Jeffrey Edward Anthony DUDGEON. For services to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community in Northern Ireland.

A short, but inspiring sentence which means so much more than just its content!

Without Jeff and those, including the Northern Ireland Gay Rights Association (NIGRA), who took HM Government in the United Kingdom to court from 1976, many people in Northern Ireland might still be living in fear of blackmail, losing their jobs, reputation, and even their lives simply because of their sexual orientation.

Jeff’s case Dudgeon v United Kingdom is often cited around the world. More specifically, here in Northern Ireland, it led to the decriminalising of male homosexual acts between men over the age of 21 in private by the Privy Council in 1982.

Recognition

“I feel very warmed by it,” Mr Dudgeon said.

“It an award for me and my achievements but it’s also an award for the community and a recognition of its equal status in society which has been 35 years in the making.”  (BBC News)

Seán McGouran

Agitato con fuoco

The Daily Torygraph sorry, Telegraph (Thurs., 17.04.97) had a ‘think-piece’ by Norman Lebrecht.  It was on the position of women in (what record vendors call) ‘classical’ music.  It isn’t really very secure.  Lebrecht quoted some orchestral musicians’ sexist (and racist) utterances.  They were German-speaking musos, which was… interesting.  He admitted that the managerial end of the ‘classical’ game is a male preserve.  As is – his – critical end.

His musings on opera, however, take the (dog) biscuit.  Here is the paragraph in full:

“Why must classical music be a boy’s own zone?  The reasons are twofold: orientational and orchestral.  Like all arts, music attracts a dis-proportionate influx of minorities, including a sizeable homosexual element.  Homosexual men preponderate in areas of operatic and vocal activity, as organisers and audience, chorus and critics.  Their input is indispensable, both creatively and commercially, but their collective attitude is resistant to women.  Of all the impediments to openness and equality, theirs is the most deeply embedded.”

Another minority in classical (and other musics) is pompous Tory gets.  Lebrecht – inevitably – bashes musicians’ unions.

This article was to be entitled WITHOUT COMMENT – but Lebrecht’s assertion is not merely absurd and childish – it calls into question his adequacy for his post.

Gay men have tended to dominate the operatic stage in the English-speaking world.  But, apart from Britten’s all-male Billy Budd, they all wrote substantial pieces for women.  Britten’s first and last large vocal pieces Our Hunting Fathers and Phædra were written for sopranos (Sophie Wyss and Janet Baker respectively).  The opera Lucretia was tailored to Kathleen Ferrier’s voice… but this has the look of excuse-making accommodation.

Lebrecht’s assertion is so breathtakingly bigoted that it is difficult to believe it was published in a broadsheet that fancies itself as an intellectual power house of the political Right.

If Lebrecht, or his editor, Max (‘Hitler’) Hastings, want a heterosexual Tory to carry the banner for vocal music they’ll have to go back to Elgar.  And he was a plebeian Papist.

Andante febrile

The Style section of the Sunday Times (May 4, 1997) has a piece about Ms Marta Brennan.  She is suing the New York Metropolitan Opera.  She was an assistant stage director.  The ‘Met’ subjected her to a “hostile work environment”.  Her grounds were that the management (in particular her immediate boss David Kneuss) favoured young Gay men.  Brennan (“a 46-year-old heterosexual female”) also claims that other employees had been “similarly discriminated against”.

The ST (aka Rupert’s Sunday Liar) emphasises the Gay male aspect of the case.  But Brennan’s formal complaint suggests that Kneuss “favoured younger homosexual male and younger homosexual female employees” (our emphasis – upstart).  The Times dug up another case of ‘reverse discrimination’, in 1988, (by the ‘Met’).  Dr. Leonard J. Lehmann’s contract was not renewed (by the director, John Dexter, who is English).  Dr. Lehmann claims the latter had a reputation for “pinching little boys’ behinds”.  The relevance of which to his case seems a wee piece strained.  (Where did Dexter find ‘little boys’ in an opera house?  Were they wheeked-in off the streets?)

Allegro con brio (tempo di balletto)

We were always under the impression that opera was the butch element in these great theatres.  Ballet was – allegedly – the queer’s own art-form.  Especially in the eyes of simple-minded, fat-arsed journos.

They found it difficult to square the fact that many of the men in dance were screaming binkies.  And superb athletes.  They (the drunks – sorry… journalists) decided it was all done with wires (and padding).

The real problem most non-ballétomanes had with ballet was the fact that dance in the twentieth century in the English-speaking world has been the domain of powerful women: de Valois / Mrs Connell, Rambert / Ramberg, de Mille, Martha Graham.  Even in Ireland the most substantial figures are Patricia Mulholland and Joan Denise Moriarty.

Strong women and muscular homos with painted faces (and tights!).  Is it any wonder Sexual Norm stuck a cork up his bum and ran?

Scherzando giocoso

The US Southern Baptists’ denunciation of Disney for extending spouse-rights to Gay employees’ long-term partners gives us a piece of Urban Mythology:

Ten-year-old, having heard the news, wakes parent at (or before) the Skraik o’Dawn:

“Hey, Pop, I’m so glad we’re Catholics — we can still go to Disneyland!”

Allegro agitato

In his Monday column in The Times (14.07-97) Must we learn to hate Norman Mailer? Melvyn Bragg mused on the differences between individuals’ personal and artistic attributes.

(Mailer has been exposed as a vicious wife-beater).

Bragg writes:

“Do you think less of Peter Grimes when you know what we do now know about the often vicious sexual exploitation of young children by Benjamin Britten?”

What “vicious sexual exploitation of young children”?

Even ‘biographies’ designed to slag Britten off can’t dig up anyone younger than 17, in whom BB took a sexual interest.  And there is no evidence that he actually had sex with anybody in their teens.  He almost certainly did not have sex with anybody until his mid-twenties.

