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A Salty-Sweet History: Brighton’s queer seaside by Alf Le Flohic

Lead Pic: Danny Frede from series Young Men and Carcasses

Studies have shown that spending time by the sea is good for our sense of wellbeing. The vast expanse of water, with little else, is emotionally restorative. When combined with sunshine, relaxation, and friends, the enduring popularity of the seaside is obvious.
The sense of freedom associated with the coast has long been a draw for LGBTQ+ people too. Where better for those who can feel on the edge of society to be themselves, than literally on the edge of the land?

Since the opening of the London to Brighton trainline in 1841, Brighton & Hove has become a popular destination for relaxation, recuperation, and recreation. Even before that date, records exist of same-sex escapades taking place on our seafront.
In 1822, George Wilson met a guardsman in the Duke of Wellington pub in Pool Valley just off the front. We know this because, unfortunately, he made the papers and ended up in prison when he offered the soldier money to “commit an unnatural crime” on the beach with him. Soldiers at that time were known to make money on the side with a little light prostitution, so you can’t blame George for trying his luck!

Antony Edwards, Wayne – from participatory series Brighton’s Naturist Beach

On a jollier note, the decoded diaries of Anne Lister (aka Gentleman Jack), records her and her lover Mariana Lawton staying at the Royal York Hotel in the Old Steine in 1826. They spent three days waiting for a boat to France. During that time the couple walked the “delightful” promenade and viewed the “beautiful” Suspension Chain Pier. They also passed the time in other ways: “Good kiss last night. Got into bed again this morning for half an hour and had another kiss.”

After taking a dip in the sea was declared good for your health, the Victorians introduced segregated bathing. Everyone knows about the huts they used for getting in and out of the sea, but far fewer people know that Hove had its very own Men’s Beach.

Daring Hearts by Brighton Ourstory is an amazing record of lesbian and gay lives in the city in the 1950s and ‘60s. In the book, author Peter describes the Men’s Beach as “notoriously gay”. Grant goes on to say, “It was men only. There was nothing in the rest of the country to compare. Of course, they never went in the sea; they never got their beautiful bikinis wet. If you went far enough down, there was no such thing as wearing any clothing.”

There were also many pubs down on the beach that attracted a rather queer clientele. Grant remembers: “The Fortune of War and the Belvedere were mostly used by the very big butch lesbians that really looked like navvies, with bovver boots, suits, and chains.”
In July 1973, the Sussex Gay Liberation Front staged Brighton’s first Gay Pride and used the beach for a couple of events. On the Friday night before the march, there was a midnight gay wedding between John and Graham to the west of the Palace Pier, and a gay picnic in the same location on the Sunday afterwards.

Rowan Frewin: Merperson

David Maplesden attended the picnic along with “Kay Ashton, who liked to be known as ‘the transsexual from Manchester,’”. He remembers her hair went a funny colour after a dip in the sea because “the water must have been polluted or she used cheap dyes!”

The West Pier closed completely in 1975 after falling into disrepair. Throughout the 1980s and into the ‘90s, the area found a new use. In Brighton’s Seaside Stories from QueenSpark Books, ‘Piers’ tells how: “The decaying arches under the West Pier were a hotbed of action.” He narrowly escaped arrest after the police arrived one evening with torches. “The arches were boarded up after that, spoiling our fun.”

The beach itself has, on occasion, become a political space. In 1988, as a direct response to Section 28, the first day of the Conservative Party conference in October was met by a sunset protest on the beach in front of the Grand Hotel. As the sun went down, the protestors lit flaming torches. The organisers, Lesbian and Gay Spirit Rising, said in advertising literature: “With one voice, as one people, as a single wave inevitably crashing on the shore, we say to you that our time for freedom has arrived.”

DAVE POP! – Seaside Sauce

In 1992, Brighton Area Against Section 28 organised a Queer on the Pier event as part of Pride. The pier was notoriously rough at that time, not made any better by the News of The World whipping people into a frenzy about the “11-day gay bash,” in a none-too-subtle call to action.

One official gathering spot open to anyone who likes to bare it all is, of course, the Naturist Beach, tucked away down the Kemptown end. Being the first nudist beach in the UK when it opened in 1980, it caused considerable controversy. Local Tory councillor John Blackman described it at a council meeting as a “flagrant exhibition of mammary glands.” Whatever your position on mammaries… the beach has always had a significant LGBTQ+ fan base.

Even before the nudist beach arrived, that area was popular, as Janine says in Daring Hearts: “I used to come back to Brighton with various girlfriends. I knew all the pools, Black Rock pool and everything and the beaches round there, and I used to take all my gay friends down there, and we’d have a marvellous sort of day.”

Josef Cabey –  Me, myself and Lobster from the series Me Myself and…

Close by and considered by some to be clothing optional as well, is the heavily shrubbed Duke’s Mound. Generally known as ‘The Bushes’, this is a long-standing cruising area for those with a taste for outdoor adventures.

Adjacent to that, and much preferred in poor weather conditions, is the ‘Temple of Love.’ Built in 1935, it was originally constructed as a reading room for locals. Many things have been picked up here, but paperbacks would not be among them…

Brighton & Hove beaches have never been exclusively for family fun. We have queered the pebbles and beyond with our protests, our pride, and our passion.

The Queer Beach, curated by the Socially Engaged Art Salon (SEAS), is in the foyer gallery of Jubilee Library till Sunday, February 11.

Jack Jameson, Venus as a Freak

Much more than just a pub disco! The Sunday Almanac celebrates 10th birthday

Brighton is well known for having a transient nature, so anything that stands the test of time can rightly be proud. The Sunday Almanac is celebrating its ten-year anniversary on Sunday, January 28. Calling it a pub disco does it a massive disservice, but in the simplest terms that’s what it is – that, and yet so much more. If you’ve stumbled across the St George’s Inn on the last Sunday of the month, a corner boozer just down from the Royal Sussex Hospital in Kemptown, then you’ll know what I mean.

The brainchild of two DJs, Chris and Dom, its longevity has surprised even them. As Chris says: “What started with a smallish group of friends, has grown, and changed beyond belief. The age range and diversity of the participants is the broadest of anything we’ve been involved with. It’s a safe, LGBTQ+, dog friendly, non-discriminatory space for people who love a laugh, a gossip, a sing-a-long, and a dance. Anyone is welcome.”

DJs Chris and Dom

The music policy is just as broad, as Dom describes: “When asked what kind of stuff we play, it’s tricky to answer. Where else can you hear Fleetwood Mac followed by Soulwax, then Julie Andrews, Midland, Amanda Lear, Kraftwerk, and Kelis.”

