Craig Burton: Full Interview

TRANSCRIPT

Craig Burton
Interviewed by Ross Horsley
13th March 2019

RH: This is Ross Horsley recording for the West Yorkshire Queer Stories project on the 13th March 2019. I’m here with Craig Burton. Craig would you like to just briefly introduce yourself –

CB: Sure, I am Craig Burton, I’m – crikey. I’m born in 1965 which is two years, before the partial decriminalisation of the Sexual Offences Act. I’m a gay man and I was born in Leeds district.

RH: Fantastic thank you. Er, Craig, I’d like to ask you about your involvement with Friends of Dorothy and how that came about.

CB: Easy, yeah we started something – it was an idea around, I remember being, somebody explaining to me what ‘Friends of Dorothy’ meant. And I think, ‘what a great idea’. It’s a code word for people that are not out. And you know the people who wouldn’t ordinarily run up and down in a Pride parade. Nothing wrong with running up and down the Pride parade of course. Somebody came to us and said we run a lunch club in Beeston and, we’ve got a couple of gay blokes that come to that. I said, ‘oh that’s great, okay so I wonder, wonder how they feel being involved with a lot of straight people from that district and that community? And I wonder if they feel as though they can talk about, the subjects that they are probably interested in?’ I thought, ‘I suspect not’. I suspect that kind of age group, obviously it’s still a little bit not the norm to be gay or LGBT. So along with that comes with older people, older straight people often they think it’s okay like you know – like they might use not necessarily derogatory terms but terms they think it’s okay to talk about. Things that I might feel uncomfortable about nowadays. I’m thinking, ‘oo I wonder what it would be like when I’m 80 and what would I want when I’m 80? And what do I want as being 50?’ I’m thinking, ‘wouldn’t it be nice if we had a community centre that was filled with people that we could reminisce and we could talk about the same things without feeling as though we might be offending somebody or people might not understand us or we keep have to keep coming out every day. So we just decided to start up a gathering in a group of people that was based around over 50s which is officially older people, but also intergenerational stuff and it went from there really.

It coincided with me being – because I’m a trustee of Leeds Community Foundation which is a group of ten people. We give out money. People very kindly donate money to us and we give out money basically. And we also manage lots of other funds, around the UK. And we only gave one percent of our funds to LGBT causes. So I’m their LGBT representative in terms of we need to find out why we only gave out one percent of our funds to LGBT organisations. We found out very easily that it’s because they don’t ask for it and the access to that. And also we did a mapping report and we found out – and this all in support setting up Friends of Dorothy. We found out after the mapping report that we, we commissioned through Leeds City Council and Leeds Community Foundation, that we were finding that when people are older and they go into nursing care or older and they need support, they either have to come out all over again, because you do and we find even as adults now when you go to a new hairdresser or a dentist or… unless we’re very obviously LGBT we find at some point we have to come out again. And it’s particularly the older you get the more uncomfortable that is. And er, so instead of coming out what we found is lots of them were going back in the closet because it was easier and that meant they didn’t want they didn’t want their more flamboyant friends coming to visit them in the nursing home either. So they were not only losing their identity and their voice but they were losing lots of their friends and networks. So we thought this needs to change, so this a step in the right direction – Friends of Dorothy – it’s a step in the direction of having something. Because older LGBT people are not just older people; they’re special, they’re different, they’ve got different needs, they have different communication styles. They are very different to just older people in terms of er, older LGBT people and not just the difference between, BME old people and white Caucasian old people. They’re fundamentally different in the support and services they’re likely to access and need. Does that answer your question? [laughs].

RH: It does. Where do the Friends of Dorothy meet?

CB: Ahh, we meet at, at the moment we meet at the Wardrobe in Leeds. We were very keen er, people asked us not to meet in a LGBT venue. Because lots of our Friends of Dorothy are not – some of them are not ‘out’ in effect. And some of them never really did feel comfortable in LGBT venues. So we decided to meet at the next best thing which to the closet, which coming out, going in the closet or coming out the closet, which is the Wardrobe, which is a great venue. I think we’ve outgrown it almost, so we’ve got some other options at the moment, but because we’re quite an established group now, we’ve got some good patrons and we got some good followers, we’ve got some people that might not understand what we’re doing or like what we’re doing but that’s fine. So we’re about to – we’re on the lookout for a new venue at the moment, but it’s, it’s been more successful than we thought. And it’s – we’ve proven to be more of support to people than we ever imagined, we thought it was about kinda pizazz and having a real interest in meeting, it’s not, it’s about loneliness and isolation, it’s encouraging people to come out and talk to like-minded individuals in a setting befitting of their life style up to now. The idea that we plonk people in plastic bucket chairs in a community centre with strip light – he says looking at a strip light in the room we’re in now – eating off a paper plate with a plastic knife and fork feels me with fear and dread. My mission is to ensure that none of our group will ever have to feel as though that’s the only option they have when they’re growing older.