(Peter Grimes was Britten’s first opera.  Premiered in 1945 it gave many listeners a great post-WWII boost.  And the illusion that England was embarking on a – musical – ‘Golden Age’).

Possibly a (very long) moratorium should be put on journalists (even quite superior ones like Bragg) throwing wild, un-researched allegations about.  The painters Dalí and Matisse are described as “endorsing Fascism” in this short article.  You might as well call the ardently Catholic composer de Falla a Communist.  He endorsed the (entirely bourgeois) Spanish Republic.

This is penny-plain, tuppence-coloured, let’s-not-engage-our-minds journalism.  And a tribute to the Blessed Rupert’s dumbing-down of a great (if overly staid) newspaper.

Gay people, and most of the general public tend to assume that people who have to do with ‘the Arts’ (major and minor) are pro-Gay, or at least are open-minded on matters of sexuality and sexual orientation.

For many years a gliberal consensus was maintained on the matter, with the odd exception, the writer Anthony Burgess, for example.  It might seem that there is a certain solidarity between the Gay community and the Arts establishment, due to the threat of the Knight / Wilshire section of the Local Government Act, but there are a number of peas under the mattress which need examining.  Sir William Rees-Mogg (now a Lord) former editor of The [London] Times, former General Secretary of the Arts Council of Great Britain, (and head of the Maggie Thatcher fan-club), has been appointed the television watch-dog in the new Broadcasting Authority, which is to oversee all radio and especially television.  He is, in effect, going to be a censor, how could Gay people trust such a dubious ally?

Other anti-Gay elements have crawled out of the woodwork, or at least, have been given time and space in the various media.  An example was the Turkish film, The Wall by Yilmaz Güney shown on Channel 4 in May.  The film was about very young prisoners.  The chief hate-figure was a homosexual prison guard.  He was presented as a stoop shouldered, slit-eyed, unshaven “baddie”.  In different circumstances it would have been a laughable characterisation.

There are, of course, few creatures in this world more intolerant of the off-centre than teenage boys.  And no Gay woman or man could accept as tolerable the abuse of power this character engaged in — the forcing of sex on his charges.  But writer / director Güney must have been indulging himself in making the Boys of Dormitory 4 promise each other to kill him, in particular, should a riot ever occur.  In a situation where inmates were beaten until they bled, strip-searching was a common occurrence, and food and money, was routinely stolen by staff.  In some ways it is liberal Turkey’s equivalent of liberal Greece’s Z, (Costas-Gavras) where the fascist assassin’s homosexuality was emphasised so often and so shrilly that a very good, serious, film almost sank under the weight of homophobia.  Channel 4 is currently showing the ‘cult’ series Lost In Space, Dr. Zachary Smith is presumably liberal America’s revenge for the late McCarthyite fink Fay Roy Cohn, who helped terrorise Hollywood.

Again on television, Ken Russell gave us an ABC of British Music in the twentieth century.  The show, a middle-brow bigot’s guide to a century of artistic endeavour, was the usual chauvinist plea for composers like Granville Bantock.  Bantock’s contribution to British music was to build up a great regional orchestra, the City of Birmingham.  His own music becomes annoying after a short time.

Russell chose to snipe at, not Gay composers, but openly Gay composers.  Michael Tippett’s opera The Knot Garden was described as “camp and obscure”.  It may very well be ‘camp and obscure’ but coming from Ken Russell it is a clear case of the snow calling the cocaine white.  He also chose to described Britten’s Death In Venice as “a child molester’s fantasy”, and contrasted it with William Walton’s “healthy heterosexual” Troilus and Cressida.  As it happens, Walton’s beautiful opera was a bit too behind-hand for 1954.  But time will make that aspect of its reception redundant.

Walton, who was quite a lucky and successful composer, does not need this sort of advocacy.  Apart from any other consideration, he and Britten liked and respected each other.  Most of Walton’s later first performances were at Britten’s Aldeburgh Festival.

All of this was in a context of Russell wearing funny Music Hall clothes and putting on a ‘begorrah’ accent for Hamilton Harty and the Ulster Orchestra (playing his Irish Symphony).  There were no similar comic turns for Scottish or Welsh composers.  Scotland was represented by Bantock’s Hebrides Symphony, Wales by Edward German’s Welsh Rhapsody.  Both rather pleasant works, but about as authentic as a double-headed dildo.  Taylor-Coleridge, the Anglo-Sierra Leonian composer was passed over very quickly.  Women composers were patronised as “girls”.  He mentioned Elizabeth Lutyens and Elizabeth Maconchy.  Due to the BBC’s wonderful sexism Maconchy’s music is unknown.  Lutyens was surely one of the most distinguished English composers.  The term “girls” is obviously a put-down.  It is a noticeable example of the tendencies of the thoroughly modern homophobe — he hates uppity women too.

The new ‘quality’ daily newspaper The Independent has developed a line of semi-detached queer-bashing.  One contributor being William, (Lord) Rees-Mogg, writing as a ‘Catholic layman’.  A response to Mogg’s homophobic ramble by a very distinguished Roman Catholic theologian disputing it in every detail, was printed a week later. It was sandwiched between the advertisements and the sports-results.  Mogg’s had been on the editorial page.

The Independent published (Sat., May 5th 1988) a comprehensively anti-Gay (and, like Russell’s, underhand) piece.  It was Profile: Rudolf Nureyev, the dancer at 50.  The techniques of the gossip-columnist and the “puff” writer were very evident.  Remarks were attributed to “close friends”, “close associates”, and so on.  Nureyev “utterly transformed Western ballet’ and “turned a minor art into something major” — this is ahistorical drivel.