The venue has also been a key part of its success, says Chris: “Tucked away in the side streets of Kemptown, with two bars and an outside area, it has a lovely vibe.” The Almanacs have become an integral part of the local scene, hosting New Year’s Eve and Pride parties free of charge.

They survived the lockdown by going online on their Facebook page and making all their playlists available on Spotify for everyone to enjoy. So, if you think the Almanac might be for you, you can check out the vibe there anytime.

But if you’re free this coming Sunday, throw on some pearls, grab a fan, and head on over to the St George. You’ll most definitely be welcome. As Chris and Dom both say: “It’s brilliant when people arrive, throw off their coats, and just join in.”

Pioneers at Pride: Sussex Gay Liberation Front returns to the heart of LGBTQ+ communities

Lead Pic: Pedal People and Sussex GLF, courtesy of Elly Hargreave

Brighton & Hove Pride in 2023 was certainly memorable, and not just for the atrocious weather. The first ‘Gay Pride’ here took place in 1973, organised by the Sussex Gay Liberation Front. Fifty years later, members of the group were at the front of the Pride parade and lead it through the city to Preston Park.

When people gather on Hove Lawns before the parade takes off, it is usually a joyous occasion full of laughter and squeals of excitement. Unfortunately, this year the squeals were in response to the unwelcome cold wind and lashing rain. Despite the weather and lack of trains on the day, the Sussex GLF veterans assembled having travelled from as far as America, Yorkshire, London and Sussex to be there.

Sussex GLF VIPS, courtesy of Shaulan Chanlewis

Two local charities, Pedal People and Cycling without Age, provided the transport for the group: trishaws or reverse cycle rickshaws with the passengers at the front. As Elly Hargreave from Pedal People said: “Our cycles put people literally front and centre back into the heart of their communities.”

Thankfully there were free rain ponchos and some dedicated Pride goers doing their best to keep spirits up. The Sussex GLF are hardy souls and they waited patiently for the parade to move off. Everyone was grateful when it started about 15 minutes before time.

Once the parade turned up West Street there was some protection from the weather. We were greeted with smiles, waves, and applause from the crowds as we snaked our way through the streets. Once the parade reached the park, the veterans were shown into a blue tented booth facing the main stage set aside for them by the Pride organisers. This was a godsend for keeping out of the wind and rain which returned on and off throughout the afternoon.

Gail and Di being pedalled by Alf, courtesy of Beth Leese

The Sussex GLF was formed in 1971 and lasted for about five years. They started Pride in 1973 and set up Gay Switchboard in 1975. Apart from a couple of boyfriends, everyone in the trishaws were involved with the group at some point. I won’t name names, but I know emotions were running high for some as they were pedalled through the crowds, and one or two tears may have been shed.

David Maplesden, who’d travelled from the US with his partner Floyd, and was on the Pride march in July 1973, described it as “the event of a lifetime.”

Di Monteath-Wilson, who was the first chair of the group, said: “It was an incredible experience, and I couldn’t believe the gratitude expressed by so many people, overwhelming. The VIP hospitality was also amazing.”

Second chair of the group, Gail Smith, described it as “an incredible event. Both exciting and humbling“, as well as “a day I’ll always remember!”

Despite the reduced turnout caused by challenging weather and transport issues, Brighton & Hove definitely showed up to commemorate and thank the queer pioneers of the Sussex Gay Liberation Front for their brave actions in the 1970s.

The Safari Bar: a gay bar, in a zoo, in Bognor Regis, in 1983…

If the Safari Bar appeared in a film, you’d quite confidently pull a face, shake your head, and say ‘Well that never happened’. But it did indeed happen: a gay bar, in a zoo, in Bognor Regis, in 1983. Just let that sink in for a minute…

Before we go any further, I just want to say that the bar wasn’t strictly inside the zoo, it was tucked out of the way at the back. Even so, what this was like for the animals living in the zoo doesn’t really bear thinking about… but it was acceptable in the ‘80s!

The zoo began life around 1950 as Pets Corner within Bognor’s Hotham Park. It was the 1979 reincarnation of the business as Zootopia that we must thank for the Safari Bar.

Barrie Appleyard is originally from Brighton, but the family moved to Bognor Regis where he got a job working in a menswear shop. In his spare time, he was a DJ, spending hours at Rounder Records back in Brighton sourcing new music.

Barrie remembers being approached by fellow gay DJ Ian Harding, who he had met through the Cairo Club in Littlehampton, and who knew Mike, the manager of Bognor Zoo. “Ian contacted me and a couple of others to say ‘Shall we try something with the zoo, you know, gay nights or something?’”

Ian, Barrie and another gay friend Andy became the Safari Bar DJs. Barrie also had a friend Laurie who worked down at the zoo looking after the donkeys.

Safari Bar flyer designed by Barrie Appleyard and Ian Harding

Having suggested a jungle theme, Barrie set about decorating the bar and function room. “I covered the till in fur fabric, the bar stools and the shelves behind the bar. The walls were covered in bamboo fencing and we hung leis, flower leis, over the bar.”

“During the daytime it was a cafeteria. The bar was gay on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday nights. We’d have the disco and we’d be playing all the latest Hi-NRG stuff.”

Alongside the zoo, some of the acts from Gerry Cottle’s circus lived on-site in caravans. On DJ Andy’s birthday, Baba Fossett arrived and performed for him.

Baba can be seen in the 1981 Soft Cell video for Entertain Me, doing her fire-eating act. Given the amount of flammable fake fur in the Safari Bar you’ll be relieved to hear she did her contortionist routine that night!

To encourage punters on a Wednesday evening the Safari Bar offered a Movie Nite via a huge back projection TV, although Barrie has confessed “We used to crank the music up and have gay porn playing.“

Barrie and Laurie at Granny’s Nightspot, courtesy of Barrie Appleyard

As well as a ‘movie’, your £1 entry fee would also get you a complimentary ticket to Granny’s nightspot in Portsmouth. Within a Brutalist concrete shopping mall and car park, an external lift took you to the club which welcomed a gay crowd on Wednesdays.

Although they never met, Chris Cage from Bognor was working behind the bar at Granny’s on Tuesday and Wednesday nights that year, while studying architecture at Portsmouth Polytechnic.

“Tuesday was Heavy Metal night – headbangers and tribal dancing to Eye of the Tiger.

Wednesday night was a bit more sedate. Pretty cheesy music as I recall. I wasn’t excited by the music, but I was much more excited by the clientele on a Wednesday.”

