Char March: Full Interview

TRANSCRIPT

Char March

Interviewed by Tash Lyons

1st February 2019


CM: Hello. My name is Char March and I’m fifty seven and I’m a lesbian and a woman and I arrived in West Yorkshire in 1985 I think it was. I don’t have any family connections with it but both my parents came from South Yorkshire and I remember the day that I came for an interview at Huddersfield. I’d never been as far as I know, I’d never been in West Yorkshire... My partner Jane and I drove from where we were living in North Yorkshire to go to this interview for Disability Equality Training Officer at Kirklees Council, that I’d applied for at Huddersfield... and as we passed the sign for Huddersfield I turned to Jane and I said ‘I feel at home’ and that was absolutely massive because she knew what a rough ride I’d had in Scotland, and that I’d never felt, I’d never felt at home anywhere... and so just passing a sign that said Huddersfield, I’d never been there before, it wasn’t that it was a particularly beautiful day or anything like that, it was just this massive feeling that came over me and I actually had to pull in, pull the car in and we gave each other a hug and said ‘I wonder why this is happening’ and da da da. And then I went off to the interview and I got the job.

So that was me working in Equal Opportunities Unit. And, so I thought, everything will be marvellous! [laughs] But, er, I mean there was lots of good things happened. Kirklees Council at the time I don’t know what it’s like now but at the time it was incredibly well run...a brilliant Council and I’d already worked for one Council and I then went on to work for Leeds City Council which was not well run but Kirklees Council at the time was incredibly well run, had a very good leader and they’d just, like a lot of Labour run Councils at that time, sort of rash in the early eighties to mid-eighties set up an Equal Opps Unit from scratch to tackle some of the inequalities within local authorities because even though they were public bodies they weren’t employing anything even vaguely like the profile of the people that they served and so that was why we were set up, to try and encourage more disabled people to come and work for the Council, to educate the existing staff in how to enable people who have a variety of disabilities to contribute... and also course women, moving women up, you know there’s loads and loads of women work in Councils but they usually work in the lowest paid and part time and so on so forth and so trying to break through and provide career routes for women and increase the numbers of black staff, black and ethnic minority staff and tackle racism generally within y’know racism and prejudice of all sorts within the Council so you can imagine we were very popular. [laughs]

So... and it was, we didn’t know that at the time but it was a short lived phase that a lot of Labour Councils went through setting up Equal Opportunities Units and I’m not saying that we didn’t do a lot of good work, we did. And we did make a lot of difference... but looking back on it now I’m not sure that it was the right thing to do... to bring in bright young things from the outside... [chuckles] very idealistic, most of us never worked in councils before, we didn’t understand the culture of them, we were very committed to our particular cause whether it was race or disability or women and of course we were greatly resented because we were actually given quite a lot of political power by the politicians, by the councillors over the other officers who’d got decades of experience of working in councils and stuff and they, they understandably resented us going in and saying ‘right this is the new policy on recruitment’ or ‘this is how you’ll now conduct interviews’ or whatever whatever.

So it was an interesting time, was a very very stressful job, very stressful and I kind of thought that the Equal Opportunities Unit would be a sort of haven, that I would go out into the rest of the council and ok I understood that that would be hostile but that I would come back to the Equal Opportunities Unit and we’d share a common purpose and so on and so forth.

My first day there, one of the... ‘cause we were all being recruited at the same time so we were all coming in completely new. One of the black staff, a woman, African Caribbean woman... I’d been out at my interview and I because I just am, I just don’t see any point in being in the closet, I’d tried that once at my first ever job and it was a disaster, I just hated it, absolutely hated it and you had to tell lies all the time and then you, [laughs] cause my memory’s not very good I’d forget why I’d told them y’know what my boyfriend’s name was or some such... bollocks and I so I didn’t like that and I thought it would be absolutely fine being out in an Equal Opportunities Unit. What sort of spooked me was that after the interview this rather creepy male councillor came up to me and said [puts on a voice] ‘oh thank you so much for having the courage to come out to us, that meant so much to us’ and I just thought ‘what a sick thing to say y’know like what’s, why shouldn’t I be out? And what’s courageous about it? And it was like he was getting brownie points from me being out and I didn’t like that at all and I never got on very well with that councillor.

But anyway so started day one and this young African Caribbean woman found out from somebody in the unit that I was a lesbian and she immediately demanded that I’d be sacked ‘cause she wouldn’t be in the same office as me because I should y’know I was an abomination and God shouldn’t y’know, God shouldn’t have allowed me to be born... and she was saying all this in front of me. And then when they said ‘don’t be ridiculous’ she demanded that her desk was moved right to the far end of this long open plan office away from me because she would catch things from me. Because of course AIDS had broke the year before, the AIDS crisis had broke, and that had been very unpleasant in the office that I had worked at for Middlesborough Council... I worked in their plumbing department and we used to all use the same tea trolley. It came round and it just had communal mugs on and you just went and helped yourself and when the AIDS story starting breaking in the press I suddenly realised that I was the only person using the tea trolley and that nobody else was coming to use the tea trolley because I was using it. So then I started taking in a flask and lo and behold, just to see what would happen and lo and behold they all went back to using the tea trolley ‘cause I wasn’t contaminating the mugs with my rotting lips!