Prior to Nureyev, British male dancers (you will note that “the West’ suddenly shrinks to the dimensions of Britain), “didn’t look like men”, and were not good at their job.  This is simply not true.  There were many excellent male dancers in Britain before Nureyev’s appearance, Michel Somes, David Blair, John Gilpin, were world-famous and very masculine looking.  The implication of this odd phrase is that male dancers were effeminate, and by implication, homosexual.  So far as can be deduced, the three men named were heterosexual, or possibly bi-sexual.  Gay dancers were not especially ‘fem’ looking (not, by the bye, that we are suggesting that there is anything wrong with being a ‘fem’ gay man).  Kerrison Cooke, who did us all the favour of appearing not over-dressed in gay male publications in the very early 1970s, is a case in point.

The whole point of this Profile comes about four fifths of the way through.  Nureyev is described as a “…flamboyant (and undeclared homosexual) Don Juan”.  This is a very confused phrase and confusing concept.  The man’s alleged sexual orientation has little to do with the subject of ‘…the dancer at 50′.  No reason is given for mentioning it, nor is any evidence advanced to back the assertion.  There is no indication that the subject sanctioned his alleged homosexuality being made known.

The point of this exercise is to buttress the image of gay men (and by implication, lesbians) as odd, engaged in artistic pursuits (but trivial and minor ones, like dancing, hair dressing, interior decoration — you know the rest).  We are isolated by this carefully fostered image.  But are not allowed to be private persons.  Distinguished people, like Nureyev, are discussed as if they were not allowed to be private persons.  Ordinary Joes who are victims of police provocateurs, like the twelve recently in court in Craigavon, are humiliated by having their full names and addresses, and their age and occupation all over their local press and the provincial press.

The point of the foregoing is not merely to give readers a guided tour around the nastier aspects of the British media but to ask that we, as individuals, and in our movement, be discerning about individuals and about social forces.  We in Ulster have, in an odd sort of way been lucky, in that our opponents have generally speaking, attacked us in a non-salacious way.  This was certainly true of Paisley and the mildly-absurdly named Save Ulster from Sodomy campaign.  The Irish News, which serves the Catholic community rarely reports minor Gay “scandals” like that in Craigavon, it will not take Cara-Friend’s advertisement.  But recently it carried a half-page interview with Ian McKellan, which was extremely positive about his coming out and about his part in the fight against ‘Knight / Wilshire’ and his commitment to helping the AIDS Helplines.

Contrast this with our false friends of the Sunday World, with their ‘exposing’ of gay men and gay male ‘scandals’ in practically every edition.  And the pompous Belfast Telegraph, a Thomson organisation paper, which takes Cara-Friend’s money, for advertisements, but has no compunction about doing us down on as many occasions as it can manage, in its genteel ‘Malone Road’ manner.

Even of the two sponsors of ‘the Section’ [Section 28], one, Dame Jill Knight is a heartless bigot of decades’ standing, whose attitude to other minorities, or even to the further advancement of women, leaves a lot to be desired.  David Wilshire appears to be an easily-led parliamentary ‘new-start’ who does not realise that he is allowing the genie of bigotry (and fear of the law) out of the legal bottle.

***

Out-take GS Vol. 2, No. 2, Spring 1989

Cuttings File

The Independent‘s magazine did a hatchet job on Jim Davidson.  They could not have picked a nicer person you might think.  He deals in racial, sexual and social stereotypes, freely using words like “nigger” in his act.

Aspects of this article are worth examining critically.  Davidson appears to be a quite complex person behind his persona.  He says “…I went to the opera… fucking ‘orrible it was.  Tales of Hoffmann.  Lasts forever.  I hated it.  I’m getting into opera a little bit now.  And ballet.  I went to see Swan Lake in Bath and I had hysterics.  You could hear their feet.  The two blokes came on with their lunches down their trousers.  The big one, the swan, had a great big lunch down his trousers.  I couldn’t believe it.  The bigger the star, the bigger the lunch box.”

The blokes in Swan Lake are not supposed to be swans, but the gist of these remarks, which are probably meant to prove how vulgar he is and how superior readers of The Independent are, appears to be pretty on the ball.  Tales of Hoffmann is appallingly dull.  It gives credibility to the “bleeding chunks” policy of firing off the interesting bits of operas on record or concert hall platforms and leaving the padding.  So far as dancers and lunch boxes are concerned, Davidson, and the rest of us, are products of a culture hypocritical to the point of psychosis about matters sexual and therefore anatomical — we are alienated from our Important Bits.  Dancers’ apparent unconcern embarrasses most men, making a joke about it is quite a good way of defusing embarrassment.

The writer of this piece chose to follow this up with the following paragraph: “It would be interesting to see what members of the Royal Ballet would make of Davidson’s act, punctuated as it is with direct-to-audience shouts like “Any poofs in?”".  Who is pushing sexual and social stereotypes here?

On the same day was a Profile of Yassar Arafat.  In the course of his, it was claimed that Israeli Intelligence had dropped “dark hints” about Arafat’s homosexuality.

Why “dark hints”?

If Arafat is Gay it makes little difference to his politics – it may have humanised his politics – he appears to be serious about dropping the exterminatory nonsense of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation) refusing to countenance the existence of Israel.  Like less eminent people it is Arafat’s attitude to his own homosexuality – assuming the “dark hints” have any validity – is what matters.

If he ever succeeds in establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel it is doubtful of it will be put down to Gay insight and intuition.

GALHA (the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association) hosted a talk in Conway Hall (Friday, 13March 2010). Squatting in Brixton: The Brixton Gay Community of the 1970s, was given by Dr. Matt Cook. He is Senior Lecturer in History at Birkbeck College, University of London. GALHA’s print / hand-out mentions the South London GLF (Gay Liberation Front). And the Brixton Faeries (a street-theatre group a member of which was Bette Bourne. Bette Bourne was currently playing Quentin Crisp in Resident Alien. A further element was Gay Left – a magazine with which NIGRA’S Gay Star had the odd passage of arms.