“I was known as the Bona Barman. I might have flirted a bit with some of the customers… in fact my first gay sex was with someone I met in Granny’s nightspot – a hairdresser called Maurice.”

But back to Bognor… the discos and cabaret shows were in the function room off the bar area. “To make it look even more jungle themed,” remembers Barrie, “Andy found loads of old artificial Christmas trees in one of the storerooms, took them to bits and stapled them to the ceiling. Here and there he’d have it trailing down a bit, so it looked like vines.”

The first Saturday of the month was a Girls Only Nite, and the second Saturday was Cabaret Nite. For Saturday, 12 February Ian organised the appearance of Rebel Rebel, “our first drag act, from London’s Vauxhall Tavern”.

Rebel Rebel publicity photo courtesy of Kenzie Jones (previously known as Butch)

Drag legend Dave Lynn remembers Rebel Rebel, aka Butch and Arthur, and worked with them on occasion. “They were very classy and popular. They were the first double act of colour”.

Butch remembers that gig: “I remember the smell of the place. I remember we had to change in a little caravan that was once used by Gary Glitter, there were pictures of him plastered all over.”

Also in the bar area was a parrot that had once starred in adverts for Kodak. Fame had gone to its head, as Butch found out: “That bloody parrot we had to walk by, having to say ‘Hello Captain’ each time. If we didn’t it would proper go off!

“It was weird as fuck, so tacky and camp. I remember me and Arthur giving looks to each other and laughing saying ‘What the fuck dear’”.

The bar was a great success initially. “It used to get quite busy, you’d get a bar full of people, especially on a Saturday night with the disco,” recalls Barrie. It seems there may have been reasons for that…

“There were two spare caravans which we used to call the Sex Dives. So, if there was somebody you wanted to have a bit of nonsense with, you’d say ‘Right, get into the caravans’”.

And if caravans weren’t your thing… “In the dark you could walk into the zoo. Right underneath you had little animatronics like the DwarvesDiamond Mine. You’d go down there for a bit of how’s ya father as well.

“It caught on to begin with and was busy, and then it sort of… I think to be honest there were better places to go really.”

It seems the Safari Bar only lasted six to nine months in total, but for that one summer Bognor was offering something quite unique thanks to Barrie and his pals!

FEATURE: ‘Fighting Spirit – An interview with Colin’, by Alf Le Flohic

Lead Pic: Fighting Spirit of AIDS Victim piece in The Argus7 March 1987; photo of The Argus‘ Health Reporter, Phil Mills 

In October 1986, 24-year-old Colin Vincent was waiting tables in a Brighton hotel.

“My employers kept dropping subtle hints about my condition and kept pushing me into a corner until I couldn’t stand it anymore. In the end, I got myself the sack by drinking a bottle of stolen champagne.”

Colin’s condition was HIV. The first case of HIV in Brighton was diagnosed 40 years ago, in 1982. In fact, there were ten cases registered at the Claude Nicol GUM Clinic at the Royal Sussex County Hospital over the course of that year.

The first death in the UK was recorded in London in 1981. Doctors initially referred to it as GRID: Gay-Related Immune Deficiency, but by August 1982 the Centre for Disease Control in the US had coined the term: Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).

The first death from AIDS in Brighton was in 1984.

“He was very calm, very determined… very resigned I would say, but I would have put him down as a nice guy anybody could be a friend of.”

The tabloids were their usual sympathetic selves. In December 1985, The Sunday Mirror ran with the headline AIDS Seaside Shocker, and how a Killer Plague Takes Hold of Brighton.

They even named people: “the latest known AIDS victim is hotelier Andrew Blyth. He has sold up and gone to Paris for guinea-pig tests with a new drug HPA23 – the same one used on film star Rock Hudson who died in October.”

Unfortunately, HPA23 was quickly dropped as a treatment after no medical benefits were seen.

With all the fear and stigma associated with the condition, it must have come as a surprise when The Argus newspaper was contacted directly by someone wanting to talk openly about having AIDS.

As the Health Reporter for the Argus in 1987, Phil Mills worked closely with the Claude Nicol Clinic so was more up to date than most people on HIV/AIDS. The request came from Colin Vincent who wanted to tell his story from his bed in the hospital.

Brighton-born Colin had attended Bexhill High School, been an altar boy at All Saints Church, but at age 16 he returned to Yorkshire where he’d spent time in a children’s home. He was living in Leeds when in 1985 he discovered he was infected with HIV.

His stepsister Fran Whiteman remembers him as “a lovely caring person. Unfortunately, people around him didn’t accept him. We lost contact when he went back to Brighton.”

“I’m not afraid of dying because I know I have not lived my life for nothing. I am an example to all others.”

Thankfully Colin found support and assistance from the recently set up Sussex AIDS Helpline.
“I just wanted to hide the fact at first – I just didn’t want to face it. It was only when I came to Brighton that I was able to come to terms with it.”

He had just returned home when The Sun newspaper stirred things up branding Brighton a Town of Terror as ‘virus grips gay hotspot’, with ‘11 dead and 1,000 infected’.

The Argus journalist Phil Mills remembers “He was the first to be interviewed like that, certainly for us. There were comments at the time such as ‘Don’t accept the offer of tea from ‘them’ in case you catch it from the mug’, that sort of thing. There was a great deal of ignorance around.

“We didn’t gown up, we didn’t glove up, we just went straight in, and I sat quite close to him in the chair and had a good long conversation with him.

“I stuck out my hand and we shook. It made us both feel more comfortable.” As it turns out, this was a month before Princess Diana shook the hand of a patient with AIDS at the Middlesex Hospital in London, challenging attitudes as she made headlines around the world.

Phil recalls Colin “was virtually blind due to a disease that most healthy bodies fight off and was being trained to cope with his disability at home. He talked about his sex partners and made the point it didn’t matter how many you had. If we’re talking about AIDS, you can get it from just one.”

Having made his point, Colin said: “I’m not afraid of dying because I know I have not lived my life for nothing. I am an example to all others.”

“Unfortunately, people around him didn’t accept him. We lost contact when he went back to Brighton.”

He then told Phil about losing his hotel job. “He said that because of his deteriorating health and because he was presumably quite openly gay, that they were putting two and two together and saying, ‘Ooh, do we really want him around?’ I bet that wasn’t an unheard-of scenario; I bet there were quite a few that lost their jobs simply because they were gay, not because they had HIV.

“Colin said he hated their ‘sheer ignorance’ about AIDS but was not hurt by them. ‘I just don’t care because I can’t be hurt more than I have been.’”