So... I had a little bit of that before but I didn’t I just didn’t expect it in an Equal Opps Unit and I was really shocked. Having said that the person who was dealing with the personnel for the Equal Opps Unit, she was very good and she just wouldn’t, wouldn’t put up with this young black woman’s point of view and I think that she must have sat down with this woman quite a number of times over the next few months stroke years and just made it her business to change this women’s mind and also to get her to shut up in front of me. But it was a hell of a shock on day one to think ‘what the hell have I walked into?’.

And then later on that week the boss of the Equal Opps Unit who thankfully wasn’t there for very long... he started, very pompous man from Bombay. He called me into his office and he said that he would like to sack me because he didn’t want degenerates like me being in his unit and that we would distract people from the real issue which was race and he didn’t really agree with me working on disability issues and he didn’t understand why we had to have Women’s Officers either but particularly he didn’t want me there and he said ‘and especially with your disability’ and I said ‘what do you mean my disability?’ cause I’ve got hidden disability y’know it’s not immediately obvious to people so I didn’t know what he meant and he said ‘you being one of them’. So and quite a few people at that time said to me that my, me being a lesbian was a disability y’know that that was my disability. So it was all a bit weird and I... anyway I was quite proud of myself actually because I’m not the bravest person [laughs] in the world by any manner or means and I just sat there and I thought I’m not putting up with this rubbish y’know. I’ve worked hard to get this job. It was my first proper paid y’know really proper paid job with a salary and I was supporting my partner Jane to go through plumbing and heating qualifications and get her plumbing business set up and running and so there was no way I could walk away from it. I was the breadwinner for us both. Plus, a cat, of course, cause we’re lesbians. I just sat there and looked at him and he said ‘of course you only have these problems in Britain because it’s very overcrowded here’ and I happened to know ‘cause I’d heard somebody speak say that he came from Bombay and one of my cousins used to live in Bombay so I knew that was a very large city and very very overcrowded and so I said ‘oh so if it’s an overcrowding problem that queers are created by overcrowding you must have a lot in Bombay’ and he was absolutely incandescent with fury and y’know called me every name under the sun and never spoke to me after that. This was my direct boss, never spoke to me. Luckily he got done for fraud about I think it was seven or eight months later and he got sacked so not that that’s got anything to do with the price of eggs but you know what I mean. All I’m saying is that I didn’t have to put up with him for too long. But he... you know I just found it quite extraordinary that this is an Equal Opportunities Unit and I was facing such a level of hostility and prejudice and out and out ‘we want to sack you’. So that was quite a shock really.

TL: And what year was that?

CM: I’m pretty sure that’s 1985 but it might have been 1984 [pause] Yeah. Or... Anyway, mid-eighties, mid-eighties. But having said that I got on really really well with the Race Equality Trainer, Lakhbir Virk, and we had a very strong friendship and alliance within the place. And just... took the piss out of everybody really just to keep ourselves sane and we did do a lot of good work... and then one day the council nurse, a woman, came round to the Unit because they were, the government was putting pressure on local authorities to do more in terms of public health information on AIDS. [Takes sip of tea] And so somebody, I don’t know somebody, must have told her that I was a lesbian and therefore of course you know, riddled with AIDS and so she came round to the office and stood in front of my desk but several metres away, again this sort of whole thing of she could catch something from me, and she said to me, this is the nurse who’s been medically trained and is working on an AIDS awareness campaign for council workers and the people of Kirklees, she stood there and said ‘you’re a public health hazard’, to me. [Pause] And that was quite shocking but what was delightful was that by that time I’d got a boss who was one of the generic training officers for the council and none of us got on very well with him, he was a real jobsworth. He was a nice enough guy but, sorry local authority officers, but a really typical local authority officer, the least, the less he could do, the happier he was and he just kept his head down all the time, never made any waves, never supported us... Anyway, and he was a single, white... Huddersfield born and bred guy and he overheard this woman say this to me, well everybody in the office heard it, she said it loud enough and he actually got up on his hind legs from behind his desk which was you know quite a few metres away from me and came up and stood right in front of this woman and said [puts on Huddersfield accent] ‘if anybody around ‘ere is a health hazard it’s me, I’m a single bloke, I shag a lot of women, I put it about y’know, Char’s in a committed relationship with her partner, has been for years y’know yer talking rubbish.’ And he ordered her to leave and she was really shocked and she said she was gonna report him and da de da de da. I was absolutely gobsmacked! And so I gave him a round of applause and we all broke into spontaneous applause. It was the one thing he did in the five years I was there but I just thought that was absolutely fantastic! ‘Cause it was so against character... I just expected him to look down at his books and his paperwork and not do anything. I really liked the guy after that [laughs]. When he left I gave him a great big box of chocolates. So that was you know sort of ups and downs really.