I managed to get to the meeting as Matt Cook ended his talk. One gathered from the questions that he had been more concerned with the squatting movement in south London, especially Brixton, than specifically with the Gay element in it. He appears not to have gone into GLF in detail and said virtually nothing about the Faeries or about the magazine. Gay Left inspired other magazines. From the vigorously non-deferential Gay Noise to the commercially viable Capital Gay. (Which was very friendly to NIGRA, C-F, and the rest.). Gay Noise was my inspiration. One Thursday night in 1981 I was told I was Editor of NIGRA’s official publication. I am not sure that the more respectable elements enjoyed all they read in Gay Star.

One veteran of Brixton GLF (as it in effect was) noted that the consumption of ganga was not mentioned. He thought that describing the organising group (GALHA) by its initials was a step back to the 1970s or even ’60s. It became clear he was not familiar with the meaning of the GALHA initials. (Consuming ganga is notoriously bad for the short-term memory). And Conway Hall is not a place where queers have ever needed to backward about coming forward.

After a few more questions and announcements of meetings germane to the subject in hand, we got down to socialising and drinking the generous quantity of vino available. (We acquitted ourselves excellently well, there was a half-bottle left at the end). It was dished out with generous abandon by a very fetching lanky young man. He was very friendly to us oldsters. Apart from him and some other interested young people (and a few merely middle-aged) the average participant was of the Freedom Pass generation.

I was surprised at how few people I recognised. We’ve all had about thirty five years of living since the halcyon days of upfront Gayness, ganga and general gorgeousness. (It struck me that one was probably a quite attractive twentysomething – pity I didn’t realise it at the time.). Joseph Healy was there. Many will remember him as an evangelist (in the 1980s in Ireland) for the poetry of Gay women and men. He’s now a Green Party member and will contest Vauxhall in the next General Election, against blood sports fan Kate Hoey. (The Gay community in Northern Ireland owes Ms Hoey considerable thanks for her efforts on our behalf in 1994. We had been left out of the further extension of legal rights for Gay people. She ‘fixed it’ with an amendment to the Criminal Law and Justice Bill.)

Another person I recognised was Ian Townson of Lancaster GLF, and now a resident of south London. There was something of a Lancaster / Brixton axis in the 1970s. It had to do with personnel. And with the fact that the two groups were among the only surviving GLF groups. Lancaster helped produce Gay Left and produced some magazines independently in the seventies.

There is one surviving GLF. In Belfast. The central group in NIGRA (the Northern Ireland Gay Rights Association) was the Gay Liberation Society. ‘Gay Lib’ was in origin a Society of QUB’s Student Union. It launched itself into the general community in the Autumn of 1972. The ‘Thursday night meetings’ are the longest-running and probably last manifestation of the state of mind which was GLF. And that is what it was – ‘programmes’ and ‘manifestos’ were decidedly secondary to the matter.

We will try to get our hands on reports from the meetings and other events being canvassed at this enjoyable and enlightening event.

I don’t really see a direct connection between Brixton / South London GLF and GALHA, as such, but the latter organised the event. So here’s its address:

Gay & Lesbian Humanist Association (GALHA for short)

PO Box 130

London

W5 1DQ

secretary@galha.org

www.galha.org

]]> http://upstartpublishing.com/670/old-gay-liberationists-never-die-we-only-go-to-hempseed/feed 0 http://upstartpublishing.com/665/afternoons-in-east-london http://upstartpublishing.com/665/afternoons-in-east-london#comments Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:26:55 +0000 Terry http://upstartpublishing.com/?p=665 The EDL (English Defence League) called a ‘demonstration’ in east London on a  Saturday in September 2011. Two trade unions, the RMT and Unite called a counter demonstration. The Home Secretary banned both – neither element took any notice. I attended the counter demonstration, which had to move three times. The first was Weaver’s Fields, Vallance Road (just off Bethnal Green Road), closed on the day with a slightly pathetic, brand new, chain and padlock. The trade union demonstration was eventually held at the crossroads of Vallance, New, and Whitechapel Roads.

It was a very orderly demonstration and did not occupy the actual road. The shopkeeper next to the platform was mollified by the fact that his cold cabinet emptied in the course of the speechifying. Of which there was a lot. One speaker was from the local LGBT group, Rainbow Tower Hamlets. There was possibly the last resident Rabbi in the area. Some young Muslim men looked speculatively at Peter Tatchell when he arrived. They probably hoped he would suggest something more strenuous than listening to the great and the good gassing. He maintained best front-parlour behaviour.

I got tired of standing about and walked down the road towards the Islamic Centre, more precisely, towards the 254 bus stop. The bus did not appear. The EDL was having ‘a static demonstration’ at Aldgate, thereby irritating at least a quarter of London’s drivers. They were hemmed-in very tightly by the police, who appeared not to relish these visitors. (The riot police at the trade union counter demonstration left after an hour). Walking through a maze of unfamiliar streets towards Liverpool Street, I encountered a number of large, courteous, young Muslim men in bright yellow hazard jackets. They were almost certainly organised by the Mosque / Islamic Centre.

The EDL is deeply suspicious of the Centre. In some ways, they are entitled to be suspicious. It (the Mosque) takes the attitude that it is better to have the headbangers inside the big tent, where they can be policed and possibly turned into normal people, than out making mischief. That was the attitude of the Labour Party to the Trotskyists, Maoists, and Communist Party ‘cryptos’ in the days when it was a mass movement. Many of these (mostly young) people became ordinary Labourites. Some became glazed-eyed ‘Trot’ hunters. Most of the EDL at Aldgate probably didn’t realise they were only yards away from their objective.

I encountered some of the EDL later. The seemed confused by the City. It is dead after the Banks empty on Friday afternoon. There was some desultory shouting of “We are, we are, the famous EDL!” Mostly they processed, under the watchful eyes of the police to various railway stations. They were grumpy and subdued, rather than aggressive. A good number had been in the pub, the term ‘drunken rabble’ came to mind. It was a very hot day. They had been standing about in a fairly desolate area for hours. Presumably ‘ethnic’ shopkeepers had closed for the afternoon. There was very little alternative to the boozers.

