Brighton Ourstory #16

2005·1.2 MB·English

by  Brighton Ourstory

New in the archive
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s ever some wonderful treasures in which he remembers
have been given to the Ourstory the campaigns and
archive for safe keeping over the last causes he was involved
few months. Bob Young in, including his
brought us prominent role in the Sweet sixteen and out on the razz
Homosexual Law
Reform Society and the
Albany Trust. Also
from Val, Gaia’s Guide
1991/2, the Gay to Z H
Directoryof 1994 and i folks, Ourstory got a nice surprise last Autumn when we heard we’d finally become an official Partnership Register last year. The posters
two cartoon books: the charity. Although it was a long, hard haul to get there, the Charity Commission were obviously reflect fifty years of protest, determination,
first issue of Dyke's on our side in the end because they registered us on International Coming Out Day! Now we join liberation and backlash. We liked it and hope
Delight, 1993 and The a select list of LGBT charities in Brighton that consists of us, Pride and Switchboard. Our Charity you did too if you saw it in any of the council
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Complete Hothead 24 Number is 1106242 and we will soon have the bank account for it up and running. This is great buildings and secondary schools to which the
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Paisan - Homicidal 1 cause for celebration as we turn our sixteenth birthday and look forward to the day when we can Council Forum sent it.
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Window sign f1r3om1, tKhine gP'isn Rk oEaledphoarnitg Cilnuab,l LDPeirasebniesa nDs i T cMeurarstostraiins, t1g9b9ys9. Above and below: Clubbers at RHeoavoent i&n Hgel la inr Sohuip nStdreet 1989 Photo: Bill Short stered charity no. oRsuperenent mWouoorr lelf e ofsrfbo oimaunr t Bheannea edrdre oggloyayry gLb hoeyeig sspta uoolrtnty if nacgebn uatl rofeeu.w sI n pq rtuhoijdee cmotuser.a wntaimy ew, ialln syaovnee uwsh ao d ceaanl ohfe lapn kxeieetpy tahned G mreaekdey wnofuw imnwPfbol.eberrarmsisg aeoh tfti taotohknnie soa aubn roleosuwtotosk rul yeast.t,ct seoooru.u,m ryk feo a- uo ba'fuls lt lhwfioeune sqdll u waae sewe bbresaaictlekth,
draft documents of egi History Month. The LGBT Workers Forum at comings and goings in Brighton during the last
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five Brighton Gay Community Graemeand Elaine have donated recent Ourstory has also been rooting around in the d. Towards the end of last year, we premiered the Council asked us to help them with a poster two hundred years and news about our latest
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Organisation newsletters from 1984/5, press cuttings, safer sex information and venue archive collections of mainstream e stat Barely Legal a short video compilation of campaign, which we were delighted to do. projects.
full of hand-written notes and gentle guides, while Hove Librarycontinues to put organisations. Brighton & Hove City wis photographs and memories spanning the time Although it all had to be done at breakneck
affection. Alec, has lodged with us two their old DIVAs our way. Our grateful thanks Council Planning Department have her when male homosexuality was still illegal and speed, we put together a series of nine Please keep in touch!
bright pink perspex window signs for go to them all and to Ninaand Karenfor generously given us access to their s ot the start of the Liberation movements. photographs and short texts which started
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the Pink Elephant Club and the Minute continuing their trawls of current newspapers. photographs of listed buildings and nl We had hoped to have it ready for Brighton with the 1955 publication of Against The Law, Benedict & Linda
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Books for that and the Variety Club A recent thinning out of the Gay Times conservation areas, producing a good stock of ory Pride 2004 but the time commitments of our an account of the notorious ‘Montagu Case’ and Trustees, Brighton Ourstory
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when it was in Middle Street. Alec photograph collection has yielded a splendid bars, clubs and gay landmarks, mainly from the ur hardworking volunteers meant it wasn't to be. ended with a happy couple waiting to sign up (A registered Charity!)