RH: So with that in mind, can you tell me a bit about this building and your plans for it?

CB: Yeah, well, this building came up in Leeds. Leeds City Council said that they – it was in one of their plans in the 1970s that we need an LGBT community centre, an LGBT space. The best we managed to do was the MESMAC building which is around sexual health. Now that’s fantastic MESMAC. Wow, I’m not sure what Leeds would have done without MESMAC and that organisation is fantastic. But the idea – if you said to a straight community or my gran, ‘you’ve got a community centre and it’s around sexual health’, she’d run for the hills because actually people think that – they still think we’re in danger of still putting LGBT people into a tribe as though they’ve got something wrong with their health. And that’s the fundamental issue. So the quicker we get away from having community organisations that are focused round the sexual health organisation the better. We have to change that [unclear]. It’s the first time I’ve said that, but it’s something that I’ve realised over the last 18 months in the, that’s almost damaging to our community doing that. We need to relook at that now.

So we decided that if they’re not gonna do it we need to – this building came up because I’ve got the building next door and who knows, you know at the moment its reasonably cost effective. Although we’ve got the works recruitment company, which my firm has kindly donated the building for three months. So, we have to find some funding soon quickly and we’ve applied for some grants, but we’re not good at that because we’re all volunteers. So we need to find some fundings, we need to find some people to work in the organisation. Because we’re victims of our own success. It’s a two up, two down cottage that used to be a lock keepers. One of the coal yard workers’ cottages and a little old lady lived in here until ten years ago and it’s just a two up, two down cottage. It’s gonna – we’ve got a project that were launching called ‘No Place Like Home’. And it’s – they decided they wanna call it, our members decided they want to call it ‘The Cottage’ which has all sorts of connotations [laughs]. But that’s what they decide. Not sure what the lady members are going to think of that, or women members are going to think of that. But hey I think they’ll laugh and we’ll get over it. But we’re not sure what we’re calling it yet. We’re calling it ‘Number 16’ at the moment because that’s what it is. So, we’ve got our friends of Dorothy HQ in one office. We have a meeting room next door that’s like a conference room that hopefully we can hire out to people. We might get a little residual income and downstairs is going to be a drop-in lounge that’s going to be comfortable. We’ve got a record player, we’ve got a piano that needs a little bit of tuning, and we’ve got a kitchen where we’re gonna get a proper range cooker, we’re gonna be baking and doing all sorts of things. So it’s a place where people can come and communicate, knock about to play games and just be – it’s, it’s our version of a community centre. In fact it’s a neighbourhood network specifically for LGBT people. It’s not going to tick everybody’s box, we can’t tick everybody’s box. Hopefully somebody else will do the same thing round the corner or in the vicinity. Cause I’ve heard there is more than one supermarket in Leeds. So there needs to be more than one older LGBT group there needs to be more than five or ten LGBT groups, for older and generational things. The more the merrier, so yeah this is the first one that’s actually dedicated to that in Leeds, so we’re very proud of it. So we’re – funding is going to be an issue. But we’ll get over that.

RH: Have you found that Friends of Dorothy has appealed to a certain sector of the LGBT community?

CB: Very much so it has. It’s appealed to people that are not used to accessing community support services. So it’s appealed to people that are actually – loneliness and isolation has no financial boundaries. We’re finding we’ve got people that are particularly almost on the poverty line. We’re lucky ‘cause, we’re quite lucky because the generation that is old and LGBT at the moment are the ones that are still managed to survive and they’ve got a pension and they [unclear] for that. You know they’re sort of whatever was before X generation. But they’re the last generation that will feel comfortable, they’re the last generation that can officially retire. The next generation are never gonna be able to retire – sorry to break that to everybody. But it’s going to be very difficult for us to retire. So we’re quite fortunate, but we have people that are particularly high net worth individuals and are particularly lonely because their, they often live way out of the city. They had a small group, lots of them met people – ‘cause this is what happens to LGBT people. They meet people, they fall in love and up until recently they’ve been able to get married and to make those commitments. But you know what, there’s people that were making commitments 60 years ago and have lived together for 60 years. We’ve got a couple of members that have 45 year relationships, 50 year relationships. One two weeks off 60 year relationship. And when their partner – ‘cause one sure thing one of you will die before the other. And it’s what happens after that that we’re concerned about, those people are particularly lonely, particularly isolated. But they’ll never identify as being lonely or isolated. So we do appeal to those kind of people very much, and getting those type of people on board, they’re not your natural activists. They’re not the flag waving, whistle blowing, ‘I’m here, I’m queer get used to it’, kind of people. They’re very much as one of my – well they’re all my favourite members – but one of my fave members Eric would said to me. He said, ‘but Craig you don’t flaunt it and we never flaunted it’. I get that. And we have to respect that and sometimes we forget. I think we forget as a gay community, and lots of people working with LGBT people, is that there’s a whole tranche of people there that if they’re made to flaunt it to speak out, it’s not for them. So, we have to respect that for as many people that are out and proud, there are – I bet there is at least the same if not more that are in, that are in and whatever. They’re still very much in there. [unclear at the end]

RH: And just so I don’t forget to ask. How long roughly has Friends of Dorothy been going?