I wasn’t officially... there at all to work on lesbian issues and I didn’t but occasionally there would be a conference... I remember Linda Bellos came up from, where was it Lambeth... I think she was the leader of Lambeth... to a conference on lesbiality [?] or whatever the title was in Manchester and I was just interested to know what was being said in other places so I asked my boss at that point who was much nicer, if I could go... ‘cause there was no other, there were no other gay people in the Equal Opps Unit and so I got, I was allowed to go for this day conference but it wasn’t like I was coming back and saying ‘right we need to do this and that and the other.’ I did suggest... the Women’s Officer include this or that when they were thinking about how to run women only events and things and sometimes she’d include things and sometimes she wouldn’t but she was a funny fish as well and she... I’m making it sound like I’m some bloody saint here and everybody else was weird but it was just odd being at that time you know when you kind of like... there were no role models for any of this stuff, any of this work y’know. And so I was trying to think on my feet and I didn’t really know many other lesbians just a few friends of mine, I certainly didn’t know anybody, any lesbians or gay men who were working in the field of y’know equality for... us raving queers. I was just trying to use common sense about what make me feel easier about going to an event or whatever.

Then the Clause 28 marches came along. This was when Thatcher brought in, you might not know about this, you’re far too young but there was…, Thatcher brought in within the Education Act a very badly written clause called Clause 28 which said that you were not allowed to promote homosexuality within the education system. Now, when, it was very badly written and so... it should never have gone in there in the first place but she put it in and [pause] because it was so badly written the general consensus amongst gay activists was that councils should do nothing y’know, that they should not comply, they should not alter anything about the way that they were doing things, that books should not be taken off the shelf etc etc which was what that was all about. It was sort of like trying to keep the lid on the sheer number of lesbian and gay teachers that there were so that they weren’t allowed to be out in schools because then that would be seen to be promoting homosexuality even though that’s a fantastic role model for everybody let alone poor benighted lesbians and gays within your class, who could do with knowing that they weren’t the only ones in the world but a lot of organisations started to, because they supported Thatcher and they, and also not even that, they just wanted to make sure that the issues that they held dearest to them weren’t distracted from by queers.

I remember I’d been working very closely with a woman who’d set up, ‘cause I also ran a lot of... racial equality courses and did anti-racist strategies courses and all sorts of things so I worked right across the board even though I was allegedly only on disability. And I’d been working with this woman who was really really right on and very trendy and stuff, straight woman, and she’d set up an extremely good library for all ages that schools across Kirklees could call on to bring some understanding of black and ethnic minority children and parenting and cultural issues and so on and so forth into schools and just have a presence of black and minority ethnic writers on the shelf and images of black and minority ethnic children and parents and so on and so forth and in positions of authority and so on and so forth. It was that sort of thing that she was doing and it was, at that time, and I know it sounds pathetic now but at the time it was really cutting edge to do anything like that and to find these books was really hard. She searched literally worldwide for these and she’d got a room, a big room [unclear] she’d shelved out at her own expense and she was completely passionate about it.

Anyway, this particular day, I went along with some recommendations that I’d heard ‘cause I’d been down somewhere in... I think down in London for a course or something and I’d heard ‘oh there’s this new series of books coming out’ so I went to tell her about them and I’d got some samples with me and she was busy rooting through all the shelves and I said ‘oh are you looking for something?’ and she said ‘yes, I’m getting rid of anything that might break Clause 28’ and this was a trendy right on woman and I was horrified and I said ‘and how many books have you found?’ ‘cause you know if books about race and black people were small... thin on the ground, books positive images of gays and lesbians were like microscopically there. Anyway, she’d found two I think and she was literally going to burn them. She’d got... there was an incinerator for the boiler in the basement of this building and I just couldn’t believe it. I just thought, ‘Jesus’ [sighs]. This is back to the Babelplatz in Berlin... and if somebody this right on is doing this then think how much damage people who genuinely believe that Clause 28 is a good thing are doing. So... I told this woman off, I took the books off her because I was convinced that if I left them with her she would destroy them so I just thought ‘well I’ll take them into safe custody’ as it were! And then I went first time I’d ever done this, I didn’t even go to my boss in the Equal Opps Unit or his boss, I went straight to the director of our whole department who I’d met a couple of times and he was a bit of a tosser. But he was alright... I’ve got alopecia and I’ve had alopecia since I was twelve and one time when I was there in his outer office when I was waiting with his secretary to be called into a meeting with him, this was later on... He didn’t realise I was there and through his open door he spoke to his secretary and he said ‘oh I wonder what weird wig, or weird hairdo Char will come up with this time, as if we don’t know she’s a bald git.’ And so [laughs] he wasn’t the nicest chap in the world but anyway...