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should be given a Golden Handbag crop of shots from inside local bars and clubs, 1970s & ’80s. Also from that era, Brighton on However, the LGBT History Conference at the to Brighton & Hove City Council’s Civil
ht
Award for services to lesbians in the direct action campaigns and Pride celebrations History Centrehas allowed us to copy Brig London Metropolitan Archive in December
1960s and early ’70s for running from the mid ’80s to the beginning of this extracts from the radical alternative newspaper, 5 provided a great opportunity for others to hear
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practically all the gay clubs friendly to century. Very many thanks to Richard Smith Brighton Voice, which carried many listings © 2 all about Brighton in the Sixties and Seventies.
women at that time. for passing those on to us. and articles about lesbian, gay and feminist ht Barely Legalincludes a lively band of ladies
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groups in those heady, Liberation days. pyri from the Minorities Research Group, camping
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Books and vids Gay Liberation Front Text C oCnlu tbh es hDoowwsn; tsh; em Uemniocroirens Bofo tohkes hVoapr;i eat ytr Cullyub; 42
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We thank Lawrence Lathamand 7 extraordinary Women’s Sexuality conference
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the former GLAM (Gay Lesbian Arts Speaking of which, very many thanks are due 99 at the University of Sussex and much more
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and Media) management committee for to Malcolm Everettfor loaning his personal 3 besides - as we loosened our clothes and the
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donating synopses of video interviews collection of Sussex Gay Liberation Front 1 Law struggled to tighten its grip. Our grateful
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recorded for their Before Stonewall papers to us to copy. Although the originals ert thanks go to all of you who gave us your
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project. The tapes themselves have will go back to him to keep, he has agreed to h memories and who gave or lent additional
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been lodged at the South-East Film and amend his will so that one day Ourstory will nt visual material for the show and particularly to
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Video Archive, where, in due course, become their permanent custodian. We hope u Kim, who burnt a lot of midnight oil putting it
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they can be viewed by researchers or that others will take a lead from Malcolm in B all together for us. It went down a treat in
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groups by appointment. The sound this respect - no-one wants to part with things d London and we hope to screen a fuller version
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recordings should be available through that bring back precious memories, while Print at the Spectrum conference in Rottingdean this
Brighton History Centre and at the they're in a position to care for them but it's • April.
National Sound Archive. We are important to make provision for their future er
st LGBT History Month
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grateful to Stuart, Colinand Basil safety. Too much of our history has h
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for a copy of Neil McKenna’s The disappeared at the hands of executors who c Inspired by the success of Black History Month
oy
Secret Life of Oscar Wildeand to Val don't recognise its significance. d J as a tool for teaching about racism, a
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for Antony Grey’s Quest for Justice - k pioneering group of activists in London
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Towards Homosexual Emancipation, Br designated February 2005 the first ever LGBT Nick and Roy of Brighton & Hove City Council's LGBT Workers Forum with the poster display at Brighton Town Hall
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Brighton Ourstory Project, PO Box 2861, Brighton BN1 1UN ed Issue 16 • Spring 2005
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Email: [email protected] Online: www.brightonourstory.co.uk sig
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Forever on our minds
The life and times of
Dougie Byng
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f, in some all too imaginable catastrophe, Brighton & Hove was ruined reads: ‘The memories of you all are he name Dougie Byng is synonymous with pantomime dames, music- What makes
and abandoned, what proof would there be to the archaeologists of the still with us and the pain in our hall - and Brighton. A familiar, dapper figure in Kemp Town, where the man such a
future that the city had ever been a centre of lesbian and gay life? hearts although eased in time is he lived in his later years, Byng is unique in having enjoyed one of the fascinating and
forever on our minds World Aids longest and most prolific careers of any performer: 76 years, during compelling
Paper records in a rainy climate Grand Parade is the inscription Day 1996’ which he explored musical comedy, variety, cabaret and pantomime. subject is that,
will decay and, given time, ‘EBO + PETE 1991’, a fading Some might argue that we are in many ways,
electronic records are too corrupt reminder of the lucky to have escaped the kitsch Born in Nottingham in 1893, his dissolved into a helpless giggling he was ahead of
to read. The raddled frontage of loveliness that was horror of, say, Manchester’s Aids had a comfortable upbringing, in fit at the sight of a large lady with his time: a
