LGBQT+ History Month

 

Pass on the knowledge 

 

When you belong to a community that you are born into – usually by ethnicity – your parents will often pass down knowledge to you. They are part of the community, they paid attention when important events happen, and they have your own family’s story to pass down to you. But when you are part of the queer community, it’s rare that you have that. We don’t have families with long stories of the people who fought for our right to be here, and most of our queer elders who were actually there are no longer with us. So it is important, as a part of this community, for me to pass on the knowledge and the stories that I have learnt to all of you, and I hope you will someday do the same for some young, freshly-out queer person you may meet down the line. 

 

 

LGBQT+ Local History

 

The first documented instance of the queer community in Manchester comes from 1874, where three drag queens were arrested on Chapel Street when attempting to call a cab. Their names were Francis Mack, Joseph Hallas and Robert Fox, and they were arrested under the 1824 Vagrancy Act. Their trial became a public spectacle, not least because they all answered as comedically as they possibly could, but because the media coverage spread far and wide across the country as a sort of ‘curiosity’. The Manchester Evening News article mentions they were on their way to the “Queen of Camp” ball in Greengate, Salford, and is the first written example of the word ‘camp’ being associated with the queer community. They were released without conviction, as there was no defined law against crossdressing as of yet. 

 

This would be followed in 1880 by a raid of a similar ball in Hulme, where police arrested 47 men – 19 of whom were in drag – for ‘soliciting and inciting each other to commit an un-nameable offence’.  They were fined £25 (about £2,500 in today’s money) and had their names and addresses publicly splashed over every newspaper. Luckily for them, the press cycle moved on swiftly and the ball was mostly forgotten until the modern day, where George’s House Trust recreates the ball every year in commemoration of the gay men and drag queens who paved the way so many years ago. 

 

Moving forward in time to 1969, where a group of students at Manchester University founded what was known as the Manchester Homophile Society (MHS), one of the first LGBTQ+ Societies in the country, and indeed the world. This was the same year that the Stonewall Riots took place, bringing queer rights to the forefront of the world news. In 1973, the MHS partnered with the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE), the TransVestite/TransSexual group (TV/TS), and Manchester Lesbians Group. This partnership brought forth Manchester Gay Switchboard, a helpline for queer people to get advice on everything from coming out, to safe sex, to how to meet fellow LGBTQ+ people. 

 

They operated out of a basement on campus, and eventually in 1981, they moved into the newly christened Manchester Gay Centre at 61A Bloom Street. Soon joined by Lesbian Link to create Manchester Lesbian and Gay Switchboard Services (MLGSS, these are becoming real mouthfuls now) and quickly ran out of space at 61A Bloom Street. MGLSS petitioned for a new Gay Centre, and eventually, after a lot of pushback from Conservative politicians, they built what is now known as the Proud Place on Sidney Street in 1988, just as Section 28 was coming in. If you don’t already know this, Section 28 was an odious law passed by Margaret Thatcher to criminalise the “promotion of a homosexual lifestyle”, something that an open helpline could be easily claimed to do. The MLGSS partnered in 2000 with Healthy Gay Manchester (HGM), a sexual health charity combating HIV, to form the Lesbian and Gay Foundation (LGF). Upon moving to their new premises on Richmond Street, they rebranded as the LGBT Foundation that you know today… and that completes the acronym-heavy section of this article, thank god! 

 

The Manchester Gay Village is one of the most wonderful things about being queer in this city, a safe space for our community with bars and clubs, as well as gardens and monuments that we gather at to remember people. It started with 2 bars around Canal Street, Napoleon’s and the New Union, which both lay claims to being the oldest gay bars in the country. Napoleon’s is older as a bar, but the New Union opened to gay clientele in the 40’s after putting on drag shows for American GIs. The New Union’s owner was arrested twice in the 50’s and 60’s, despite not being gay, for ‘outraging public decency’. In the 80’s, Manchester’s Chief Constable, James Anderton, publicly described the community as “swirling in a cesspit of their own making” and would send police officers to beat up people they found in the area and arrest them on false pretences such as ‘licentious dancing’. In 1990, Manto’s opened, a gay bar with glass windows for all to see, effectively saying that we would no longer hide ourselves for the comfort of straight people. The wonderful drag queen Foo Foo Lamarr (who is very interesting and I wish I had more time to tell you about, go and look her up!) saved up and bought Napoleon’s to save it from closing, and persuaded friends to open bars now known as BarPop and REM on Canal Street. Foo Foo also took ownership of Manchester’s first gay nightclub, Cruz101, after the original owners struggled with the influx of members, as well as buying Foo Foo’s Palace on Dale Street, where famous footballers and models would frequent her shows. 