I went to see him and I showed him the information from Stonewall and I showed him the two books and I said that this had happened and I was very concerned about it and that the word coming down from the local authorities, governing bodies was that nobody should do anything about Clause 28, that we were basically to ignore it, that it wasn’t a good piece of legislation, that it could be used in all sorts of extremely unpleasant ways against gay staff and that it was so badly written and it was in the wrong law. It was put into the wrong act... and so it basically, under law, it didn’t have any umph to it and that we should make absolutely sure that diktat went out to say it’s business as usual, do nothing about this just completely ignore it. He and I sat down... he understood my concern which was amazing and he was okay about me, just turning up at his door, when I was a Junior Officer y’know going to the Director was sort of pretty unheard of but I was obviously a bit passionate about it so anyway we sat down there and then and drafted what he should send out in a memo to the whole council ‘cause he said, ‘look, I can understand you being passionate about this but the more passionate the memo comes across the more people will think ooh, ooh well maybe I’m to...’ so he said, ‘I will write it in the most boring boring language and make sure that it just goes through, it’ll go through committee and come out the other side and go out as a diktat to everybody in the most boring language possible so that they understand that this is no big deal, just don’t do anything’ and he said ‘council officers would much rather do nothing than something so it’ll... that’ll help.’ And then...and it did. Kirklees Council literally took no notice. I mean, I’m sure there were instances of teachers being got out, I’m not saying that there wouldn’t be but the general council thing was to completely ignore Clause 28. So I kind of felt very relieved and when it finally came round a few weeks later, once it had gone through committee and everything, I took a copy back to this lady who had the race library and gave her the books back and said, ‘these go back on the shelf.’ And she’d obviously had time to think about what she’d done and she...as I say she’d got on really well with me and id really supported her in all sorts of things and she said ‘I’d been thinking about it and I can’t believe I did that... I went home and told my husband and he said so you’re into burning books now...’ Of course, it’s such an emotive thing burning books so she... to give her credit she’d thought about it and she’d put them back on the shelf and she’d said ‘and I’m not only just going to do that, I’m going to search for some more because we have no... we just have no representation here at all.’ So that was good, so there was sort of like these sort of ups and downs but it was very stressful, it was very stressful.

Anyway, the Clause 28 thing involved lots and lots of marches all over the country and it was the first... I’ve never been on a Pride march. I’m not very good in crowds, I get panic attacks and claustrophobic. I’m very claustrophobic. And I haven’t got much stamina so going on a march is a very big deal for me. But I went on lots of Clause 28 marches because I kinda could see the real point of that, that we were really angry about it and how dare you in... ,sounds like ancient history to you, of course, you were probably weren’t even born, but say it was 1986 or something, I can’t remember when it was. It was 1986 [1988?]for goodness sake! This was the most...! [Pause] It’s like Shakespeare’s day – it’s 1545! This sort of thing doesn’t happen in modern 1545 Britain. So anyway, I went on Clause 28 marches all over the place. Again and again and again and again and made banners and shouted and marched and da da da and the one in Manchester, I was very very lucky to not get hit by... there was a load of fascist skinheads got onto one of the overhead bridges over the march and they dug up a load of paving slabs and they were throwing them off the bridge into the march and one just missed me, it hit the guy next to me and cut open his cheek and broke his elbow and cut his shoulder and everything. There were quite nasty things to go on, you had to... it wasn’t just oh jolly jolly let’s have a nice Pride thing.

But they had a Clause 28 march in Huddersfield and I didn’t go on it because I lived in Huddersfield and I had experienced that extremity of violence in other marches in other places that I didn’t live and I didn’t want to experience that on my doorstep and y’know be recognised and followed home and beaten to a pulp thank you very much. But alarmingly the Women’s Officer who worked, who I worked with in the Equal Opps Unit, and who did live in Huddersfield, she went on the march with the other Women’s Officer, they were both straight and known as straight within Huddersfield... They went on it and they both tore strips off me for not going on it and I just couldn’t believe it, I just thought, [puts on a voice] ‘oh right yeah thanks very much that’s so supportive so you gain brownie points’ and she said, ‘oh me and....’ I won’t say her name, this other woman, ‘oh we linked arms and we kissed each other as we were going round.’ And I just thought, ‘how dare you and would you go on a race march and black up?’. It just... she didn’t see anything wrong in attacking me for... Ah anyway, I don’t need to explain it to you [laughs] it was just like... [incredulous] fucking hell y’know! Don’t, can’t you understand what you’re saying! Anyway, she then started putting the word around that I was ashamed of being a lesbian and I met another Women’s Officer from another Council at a do in... Bradford I think it was, a couple of years later. And she said, ‘oh so you’re Char March, oh right! Well.’ ‘Cause we’d been having lunch together and we’d been getting on really well and she said, ‘well, so and so’, won’t say her name from Huddersfield, the Women’s Officer there, ‘had given me the distinct impression that you were very... ashamed of being a lesbian and very in the closet and everything.’ And she said, ‘clearly not!’ and I was absolutely gobsmacked, I just... my mouth fell open and I actually burst into tears in the middle of this conference lunch and I just went home, I just thought, ‘I can’t be doing with this, this is just...’ [sighs] I always tried to be really supportive of all of my other colleagues y’know and whatever they were doing not, I mean, if I didn’t agree with it obviously I would say so but y’know but we were all struggling against massive odds in that Equal Opps Unit and people came back exhausted from doing training or running policy sessions or going to committee meetings or whatever and y’know we needed to support each other and this sort of thing just left a very nasty taste in my mouth.