Revenge on Old Steine and a few Ebenezer Holland, a memorial on Canal Street an extended family which prominent teeth and pince-nez, pioneer and key
fragments of the Royal Pavilion’s much-loved gay man but, all in all, included 10 half-siblings from his belting out a sentimental ballad. exponent of
minarets might advertise a about town. A Brighton has father’s first marriage. His Lack of family support did what we would
settlement dedicated to the plaque on the wall very little to Should we be bothered - that grandfather had been a music nothing to dampen the young now regard as
pursuit of eccentric pleasures - but of Café Rouge on show for the we have come so far and have so hall entertainer, who trod the Dougie’s enthusiasm, or his ‘camp’, and he
what else would survive in Market Street decades of queer little? Perhaps, in the distant boards in London for 40 years, determin-ation to carve out a proved to be a
concrete and stone? commemorates life and passion future, sexual identity will come writing and performing his own successful career in show major influence
the DJ Andy Crock, that have to seem a quaintly unimportant songs. Dougie was just eight business. He worked his way on subsequent
Scratched
another bright star of Brighton’s animated the town. marker of a forgotten tribal when he first expressed a desire across the various genres, comics and drag
The permanent marks of our dance scene. And in the gardens Memorials are not allegiance. But in the here and to go on the stage, but received starting off as a dresser with a artistes. Beneath
occupation are pitifully few. behind the Brighthelm Centre a impossibly difficult to erect. now our failure to imagine a little or no encouragement from theatrical costumiers in Soho, his this flamboyant
Scratched in the cement outside 41 plaque which has seen better days Thanks to the efforts of Adrian place for ourselves in posterity his mother. At a village concert first job. From there he turned to exterior,
Cooper, tribute has at last been looks more like the proof of a she had to remove him after he acting, and in 1914 joined his first however,
paid to Lord Alfred Douglas, with belief that our lives do not
a blue plaque on the wall of his flat deserve commemoration, that we
in Nizells Avenue, Hove. Total do not think of ourselves as
cost: £250. Gay men have been possessing the dignity which an
known to spend more in the course everlasting memorial confers
of a single wanked-out weekend.
Adored and Accepted concert party at the Palacette existed a very private,
piece by the scholar Jean Overton Theatre in Hastings, a big break introspective man. Byng’s
Fuller, while family reminiscences which led on to lengthy tours in personal life was open to
are offered in a shorter piece by musical comedy and operetta, widespread speculation, but
Allatini's son. and prestigious cabaret stints in among his immediate circle of
Melanie Mills, a five-time London, Paris and New York. friends his homosexuality was
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wo interesting fragments of suppressed by the government novelist herself, also emerges as common knowledge. He was
“Too blue” ea
lesbian history have recently after publication during the First an eminent candidate for lesbian rumoured to have had dic
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floated our way on a slightly World War for fear it would reappraisal. Her 1935 memoir The While touring with ENSA during relationships with the Bo
musty tide of esoteric research. encourage pacifism amongst the Wheel of Rebirth(published under World War Two, his act was playwright Terence as
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Rose Allatini (1890-1980) is chiefly troops. the name of HK Challoner), considered “too blue for the Rattigan and actor Robert Byn
remembered today as the author Despised and Rejectedwas concerns the strange goings-on in Troops”. Byng also turned to Newton, among others. gie
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of Despised and Rejected, a novel reprinted by Gay Men’s Press in a holiday bungalow on the Sussex radio (in 1920 he’d received the Do
about conscientious objectors and 1988, with an introduction by the seashore, and is still in circulation dubious accolade of being banned
homosexuality gay antiquarian Jonathan Cutbill Rose Allatini, the Vienna-born Jewish today, a classic of British mystical by the BBC for being too risque),
that was making brief reference to author of a stream of popular novels writing. A study of Mills's career and became the first-ever female Have you got a story about Dougie?
Allatini's connection with Rye in tinged with mysticism and lesbian and writings ought to shed some impersonator to appear on
Sussex. Articles published by the references.Eunice Buckley was one of much-needed television, with his own show. A
American journal Theosophical many pen names. light on brilliant raconteur, he wrote his Veronica has spent several months researching into Dougie
Historypaint a fuller picture of lesbian own material, including many Byng’s life, with a view to turning it into a biography, and has
both Allatini’s local roots and Holiday bungalow involvement in songs, which were packed with interviewed several celebrities who knew and/or worked with Byng,
those of her friend Melanie Mills, theosophy and innuendo and double entendres. including George Melly, Ned Sherrin and Brighton’s own Dora Bryan.
whose house at Beckley near Rye Allatini’s career as the author, its related Only six months before he died But more contributions would be most welcome.
she shared during the Second under various pen-names, of 38 branches. (in 1988) he gave a sell-out
World War. novels, much concerned with performance at the National Please e-mail any stories or reminiscences - however tenuous -
reincarnation, is explored in a long Theatre. about Dougie Byng, to Veronica at [email protected].