I asked Phil what he remembered about Colin and the interview.

“He was very calm, very determined… very resigned I would say, but I would have put him down as a nice guy anybody could be a friend of.

“Like a fireman puts his uniform on every day, my uniform was being a reporter, and I had to get the interview. Now I’m seeing him through a human being’s eyes with no uniform, I feel sadder for him today than I did then.”

The article appeared in The Evening Argus on 7 March 1987. Tragically that same issue contained a piece about a 75-year-old man from Chichester who had killed himself because he thought he had AIDS. No trace of the virus was found in his body.

And of course, The Argus letters page a few days later was predictably vile, with Mrs M Dougon of Brighton declaring AIDS to be “self-inflected, due to a complete breakdown in morality”.

Shortly after the interview both Phil and Colin celebrated their birthdays. Phil turned 36 and Colin 25. Colin died a couple of months later.

This year Colin Vincent will be included in the names read out in Brighton at the annual World AIDS Day Memorial.

Thanks to Phil Mills, Amanda Soutter, and Fran Whiteman for their assistance.

LGBTQ+ History: The Hotel Roger Dee

A gay couple opening a hotel near Brighton is so commonplace these days it’s almost a cliché. In 1972, however, few people had seen the likes of the Hotel Roger Dee before…

Roger Deacon was born in London in 1937, and swiftly developed a passion for entertaining. His energy and powerful singing voice made him popular with the crowds.

He soon formed a successful cabaret partnership with Douglas White, aka Duggie Dean, and ‘deacon and dean’ played the Moss Empires theatre circuit up and down the country.

“I recall their stint at the Brighton Hippodrome,” says Roger’s brother David Deacon. “They had a fist fight behind the building, whilst exclaiming to each other Not on the face! Not on the face!”

David also said: “Duggie never came out. Clearly, though, they were a couple.”

They both went solo in the mid-1960s, and ‘Roger Dee’ was born.

Deacon and Dean – collection of author

All change

Whilst on holiday with his new wife in Great Yarmouth, David Fuller saw Roger Dee perform. Roger and David hit it off and in 1967 David moved to London to be with him.

Roger remained popular with the public, though not always with other artists as his brother recalls, his impersonation of “a histrionic Shirley Bassey, arms flailing in a roll of lino up to his armpits. When he was MC for a show in which Bassey was top of the bill, she wanted him to drop the routine. He kept it in.”

David Fuller got work backstage in London theatres and in 1970 he was the dresser for female impersonator Danny La Rue at the Palace Theatre.

David Fuller courtesy Paula Milligan / Danny La Rue at The Palace collection of author

Roger also worked aboard the ocean liner QE2, becoming a fixture on the late-night cabaret slot. There’s a story he hosted a radio show interviewing celebrities on board, and got into a scuffle with John Wayne who asked, “Who is this commie faggot?”; and another of him being turned away from a restaurant for not wearing a tie and returning with an upright vacuum cleaner in a bow tie demanding they both be served. They were.

David was working the QE2 when his mother died, and he decided he wanted to stay in the UK. Despite having just released an album of his songs Roger Dee Live, Roger was also ready for a change of scene. So, in late 1972, he and David opened the Hotel Roger Dee in Angmering.

The hotel years

David managed the hotel while the camp and comedic cabaret at the weekends was provided by Roger in a white catsuit.

It was run as a fun place to be with each room named after one of the Seven Dwarfs. “I remember the Easter Bonnet parade. All the guests, visitors and friends paraded outside the front in the most elaborate hats and costumes. It caused quite a stir”, says local resident Penny Thurlow.

Roger was a proud libertarian, so it seemed natural to him to run the hotel for a gay clientele. With partial decriminalisation of sex between men having only taken place in 1967, it must have been one of the earliest hotels in the country to be explicitly advertised as gay.

David Fuller bar – courtesy of Paula Milligan

David Deacon stayed at the hotel a few times: “Guests were mostly men on their own and sometimes one or two couples, gay and lesbian. There was ample floor space for dancing, a small platform in the bay window that acted as a stage and housed the disco turntable. Guests danced flamboyantly on tables on Saturday night after closing time.

“The bar was the centre. There was much earnest talk there. The hotel was a refuge, some guests had travelled a long way to reach the place. What I recall of conversations there with a doctor, a councillor, a Salvation Army member, and a lorry driver, was their fear of ridicule, exposure, and for their work.

“Prejudice and discrimination were rife at the time. I recall sitting on the loo and leaning forward to read the newspaper and a stone crashed through the window behind me. Had I been sitting up it could have killed me.”

Dogs but no gays

In April 1975, Roger told Gay News that Worthing Council refused to let him say “gay people welcome” on their accommodation list. When Roger approached the English Tourist Board, they claimed it was an issue of symbols; “We have a dog symbol, but we certainly don’t have one for homosexuals.”

So Roger phoned round some local hotels to see whether he and his boyfriend could book a double room. The Metropole Hotel in Brighton told him “For your sort, only two singles.” The Beach Hotel in Littlehampton also declined – “We don’t encourage this sort of thing.”

 

In August of that year, a trial period of ‘hets’ being allowed to use the bar swiftly ended when Roger found himself with a ‘a black eye, broken teeth and a severe cut on his face’.

Advert for the hotel from Gay News issue 82, Nov 1975.

Eventually the business took a toll on their relationship. Within a year the hotel had closed and Roger and David went their separate ways.

Moving on

Roger travelled the world for a few years, eventually settling in France. His final creation was the clown Rafistol, who would busk the streets earning money for food and wine before returning to his caravan.

David moved to Blackpool and befriended the owners of the Seafield Hotel, Piero and Harry, and went to work for them. In 1987 David died of AIDS, as did Piero and Harry. All three are buried together.

Ill health eventually drove Roger back to the UK. He died from hepatitis complications in 1988. The Theatre Royal Stratford East has a seat dedicated to his memory.

The courage of Roger and David to create a fun space for gay men and women to be themselves in the early 1970s, marks them out as trailblazers. The hotel is still there although it’s a private residence. If those walls could talk…

Thanks to David Deacon and Paula Milligan for their invaluable assistance. 

Alf Le Flohic – www.gayhistory.co.uk

Featured image courtesy of David Deacon

 

Mighty Real

Visual artist Josef Cabey reflects on both the musical and personal influence that iconic singer Sylvester had on him as a young gay black man, while local historian Alf Le Flohic shares a few memories and tracks down Sylvester appearing in Brighton during the 1980s

Mighty Real

By Alf Le Flohic

I first became aware of falsetto icon Sylvester in 1978 with the success of You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real), and the video being shown on Top of the Pops.