And anyway, I was there for five years, very very hard work, very hard work, and my, I got my partner through all her college courses for plumbing and heating and then we moved to Bristol for a year and I had a massive breakdown and that, I’m not surprised at all. I mean even just, y’know, I very rarely think about this... that part of my life, it’s a long time ago now but I very rarely think about it and I don’t think I’ve ever talked to Janina much, my current partner about it in anything like this depth. I’ve mentioned a few things but sort of put a gloss on them, you make a joke out of things. [Sighs] But, yeah... I’m not at all surprised that I had a breakdown because I was just totally stressed out and... felt... I think betrayed wouldn’t be too strong a word, really... by people who I supported when they were really going through it and then... to have that sort of thing done... So the only person from that time that I kept any contact with... was Lakhbir Virk, who was the Race Equality Training Officer, alongside me... and she was great, she’s great fun, really good laugh, and if she hadn’t been there I would’ve gone nuts, years before. Oh well, I would’ve walked out, I wouldn’t have been able to stand it but... yeah. [Pause] So I don’t know if you want to know anything else [laughs].

TL: Yeah, I mean, that’s great to be honest. Let me just check the recorder... I mean outside of work, how was just like day to day living in Huddersfield as an openly lesbian woman?

CM: Erm, it was great, actually! [Pause] I loved Huddersfield, I absolutely loved it. It was... in those days the university was a poly and there weren’t, there weren’t a fraction of the students there, that there are now. And it was the north at the time, quite run down... I mean the north has changed beyond all recognition in the thirty... four years, thirty five years I’ve lived in West Yorkshire... Leeds was always well off but it wasn’t, y’know, it wasn’t like it is now... Bradford has been in the doldrums but at least it’s got its wonderful city park now with the fantastic pond thing and... Manchester was grim y’know...all these northern towns were pretty grim and they’ve all changed a lot in that time, massively... Hull, the same, I don’t know if you went to Hull for City of Culture but ah Jesus, it was fucking fantastic I’ve always loved Hull, I had a friend who went to university there so I used to go... over there from the late seventies and... yeah it’s great place... what was the questions? I’ve gone forgotten the question?

TL: That’s okay. What was the day to day kind of living in Huddersfield, or the social scene perhaps...

CM: Well, you see I’ve never been into... I’ve never been into going to bars and clubs and things like that. I’m just not interested, partly because of this Scottish upbringing that I was telling you about, I’m not a drinker, but also... I get very severe migraines and they can be triggered by numerous things but alcohol is one of them and smoke, y’know, smoky atmospheres another and... lots of noise so that’s sort of dancing the night away... I’ve done, like, I’ve done it a couple of things I think in my entire life... but I’m not really very interested I’m really interested in conversations and having a good laugh with people and most of the time when you go to those places you can’t hear yourself think so... so, no I’ve never been interested in that. And like a lot of lesbians of my age I met other lesbians in walking groups and things like that, y’know, typical hiking dykes sort of stuff. I mean, I put that behind me quite a few years ago now, but... When I lived in rural East Anglia, that I mentioned to you before we started the tape... I was a member of the horrendous Kenric which you probably have never heard of... well you’ll have to look it up, Kenric... I can’t remember what its stands for, but it was a sort of genteel organisation of lady, rural lady lesbians, it was absolutely hilarious! The vast majority of whom weren’t out at all and they all had [puts on a RP voice] dogs! And er quite a lot of... kennels! ...and lived in rather nice houses! [Back to normal voice] And oh God that was hilarious... I mean even then I was only like... I used to get their newsletter and very very occasionally go to a meeting somewhere... for afternoon tea... But no I’ve never, I’ve never really been interested in that...

I went through a phase when I was in my twenties and then living in Huddersfield, Jane and I did, where we’d became more and more and more political and... as you would be in those days, I mean y’know it wasn’t easy, it wasn’t easy... y’know I remember walking down, High Petergate in York and getting spat at by a perfectly respectable looking middle aged couple cause Jane and I were holding hands as we were walking down the street and that was really shocking, that... why why would they hate us so much, they didn’t know anything about us... lots of people thought we were sisters. I mean in fact we didn’t look anything alike. It was just sort of like I suppose people trying to, ‘why are these two women holding hands? Oh they must be sisters’ y’know sort of thing.

Anyway, so the day to day stuff in Hudderfield was fine. We got on really well with our neighbours. Nobody ever said anything to our faces anyway, they were all really friendly and nice and it was just a one horse town with not really anything going on. There was one, I think there was one gay pub called the something like the New Penny [the New Penny is in Leeds] and it might even still be there. And as far as I know, I went once and I just took one look and I just thought, ‘oh fucking hell, the sad twilight world of the underclass’ y’know and I just, not interested... people... again Jane was a sort of like knew she was a definite lesbian and did go to lesbian pubs and things like that when I first met her at university.

