. Finally! I was lost for words with one, which showed two women up close looking into each  other’s eyes with the caption ‘If you thought safer sex was dull perhaps these two could tell you a thing or two’. I suppose I get where they are coming from but will it wash in pre test research I wonder;I doubt it. I find it politically ok but safer sex has never worked because it was politically correct. How much longer should I stay at the HEA l wonder? This is what I get to call my ‘establishment period’ I guess. Today it feels like it’s gone on far too long already.

However, some weeks passed, without any further great dramas. By Monday 29th May, a Bank Holiday, the sun was shining and London was at its best:

A picnic on the Heath on Sunday, with Mark S, his boyfriend Charles G, Joe, David B and his boyf Malcolm T (really nice guy- and sexy with it).Seems he’s an artist. Got on well with David B too, which was nice. All back to Somerstown for tea, then onto David’s place and then onto the Bell. Quite fun but oh, so smoky. Evidently,Joe tells me I fell asleep towards the end.

Then the following day, Tuesday 30th May:

One of those strange days.I finished reading ‘Sherbet Lemons’(Sucking Sherbert Lemons (with preview) by Michael Carson, 1988, an engaging coming out story, and now a trilogy) and crying at the end. Crying for my lost youth, yet realising its hero ‘Benson’ was very much like myself in some ways. We do not become men from being boys. This whole concept of ‘you’re a boy, now you’re a man is crap. We are spiritual beings enclosed in a decomposing (but often still intrinsically beautiful) shell. Yet what is beauty? In the eye of the beholder.

Some bad news today, it seems that Jonathan Grimshaw (who was the Body Positive group rep on the Men’s Advisory Group) has PCP related pneumonia and has been into hospital. I feel concerned and sad for him. And what of Dennis’s many friends who are dying. Sometimes it feels we are all soldiers in a battle, riding out the storm we have unwittingly created. Is the real crime to perpetuate the battle by having sexual intercourse unsafely?

Things were soon brighter though, as by Sunday, 4th June, I was writing:

To Charles G’s party on Saturday. Almost fun, mainly due to the attentions of Malcolm T who is an absolute scream. I love him wildly for it. One of the funniest, original people I’ve met in a long time. He’s devoted to David, who is a lucky man. Switchboard shift this evening, Philip R on: warm and welcoming. Nice.

There followed a break, as I went off to Ibiza for ten days with Joe. I had developed a hispanophile bent by the late eighties, though some will argue that Ibiza is not really truly Spain anyway. A lot of my life was going to revolve about Spain though in the years to come, with many journeys, lovers, life lessons and good times but that is all another story that will have to wait for now (I intend to cover it all in a seperate book as part 3 of this trilogy).

Sex, love and life (The Sacrifice) 3.10 Two steps forward, one step back

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Understanding & learning to love new musical form, why I had a love of musicals, Letting yourself be open as a person to the new and different in your life..

I suppose it comes as a necessity when you move to a new place. A new town, a new workplace. You have to let go of some things and embrace new ideas, new people, places and ways of being with people.  When some types of music have always been a part of your life though, played such significant roles in it sometimes I find it hard to move on. There a strong temptation, maybe even desire to replay, recall, relive, relove those songs that you regard almost as highly as the significant others in your past.  Songs about love, lust and life. Songs that made you feel as if you truly belonged, that you were significant ; really significant. Something more than just a collection of carbon atoms, stardust if you want to get all fancy about it.  

Sitting in a dark hushed cinema staring at the light. People whispering, a quiet cough.  Was it the different reality I liked? Beams of light dancing through celluloid could do this to us all? Is that really all it took to bring us together, to have us all waiting expectantly, our senses, our very  conciousness merging? Bournemouth Odeon was where the magic happened. A warm summer in 1966. Mum Dad and I were at the cinema together to see ‘The Sound of Music’.  I had no preconceptions or expectations except my Grandma had become unusually animated when telling us about it, that we had to go and see it. The adverts over the curtain rose and I was transported to a land I had never seen before. White snowy mountains, green green meadows and goats on a hillside. Bells tinkling and in the valley far below church bells chiming the hour. And then a glorious musical score swelling up, gathering pace, enveloping you. Wow, I’m getting teary eyed remembering it.  What exactly is it that am I remembering that brings such an emotional rush, fully sixty years later?