There wasn’t much evidence of where the crowd came from, banners had been folded. There was a placard with ‘Luton’ on it, and an indecipherable slogan. Surprisingly few were wearing headgear, and none covered their faces. (An odd procedure for people who object to Muslim women covering their own faces. Presumably the police objected to masks). There were no St. George flags visible. It was a rather dowdy crowd. It was a decidedly plebeian crowd. They were the sort of people one would expect to meet at a trade union organised event.

Are they racist? Probably most of them aren’t. They are certainly not fascist. Yet.

Patrick Pearse, President of the Irish Republic of Easter Week 1916, remarked, in 1913, that the ‘the Irish people in the nineteenth century was a mob attempting to realise itself as a nation’. The EDL is a crowd attempting to realise itself as a power in the land – possibly a political party – we can only hope that it does not acquire a charismatic ‘leader’.

Out in ‘ackney

The other afternoon was more engaging. It was the first East End Gay Pride. It had been billed for early April. EDL involvement, and the consequent Islamophobia, rather put the kibosh on the matter. The SWP (Social[ist] Workers’ Party) probably assumed the EDL’s role. It was fairly discreet and non-manipulative. (Which is semi-miraculous). The actual walk itself can best be described as small and (somewhat) imperfectly formed. There were about two hundred of us walking the one and a half miles from Hackney Town Hall on Mare Street to Oxford House in Derbyshire Street off Bethnal Green Road. (Where the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement has its headquarters. I rather hoped they would be offering tea and buns when we arrived.)

Some young people were somewhat put out at the apparently small number but I suggested it was standard for a first Pride. There were very few ‘Asian’ women or men on the walk. There were very few African or Afro-Caribbean people either. The parade was led by the big banner of the Movement For Justice. It is a civil rights group dealing mostly with refugees and asylum seekers. It appears to be largely African in membership. It has had a quite significant victory in the case of the Tanzanian, Edson ‘Eddy’ Cosmas. A student and asylum seeker who was to be chucked out on the grounds that the fact that Tanzanian society is heavily homophobic is not a reason for him to stay in the UK. This was quite apart from his being only mid-way through his college course. Other banners included Queers Against the Cuts, and Redbridge NUT (National Union of Teachers). Redbridge is practically in Essex. East End Pride’s logo is a map of the seven east London boroughs with the rainbow colours superimposed on it.

There were two Asian people on the walk, one a young ethnic-Chinese man who cross questioned Peter Tatchell. Another young man, of ‘BanglaIndoPakLankan / south Asian’ origin, was clearly a member of one of the SWP’s front groups. The SWP and the Socialist Party (‘Militant’ as was) had stalls outside Hackney Central Library (next the Town Hall) but the latter seemed not to take part in the walk. There were three people with Belfast accents,and one with a Donegal accent. The age range would have gladdened the heart of any pollster, as would the gender ratio which was more or less fifty / fifty.

There was no music and we inevitable ‘bunched-up’ as we progressed down Mare Street. The police set a good walking pace, which was useful. The few people who took notice were bemused-to-friendly some waved at friends on the walk. We turned into Bethnal Green Road past ‘an EDL pub’. The road is crowded with shops and stalls – and on a Saturday afternoon lots of people – the general attitude of people of all ‘races’ was vaguely interested goodwill. One (pinko-gray) man at a bus stop did a ‘disgusted’ pantomime, which could well have been closetry, of course.

The ‘bar’ in Oxford House was staffed by members of the local LGBT group. It sold fruit juice and bottled beer, and was billed as The Out Not Inn. The programme promised ‘The Chamber of Queer Controversy (in a dance studio). The Dance Studio was difficult to find and acoustics were hardly a major consideration. Hannah Dee, author of The Red in the Rainbow, (you may read a review relatively shortly) assumed the ‘chair’ of the first discussion, LGBTQ people and the cuts. ‘George’ spoke for Queers Against the Cuts, he made the point that a whole generation of (male) LGBT activists was lost. The SWP ‘line’ seems to be that the trade unions are hopelessly compromised by the alliance with Labour. My own ‘line’ and probably that of Queers Against the Cuts, is that the unions are still very significant. We can hardly shrug at millions of workers organised in strategic parts of the economy (though the Government probably will).

Hannah Dee is something of a motormouth – this is not a complaint – she used the “megaphone” as she put it, on the walk. The main slogan was “If you hate homophobia stamp you feet. If you hate transphobia clap your hands. If you hate Islamophobia scream.” The foot stamping was very satisfactory, as was the hand clapping. Hannah seemed slightly surprised by the vigorous screech the last slogan brought. This last section of the slogan may have annoyed as many on Bethnal Green Road as it mollified.

I left Oxford House quite early in the proceedings, missing Roz Kaveney reading of her own poetry, Building a multicultural LGBTQ community. And more important (in some ways) MoMo (Music of Morrocan Origin. Mainly because it sounded rather jolly. Apparently “the band is MoMo, the music is DAR, the Vibz are International. It’s a Morockney slang ting!” Anything so totally out of one’s own experience could only be great. But it took too long to manifest itself. One hopes a jolly good time was had by all. And that this event is the beginning of a long tradition. I’ll only be eighty nine (and a bit) in its twenty-fifth anniversary year.

S. McGouran

This is a report from within the Belfast LGBT Pride ‘Dander’ 2008.  I went from London because of Iris Robinson’s ‘outbursts’.  (The plural, apart from being disgusting abominations she compared us to murderers.  And worse than child molesters.  See the article DUPlicity for an attempt at analysis.)  I wasn’t the only ‘exile’ to return to give Iris a bad day.

I’d intended to walk with the Labour Party banner, but couldn’t spot it.  It was at the very end of the parade, I discovered late in the proceedings.   There were four thousand on the Dander, (an east Ulster dialect word meaning ‘stroll’.  Without the sense of urgency implied in that word.  It was chosen to deflect whinging about a big, butch, ‘march’.