Filmed at the Embassy Club in London, Sylvester changes outfit several times (naturally), moving from statement suits to sparkly robes, accessorised with earrings, eyeshadow and an ever-present fan.

I was fascinated but at 13 I was already aware that men were not supposed to look, act or sound like this. I was quietly gutted the following week when Top of the Pops dropped the video and the all-female studio dance troupe Legs & Co bobbed around to the song instead. Looking back my reactions were a rather massive clue about my developing sexuality… but enough about me.

Sylvester in Bolts, Brighton

Sylvester was born in Los Angeles in 1947 and his family were devout Pentecostal Christians. This was great for singing gospel songs at church, not so much when you’re a rather obviously gay young boy. He stopped attending church at 13 and left home at 15.

He fell in with a group called the Disquotays, young black gay men who liked cross-dressing and partying, before moving to San Francisco in his early 20s. His talent was recognised while performing with the drag troupe The Cockettes. That was followed by the formation of Sylvester & the Hot Band, who found themselves as the support act for a young David Bowie one night.

Sylvester became known as ‘the Queen of Disco’ in the late ‘70s, with his back-up singers Two Tons O’ Fun (Izora Rhodes and Martha Wash). As The Weather Girls in 1982, they had a huge hit themselves with It’s Raining Men.

Sylvester had more UK chart success in early 1982 with Do Ya Wanna Funk, co-written with his friend and electronic dance music pioneer Patrick Cowley. They had been on a world tour together the previous year, and Patrick had complained of feeling ill. In November, just as he was about to go on stage at London’s gay superclub Heaven, Sylvester was informed of Patrick’s death from AIDS. He told the crowd what had happened and performed the song in his honour.

Sylvester also made appearances in Brighton during the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, at venues with great names like Sloopy’s and Coasters. In 1984 he appeared at Bolts, the gay night at Sherry’s, 77 West Street.

Photographer and local resident Bill Short interviewed Sylvester for October Gay Times. He remembers: “After the show, which was at a straight club in my hometown, he asked me to take him out on the gay scene.”

Sylvester had found his appearance criticised by sections of the gay community over the years and commented during the interview: “When I first was a hit over here, I used to wear sort of dresses because that was the sort of drag that I was into at the time – we all wear drag whether it be dresses or leather or jeans.”

Sylvester also appeared at the Beverly Hills, 54-55 Meeting House Lane in October 1985. To quote a review of the venue that year by Peter Burton for Gay Times: “The centre of town’s main attraction has to be the recently opened Beverly Hills. This elegantly designed nightclub has developed the reputation for being the week-round place to go. A gallery furnished with sofas and chairs surrounds the bar area and dance floor and offers a handy and cruisy vantage point. Cabaret – fairly unusual in Brighton – is a regular feature.”

The cabaret, for example, had been Miquel Brown on Friday, August 2, famous for her 1983 Hi-NRG anthem So Many Men, So Little Time.

Phil Monteiro-Sampson remembers: “I saw Sylvester twice in Brighton, at Bolts and Beverley Hills. He was a lovely guy. I was resident DJ [Beverley Hills]. Sylvester was FANTASTIC. The manager was annoyed as he didn’t arrive for a sound check but within 30 seconds he was sounding fantastic. To cover the cost we had to charge £4 entry, so turn out suffered as no one ever wanted to pay entry fees, which seems crazy now.”

UK label Dominio Records must have sensed the love for Sylvester here, as a Brighton Summer Mix of Do You Wanna Funk hit the record shelves in 1986.

Sylvester’s boyfriend Rick Cranmer died of AIDS in September 1987. Just over a year later Sylvester died of AIDS, aged 41. He left all future royalties from his recordings to two HIV/ AIDS charities.

Our own gay falsetto singer Jimmy Somerville paid tribute with a cover of Mighty Real in 1989. The video features images of Sylvester and people dancing in the cosmos – which seems like the perfect way to imagine Sylvester evermore.

DISCO HEAT

By Josef Cabey

Like many who were into pop music at the time, I first encountered the powerhouse of fabulousness who was Sylvester James in 1978, when the disco anthem You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) went to number eight in the UK. For my 13-year-old self, seeing Sylvester on TV evoked mixed feelings.

As a young black boy with relatively little experience outside of the specific community I grew up in within Hackney, I pondered, why does this man sometimes wear a dress and make-up? However, I also thought: Wow, this person is fascinating, I really like him! Plus, those two amazing big women that he sang with could easily have been my aunties.

“[Sylvester] was a trailblazing black gay man who radically played with gender in a way that was really very risky for a performer at that time, and in doing so created space for others to more freely explore their own black queer identities today”

At that time my own sexuality had not yet surfaced in any meaningful way. However, there was something, just something, that drew me towards this flamboyant man with the soaring voice and the same skin tone as myself. I knew I loved the record, in fact at that time I loved all things disco and still do.

I had always felt slightly different to the kids I hung out with at school, but I was also obsessively creative and ‘arty’, and artist types were always considered kind of weird so that had to be it. Anyway, I continued to bop away to Sylvester and be in awe of that video where he descends the stairs of the club looking amazing. In hindsight yes, I did notice all the scantily clad men that were in the video too!

Fast forward a few years into the ’80s and I certainly now knew what had ‘panged’ in me when I first saw Sylvester. I was now out as a young gay man doing my thing, and very much a big Sylvester fan. After Mighty Real and his only other UK top 40 hit Dance (Disco Heat) I discovered some of his earlier material, some of which were better than the hits. I also discovered his incredible role as one of only a few black performers in ’70s radical drag troupe The Cockettes.

I was going out and shaking my stuff at clubs like Heaven to his HiNRG tracks like Do Ya’ Wanna Funk and Menergy and buying all the 12“ singles, remixes and albums. Sylvester became a real role model as someone who looked like me and was really out there being publicly and unapologetically gay at a time when this was uncommon, especially for black singers.

By then I was at art school and had begun to express myself more visually too, not quite to the fabulous gender nonconforming lengths of Sylvester, but I certainly remember in particular a wraparound garment that I had created for myself that prompted my mother to shout: “You are not going out of the house in a dress!”

I was devastated when Sylvester died of an AIDS-related illness in 1988 and certainly didn’t realise just how fully the same disease would impact on so many of my friends and acquaintances too as the next decade rolled on. In much later years I visited the AIDS Memorial Grove in San Francisco and seeing Sylvester’s name definitely brought a tear.