Of course, all knowing critics will step in here in a rush to explain everything. To expand on the film critique that I took in so avidly when I finally applied to study film production twenty years on. Now I realise that I needed to understand what happened to me (and I discovered so many others) as we sat back as youngsters and watched technicolour magic unfold.  How our brains process this information.

By the time I moved to Almeria a few years ago this process was long understood, codified, expanded upon, used, reused, and even crafted in films I had made. I long knew of the significance, the power, the majesty of music fused together with potent imagery. Perhaps I had become even a little blase about the whole process.  As Neil Tennant writes, in his three minute piece of perfectly salicious, delicious pop rap, ‘Wet End Girls’ 

Too many shadows, whispering voices
 Faces on posters, too many choices
 If, when, why, what? How much have you got?
 Have you got it, do you get it
 If so, how often?
 Which do you choose
 A hard or soft option?

It was all too commodified, too safe, a pastiche: a stale cream bun with the red, red glace cherry knocked off. What was new or different?  Yes I still thrilled to the form but how many times can you watch Jesus Christ Superstar, South Pacific, Oklahoma without feeling that the sweetness was too sweet. Like a spanish gateau from a cheap patiserrie that looks delicious but tastes of nothing but empty sugar calories.

Where was that strange rush I felt as a seven year old as I giddily took in the costumes, the glorious disfunctional yet connected family, the notion that if things got bad you could just burst into a song, dance or waltz your way out of it all.  In a thunderstorm? Sing!  Put on a puppet show and sing. Dance around a gazebo and sing to your new love. Sing of thoughts, feelings, emotions. You don’t need to lock them all away. Sing and the world will love you, sing and the future becomes so clear. Sing and you can escape the evil in the world. And they all looked like they were having fun. My young self couldn’t possibly articulate it but whilst even he wasn’t naive enough to believe that singing would solve everything, he had just realised that you can escape into a fantasy world for precious moments when the outcome was pre-ordained. You could control things in a way that you couldn’t in real life.

So it was with not a little sense of trepidation that I began to listen in those long lockdown days to new rhythms, the music that was associated with the tempo of Spanish culture. As a hispanophile I realised that I had not touched the culture that oi professed to love, that I had no real understanding of it. I watched quiz programms only to realise that the Spanish had grown up with a range of traditional music sounds and rhythm that was a wotld away from that which I knew. Infused with traditional gypsy rhythms, flamenco, music from the far south, from the New World and that which was home grown in its many poor urban barrios. Music by artists such as Fuel Fandango, Madrid punks like Biznaga and those culled from an urbanista scene coming from the likes of Tomasito along with gay musical poets like Victor Algora with his themes of spanish inner city life well lived.  And equally that each had its own blend of imagery, its own rich fusion of styles.

Little by little I gave each of these styles time to filter through my own conciousness, to assemble my own critique of them, without feeling the need to automatically adopt everything simply because it was Hispanic. Equally time to feel that learning to love another culture does not automatically mean removing yourself from all the previous influences that you have been shaped by. Learning to understand that assimilation does not mean losing that part of yourself which you have loved, nurtured and cherished.

Learning that you are now big enough to accept new influences into your life whilst retaining those from the old world. Learning that it is the people who demand that you integrate completely into their culture that are the ones with the closed minds. Learning that sometimes it is you who must educate them, tell them that the world was not made as a place with borders, it is us, the humans who have created them, it is us the humans who have created barriers, it is us, the humans who have closed our mind to ´the other´. It is us, the humans, who must open ourselves up to accepting difference, change, and a shared identity and destiny.

By 1988, Margaret Hilda Thatcher had been the leader of the Conservative Party for thirteen years and the British Prime Minister for eight of those years.

She seemed, in many ways, an invincible figure. By the mid eighties though, she had alienated a great many people, including the Queen, partly as a result of her feelings about the British Commonwealth and partly as she increasingly assumed regal poses, (such as taking the salute at the victory parade after the Falklands war) and starting using the royal ‘we’ when talking about herself, which was seen as quite strange by many. Her story was dramatised (although shoehorned) reasonably well, in the popular Netflix TV series ‘The Crown’ in 2020-2023. Watching it, it felt like Thatcher came and went ‘in a flash’ in some respects but for those living through her premiership and opposed to her policies, it felt anything but that. It seemed to drag on and on and there were countless marches I went on, after that day when Gary, Alison and I had been to the Tory Party Conference, back in 1980, where the phrase ‘Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, Out, Out,Out’ was  repeated ad infinitum.   