 

Some of you will know this already, but 1999 brought new attention to the Gay Village in the form of Queer as Folk. This show, by a young-ish Russell T Davies, was a triumphant celebration of the queer community and the vibrant lives of the people within it. It aired, controversially, on the same day as Parliament were discussing the Sexual Offences Bill, which eventually lowered the age of consent from 18 to 16, equal with the straight community. Filmed in and around the village, especially Cruz101, it eschewed the more popular, depressing topic of AIDS that dominated the queer media of the period in favour of love, joy, and clubbing. 

 

 

LGBQT+ Culture NOW 

 

Today, the village is thriving, with dozens of clubs and bars up and down Canal Street and spilling onto the roads around it. But I will always believe that the most important location in the village is Sackville Gardens, just over the road. This is where the Alan Turing Memorial, the Beacon of Hope, and the National Trans Memorial are located, and as such it is where many of us gather at times of remembrance such as Trans Day of Remembrance or World AIDS Day. Alan Turing is there because he worked on the world’s first computer at Manchester University, and after being charged with homosexuality and chemically castrated, took his own life in Wilmslow not too far from here. The National Trans Memorial, first and only of its kind in this country, no longer stands, having burnt down back in 2022.  

 

 

Mark Ashton

 

I went to a memorial in Sackville Gardens today, honouring the life of a man named Mark Ashton. He was a young man who died aged just 26 back in 1987. Mark Ashton made an impact on the city of Manchester that runs so deep, we still celebrate his life today. He is part of a long and beautiful lineage of queer people who have left a legacy on Manchester and, this being LGBTQ+ History Month, I would like to share some of that lineage with you. He was the General Secretary of the Young Communist League, but more importantly he was the co-founder of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, or LGSM. His strong belief that groups of people who are oppressed should come together in solidarity against their common enemy to support each other directly inspired the creation of LGSM, and raised £22,500 (£71,912 in today’s money) for the miners and their families, allowing them to survive without work for the full year of the Miner’s Strike. In response, the miners led the 1985 Pride march in London and pressured the Labour Party into making LGBTQ+ rights a key tenet of their politics. They even stood with us when Thatcher passed Section 28. Not bad for a young 20-something from Oldham. Mark Ashton was admitted to hospital for a seemingly innocuous X-ray on the 30th January 1987. He never left it and died from AIDS-induced pneumonia just 12 days later. The 9th of February, 37 years ago. 

 

 

HIV Testing Week

 

I am going to finish this article with a bit of a novel thought. It’s HIV Testing Week across the UK from today and I would like to invite all of you to get tested for HIV. All of you – really, all of you. Straight, gay, bi, pan, ace, cisgender, transgender, non-binary alike. Yes, even you at the back, who haven’t got around to that sex thing yet, and are 100% confident you don’t have an STI of any kind. 

The UK is supposed to be on track to be the first country in the world to end new HIV transmissions, but we can only do so if everyone is getting tested. It’s no longer a ‘gay plague’, it moves amongst all sexualities and genders without regard. We managed to beat back Covid until it no longer darkened the door of our news, and a large part of that came through testing, so why can’t we do the same with HIV? Also it’s free! The LGBT Foundation in Manchester offer testing for free, and its quick and easy. We’re all students, after all, and who among us doesn’t like a freebie? 

I want you all to do this because there is a massive stigma around HIV that is not going away. People diagnosed with it feel they can’t talk about it, that society will shame them, and we have a duty to prove that this will not be true of our generation. The mental health of anyone diagnosed with HIV is often extremely vulnerable, and by coming and getting tested, you can show them that you understand and aren’t going to judge them. 

So, on Thursday 10th, between 12 and 3, the LGBT Foundation are bringing their HIV testing clinic to Islington Mill. That’s 10 minutes' walk, max, from Peel Park campus. I hope to see as many of you there as possible.  

And remember, as important as these stories and passing them down is, the most important thing is that you are here to pass them down.