Incidentally, the ‘marching season’ was invented in the Europa Hotel about 1971.  Prior to that Orange and Green (Hibernian) parades were known unthreateningly as ‘walks’).  The Pride Committee, allegedly, is a bit worried about future walks being a bit anti-climactic, after this one.

The Curse o’Paisley?

From within the parade, in a fairly anonymous position, I can report that it was hugely cheerful.  And that the Belfast public had turned out in very large numbers to cheer-on Pride.  It is partly the curse of Paisley.  If the Free Ps are agin’ something most of the rest of the public (including many who vote DUP) will favour it.  More to the point, very large numbers of people were taking photos and making vids of the Dander.

This vindicates our decision in 1991 to ‘position’ the Dander as the climax of a festival.  And not as yet another grim, gray (boring) Belfast ‘protest’.  Political and social points can be made with a smile, rather than a scowl.

The public who crowded onto the road, so eager were they to share space with us ‘abominations’, probably thought we were, in a Belfast phrase, ‘out on our geg’.  (It’s untranslatable).  It included the Drag Queens, about whom some commentators waxed somewhat snooty.

The opposition now consists of two groups.  The ‘traditional’ one run by David McIlveen of the Free Presbyterians has a pitch at ‘the Art College’ (aka the University of Ulster, Belfast).  Passing this pitch it was noticeable that a couple of people were not obeying the rules set out by the Parades Commission.  They were not in the grounds of the College, but standing on the parapet surrounding the grounds.

(Dawn Purvis, the leader of the Progressive Unionist Party was embarrassed by their antics.  She was there for solidarity reasons (with us, not them)).

Another small problem at that point was that the skies opened (for a very short but drenching) time.  Practically nobody noticed an eejit ‘mooning’ at the opposition.  Most of them could not have seen this.  They were well inside the College grounds, behind a (largely decorative) wall.  A photograph of this non-event appeared in the Irish News the following Monday (August 4).  It illustrated a front-page article Indecent act at gay march condemned.  No named person was quoted as ‘condemning’ the act.

Brendan Breen’s Mammy

The writer Brendan Breen almost certainly ‘invented’.  An unnamed “witness” was “gobsmacked”.  (Pure Belfastese, I don’t think).  He (the mooner) “was touching himself”.  The pic shows him pointing at his arse.  Allegedly “women and children” were “completely shocked”.  (This is terribly touching.  But it’s worth pointing out that an actual we’an was walking along beside the mooner.  And not taking a blind bit of notice.  Mothers have seen an awful lot of bare arses in their lives.  Brendan Breen’s Mammy has probably seen his hundreds of times).  Most people were opening brollies as this was happening.  The skies opened for several minutes.

This story was uncharacteristic of the Irish News and was offset by an editorial No pride in this behaviour.  It was pretty pompous but accepted that the incident was silly rather than sinister.  It also referred to “a clergyman” being “‘jostled” by “revellers” after the Dander.  Breen’s story implied that the above incident and the ‘jostling’ (of a “Catholic priest”) were part of the same incident.

And “a man was arrested for disorderly conduct at Custom House Square”.  Which is why the Polis love Pride.  There were thousands of people in the Square.  Nearly all boozing.  One arrest (if this is an accurate report) is semi-miraculous.

Foaming at the mouth

What was not referred to was the behaviour of some of the other lot of protesters at the City Hall.  Two men (who appeared to be foaming at the mouth) broke away from the group on the footpath.  They stood on a traffic island close to the people on the Dander.  A very wee lady Peeler was trying to reason with them.  It is this lot, supplied (by the Christian Institute) with ‘money from America’, who brought the Pride Committee to the Parades Commission some years ago.  This is why the parade route is somewhat truncated.

Apart from the (Church of Ireland) St Ann’s Cathedral it does not pass any church buildings.  (The mooning incident took place a good ten metres away from St Ann’s.  The IN story was written as if it took place in its precincts).

This foreshortening of the Dander caused a hold up.  Half of us, had, like the kilties, marched around the City Hall.  The other half of the parade had not yet exited Donegall Place.  That was very cheering.  So we cheered and clapped.  Some people decided to sloganise back at the protesters.  It was understandable.  But some of the latter are genuinely unhinged.  (If you know you are ‘saved’ you can do anything to advance God’s will.  Hassling lady Peelers is the least of it).

All of the floats appeared to be together at the end of the parade, probably an optical illusion on my part.  There was an Old Farts, sorry… ‘veterans’… float at the head of the parade.  It was suggested that I get on board.  But I felt that walking made the point better.  (And I couldn’t work out how to get on to the damned thing).

Was it worthwhile? 

Emphatically ‘Yes’.  Our opponents got the message loud and clear that we are not intimidated.  Apart from Dawn Purvis of the PUP there was a turn out by the Greens, the SWP and the Socialist Party (formerly Militant).  Éamonn McCann, came down from Derry / Londonderry with a lot of Gay women and men.  And his family.  David Ford the leader of the Alliance Party was there.  So was Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Belfast, Tom Hartley, and party colleague Bairbre de Brún MEP.  Basil McCrea and another UUP (Ulster, formerly ‘Official’, Unionist Party) MLA were on the parade.  The SDLP Youth carried their banner.  I did not notice any SDLP elders.  But (NIGRA President) PA Mag Lochlainn (a founder member of the party) has been permanent fixture of Belfast Pride from the start, in 1991.

The Facts of Law

The protesters got very excited about the Rev Chris Hudson (of the Unitarian (Non-Subscribing Presbyterian) Church which dates from the 1830s) being on the parade in ‘uniform’.  He was part of the (largely Anglican) ‘Changing Attitudes Ireland’ group, started by the Rev. Mervyn Kingston who was too poorly to be on the ‘walk’.