I think it’s very important that the impact of Sylvester is neither forgotten nor underestimated. He was a trailblazing black gay man who radically played with gender in a way that was really very risky for a performer at that time, and in doing so created space for others to more freely explore their own black queer identities today. Indeed, I sometimes wonder how Sylvester might have identified today had he survived. When Joan Rivers once referred to Sylvester as a drag queen, the response back was: “I’m not a drag queen, I’m Sylvester!”

Sadly, the most disappointing thing for me as such a big fan is that, somehow, I never saw Sylvester perform live. I’m not certain why this is, as I did see so many of his contemporaries. However, Sylvester will always remain an inspiration to me. I live in Brighton now, and as I sit here surrounded by my wonderful collection of vintage 12” vinyl, I can only say thank you to Sylvester for being there and making such a difference.

Vintage Photo’s from Brighton Pride 1973

On the afternoon of Saturday, July 7, the Sussex Gay Liberation Front (SGLF) and friends met in Norfolk Square off the Western Road in Brighton. As you can see in some of the pictures, they marched down Western Street to Embassy Court on the corner with the Kings Road, on past the Kings Hotel and finished at the Old Ship Hotel. With banners held aloft, they handed out 2,000 leaflets as they went…

“A Gay Pride Week is when gay men and women show that they are not ashamed or embarrassed by their sexual orientation. It
is a chance to come out of the closet, for gayness will never be accepted until everyone does this. Come out of the closet with us. Love and kisses, Sussex Gay Liberation Front.”

The leaflet also listed all the events for that week:

Tuesday, July 3
Rose Robertson of Parents Enquiry speaks at the Stanford Arms, Preston Circus, Brighton at 8.30 pm on the problems of homosexuality and the family.

Friday, July 6
Disco at the Stanford Arms 8.15–11 pm with a raffle and prizes for the most outrageous and the most conservative dress. Afterwards, there will be a Gay Wedding between John and Graham on the second beach to the west of the Palace Pier at 12pm. Bring a bottle for celebrations.

Saturday, July 7
Gay Pride March starting from Norfolk Square, Western Road at 2.30 pm. We shall march down to the seafront and along to
the fish market opposite the Ship Hotel, distributing leaflets as we go. The more people who march the greater impact we will make. Those with any gay pride in themselves will be there.

Saturday Evening
Gay Dance at the Royal Albion Hotel, 8–12 pm, tickets 50p.

Sunday, July 8
A Gay Picnic will take place on the beach to the west of the Palace Pier from 1 pm.

Who were they?

As Mark Rowlands recalls: “We had been actively preparing to form a [Sussex] university group of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE) but had encountered considerable nervousness and bureaucracy from national CHE. What impressed us [about GLF] was the informality of the group and its lack of rules. There was no membership; people simply turned up. Meetings did not have fixed agendas. Anyone who wanted to speak was encouraged to do so. The politics were unashamedly radical; as others afterwards would put it, ‘we’re out and we’re proud’.

“Brighton GLF was officially formed in January 1971. Later we changed the name to Sussex GLF to reflect its wider geographical membership”.

SGLF member Doug Coupe remembers “It was a very fluid kind of organisation. People came in and we saw them for a few months and then they disappeared. This whole organisation was thrown together. We often didn’t know people’s full names. Some people stayed for years but some just drifted away.”

This fluidity has of course hampered me trying to identify people in the photos, but some have been successfully identified by other SGLF members.

In the photograph with the women on deckchairs, Peter Duxbury can be seen on the left handing out flyers. He remembers
the chap in the dress with a hat, David Maplethorpe, who was into genderfuck – subverting traditional notions of gender identity and gender roles. “He was a character with his dress and everything. He used to go to work in his dress as well, at the Electricity Board, ‘cause I worked at the Electricity Board as well.”

Graham Wilkinson (who set up the Sussex AIDS Centre) and his boyfriend John Roman Baker (who set up the AIDS Positive Underground Theatre), can be seen together in one photo in front of the Embassy Restaurant. They were also the John and Graham mentioned in the leaflet who got married on the beach the night before.

The SGLF spokesman Graham Phillips can be seen in the floor-length skirt with the Civil Liberties banner.

Carrying the No More Sex Roles banner is Alastair Kerr who had not long come out himself. He was doing his teacher training in Brighton. The following year he moved up to London and became a key figure in the Railton Road Brixton Faeries.

Some members of the SGLF are not in these photos, for example, Doug Coupe: “There was a lot of fear you know when Gay Lib was coming to be known, there were an awful lot of people who were scared to death to be involved. I was a teacher, so I was a bit careful about where I was seen. I didn’t really want to be appearing in newspapers. As it happened when I was outed, it was a very difficult time, for years. In the end, I had a breakdown. I went to work at Boots.”

Sadly, I haven’t been able to identify the flamboyant character in the robes with the GLF banner at the front of several of the photos. Peter has come close though: “I do remember a character like this, and he had long flowing things. When we went to have a pee, the hem of his garments were trailing in the urinals. So he was very glamorous but he was covered in urine.” But, as they say, I think that’s another story.

If you recognise him, or indeed anyone else in these photos please get in touch, I’d love to hear from you.

How did it go?

It was reported in Gay News and the Brighton & Hove Gazette as a ‘Gay Demo Flop’. SGLF spokesman Graham Phillips said, “many homosexuals in ‘responsible jobs’ steered clear of the demo march for fear of being publicly identified and perhaps sacked as a result”. Nevertheless he “felt the march was one more step towards getting homosexuality accepted”.

While the actual demonstration may have only involved about 20 people, we know that the dance at the Royal Albion Hotel was “highly successful”, attracting 200 people. To quote Gay News again, “A spokesman for Sussex Gay Lib tells us that they are the only provincial GLF group to hold regular dances of this

size and feel that with a larger venue they could attract 300 to 400 people. The music
is provided by the gay group’s own disco and it particularly attracts the local gay girls who travel from such exotic places as Eastbourne, and the boys from faraway Portsmouth, where hardly any gay life exists.”

As John R remembers, the SGLF were “actively campaigning to promote Gay Pride and encouraging people to come out.” It may be hard for us to imagine now, but this was very radical for the times. The literal criminality of being queer was still very fresh in the collective memory.

“Much attention was paid to changing the attitude of the commercial gay scene. Each weekend we sold the newspaper Gay News outside the Heart and Hand Pub in Ship Street, and sometimes outside other venues. All the gay venues were closeted and refused to sell the newspaper, as did almost all newsagents.”