She seemed immune to all the criticism levelled at her (although retrospectively we know now that this was not quite the case in fact) but she was not called an ‘Iron Lady‘ for nothing. In her political lifetime she managed to dodge all the ‘political bullets’ fired at her. She even survived an assassination attempt by the IRA (Irish Republican Army) on the Grand Hotel in Brighton, at another Tory Party conference there in October 1984. We had, by 1988, resigned ourselves to the fact that she was not going to look at changing any laws or policies of the time, in regards to discrimination against lesbians & gay men, whether related to social attitudes, employment, legal issues or sexual matters.

However, what we hadn’t bargained for (and perhaps we should have seen it coming), is that the government would start to create new laws that actively encouraged discrimination against us.  But with the advent of discussion, about what became known as Section 28, that is exactly what happened. Certainly, by 1987, there had been a shift in attitudes publically about acceptance or tolerance of homosexuality generally. Much of this had been fostered by papers like the Tory supporting ‘Sun’ which had sought to create negative publicity about gay men in particular with headlines at the time such as ‘I’d shoot my son if he had AIDS’.

In 1987 too, Thatcher went to the nation and managed to get a landslide majority, so securing a third term. Things started well enough for her but slowly, in the year or so afterwards, it is generally accepted that her mistakes multiplied and equally, her enemies in her party and indeed in the country, started to actively conspire against her.

At that year’s Conservative Party conference, she was attempting to gain support from those who wanted a stronger moral line to come from the government. Backbench Conservative MPs and peers had begun a backlash against what had been seen as the “promotion” of homosexuality, especially by councils such as the GLC (Greater London Council). On the whole this was not something she had wanted to become very involved in, up until this point in her premiership but she recognised the need to be seen to be addressing the issue and consequently bit the bullet “Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay”. There was loud applause.

In December 1987, what became known as “Section 28” was added as an amendment to a new Local Government Act 1988 that was going through parliament. Books such as Jenny lives with Eric and Martin were highlighted as being examples of this promotion of unwholesome non family values.

Within the lesbian and gay community, there was outrage at the way in which this law was being pushed through and a number of organisations stepped up to the plate to protest against it. Despite these protests the amendment was nevertheless enacted into law on 24 May 1988, and stated that a local authority “shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality” or “promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship”.

Of course I felt very strongly, as did many, many, others at the time, that this was completely the wrong direction to be heading in; indeed, it was exactly what had caused me so much angst, growing up as gay teenager in the early 70’s and having nothing of any sort that was available to help me understand what was ‘happening’ to me and that I wasn’t alone: that there were many others who had successfully built up their lives, whilst acknowledging and accepting their sexuality and forming positive loving relationships, as a part of that. But not just that, also accepting that just wanting to have a sexual relationship with a partner of the same sex was not ‘deviant behaviour’ to be ashamed of or hidden but was also a positive healthy thing. Along with the issue of HIV and AIDS, this felt like an immense step backwards, into the moral conservatism and opprobrium of 1950’s Britain. Suddenly the future stopped looking brighter and it seemed that we might be heading back towards the widescale oppression and bigotry of the sort that existed in the year that I was born, 1957.

In 2018, the Guardian interviewed a number of people who had been most actively involved in the various campaigns against Section 28 then, such as Michael Cashman and, in particular, talked to Lisa Power. At the time (of Section 28) she was very much involved with Lesbian and Gay Switchboard but she was also one of the co-editors of the relatively new ‘Pink Paper’, a weekly free newspaper.

She talked about how the Section 28 Campaign had been positive in that it ‘had brought the scene queens together with the political activists’ for perhaps the first time. But she went on to make a very salient point, I think:

‘I still find it interesting when people talk about section 28 as if we won, because they remember the abseiling and protests. Those didn’t make a blind bit of difference to the passage through parliament: we lost the battle on section 28′

…which, of course, is absolutely correct. Despite all the hard work put in by so many different people, it still went through parliament and passed into legislation.

Knowing Lisa from Switchboard, I knew she could be relied upon ‘to tell it like it is/was’ and she does not disappoint here. She went on: 

‘But this did make people think much more strategically about how we should go about getting lesbian and gay rights to win the war. What we had at the time was a gay movement that was very good at fighting among itself and very good at debating political points – but with no history of making allies with the wider world and no effective lobbying mechanism.

