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“I didn’t know I was gay at the time,” she says. 57-year-old Julia speaks about her ‘uncle’ Maurice, a scandal-dogged “bachelor in a tiny Somerset town” who eventually committed suicide. Many dedicate their stones to queer relatives, never able to overcome internalised self-loathing. “It’s better than being tied to a post and beaten to death.” “I spent years wondering if I should step in front of a bus,” she says. Botswana-born trans* artist Kat Kai Kol-Kes performs a song from her musical and remembers Matthew Shephard, battered to death for being gay. “They were shown dildo moulds.” Another woman describes her “very happy, very dysfunctional family”, and Christmases spent with her mum, her dad and her dad’s new boyfriend.īut these are the minority. “My parents went expecting fashion,” she says. Some have happy endings: Nell’s aunt set up a leather-shop with her lesbian partner in Los Angeles. But grief should be a collective emotion.” He invites queers of all ages and denominations to pick up a stone symbolising a lost LGBT* ancestor, and share their stories. “We become clichés, those happy gays: it’s a manifestation of internalised homophobia. “Our entire culture is seen as about getting fucked, in one sense or another, but there’s a higher spiritual level… about being together, being free” – Nell Andrew Not only being gay is a sin, but suicide is a sin: so we never talked about it.” “Four kids killed themselves before turning 14. “I grew up in an orthodox synagogue,” organiser Dan Glass says. Things have changed: this event is commemorating the 50th anniversary of partial decriminalisation in 1967.īut as the room relaxes and muted jazz plays, speakers open up about decades of trauma.
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Andrew describes the “liberated 1960s” as “a nightmare of a world”, full of secrecy and fear. The original Caravan Club was rapidly torn apart by police disgusted by “rotten sissies”, and the owners received years of hard labour. But when Andrew demands an apology from the Queen for gay persecution – “pardons? we’ll issue any pardons when we feel like it!” – a cheer rises. The National Trust name has brought a scattering of slightly nervy City boys and curious pensioners, and the crowd is quiet at first. He quietly names those who “were with us and aren’t now”, particularly activists lost to HIV/AIDS or hepatitis. He and the Gay Liberation Front were hounded by police for their “radical drag” stunts shutting down queerphobic religious festivals and so on in the 1970s. Black-and-white photos of Oscar Wilde and George Michael hang on the walls.Īndrew, 75, is the star attraction. Storied queer activist Andrew Lumsden tells me about 1960s gay clubs where you were not allowed to touch while dancing, and I am reminded of this as whiskered waiters sashay through the packed crowd. Amber Tallon, who organised the event with notorious radical queer subversives the National Trust, explains: “Undercover police reported seeing ‘sexual perverts, lesbians and sodomites, dancing very close together and wriggling their posteriors’… it sounds like the place to be.”Ĭramped in the caravanserai-like interior, it is easy to imagine the fug of smoke and queer bodies which filled the tiny private members’ club.
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The bar’s exterior is covered in blown-up 30s police reports and scandalised letters of complaint. “But there’s a higher spiritual level… about being together, being free.” “Our entire culture is seen as about getting fucked, in one sense or another,” Queer Tours of London campaigner Nell Andrew tells me in the bar. As generations of activists recall predecessors thrown in jail, beaten to death and consumed by Aids, waves of goosebumps pass through the room. Event organiser Dan Glass tells me he sees Peaches’ Fuck the Pain Away as an anthem for queer youth. A 1930s theme tends to attract overpaid wankers on the hunt for overpriced gin in jam-jars, electro-swing, and the chance to delude themselves they’re having a good time.īut at gay clubs then sex, drugs and swing have always mingled with grief. The vibe at Soho’s recreated Caravan Club could easily have gone wrong.