More conservative members of the local gay community were not impressed by the antics of the SGLF. Peter Duxbury remembers another SGLF march where “we walked all the way through Brighton in dresses, placards, into Hove, on to George Street, Blatchington Road. And this [gay] man in a raincoat and hat dashed up to me and he said something like ‘You’ll never get people to understand you dressed like that. Why are you doing this?’”

Where have these photos been?

“While searching through the negatives of
the Argus Photographic Archive I found a small brown packet with the details ‘Gay Lib March 8/7/73’ written in blue biro. Viewing the images was like holding hands across time with those who were activists before us and reopening long unspoken stories, seen again in modern light.

“The importance of finding these images cannot be understated as it resets the timeline for overt local activism by 15 years prior to the Anti-Section 28 Campaign.” Tina from Gay Brighton Past.

Having checked The Argus and Brighton & Hove Gazette newspapers for that weekend
in 1973, and the week after, it seems the photographs were never used. This would explain why no one knew of their existence up until now. It also means that pretty much no one has ever seen them.

Exhibition

We wanted everyone to have the chance to see these pictures, and Wayne from the Sussex Beacon has very kindly let us display them in the windows of the St James’ Street shop. They’ll be up throughout August marking the month that Pride now happens in Brighton.

These photos are a key piece of our history that up until now has been missing. We knew Brighton Pride began in 1973 but now we can actually see some of the brave individuals who started the fight for LGBTQ+ rights in our very own city.

The usual parade and park events may not be taking place this year, but we can still be proud of who we are and where we have come from.

Images reproduced with kind permission of Andy Garth, Brighton & Hove Stuff and the Argus Photographic Archive

 

Alf Le Flohic 

 

Pride & Protest: Brighton Pride 1973

After Gay Brighton Past found a trove of never-used pictures from the original 1973 Gay Pride march in Brighton, Alf Le Flohic managed to track down some of the people involved and get their stories. 

On the afternoon of Saturday, July 7, the Sussex Gay Liberation Front (SGLF) and friends met in Norfolk Square off the Western Road in Brighton. As you can see in some of the pictures, they marched down Western Street to Embassy Court on the corner with the Kings Road, on past the Kings Hotel and finished at the Old Ship Hotel. With banners held aloft they handed out 2,000 leaflets as they went… 

“A Gay Pride Week is when gay men and women show that they are not ashamed or embarrassed by their sexual orientation. It is a chance to come out of the closet, for gayness will never be accepted until everyone does this. Come out of the closet with us. Love and kisses, Sussex Gay Liberation Front.”

The leaflet also listed all the events for that week:

Tuesday, July 3
Rose Robertson of Parents Enquiry speaks at the Stanford Arms, Preston Circus, Brighton at 8.30pm on the problems of homosexuality and the family.

Friday, July 6
Disco at the Stanford Arms 8.15–11pm with a raffle and prizes for the most outrageous and the most conservative dress. Afterwards there will be a Gay Wedding between John and Graham on the second beach to the west of the Palace Pier at 12pm. Bring a bottle for celebrations.

Saturday, July 7
Gay Pride March starting from Norfolk Square, Western Road at 2.30pm. We shall march down to the seafront and along to the fish market opposite the Ship Hotel, distributing leaflets as we go. The more people who march the greater impact we will make. Those with any gay pride in themselves will be there.

Saturday Evening
Gay Dance at the Royal Albion Hotel, 8–12pm, tickets 50p.

Sunday, July 8
A Gay Picnic will take place on the beach to the west of the Palace Pier from 1pm.

Who were they?

As Mark Rowlands recalls: “We had been actively preparing to form a [Sussex] university group of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE) but had encountered considerable nervousness and bureaucracy from national CHE. What impressed us [about GLF] was the informality of the group and its lack of rules. There was no membership; people simply turned up. Meetings did not have fixed agendas. Anyone who wanted to speak was encouraged to do so. The politics were unashamedly radical; as others afterwards would put it, ‘we’re out and we’re proud’.

“Brighton GLF was officially formed in January 1971. Later we changed the name to Sussex GLF to reflect its wider geographical membership”.

SGLF member Doug Coupe remembers “It was a very fluid kind of organisation. People came in and we saw them for a few months and then they disappeared. This whole organisation was thrown together. We often didn’t know people’s full names. Some people stayed for years but some just drifted away.” 

This fluidity has of course hampered me trying to identify people in the photos, but some have been successfully identified by other SGLF members.

In the photograph with the women on deckchairs, Peter Duxbury can be seen on the left handing out flyers. He remembers the chap in the dress with a hat, David Maplethorpe, who was into genderfuck – subverting traditional notions of gender identity and gender roles. “He was a character with his dress and everything. He used to go to work in his dress as well, at the Electricity Board, ‘cause I worked at the Electricity Board as well.”

Graham Wilkinson (who set up the Sussex AIDS Centre) and his boyfriend John Roman Baker (who set up the AIDS Positive Underground Theatre), can be seen together in one photo in front of the Embassy Restaurant. They were also the John and Graham mentioned in the leaflet who got married on the beach the night before.

The SGLF spokesman Graham Phillips can be seen in the floor-length skirt with the Civil Liberties banner.

Carrying the No More Sex Roles banner is Alastair Kerr who had not long come out himself. He was doing his teacher training in Brighton. The following year he moved up to London and became a key figure in the Railton Road Brixton Faeries.

Some members of the SGLF are not in these photos, for example Doug Coupe: “There was a lot of fear you know, when Gay Lib was coming to be known, there were an awful lot of people who were scared to death to be involved. I was a teacher, so I was a bit careful about where I was seen. I didn’t really want to be appearing in newspapers. As it happened when I was outed, it was a very difficult time, for years. In the end I had a breakdown. I went to work at Boots.”

Sadly, I haven’t been able to identify the flamboyant character in the robes with the GLF banner at the front of several of the photos. Peter has come close though: “I do remember a character like this, and he had long flowing things. When we went to have a pee, the hem of his garments were trailing in the urinals. So he was very glamorous but he was covered in urine.” But, as they say, I think that’s another story.

If you recognise him, or indeed anyone else in these photos please get in touch, I’d love to hear from you.

How did it go?

It was reported in Gay News and the Brighton & Hove Gazette as a ‘Gay Demo Flop’. SGLF spokesman Graham Phillips said “many homosexuals in ‘responsible jobs’ steered clear of the demo march for fear of being publicly identified and perhaps sacked as a result”. Nevertheless he “felt the march was one more step towards getting homosexuality accepted”. 