And er, even though I had been in a four year relationship, physical relationship, with another woman, um my mum caught us in bed together [starts laughing] when I was fourteen. So she was the older woman, she was fifteen. Um... and my mum rang the police when she caught us in bed together and then was absolutely furious to find out that it wasn’t a crime! And er... and then so she marched me off to the doctor to get some pills to sort me out and thank God! Turned out my doctor was a lesbian. I mean, how likely was that, in central Scotland at the time? But anyway, so, this doctor said, [Scottish accent] ‘I’m sorry but I can’t I can’t see you with your daughter, your daughter’s fourteen and she shouldn’t have a parent with her by this time and I’d like you to wait out in the waiting room.’ And then er she sat me down and said,’ you’ll have to be a lot more discreet y’know if you’re going to live this life, you’re going to have to be a lot more discreet... and just tell your mother it was a misunderstanding... you’re headed for a lot of unhappiness but there’s a lot of love there as well and... of course I’m not going to give you any pills, it wouldn’t do any good anyway, you’re born like that.’ Now whether it’s true or not I don’t know but it was just like, good God! I’ve met my first lesbian! So that was quite fun. [Pause]

So yeah Huddersfield was surprisingly okay. Jane... I pestered Jane at university to take me to... I kind of thought ‘ooooh a lesbian pub! Or a lesbian club!’ y’know it sounds terribly naughty and... and lascivious and y’know I think, I probably just imagined that everybody just stripped their clothes off at the door and it was like a massive orgy or something... I don’t know. I don’t know why quite what I imagined really. But she took me to the Norwich equivalent of The New Penny and it was horrible. It was absolutely horrible, really. It was like a Tuesday night when lezzas could go, y’know cause of course, we all definitely want to go out on a Tuesday night... And we went in and... it was virtually empty and there was just a few very frightening looking dykes around... in those days there was a big thing of femme and butch which I always hated, I just wanted to be me. I mean I did try the whole wearing dungarees thing and stuff but Jesus they’re so uncomfortable when you’re wanting to go to the loo... dealing with all those buckles and things. [Pause] As I say, I’ve had alopecia since I was twelve so I’ve got to have short hair because it looks... it looks even more of a mess if I’ve got long hair so [Pause] Ah, I dunno it just... it... all these women just standing around... overweight women standing around smoking heavily, drinking heavily, looking like, their faces looking like slapped arses and... they were so hostile to us, it was literally like one of those scenes in a Western when you push open the doors and the piano stops and everybody turns and looks at you. They were sizing us up and I immediately just wanted to turn and leave but we were there, by then and so Jane sat down at a table and I said, ‘oh I’ll go and get us a couple of drinks.’ I went up to the bar and this woman came over to me straight away and groped me. Just grabbed me on the fanny and the tits... didn’t say anything to me... and it was just like, good God [sighs] is this really lesbian culture? Y’know, it’s like for goodness sake! So I’m afraid I was put off from a very early age really. There were dykes... leather, biker dykes there, again very overweight, very... [sighs] intimidating, very antagonistic, not just, they weren’t just intimidating because of their size and the fact they were covered in leather and studs and stuff. They were... they looked as if they wanted to punch us y’know and then I just thought, ‘why on earth would I...’ I wouldn’t go into a pub that was this intimidating, full of straight people so why would I would I do it just ‘cause they shag other women? So... I’m painting a [starts laughing] really great portrait! Oh God! I’m not sure about this now... Anyway you can delete it all if you want…

But no, so I never got into all that but Jane and I did become more and more political and we knew y’know we were pretty political weren’t we? I was working in the Equal Opportunities Unit, she was a female plumber and heating engineer. I went and helped her on weekends. We worked for Women’s Refuges and stuff as well as for individuals and we went on marches and this and that and the other and we did have some, some friends who we met who were lesbians who were lovely and we used to have dinner parties with them and... go off on holiday with them and stuff like that and so... most of the friends we associated with were lesbians but that was two other couples that we knew...it wasn’t like there was some huge community or anything.

And we just got on with whoever was around but then we gradually got more and more as I say political and sort of like, read... we subscribed to Spare Rib and this and that and the other, various lesbian things... and I was getting my first short stories published by Only Women Press which was a lesbian only press at the time and we were kind of thinking ooh yes separatism is the way to go and... we shouldn’t have a... we shouldn’t have a male milkman and we shouldn’t have a male dentist and we shouldn’t... all this sort of stuff and... we got to know these other two separatist lesbians in Todmorden I think they were, or... Walsden [pause] and they were the only other separatists that we knew and they were very very fierce and... no sense of humour at all [laughs] we went round for dinner with them once and they gave us red kidney bean stew and we just farted for days afterwards... and we just took this as a sort of sign, we just like, ‘oh God we have nothing absolutely nothing in common with these women... they’re fierce, they’re unpleasant, they’ve got no sense of humour, they can’t cook for toffee, they live in a really ‘orrible place, they’re... as soon as you disagreed on the slightest wording of the slightest nuance of something you’d... they’d stand over you, shouting at you that you were a traitor and... and you had to be a lifelong lesbian... you could never have had sex with men...’. I mean I haven’t but... and Jane hadn’t but... it was sort of like this... they just, I just felt that we’d become fascists, we’d met Hitler round the back, we’d gone so far off in one extreme. And I just suddenly thought, ‘this is mad, this is not me, this is not Jane, this is not how I want to live, I want to actively put a stop to this right now. I want to have a very wide and various and diverse group of friends and acquaintances and I want to widen my life, not narrow it and narrow it and narrow it...’ Jesus, life’s short enough without... fucking it up like this. So I just actively went out my way to get to know gay men at the time and, more black people and... just widen out and open up and here I am warts and all, if you like me, great, if you don’t, fine, you don’t have to be my friend sort of thing.