[Chris Hudson was the clergyman who was assaulted.  He was attacked by elements of the Christian Institute's mob (there's no other word to describe their behaviour) who tried to drag his 'clerical' collar off.]

I note from Conor Lynch’s photographs that the Humanists were with us, as was Andrew Mulvenna’s hair studio, and the Young Greens.  The people who organise the protests (the Free Presbyterians (and Free Methodists?)) and the Stop the Parade Coalition (they’re too bigoted to mention Gay or LGBT) are going to have to tell their followers the facts of law.

They dragged Pride to the Parades Commission.  They agreed to certain rules and regulations.  Including standing away from the actual Dander.  And not barging into it.  Two strapping men stood on the parapet round the Art College.  Another pair at a traffic island were well away from the Coalition’s pitch in front of City Hall.  They were intimidating.  And yet another tried to tear a cartoon image of Iris Robinson off the front of a float.  (This was in Donegall Square South, behind the City Hall).  Even those engaged in ‘God’s work’ ought to obey the law of the land.

Any downsides?

No live music.  There was no ‘tinned’ music, which is a boon.  The samba band we had for a number of years was cheering.  And laid down a reasonable walking pace.  Otherwise, as in this case, we tended to crowd and walk rather too quickly.  (Disco music is worse.  The people nearest to its source tend to run and leave the rest behind).  The route could have been somewhat longer.  If only to avoid confrontations with the Holy Joe’s. 

It isn’t a criticism, but there were a lot of Gay people – largely men – among the spectators.  They waved to us on the Dander but it would have been useful if they’d joined in.  We needed to make a show of ourselves.

l l l l l

Paranoia?

I don’t want to end on a sour note… but… when I tried to get into the Cara-Friend premises, I asked a (rather fetching) young man at the door if he was going to the C-F rooms.  (Being a Saturday afternoon, an hour or two before the Dander, I assumed he wasn’t the chiropractor or a Communication Worker).  He asked, “Who are you?”  I struggled momentarily with an element of existential self-questioning.  He let the door slam in my face.  After the Dander I managed to get into the premises.  Two nice young men asked me the same question “Who are you?”.  I gave them my CV.  It didn’t impress them.  Malcolm, a Cara-Friend volunteer, happened along to vouch for me.

It is true to say that the fact that you’re paranoid doesn’t mean ‘THEY’ aren’t out to get you.  But this blunt question (is it used regularly? or was I unlucky?) is too challenging.  What if I’d been some poor soul coming to a befriending?  If this sort of confrontational questioning is common it should be stopped.  It would be better to say something along the lines of “I haven’t seen you here before…” an ‘open-ended question’, as any telephone befriender will tell you.  You risk autobiographical garrulousness.  But that’s better than someone going away with a bad impression.

In the days when armed men were driving around Belfast looking for people to kill the tenor of social interaction by Gay women and men was much more easygoing.

(Molehills…?

Mountains…?

Maybe…).

The last upstart did not have space to mention the “Queer Action” in Belfast, in solidarity with the ILGO (Irish Lesbian and Gay Organisation) of New York.  ILGO has been refused permission by the Ancient Order of Hibernians in America (AOHA) to walk in the St. Patrick’s Day parade.  The ILGO slogan was: Year Eight – end the Hate!  Yes, this has been dragging on for all of the 1990s.  (Parallel to Belfast Pride — something ILGO could use in its publicity).  The Queer Action was comparatively large, and noisy, it drew plenty of attention.  People stopped and had the situation explained to them.

To that extent, it was a very useful exercise, but there were a number of things wrong with it; and (in the interests of our friends in New York, who are engaged in a genuine struggle for civil rights), it would be cowardly not to deal with them head-on.  NIGRA (the Northern Ireland Gay Rights Association), which has organised solidarity actions for six years now, issued a statement which was published (in amended form) by GCN (Gay Community News, Dublin), prior to any actions.  Part of the burden of this, was that NIGRA had picketed the US Consulate-General a number of times, and the staff, (while sympathetic to the aims of the picket) had pointed-out that the dispute was between ILGO, the AOHA, and to an extent, the New York City authorities.

This is the reason why NIGRA, in Dublin, picketed the Aer Lingus office on O’Connell Street.  Aer Lingus, Bord Fáile, and Guinness are among the biggest ‘corporate sponsors’ of the Parade.

The Queer Action in Belfast was held outside the Consulate.  No harm in that.  It is a big, noticeable, public building (with ‘Old Glory’ flying outside of it — it must be the biggest flag in Belfast).  But the banners bore the following legend:

AOH,

NYPD, RUC,

Unholy Trinity.

There are practical objections to this slogan.  The first one is that most people would not know what AOH stands for.  They might recognise the term Hibs.  Even then, they might assume it was a Scottish football team.  The AOH has experienced a great fall in Ireland, including Ulster.

(Without boring the arse off readers, the Hibs in Ireland, the Board of Erin, were different from the American organisation; which was connected to the AOH in Scotland, but had only a small following in Ireland.  One of the reasons why this ban is disgraceful if that the AOHA has genuine radical traditions: the ‘Mollie Maguires’ and all that.)

Most people would not know what NYPD meant, even insomniac fans of NYPD Blue.  We may be fascinated by Americana, but meeting it in Queen Street in the middle of the afternoon, is disconcerting (again, it may not be a bad thing, it pulls people up, and makes them think.)

NIGRA could have noted that Rudi Giuliani’s web-site lists one of his achievements, as Mayor of New York, (as well as – allegedly – cleaning up crime) as keeping ILGO off the streets!  (There’s an awful lot of votes in red-neck Irish America, all those ‘Reagan-Democrats’ – virtual ‘Dixiecrats’ – in the New York Police Department).

The inclusion of RUC in the slogan is surreal.  What point is being made here?  An obvious one is that he RUC is directly involved in the oppression of the ILGO.  Or possibly that the RUC goes over to New York to get at Irish queers as a sort of hobby.