While the actual demonstration may have only involved about 20 people, we know that the dance at the Royal Albion Hotel was “highly successful”, attracting 200 people. To quote Gay News again, “A spokesman for Sussex Gay Lib tells us that they are the only provincial GLF group to hold regular dances of this size and feel that with a larger venue they could attract 300 to 400 people. The music is provided by the gay group’s own disco and it particularly attracts the local gay girls who travel from such exotic places as Eastbourne, and the boys from faraway Portsmouth, where hardly any gay life exists.”

As John R remembers, the SGLF were “actively campaigning to promote Gay Pride and encouraging people to come out.” It may be hard for us to imagine now, but this was very radical for the times. The literal criminality of being queer was still very fresh in the collective memory.

“Much attention was paid to changing the attitude of the commercial gay scene. Each weekend we sold the newspaper Gay News outside the Heart and Hand Pub in Ship Street, and sometimes outside other venues. All the gay venues were closeted and refused to sell the newspaper, as did almost all newsagents.”

More conservative members of the local gay community were not impressed by the antics of the SGLF. Peter Duxbury remembers another SGLF march where “we walked all the way through Brighton in dresses, placards, into Hove, on to George Street, Blatchington Road. And this [gay] man in a raincoat and hat dashed up to me and he said something like ‘You’ll never get people to understand you dressed like that. Why are you doing this?’”

Where have these photos been?

“While searching through the negatives of the Argus Photographic Archive I found a small brown packet with the details ‘Gay Lib March 8/7/73’ written in blue biro. Viewing the images was like holding hands across time with those who were activists before us and reopening long unspoken stories, seen again in modern light.

“The importance of finding these images cannot be understated as it resets the timeline for overt local activism by 15 years prior to the Anti-Section 28 Campaign.” Tina from Gay Brighton Past.

Having checked The Argus and Brighton & Hove Gazette newspapers for that weekend in 1973, and the week after, it seems the photographs were never used. This would explain why no one knew of their existence up until now. It also means that pretty much no one has ever seen them.

Exhibition

We wanted everyone to have the chance to see these pictures, and Wayne from the Sussex Beacon has very kindly let us display them in the windows of the St James’ Street shop. They’ll be up throughout August marking the month that Pride now happens in Brighton.

These photos are a key piece of our history that up until now has been missing. We knew Brighton Pride began in 1973 but now we can actually see some of the brave individuals who started the fight for LGBTQ+ rights in our very own city.

The usual parade and park events may not be taking place this year, but we can still be proud of who we are and where we have come from.

Images reproduced with kind permission of Andy Garth, Brighton & Hove Stuff and the Argus Photographic Archive.

Sussex Gay Liberation Front – The Gay Day Before Pride

On a windy afternoon in October 1972, a small group of people gathered between the piers on Brighton seafront. There were roughly 20 of them with an assortment of banners, badges and a great deal of courage. This was the Sussex Gay Liberation Front (SGLF) and they were there to make a point.

Mark Rowlands, one of the founding members, remembers “we followed King’s Road along to the Palace Pier and round into the Old Steine. We did our best to make our presence felt. ‘Give us G’, someone yelled. ‘Give us an A. Give us a Y. What does that spell?’ ‘GAY’, we tried to roar. ‘And what is Gay?’ ‘Good!”

SGLF started life in January 1971, comprised of students and staff at the University of Sussex, along with lesbians and gay men from the town. Co-founder Simon Watney remembers ‘The idea that one is Glad to be Gay may sound terribly naïve today, but it was the beginning of a whole notion that you could be lesbian or gay and not be ashamed, and stand up for yourself. It gave people confidence.’

The GLF wanted ‘to bring homosexuals together in a different atmosphere, away from the ghetto, away from isolation, to bring an end to their treatment as psychiatric cases, to reject all we have been told to feel about ourselves. We want only one thing – that the love of a homosexual should be treated on the same basis as the love of a heterosexual, so that all people in our society can realise their full potential’.

The 1972 Gay Day (pictured above) specifically campaigned for an equal age of consent. At that time it was 21 and came with a host of conditions: only in private accommodation (not hotels), no one else be present in the building (even in a different room).

The march was originally intended to move down Western Road into the main shopping area but, at the last minute, officials re-routed it for fear that ‘the gays’ banners might cause a breach of the peace.’ (Gay News)

‘On Brighton’s Lower Esplanade a gang of eight or nine youths began jeering and a scuffle broke out. Police intervened, but no arrests were made.’ (Argus)

Not to be deterred, the SGLF decided to organise a bigger event for the following year. London had had its first Gay Pride march on July 1, 1972, the nearest Saturday to the anniversary of the Stonewall riots on June 28, 1969, so it made sense for Brighton to follow suit.

Brighton’s Gay Pride in 1973 was a whole weekend of events, starting with a disco at the Stanford Arms (now The Joker) on Friday, July 6, the regular meeting place for the SGLF. That was followed by a midnight wedding between John Roman Baker and Graham Wilkinson on the beach.

Allowing for what was probably a late night, Saturday began with a ‘Gay Pride March starting from Norfolk Square, Western Road at 2.30pm. We shall march down to the seafront and along to the fish market opposite the Ship Hotel, distributing leaflets as we go.’ (SGLF newsletter)

That was to be followed by another disco (obviously), which was held at the Royal Albion Hotel, with tickets costing 50p each. Sunday was a gay picnic back on the beach to the west of the Palace Pier. According to Gay News the dance at the Royal Albion was ‘highly successful’, attracting 200 people, and the SGLF were ‘undeterred by Brighton Council’s rather pathetic refusal to allow them to hold dances on corporation property’.

SGLF member Bob Apps booked venues for SGLF and even managed to arrange a couple of dances in the Royal Pavilion dining room, with the kitchen becoming a bar for the evening. Fellow member Doug Coupe said: ‘Bob was a very brave man and overcame many difficult confrontations, not least in his dealings with local authority representatives who at that time did not conceal their disapproval of gay people.’

Unfortunately the turnout for Gay Pride had been disappointing as SGLF spokesman Graham Philips told Gay News: ‘many homosexuals in ‘responsible jobs’ steered clear of the demo march for fear of being publicly identified and perhaps sacked as a result.’

On a side note, that very thing happened to Doug Coupe. He was a teacher in the local area, but after being outed he had ‘a very difficult time, for years’, until he left the job.

Graham Phillips told Gay News that nevertheless ‘the march was one more step towards getting homosexuality accepted.’

So when you celebrate Pride, think about the people that came before you, before me, who had the guts to stand up for who they were, when violence and abuse were frequently the consequences, they did it anyway.

PICTURE Courtesy of Bishopsgate Institute, London

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