So, and... and even though I live in Hebden Bridge, I did not come to Hebden Bridge because of the alleged lesbian community because I’ve never found the alleged lesbian community anywhere, to be welcoming or supportive. I have some lesbian friends, but they’re because I like them as people and they happen to be lesbians. I’ve got lots of different friends, hundreds of different friends, and of course, I mean the writing community as well, and they can be just as bitchy as lesbians, I mean y’know... [pause] But I [sighs] I think... I’m probably the first generation who’s had that choice, that ability to make that choice, to... that I can socialise openly with a whole variety of people, and... be at, I hate the word accepted, but you know what I mean, as a raving queer and as a weirdo and as a nutcase and as a people... person who’s bald and all these things and it... I just think that’s so much healthier than just going to a lesbian pub or club and mixing with other lesbians, I mean what... the only thing you’ve got in common with somebody is that you might occasionally have sex with the same sex. I mean, I haven’t had sex for, I don’t know, ten years. Typical lesbian bed death. So I kind of even hesitate to call myself a lesbian. [Pauses] I am a lesbian, you know what I mean. It’s just like, ‘cause whenever anybody says lesbian, who’s not a lesbian, they, to them it’s all about sex and to me it’s... obviously that’s an... [laughs] otherwise I’d be out having sex wouldn’t I? That’s not really a thing. It’s more to do with... Janina and I getting on really well and having a laugh and... having similar political ideas... I mean, even then she’s quite different from me, politically, really but... Yeah I’m rambling, I feel I’m rambling, so ask me another question or tell me to shut up or something, I feel like I’m digging myself a big hole here! [Laughs]

TL: So going back to Clause 28... Obviously there was a big deal when you were working in the Equal Opps Unit. What happened after that when you left and Clause 28 trying to be enforced, or at what point did it no longer become a thing anymore? Can you remember that?

CM: Oh right, well I mean I don’t know when Blair came into power... but it was the first thing he did when he came into power, not that I liked Blair. [Pause] We all had such high hopes of him... but to give him his credit the first thing he did when he came into power was abolish Section 28, Clause 28. [Pause] But it didn’t... it was, what was useful about Clause 28 was that it became a rallying point... we, gay men in particular, obviously lesbians have never been illegal, thanks to Queen Victoria not wanting to get her ladies in waiting who often slept in the same bed together, allegedly, into trouble. And also she, I think she used the cover that she couldn’t imagine what women would do to each other, like yeah right, ok Vicky, whatever. And so gay men have been illegal, they’ve been sent to jail, they’ve lost their jobs, they’ve topped themselves etc etc throughout long long period of time and lesbians haven’t been under the particular cosh but we’ve been under the, under the cloak of invisibility. You’re just sisters or you’re just friends or you’re... or all you need is a good man, y’know, all that bollocks. I’ve gone and forgotten the question again...oh yeah, Clause 28! So what was good about Clause 28 was it was about homosexuality per se so for the first time [raises voice] lesbians had something to kick against! Hoorah, hoorah! In the law. And it brought lesbians and gay men together in a way that we’d never known it before because we’d always seen ourselves as very, very separate, and I think... I think it built a lot of bridges between gay men and lesbians and to a certain extent, bisexuals, although I think both sides at that time were quite dubious about bisexuals and thinking, ‘no, no, just make up your mind! You can’t possibly swing both ways. That’s not fair!’ And also when AIDS broke, I think there was quite a lot of uncomfortableness about well... and this is just pure prejudice, are bisexuals going to bring stuff into our community that if they were just lesbians who weren’t have, you know all that sort of... it’s typical isn’t it? The outsider, ‘oh everything, let’s blame everything on the immigrants.’ That sort of thing.

So the political territory at that time was very very different. Which is why I kind of wanted to talk to you because I feel that because of that Equal Opps perspective and being actually at the front line, not necessarily on lesbian issues but it turned into I was often on the front line because of lesbian issues. It’s so different from the situation now, for you growing up... You’ve got your own issues to face I’m not saying that you haven’t and I’m not saying that the pendulum could swing the other way, I’m bloody terrified about that. I really am. And every... we’ve fought so hard for the bits that we’ve got and it could so easily be taken away, all at once. Just gone. [Pause] I’ve felt that it was worth talking about that aspect of things. [Pause] And things like... when Jane and I were sharing that awful place in Norfolk and being so cold [coughs] we, if we’d been a bloke and his girlfriend even though we weren’t engaged, or married, or anything like that. The benefits system would have treated us as a couple and we weren’t have got so many benefits but because the law didn’t recognise that we were a lesbian couple, we’d both got sort of full benefits as single people because it couldn’t possibly, the state couldn’t possibly contemplate that we would be a, in a partnership, in a couple. So that was quite good, so it’s sort of y’know there are some benefits to being invisible and the law... not wanting to recognise you...