It is politically unwise to use slogans which are not to the point in a particular situation.

The RUC are not implicated in the situation in New York.  The fight for civil rights for Irish queers to walk in (what everyone knows is a Parade open to every other citizen of New York — to all the world.  The Parade was host to militants of the Indian National Congress in the 1920s), is not served by dragging in extraneous matters.  This is especially so as the RUC have, apart from the bruising encounters outside Gardners bookshop in 1977, been well-behaved even sympathetic, at Gay events in Belfast.

Despite that, it may well be that we will have to have to picket the Chief Constable, other senior officers, or particular RUC stations, because of their refusal to take a reasonable attitude to the treatment of [homo]sexual offenders.  And the biased classification of sex crimes, which emphasises the behaviour of gay men, but disguises sexual, violence against women and children.

Something else which should be discussed is the state of mind of some on the Queer Action.  One participant said he was getting rid of a “lot of anger”.  That should happen at an encounter session, or a therapist’s chambers.  It definitely is not the state of mind that one should have on a picket. What would a person in such a state of mind have done of the police had got heavy?

We are, or should be, in the business of getting he ILGO onto the St Patrick’s Day Parade in New York, sooner rather than later.  That will not come about as a result of self-indulgent posing about the RUC, or any other group, especially if they are not involved in the case.

Belfast, and this region, is important in the campaign against the AOHA, because they have signed-up to a large number of ‘civil rights’ campaigns over the last quarter century.  This is partly the result of guilt: they threw people trying to unfurl a NI Civil Rights Association banner off their march in 1969. And we mean threw.  (If someone tried to unfurl a NI Gay Rights Association banner…?)

There are other ‘ethnic’ marches in New York, and other US cities — ILGO’s fight (like NIGRA’s in Europe), as a ‘test case’.  If ILGO do not succeed, all may return to the status quo ante.  It might also be seen as a signal to unpeel the queers from the African-, Italian-, Greek-, You-name-it-American parades, and corral us into our ghetto — which can then be ignored.

1999′s actions will have to be effective — we should start thinking about them now, rather than a week or two before St Pat’s Day.

The Irish Times, pre-Christmas 2010, carried year-end round ups.  Eileen Battersby’s books of the year involved thirty-two publications.  Twenty-five were ‘fiction’, ten ‘non-fiction’, and two ‘poetry’ both by Irish authors, a book of short stories was Irish authored.  America ruled with five (possibly six), fiction authors, and two ‘non-fiction’ (one on Dostoevsky).  Two books about the US are by British authors.  A Dutch writer (and a Russian novelist) tell how awful was Stalin’s Russia.  Which leaves the vague impression that the non-Russian USSR was paradisial.  Another novel is about returning to modern Russia.  The Chester-Beatty Library and the British Museum appear in ‘non-fiction’.  The latter’s is A History of the World in 100 Objects, the other Muraqqa, arising out of a travelling exhibition of Indian art.  The fiction ranges from the Anglosphere to Turkey by way of Latin America, Scandinavia and Germany.

How can this be said to be a ‘narrowing’?  In “Skylark by Dezso Kosztolány (New York Review Books Classics) An ageing father and mother are trapped by their love for their domineering daughter, their “little bird”.  It is 1899, and the slow death of the Austro-Hungarian Empire has already begun… first published in 1924″.

There was no such entity as ‘the Austro-Hungarian Empire’.  There was Austria-Hungary.  They were independent states, joined by the monarch, pooling defence and foreign policy resources.  Austria ruled by an Emperor, (King of Hungary) was not the conservative element.  In 1899 Austria and Hungary perceived of themselves as thriving.  The creation of a third political entity in the Czech provinces was being considered.  The heir, Franz Ferdinand, (whose assassination set in trail the Great War), favoured Croatia having the same status as Austria and Hungary.  Croatia was part of Hungary, which was in no hurry to allow such an eventuality.

Even in November 1918, the two states were still in place.  The Croats remained loyal to the end.  The Polish province was let go, by mutual consent.  Czech soldiers had deserted to Russia, forming the Czech Legion — engaged in a long march to Vladivostok along the Trans-Siberian Railway — to get to the Western Front.  Outside of Budapest, there was no revolutionary upsurge as in Germany.  Lloyd-George’s “ramshackle empire” had to be knocked down.  US President Woodrow Wilson helped this endeavour, with his notion of a Europe of fatherlands in his League of Nations.  By 1924 Hungarian intellectuals may have convinced themselves what happened was inevitable, and not political vandalism.

This is not an attack on Eileen Battersby, (who clearly has broad interests), but on a, literally, unthinking attitude.  There was a time when Irish people took a distinctly quizzical attitude to the British (imperial) view of what happened between August 1914 and November 1918, a view (or propagandist spin) that has been absorbed by imperial America.  It is well past the time that Ireland (and America) returned to republican values.

He sneers at the “huge success” of The Sopranos, whose “hero was a violent godfather and the underlying protagonist was organised crime”.  Can an abstraction like “organised crime” be a “protagonist”?  It reads reasonable enough.

The next paragraph is Prize-winning material: “How would Irish viewers react to a soap opera about the Murphys in mid-80s Belfast and the difficulties they faced in trying to resolve the conflicting requirements of home life and being effective Provo operatives?”

The Mafia / IRA comparison is a bit passé.  A bit ‘Indo‘ and unsubtle.  The people ‘Provo operatives’ were allegedly ‘terrorising’ have been voting, in increasing numbers, for them for a quarter century.  Paddy Agnew is living in Italy but surely he must be familiar with the election results?

‘Provo operatives’ might have to be put in context.  The British Army (and Navy, and Air Force), a large (armed) police force, two large (and many smallish) Loyalist paramilitary groups would have to be factored in.  It might get a wee bit too complicated for simple soap treatment.  Viewers might even start thinking.