After section 28 happened, some of us quietly went away and began working on what would become Stonewall… I think it’s the strongest example in the world of a successful LGBT lobbying group, changing a country’s mind about some of its citizens‘.

I’m not necessarily sure about the quietly bit but ‘Stonewall’ went on to became a hugely important and influential lobbying group, by using its contacts to work with people in many different areas but especially within external political and social groups at the highest level. With people who had the power to make things happen and change.  And this is a difficult issue to wrestle with, to accept that sometimes it’s easier to create change from the inside out, rather than the outside in. 

It gave me much pause for thought too, at around that time in 1988, frustrated as I was that we had endured long years of the repressive Thatcher government, put up with years of negative press coverage, especially in relation to the issue of HIV and AIDS, seen no great movement in our civil rights and development of the policies suggested in ‘Changing the World‘, that document coming from the GLC that Lisa had again been involved in developing some years before. I began to strongly feel that if I really wanted to influence policy I had to be ‘on the inside‘ looking out too. I had been involved in working in community action projects for so long that it seemed now a natural part of my very identity. Life was self help, community development and protest against perceived injustice. All my heroes, role models if you like, had been doing something like that all the time. How did I feel about changing that? What would those I had been working with think about me becoming involved in such change. Becoming a part of those on the inside? 

And yet for some in the gay community in particular (less so the lesbian communities) I think this experience isolated them further from the idea of collaboration, and trying to develop work that was inclusive from ‘within the mainstream’. Others started to feel that progressing things through a more– rather than less -radical agenda was the way forward. This agenda was to develop further in the nineties, fuelled to some extent by the situation in the USA, where it became clear to some gay men that to stay silent would equal ‘death’.    

Having come from this position in the last decade myself, I could well understand the anger, frustration and energy behind just such a position. And yet.. and yet .. was it the most useful way forward? I write this, in the third decade of the twentieth first century, when lesbians and gay men have never been more integrated into society as a whole in western Europe (though by no means everywhere of course). We have rights, equality and frequent ‘mixed’ venues. Many of my (lesbian and gay) friends live in small villages up and down the UK and elsewhere and are accepted as important and valued members of their local communities. The radical movements that sprang up in the late eighties and early nineties are for most purposes a thing of the past.

History has been written now about these organisations and how they interacted with the statutory sectors at the time; yet there is more to the story I think in retrospect than reading such history tells us. I think it’s at least worth looking at things from a different perspective. The next part of my own story does just this; after three decades I think I can now more objectively look back: understand the anger, pain and anguish, forget the hurt, the backbiting and demonising that went on. 

But in 1988 all this was to come. I had made a mental, theoretical decision to throw my lot into change ‘from the inside’. Would I need to change how I thought, how I acted, how I responded to challenges? How much of the person I had become in the eighties could I bring to the future? Could I even do it ? At that time I wasn’t sure if I could or indeed, just as importantly, if I wanted too.

But for a while these were just thoughts that I pondered over in my diaries, to myself, late at night. There was plenty to keep me occupied anyway, with commissions to make various films and videos coming in for ‘Cleancut’ , and so for the time being I stored the idea away and got on with the business of making and directing films, going to gay venues, and living and loving as a gay man. Which really was something that was never boring..

Being Boring , originally recorded by the Pet Shop Boys

• ON to Sex, love and life Part 3 (The Sacrifice) 3.01 1987 The Foster years, an HIV/AIDS helpline and a hard hitting national campaign

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There are many examples throughout the music world’s culture in the sixties and early seventies of people, famous, infamous and unknown who were gay,

who did not dare to come out publically, for fear that it would damage their career, reputation or both. Of course they had every right to make that decision but for every one of those who didn’t, there was likely someone else who suffered a little, as a result of it. 

Equally, there were those who said to hell with convention, I’m going to live my life as I choose, both defying whilst defining convention around them. The artist Francis Bacon was at the very pinnacle of success in this era, living his life quite openly as a homosexual man. But sadly, as stories involving homosexuals all seem to in those days, it ended tragically as his lover died in a bathtub, whilst he went to the opening of his key show.

Joe Orton and Keith Halliwell were yet another couple whom tragedy struck down. In August 1967 Halliwell (41) murdered his lover Orton (then 34) with a hammer, in their flat in Islington and then took an overdose of barbiturates; homosexual acts (in private) had been legal for 2 weeks when they both died. Orton had become famous for his writing, especially the plays ‘Entertaining Mr Sloane’, ‘Loot’ and ‘What the Butler Saw’. Both men are now feted, especially Orton who has recently been called a’ subversive genius’ in an article by Lian Barnes for the BBC.