And... oh another thing that happened in the Equal Opps Unit in Huddersfield, again when the AIDS thing was on and again, this nurse... it was the week after that nurse had come and said that I was a public health hazard [coughs] and that was that I’d met one other out gay person while I was at Huddersfield Council, s’cuse me, Kirklees Council. Obviously there would be loads of people around but nobody ever came out to ‘em apart from this one guy, and he... he didn’t work at the Equal Opps Unit, I think, I think he was something in personnel, I’m not sure... Anyway he was a sort of central admin person... He had his own office so he was obviously a lot further up the scale than me but he worked on the corridor leading to my big open plan office where we all worked and he was the only gay man that anybody in the council knew, if they were... And they always referred to him and would do the limp wrist thing and all that sort of stuff, and he wasn’t particularly camp at all. He was a really, really lovely man and, anyway, where did they decide to stack all the boxes of AIDS leaflets that the Council ordered? But outside his office. They virtually barricaded the guy in. I mean, they literally had three boxes on one side of his door, and three boxes on the other, right to the ceiling and then they actually put a second tier of boxes in front of his doorway so he could get into his doorway but he had to squeeze past the boxes of AIDS leaflets so when they did that, I was just horrified, really horrified and it... cause they come from the printers, what the printers do they always put one of, one from the box onto the box they Sellotape it onto the box so they weren’t anonymous brown boxes, it said, AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS, beware, beware, blah de blah... whatever it said and when I came in that morning, they’d been sellotaped all over my desk, as well. Really, really sellotaped. Somebody had gone to town, it must have taken about, I would think about three quarters of an hour. My desk was completely covered with them and then sellotaped really hard down all over like the whole of the top of my desk was covered in Sellotape. [Pause] So... me and him went to the Director and he was in tears, the guy, who had the boxes stacked outside his thing and we never did find out who had done it, nobody would come clean or anything. But again, the guy who, my boss, who stood up for me in front of the Public Health Nurse, he and Lakhbir and I took all the Sellotape off these, off my desk together. Nobody else helped and... and I wish I could remember my boss’s name but I just can’t remember it at the moment. Anyway, he, the guy who stood up for me, he actually took an AIDS leaflet and put it in one of those Perspex folders that, it stands up, and put it on his desk and... put, wrote beware at the top, and had it on his desk as a joke and that was, that was amazing as well and we got the boxes moved but we moved them, we physically... as Training Officers, we physically moved them down into the basement and it was just... extraordinary, really... I mean, that is so in your face, so... such a deliberate act and also anybody in the office could’ve given us a hand and nobody did and it just, it really did draw up the dividing line to make you feel like you knew who your allies were. [Pause] And... and that guy had to go back into that office and walk past those people every day... it’s just... so [Livens up] Oh joy! Oh joy! [Laughs] Anything else you want to ask me?

TL: Er, I think we might leave actually unless you’ve got anything else you’d like to add?

CM: No, I don’t think so. [Long pause] I think the thing for me has been... just... [Sighs] as I’ve got older... I mean I’ve never been that bothered about what people think about me. You can’t be if you’re bald y’know, it’s... [Pause] But as I’ve got older it certainly becomes easier to just be who you are and yeah, and you’ve got a problem with that? Well, bugger off, y’know... I don’t have to deal with you, you don’t have to deal with me... That seems to me a very state of affairs but there’s... Janina was saying to you, before we put the tape on, the very fact that our new landlords down in Loughborough just happen to be gay men, we were just totally lucky that that happened, made us feel very relieved and that they knew the neighbours and that the neighbours were really nice, so it doesn’t go away, it doesn’t go away that... I don’t know how you feel about things because you’ve grown up in very different times from me but that sort of fear that you’re gonna get spat at or your car’s gonna get damaged or you’re gonna get beaten up or you’re going to have some... negative experience because of being a raving queer doesn’t leave you once you’ve grown up with that suppression and that...y’know, the attitude of my parents and y’know... my mum’s still deeply homophobic. I mean, she’s been horrible to each of my partners. I’ve not had very many but...she’s...she’s not going to change. But equally, my dad at first was very negative and then he decided that it was really quite trendy and so... it’d just be so embarrassing. He was a painter... He had a lot of exhibitions and we’d go to the private viewing of his exhibitions and he’d walk in and say, ‘hello everybody! This is my lesbian daughter!’ And I’d just think, ‘Ah for Christ’s sake!’ Y’know, okay to introduce me as your daughter but... give it a break! And er, it was only ‘cause it made him seem trendy, y’know? I mean, it was a bit of a laugh but it’s such a contrast between my dad, and my mum, who y’know. If I mention a man’s name when I’m up with her, ‘oooh who’s that? Who’s that? Oooh this Steve that you’ve mentioned, and when you bring him to see me...’ Even now! [Laughs] She caught me with my first girlfriend when I was fourteen and now I’m fifty seven. Hmm I think I’ve sort of missed the boat mum [Laughs] So, there we go... stop the tape –

TL: Thank you ever so much.