CB: We started – we launched on the same day as the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of the Sexual Offences Act which made it okay, well kind of okay to be gay but who are we kidding. So we launched on the 50th anniversary so yeah the 27th July 19, 19 what am I thinking? 2017 [laughs].

RH: So what do you get out of Friends of Dorothy, personally speaking?

CB: Crikey I can’t – if I were, it makes me cry when I think of some of the stuff we do. Somebody said to me the other week, ‘well what’s, what’s a successful businessman doing knocking about with a load of old people?’ Oh why, okay God talk me through why not? Why not? I wanna know. It’s a little investment for me, but in terms of… it gives all of us social currency as well. So I think – we get a few things out of it too. I probably can’t – I’m gonna try and list some of the things. We had one of our members, we’ve had two members pass away in the last week actually. One of them made a statement to us. He said I’ve not had an embrace or a hug from anybody in ten years’ and we know that we hugged and we embraced this man, quite a few times before he died. And we made a little difference to that man in his –the years he probably thought, ‘that it, that’s me done’. I talked to some people last night, Eric said to me while when we were having a black tie ball – okay some people may say to may to me, ‘well that’s elitist’. Get used to it, get over it. It might be elitist. But actually, we’ve got a deal with Moss Bros and they give us suits for people who if they wanna wear black tie at an event, we’ve got a deal with them and they’ll give us them, because we’ve been schmoozing them. So Eric said to me, ‘I never thought I’d get a chance to wear my black tie again’. So the idea that anybody could say to me – if you imagine saying that to a supermodel or a woman or your gran who loved it – you imagine her sat at home, this is along this isolation stuff. Imagine you’ve got a wardrobe full of beautiful dresses and nowhere to wear them that’s – and actually you’ve got a wardrobe of dresses you know or you believe that you’re never gonna get to wear them again. That’s a horrible place to be, isn’t it? That’s almost like, ‘right, well it’s done for you’.

So one of the things that we really get out of it is that we are in effect, it’s business as usual for these people ‘cause I’ve never wanted anyone to think, ‘well that’s me over and done with, or that’s it’. They used to say or my dad use to say, ‘it’s good enough or us’, in terms of, well we don’t deserve the best. I think the, our older LGBT community are very… humble. In the main, in that they’re grateful, they’ve always been useful, grateful for what concessions they get. I think it’s about time that the younger LGBT populations started to appreciate genuinely the things that… the compromises the awful things that these people went through. In able for them to have a rugby team for them, to have a football team, for them to march up and down the main street, for them to go into a bar and them to not be fired for being gay but we could list it. But that is the activist part of why we do it. In that not in terms of you know we’ve got to leave the activism to some of the younger people. It’s their turn now. The activism in our part is to – we need the younger people to appreciate some of our elders because they don’t have grandchildren, they don’t have sons and daughters to look after them when they are old age. So we have to rely on our younger populations to look after so, so as far as we’re concerned the younger generations are our pension. And they also, just like you do with your parents, I do with my parents. There’s a time, there’s a payback time with parents. It’s payback time in terms of, you know, you might have to look after them. You might have to hold their hand when they take their last breath. We want to be there for these people when they, to hold their hand on their last breath. Lots of older LGBT people gets scared, they’re frightened. And that’s part of, that’s why we do it and it gives us, it warms our heart every time.

The tiniest little things, you just see these little snippets of gratefulness and we’ve got a guy actually a painter, an artist. He’s just the most amazing guy, heard us on the radio. One of his friends that’s on the radio, lives up near the Castle Howard estate. Little house there, he’s an artist, a real artist and he gets the train from Malton to Leeds. Every other Sunday he comes to our gatherings and he thought his entire life was over because his partner died a year ago, they’d been together 40 years and he just thought that was it. The end. And it was kind of, but now every time we speak to him it just [gasps]. He always finishes a conversation, he says well ‘can I just tell ya, I know I tell ya every time, but how grateful I am that I’ve met you’. And I thought wow that, that… you can’t put money on stuff like that. And so yeah that’s, there is a million reasons why we do it. And well we do it because it’s the right thing to do, it’s the right thing to do. Talk me through, give me any other reason why not, as an LGBT man who’s been very grateful for [unclear] I came out in the ‘70s, I’ve never had any – maybe because I’m quite handy – I’ve never had anybody be homophobic to me – well, I have had lots of people be homophobic to me, but I’ve got over it and got round it because I know that people have had far worst things to deal with in my community.

RH: That’s a nice note to end it on and I’ll leave it there. Thank you very much, Craig.

CB: You’re welcome, great to speak to you.

[END]