Halliwell, in contrast, had become jealous of his lovers success along with his regular encounters with young lads in cottages. However, for Bernard Greaves, a Cambridge architecture student in the mid-60s, Orton’s clear-eyed portrayal of aspects of contemporary gay life struck a chord. “The impact of his plays was enormous,” he said.

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The subversive genius of Joe Orton BBC article from 2017

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“I didn’t have a large circle of gay friends at that time; I was in the closet living a double life – nearly everybody was, because it was still illegal – but Orton put on stage the reality of what it was like for us in an unvarnished way.

The media, especially the popular press, gleefully reported such tragedies with the underlying morality tale contained therein. These were interesting characters, certainly yet not role models I really wanted to emulate and yet…their stories could have been told differently: Epstein, Bacon, Orton could have been portrayed sympathetically, with the paths their lives took, being seen as a result of the circumstances which society had placed them in. But no, the story was always one of sordidness, of scandal, the result of being misfits in society. This is what comes of deviance we were told. We didn’t really believe it but how could we show that our lives as lesbians and gay men could be positive, hopeful, lives worth leading?   

There were a few exceptions in the sixties though of people who managed to be homosexual in their private life and yet allowed their careers to hint at something publically that suggested they were supportive of homosexuality too. One such actor in this period was Dirk Bogarde. Starting his career as very much a matinee idol appearing in such box offices successes as the ‘Doctor’ series (eg. Doctor in Love, 1954), he allowed it to dramatically change direction in 1961, by taking on the lead role in the film ‘Victim’, directed by Basil Dearden. Bogarde took the role of barrister Melville Farr, in a film which told a story about gay men being blackmailed under threat of exposure and jail time, a very real threat in that period. Remarkably it was the very first British production to use the word “homosexual”. John Coldstream noted in his 2004 biography of Bogarde:

“This was a way of getting out a message… he couldn’t go on a chat show and say, ‘Look, I’m living with Tony Forwood’”.

It played a role in helping the Sexual Offences Act, that decriminalised homosexual activity in private, finally be passed in 1967. Lord Arran, (who introduced the legislation in parliament) wrote to him in 1968 praising his “courage in undertaking this difficult and potentially damaging part”, adding “It is comforting to think that perhaps a million men are no longer living in fear”. Bogarde lived with his partner Tony Forwood, until his (Forwoods) death in 1988. Here, finally perhaps, is a role model that I could have attempted to emulate?  However, crucially, in seven (yes seven!) best-selling volumes of his memoirs, he staunchly claimed to be ‘straight’. This was mainly put down to ‘morality’ clauses in his film contracts. Despite it being widely known in private circles and often rumored in public ones (it was more a less an ‘open secret’) even Bogarde it seems, who had acted several times as a homosexual man just couldn’t take the plunge and publically ‘come out’ as a gay man, right up until his death, in 1999.   

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https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20210322-why-dirk-bogarde-was-a-truly-dangerous-film-star

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What was needed was, somehow, that a large number of people ‘together’ made such an ‘event’ that the media couldn’t ignore it or report it in a completely and salaciously negative way. An event that others could see or hear of and recognise that other ordinary people, just like themselves, were lesbian or gay. For me, as a young teenager in 1970, luckily, such events were not too far off now. 

ON to Sex, Love and life 1.9 The Seventies- with high shoes on, bolting through closing doors

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Pushed around and kicked around, always a lonely boy
 You were the one that they’d talk about around town as they put you down

And as hard as they would try they’d hurt to make you cry
 But you never cried to them, just to your soul
 No, you never cried to them, just to your soul

Smalltown Boy, Bronski Beat (excerpt), 1985

And so, as the swinging sixties ended, and the seventies begun, with a somewhat more open & tolerant mindset than it had had, a decade earlier, at least in the UK. I, myself became a teenager. My family however, had by then moved to a small village in deepest Cornwall in 1968 and attitudes here were far less liberal on the whole, than those held in most of the larger cities. Whilst the changing attitudes in society over the past fifty years, were to have a substantial impact on my life, most of that which I have described so far, I was entirely ignorant of. Little of it would be conveyed to me in the next six years that I was to be at the local Grammar & then Comprehensive school.

