Late 20th Century

The last decades of the 20th century saw slow steps towards a wider public acceptance of queerness but also extreme levels of bigotry, often directly from the state. Despite some dark times, some queer people were able to live more openly than they had in earlier periods.

Arts and Culture

Local attitudes remained mixed. When a controversial Andy Warhol documentary “featuring nudes, lesbians, homosexuals and transvestites” was broadcast on ITV in 1973, readers of Barrow’s Evening Mail wrote in defence of the piece. One argued that real-world violence and corporate sexploitation were far more damaging to viewers and asked why the censors “consider nudes, homosexuality, lesbianism and transvestites as social misfits”. Another said “Isolated Furness may be, but I for one do not have an isolated mind.”² A lengthy response from the head of religious education at Dowdales School (Dalton) seemed to argue in favour of preserving a isolated mind:

“Now I must confess that I do not know what transvestites are, but as [the previous correspondent] gathers them up with homosexuals and lesbians, I suspect that I am no poorer for my ignorance … Would that my mind had not been plagued with much that I am aware of now.”³

Community

Gay rights groups, set up in the wake of the 1967 law change, were becoming more visible locally. In 1973, Carlisle Labour MP Ron Lewis invited the recently founded local branch of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE), among other interest groups, to his ‘Meet the People’ event at the city’s Central Hotel.

A South Cumbria branch of the CHE was set up by John Holland in 1976 and the leader of a local women’s group to bring together queer people and allies in the area. The initial response to the group was positive, particularly from Kendal and Dalton, but there were concerns that persistent witch-hunts prevented people in Barrow from joining — a concern still present when a separate branch of the group was founded there in 1979. There was also a branch based in Cockermouth.

In 1980 the Solway Gay Switchboard was created to provide counselling and advice to queer people in North Cumbria, including information on “pubs, clubs and discotheques where they won’t find discrimination and hostility.”

A report on the switchboard in the Cumberland News presents a picture of hope within a hostile society.⁴ The reporter chose not to name the openly gay spokesman for the switchboard, fearing abuse, although the spokesman himself said that he and the other members of the switchboard were “used to personal abuse” and prepared to face it to help others. The spokesman recognised that things were more problematic for older people, particularly in rural areas, and those who might face discrimination at work. The reporter noted that “Many homosexuals have emerged from a twilight world in the last decade-or-so, struggling against the bulk of society’s scorn and anger.” But there was more hope that “the younger element who have been brought up in a more permissive society, may not find life too difficult.” There were hopes that the switchboard could encourage people to create a queer social scene in Carlisle.

An underground social scene did exist in Cumbria, but was fragile and largely male dominated. Recalling her queer youth in Carlisle in the 60s and 70s, Julia Reid said:

But there was always a scene going on, y’know? And it was kind of thriving in a way, but just under the surface. Although I’d say it was about 70% blokes … There was The Witness Box, which was the bar in the [Carlisle Station] Hotel. We used to go there quite a lot. But again that would be about 90% blokes. Which was alright. At least you could relax! But there’d be parties and that. At people’s houses. Aye, there was always parties. Every weekend. — ‘A Boy Called Mary’, Queer Cumbria⁵

In the mid-1980s the Dukes Night Club in Whitehaven became a popular place for gay men, but the police specifically cited this as a reason not to extend the club’s opening hours in 1985. The club’s owner, Nick Gunjal, defended the local gays, but lost his case. Efforts in the early 90s to make specific gay nights in Whitehaven seemed to falter because of prejudice in the town. Cumbria’s first known dedicated queer nightclub, The Steam Packet, opened its doors in Workington in 1996.

The Impact of HIV/AIDS

AIDs became known in Britain and claimed its first victims in the early 80s and quickly became associated with gay men in particular. By 1985, cases were being reported in Cumbria rarely, but the impact of HIV & AIDS was certainly felt here.

Stan Blacklock has written in his memoir I Knew I’d Done Nothing Wrong about the experience of losing his partner, Fred Robinson, to AIDS in the early 90s. The couple had met in 1977 in the service station café where Fred worked and quickly fell in love. Their respective families seemed to accept them even though it was never explicitly stated that they were a couple.

