Although consensual sex between men had been partially decriminalised for males (with caveats: in private, over 21, England and Wales only, (presumably Scottish men in Gretna Green could nip over the border for a quick spot of legal sex) with the passage of the Sexual Offences Act in 1967, in England and Wales it took some time for a network of support organisations to develop, in response to this newly liberated climate. The Stonewall Riots in New York in 1969 enabled a wave of development however in the USA and an organisation called the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) spread from the United States to London in 1970. A fledgling campaigning organisation in the UK, the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE) had already developed in 1969 with a stated aim from 1969 to promote legal and social equality for lesbians, gay men and bisexuals in England and Wales (not Scotland & Northern Ireland).
After a meeting in Leeds in 1972, a counselling group called London Friend was also set up in London and CHE members took part in the first London Pride at Hyde Park, followed by a march to Trafalgar Square, (nominally to protest at the age of consent, still then age 21). In 1973 it went on to hold its first national gay rights conference in Morecambe. CHE and London Friend shared offices and had close links until 1974, but it was separated from CHE in 1975. By 1977 its membership was falling as the group leadership supported a paedophile organisation and proposed an age of consent of 12, which for many conservative people at the time was simply felt to be too low (the heterosexual age of consent was still sixteen).
Whatever you thought about their policies, perhaps for many the most significant development was that they created as many as a hundred local groups in cities & towns around England & Wales. For the very first time people in smaller locations away from the provincial centres had a place to go and meet other gay men, bisexuals & lesbians. The significance of these groups in this early period for offering support and local advice to many isolated gay men in England & Wales cannot be understated.
It was where I turned first, late in 1978, when my copy of Gay News (that I had bought at a large newsagents in central London as anonymously as possible) told me that there was a group that met regularly called Feltham CHE close to where I then lived in Teddington. In fact there were as many as eighteen different groups in London alone, many connecting those in the suburbs for the first time. My copy told me to ring Toni on 5703914.
Doing so, saw me visiting my first gay group, though I cannot now remember where we met: I think in a members house. It also saw me meet up with my first bona-fide boyfriend too, Niall, and we went on a canal cruise (on a boat I mean) together, with others, organised by the group. I seem to recall however that, at twenty, we were the youngest members of the group and of course technically ‘illegal’ then, though that very seldom stopped young gay men initiating relationships at the time.
I mentioned that I had seen this information in Gay News. This paper had been the response to a nationwide demand by lesbians and gay men for news of this burgeoning liberation movement in the early to mid 1970’s. It had become a fortnightly newspaper founded in June 1972 as a collaboration between former members of the GLF and members of CHE. At the newspaper’s height, its circulation was as high as 19,000 copies fortnightly. Its importance to the development of information and support networks right across the UK (and indeed more widely..) has been fairly well covered elsewhere. However, given the central role it played for me in the early years of my own activity and radicalisation as a gay man, involved in the burgeoning gay movement, I’d like, at least, to say a little more about it and its effect on me, personally.
Many of its early editorial team members went on to become well known names in the political field. Its editor, for instance, Denis Lemon, became nationally famous when defending Gay News against a blasphemy trial by Mary Whitehouse: he was sentenced to a suspended nine month prison sentence, which after appeal was dropped eventually but fined £1000 with £9000 costs, which a subsequent public campaign paid for; in 1974, Gay News was charged with obscenity, having published an issue with a cover photograph of two men kissing (it won the court case); Martin Corbett, (who became involved in the burgeoning ‘Act Up London‘ movement in the late 80’s), David Seligman, in my own opinion the most essential early member of the London Gay Switchboard collective, (who sadly passed away in January 2021), formed in 1974, Ian Dunn who became involved with the Scottish Minorities Group, taking the fight for equality and legalisation of gay sex north of the English border & Glenys Parry, who was for some time the national chair of CHE.
Alison Hennegan (the newspapers Assistant Features Editor and Literary Editor from June 1977) has retrospectively described the paper as the movement’s “debating chamber”. Looking back now at the vast range of topics it covered, it is hard to disagree with that assessment. It carried reports of discrimination and political and social advances, campaigned for further law reform, (including parity with the heterosexual age of consent of sixteen (which was more to most CHE members taste), campaigned against the hostility of the church (which still treated homosexuality as a sin – and as already mentioned was rather wonderfully and memorably covered by the Pet Shop Boys song ‘It’s a sin’) and indeed the medical profession, which in the early to mid 1970s still officially treated homosexuality as a pathology: a ‘disease’ to be cured’. It also campaigned for equal rights in employment & the trades union movement at a time when left wing politics in the UK was still historically influenced by hostility to homosexuality. Under the influence of its features editors, Keith Howes and Hennegan, it also drilled down into the lesbian and gay cultural history of past decades, as well as presenting new developments in the arts.
Of course it was all well and good having a politically minded paper that covered the news from such a perspective but many wanted to be able to purchase something a little more, ahem, racy.
With that in mind there were several companies publishing materials that were aimed at homosexual men in this period in the mid seventies, of which one was the company that came to dominate the UK market, that of the Millivres empire founded in 1974 and owned by Alex Mc Kenna. At one stage they published three explicit magazines: Zipper, Mister and Vulcan. Later they also publiushed ´Him´ magazine as well. Each had its own editor and a specifically targeted market. However, at least initially, these were not explicit, in the form that we would understand today. Erections were not allowed above the so called ´angle of the dangle´, although sometimes publishers would test the water by adding a more explicit image with other less explicit ones to see if it was seized. Sometimes they were. The fledgling bookshop ´Gays The Word´ was to go on, to wage a battle against customs seizure of imported books for many years in fact.
Remarkably perhaps, although Millivres merged with Prowler Press to become the Millivres-Prowler group in 1999, Alex is still publishing magazines, thirty years on, in particular UK Beef, for hardcore muscle fans in 2024. This should very much not be confused with Beef, America’s leading cattle publication, publishing monthly issues for cow-calf operators, stockers, feeders, vets & more.
However, going back to the mid seventies, for many lesbians & gay men individually it was the fact that Gay News also published personal contact ads, in a more clearly defined way than, for example, ‘Films And Filming‘ had in the ‘fifties and ‘sixties and still, then, in clear defiance of the law (in fact, in its earliest editions this section was always headlined “Love knoweth no laws.”).
It was one of the first places that I saw specifically gay contact ads, though it was not in fact how I first contacted other gay men in the press: that was still to come a little later. However, for many lesbians and gay men who had access to Gay News, especially those away from the larger cities it must have at least offered a way to potentially develop meaningful relationships for the first time, away from the other alternatives available at the time, which were mostly illegal, such as in public toilets (cottages) and outside cruising areas and so its role in helping to create a fledgling community cannot be understated. Equally, realistically, the influence of the ads should not be overstated, as there were still a multitude of barriers to overcome before you met anyone. Many lesbians and gay men would not even have heard of ‘Gay News’ or been able to access copies of it easily. Certainly for those youngsters living with their parents or in digs it would not have been possible to have it delivered to them. Even after finding the ads, responding to an advert took some courage, as you had no idea really, in a pretty hostile world, who you might be letting know about your sexual and romantic proclivities.
The threat of the possibility of blackmail was still used by many institutions in the early to mid seventies (such as the Armed Forces) as a reason not to trust or employ lesbians & gay men. So it was by no means ‘plain sailing‘.
On to Sex, love and life (The Rituals) 2.5 Icebreakers and the beginnings of an ‘alt gay’ scene
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