Some of it I would discover by chance, during the next decade, some I would seek out and some would come to me by a very gradual ‘drip feed’ process, in which I recognised the importance of ‘difference’ in society from the norm and did not regard such ‘difference’ as deviance; some however, I would only come to learn and understand decades later. Indeed, some information very pertinent to its understanding, only became available less than a decade ago, with the widespread proliferation of digital media. There is a reasonable argument that suggests that I couldn’t have been taught a lot of this in this period from the late sixties to the mid seventies as it simply wasn’t available. For young people today, it is perhaps hard to understand just how difficult it was then to collect and assimilate ‘alternative information’; information that had not been filtered and ‘censored’ through a ‘mainstream’ cogniscence.

Some people were lucky at school and seemed to naturally gravitate towards alternative groups, where some acceptance and appreciation of difference was tolerated, even appreciated. This didn’t really happen to me, in any shape or form, until I reached the fifth form at my school, when I was sixteen, and so a good three or four years into my teens.

I found solace in the early years at Grammar School by getting involved with literature and  books. I volunteered to help catalogue the school’s library into the new ‘Dewey’ Decimal system. Lunch breaks could be spent safely immersed in the library cataloging, referencing cross checking and encoding. I derived some benefit, some comfort in knowing that I was handling the world’s knowledge and hoped that I might glean something of its richness. By the third year though we were part of the new comprehensive structure at Falmouth, there was no library in my part of the school and I was out on my own, fending for myself. Luckily I was in Mr Holt’s class, a young geography teacher who I liked and I developed a passion for geography: specifically cartography and meteorology.         

In particular, in those years I now look back on certain people and know I should thank them. There was the very wonderful Huw, who I now realise and recognise I had a ‘first crush’ on at thirteen, Ashley, who helped me learn about rigid conformity, recognise it and how to ignore it, James, who helped me understand that life is to be enjoyed, explored and invented at whatever age, Paul, who helped share my passion of the natural sciences (especially the weather), Peter who had me digging for old bottles, developing a lifelong love for ‘real life history’ and Philip, whom I recall as being a good looking lad and recognise now,  retrospectively, was negotiating the same road as I was at that time. There was also a completely gorgeous head boy, Adrian, who literally and metaphorically held my hand on school field trips away and showed me there might be another way ahead. As with all our schooldays, there were people who really didn’t help me at all, as well: bullies, egotists, telltales and just not very nice people. I forgive you, wherever you are now but know that you caused me a lot of pain and knowing what I now know about life, I can’t believe that it really helped you either, in the long run.  

And so, by the time I reached London in the mid 1970s, which is really where my ‘story proper’ finally begins, I was at least partially aware of the effect that all these cultural, political and social influences had made on society. I think London changed quite markedly even in the decade when I was growing up. Race, gender and sexuality were very much things that people had opinions on now and these issues were being discussed, even by then, in the mainstream media at the time.  

None of this had come from my school work, which had not prepared me in any great way for any of the things which I was going to experience, in London, in the next few decades. Retrospectively, I came to regard this as a great pity, as it would have been very useful to have known more about the spectrum of sexuality, to have understood more of the alternative culture and history in the UK in that decade in particular and to have started to possess some kind of opinion on these things. Anything that I’ve mentioned so far, that has influenced me and the decisions I’ve made, in relation to how I’ve progressed my life, came from the explorations I made from curiosity: a need for enlightenment. In so many ways, my life hadn’t adequately prepared me for what was to come, or what I needed to know, to better understand decisions I’d need to make, indeed have to make, in what was to come in my life fairly soon. 

A statistic that I didn’t know, until very much later, was how young gay men and lesbians have a proportionately higher rate of mental illness, depression and in some cases self harm and suicide than their heterosexual counterparts. In my bleak black moments, as a youngster, I often thought about it. Somehow I always had something in me, which brought me back from that edge: I can see something beautiful and be mentally and emotionally  uplifted by it. Others were not so lucky. I have already mentioned the mathematician Alan Turing and the belated respect that the current government have awarded him. It seems slightly odd to name a educational scholarship award, replacing the much missed European Erasmus scheme in the UK after a man whose was absolutely, and completely failed by the educational and sociological institutions of the Government and State institutions of the time, to such an extent that he took his own life in 1954.

As  Ruth Sutherland, the Chief Executive of the Samaritans, wrote on the NHS England blog page recently, suicide is still the leading cause of death, amongst men under 50 in the UK. 

