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Local Matters: Queer Scenes in 1960s Manchester, Plymouth, and Brighton

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 January 2020

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Abstract

This article compares queer social scenes in the 1960s in three English towns and cities: Brighton and Plymouth on the south coast and Manchester in the northwest. It considers how queer experience in these places was affected by local identities, demographics, geographies, and socioeconomic circumstances and so demonstrates how and why the local matters to queer scenes and lives, even in the midst of wider burgeoning mass and connective cultures. A focus on London has dominated analysis of both the “Swinging Sixties” and queer lives in England; this article shows how different queer experience outside that city could be. Despite multiple resonances and connections, London's queer story cannot stand in for that of other places.

Type
Original Manuscript
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 59 , Issue 1 , January 2020 , pp. 32 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies 2020

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References

1 On these shifts, see Donnelly, Mark, Sixties Britain: Culture, Society and Politics (London, 2005)Google Scholar; Weeks, Jeffrey, The World We Have Won: The Remaking of Erotic and Intimate Life (London, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Collins, Marcus, ed., The Permissive Society and Its Enemies: Sixties British Culture (London, 2007)Google Scholar.

2 Ourstory, Brighton, Daring Hearts: Lesbian and Gay Lives in 50s and 60s Brighton (Brighton, 2015)Google Scholar, originally published in 1992, provides a rich descriptive (rather than analytical) account. The focus of other work has been on adjacent periods or has dealt with the 1960s only fleetingly. See Howes, Robert, Gay West: Civil Society, Community and LGBT History in Bristol and Bath, 1970 to 2010 (Bristol, 2011)Google Scholar; Meek, Jeffrey, Queer Voices in Post-War Scotland: Male Homosexuality, Religion and Society (Basingstoke, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smith, Helen, Masculinity, Class and Same-Sex Desire in Industrial England, 1895–1957 (Basingstoke, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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4 For occupational breakdowns, see GB Historical GIS/University of Portsmouth and others, A Vision of Britain through Time, http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk. Specifically for Brighton, see http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/unit/10056410/rate/IND_MAN; for Manchester, see http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/unit/10056925/rate/IND_MAN; for Plymouth, see http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/unit/10168259/IND_MAN.

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11 The party held both parliamentary seats until 1964 and again from 1970; Labour took one of them in between.

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14 In English law, sections of an act are called clauses until passed, so when Clause 28 was enacted, it became Section 28.

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17 The Modern Lesbian, 2012 (hereafter ML), https://soundcloud.com/themodernlesbian/sets/the-modern-lesbian-manchester; Queer Noise, 2016 (hereafter QN), is part of the Manchester Digital Music Archive at www.mdmarchive.co.uk/exhibition/id/77/QUEER_NOISE.html.

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26 Michael, interviewed by Justin Bengry, August 2017, for Queer Beyond London (hereafter QBL). The project is more formally known as Sexualites and Localities, 1965–2013; interviews and transcripts are currently held by the project team. See also “The Beachniks Who Sleep on Brighton Front,” Times (London), 29 August 1962, 4.

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41 Cited in Sandbrook, White Heat, 248.

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46 Collins, “Introduction,” Permissive Society, 19.

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61 “Pubs of Manchester,” accessed 4 March 2019, http://pubs-of-manchester.blogspot.com/2010/02/long-bar-trafford-bar-oxford-street.html.

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63 Jenny Anne Bishop, witness seminar, QBL.

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65 Luchia, interviewed by Sarah Feinstein, 28 September 2016, for QN.

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69 Luchia, QN.

70 “£6,000 Gift for Research into Homosexuality,” Guardian (UK), 25 November 1964; see also Tommy Dickinson, Curing Queer: Mental Nurses and Their Patients, 1935–1974 (Manchester, 2015).

71 “Two Men Sent for Trial,” Manchester Evening News, 23 March 1960.

72 Luchia, QN. In the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, “quean” was used to signal effeminate men and female impersonators. It slid into the more contemporary “queen,” but Lucia seems to be using the older association.

73 “Homosexuality and the Law,” Leigh Reporter, 4 February 1965.

74 “Men on Sex Charges Are Sent to Trial,” Bolton Evening News, 26 June 1963; “Tempter Is Jailed for 18 Months,” Bolton Evening News, 25 June 1963; “The Witchunt is Horrifying,” Bolton Evening News, 12 July 1963.

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79 Judith, interviewer not specified, ca. 2008, ML.

80 Liz Naylor, cited in Robb, Manchester Music City, 157.

81 Comment on a 1962 image of the Rembrandt posted by Manchester Archives, https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/5335375310.

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83 Luchia, QN.

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101 Ted, PiOP.

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103 Ted, PiOP. See also Butler, “Performing,” para. 342.

104 Michael, QBL.

105 This story was shared with the author by a project participant after the QBL witness seminar held in Plymouth.

106 Michael, QBL.

107 Michael, QBL.

108 Michael, QBL.

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125 Ourstory, Daring, loc. 1512.

126 Ourstory, Daring, loc. 1630.

127 Ourstory, Daring, loc. 1446.

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130 Ourstory, Daring, loc. 2440.

131 Ourstory, Daring, loc. 2440.

132 Ourstory, Daring, loc. 1216.

133 Ourstory, Daring, loc. 2544.

134 Ourstory, Daring, loc. 2566.

135 Ourstory, Daring, loc. 2530.

136 Ourstory, Daring, loc. 1922.

137 Ourstory, Daring, loc. 590.

138 Ourstory, Daring, loc. 1073.

139 Ourstory, Daring, loc. 1354.

140 Ourstory, Daring, loc. 1541.

141 Ourstory, Daring, loc. 2257.

142 Ourstory, Daring, loc. 2403.

143 Ourstory, Daring, loc. 1091.

144 Ourstory, Daring, loc. 1202.

145 Ourstory, Daring, loc. 622.

146 Ourstory, Daring, loc. 248.

147 Geoff Roberts, “Last Exit to Brighton,” [Brighton Gazette, ca.1968], East Sussex folder, Lesbian and Gay Newsmedia Archive.

148 Ourstory, Daring, loc. 2212.

149 Ourstory, Daring, loc. 1311.

150 Ourstory, Daring, loc. 801.

151 “Court Hears of Queer Rolling,” Brighton Gazette, 23 September 1966.

152 “Four Fined in Whipping Case,” Brighton Gazette, 24 July 1964.

153 “Hotbed Lavatory to Close,” Brighton Gazette, 23 April 1965.

154 Ourstory, Daring, loc. 2137.

155 Ourstory, Daring, loc. 2129.

156 Ourstory, Daring, loc. 1563.

157 Ourstory, Daring, loc. 248.

158 Roberts, “Last Exit.”

159 On this, see Weeks, World We Have Won, chap. 3.

160 “Driven Underground,” Brighton Gazette, 12 March 1965.

161 “Sussex Undergrads Lobby MPs,” Hastings Evening Post, 10 February 1966.

162 “And a Gay Time Was Had by All,” Brighton Evening Argus, 1 June 1971.

163 Jim Stanford, cited in Jastrzebska and Luvera, Queer in Brighton, 189.

164 Ourstory, Daring, loc. 2137.

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