She said: Something called the ‘gold standard’ of masculinity puts pressure on men. It’s a persuasive little voice that whispers, ‘You’ve failed’ – unless you have gone out and secured that job, that house, that car, that woman, those children and that sunny family life.

‘You’re divorced? Don’t see your kids much now and don’t live with them? You lost your job? You can’t pay your debts, your rent, your mortgage, your bills? Your life is over, man!’

It whispers about anything that isn’t part of conventional ‘James Bond-style‘ masculinity: ‘You’re gay, you’re trans, you’re bi – what sort of life do you think you’re going to have? Don’t tell anyone, whatever you do.’ Feelings of failure and shame make it harder to open up because that will make things worse, won’t it?

And that is just where we stand in today’s liberated society, after a half century of some acceptance and change. Research, in the last few decades continues to find that the attempted suicide rates and thoughts of suicide amongst lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) young people is still significantly higher than among the general population.

They (the Samaritans) suggest that the laws that discriminate against LGBT people have been shown to have significant negative impacts on the physical and mental health and well-being of young people with depression and drug use higher in this group as a whole than the general population. Equally, in a positive finding, laws that recognise LGBT people as equal (for example in relation to their civil rights) tend to have significantly positive effects on the physical and mental health of LGBT youth. Remarkably, for example, in the USA, looking at the period between January 1999 and December 2015, research suggested that the establishment of positive laws relating to same-sex marriage was associated with a significant reduction in the rate of attempted suicide among children, the effect being especially concentrated among children of a minority sexual orientation (LGBT youth), resulting in approximately 134,000 fewer children attempting suicide each year in the United States.

Another key issue, which has been shown to be a contributing factor in many suicides, is bullying (and this is an issue which affects all suicide attempts in young people per se) but since a series of suicides in the early 2000s, more attention has been focused on the underlying causes in an effort to reduce suicides among LGBT youth. The Family Acceptance Project in the USA has demonstrated that “parental acceptance, (and even neutrality), with regard to a child’s sexual orientation” can bring down the attempted suicide rate.  And these figures relate to a relatively recent period in our history, when tolerance and acceptance of LGBT people was rising in much of the Western world.

So, it is hardly surprising that things were even bleaker in the early to middle part of the last century and right through the period in which I was growing up, from the mid fifties through to the eighties. There was nothing -and I do meant absolutely nothing– that was remotely positive in relation to coming out as a gay man, and living a fulfilled life, related to my sexuality, that I was offered, when growing up and at school. Perhaps the art classes that inspired my creativity, at a push. In fact, I often think how remarkable it was, in retrospect, that I managed to cope as well as I did.

For me, very luckily, there were a few factors operating in my favour. I was actually quite an artistic child who, despite studying sciences, became motivated by being able to express myself artistically. Creating and assimilating things, that allowed me to vent my worries, concerns, anger (at myself for not adequately fulfilling the heterosexual role society expected from me and thus being ‘a failure’). Secondly, that I was posted up to London for my first job when 18, which, despite the initial ‘culture shock’ put me in the one place in the UK, at that time, where I could perhaps better understand myself, with like minded people around me and finally, that I had a love of meteorology, a passion if you like, (that was also my work) that I could ‘escape’ into.

These things ‘saved me’ in many ways. It is no surprise that so many gay men wanted to escape their localities and communities and ‘come up to or down to’ London. Both Jimmy Somerville and Neil Tennant (and others) wrote important songs about it,  important because this ‘struck a chord’ with so many young gay men at the time.. and since.  It was time to leave my childhood dreams , ideas, notions behind me and ‘set out my stall’.  I had no real idea what that would look like, no idea how I was going to go forward but I would just have to ‘hope for the best’.

Now, I recognise that I was far from alone in having to do this: people who would become my role models, people whom I would meet, people I would counsel in the future; they would have all been there too, at some stage, in their lives. 

And as I finally waved goodbye to my family at Truro station in the far southwest of Cornwall, one damp late September early afternoon in 1975 and sat down in the train, I suddenly felt very alone, very alone indeed. And yet also, somewhere, somewhere deep within me, there was a sense of freedom. Of escape. Of the adventure to come.  And a place for me.

ON to Part 2 Sex, love and life (The Rituals): Introduction

BACK to Sex, Love and Life : The index

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Your insights and experiences concerning the topics discussed in this section are incredibly valuable. I warmly invite you to share your thoughts to help add to the conversation.

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