They spent 12 happy years together running a B&B in Penrith before Fred became mysteriously ill. “No one thought about AIDS because we still associated AIDS with New York and London, not Cumbria,” recalled Stan, although there had already been reported cases in the county by 1985.⁶ After Fred was diagnosed with HIV, the couple had to live in secrecy, not daring to tell anyone the truth of his illness. Even so, rumours spread and Fred was forced out of his café job, although some of his colleagues remained supportive.

During his final months, Fred was cared for at home by Stan (a former army nurse). Although the local doctors and nurses were attentive and caring, the local hospital forced Stan to keep a body bag in Fred’s room, since fear of infection was still rampant. “He once asked what it was. I couldn’t bear to tell him — but I think he knew really.”⁷

Fred lost his final battle during the night of 10th November 1991 with Stan by his side and both their mothers nearby. “I thanked him for our time together, and thanked God and said a little prayer,” Stan said, before Fred slipped away.⁸ He was 36 years old. The funeral notice described Stan as “a dear friend.”⁹

In his grief, Stan received support from his and Fred’s families and many of their friends. The following year, with the help of volunteers and social services, he founded the Cumbria Support Group for HIV and AIDS, to provide patients, friends and family across Cumbria with practical and emotional support and advice. Young men who had fled Cumbria for a new life in the city were now returning home to their families. They were not always fortunate enough to be accepted back: one young man who returned to Furness from Manchester was left homeless after being rejected by his father, and was found housing by the Support Group and the local council.

Although the diagnosis was a huge shock, he met its challenges with positivity. By 1992, the illness had caused him to go blind, robbing him of his ability to read, although he began learning braille and continued to research and write, enjoying the cinema and theatre, and of course his beloved music. He wrote:

As long as I have my friends, my family, my fags, my coffee, my opera tapes and my writing I guess I shall tootle along, even though I may not have all my coat buttons done up properly. Life is for living and I am trying to live it as well as I can. But I suppose that I feel that when death finally comes I shall be ready for it. Perhaps that is what life is all about — ‘Descent into Darkness’, Gay Times¹⁰

Kris died in April 1993 at the age of 42.

Homophobia

After positive steps since the 1960s, the fear and misinformation spread by the media about AIDS, as well as conservative fears about the breakdown of the traditional family, increased homophobia in Britain during the 1980s.

In 1987, Lawrence ‘Laurie’ Frith was murdered in a homophobic attack in Carlisle, having been lured by his killer from public toilets on Fusehill Street to Melbourne Park, where his body was later found. Three weeks earlier, an almost identical attack had occurred to another local man, who managed to escape. The victim had reported the attack to police, but had been too afraid to explain the circumstances for fear of incriminating himself. Laurie’s death naturally shocked the local underground queer community, where he was a familiar face, but there were added fears of a police witch-hunt and the potential for public exposure. Fortunately the killer was found and brought to justice.

Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government used homophobia to further their agenda of the heterosexual nuclear family with the introduction of Section 28 of the 1988 Local Government Act. It banned local councils from ‘intentionally promoting homosexuality’ and state schools from ‘promoting the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship’. The act created a state-sponsored culture of silence that stigmatised queer people, encouraged discrimination and had the potential to impact the support available. In 1991, questions were even raised about whether the act would prevent the Council-owned Coronation Hall in Ulverston from hosting a local production of La Cage Aux Folles, although Councillors allowed it to go ahead.

When two men were fired from VSEL (Barrow shipyard) in 1992 after being found together in a compromising position at work, it was argued that their immediate dismissal wouldn’t have happened if they weren’t both men. Gay rights group Stonewall wrote a letter of protest to the company, who denied any discrimination, although it seems the case couldn’t be taken any further as the men involved didn’t come forward.

Refuge

Despite the ongoing homophobia Cumbria has long provided a refuge for queer people, at least since Dora Marsden and Hugh Walpole in the 1910s and 1920s.

In 1992, Britain’s first openly lesbian MP Maureen Colquhoun and her partner Babs Todd moved to Ambleside, into the former home of pioneering Victorian writer Harriet Martineau. Maureen had been elected as a Labour MP while a wife and mother but came out after meeting actor and activist Babs in 1975. Three years earlier, Babs had founded the lesbian feminist journal Sappho with her then partner Jackie Forster. Maureen’s openness about her sexuality and her “obsession with trivial issues such as women’s rights” led to her being deselected by the Labour party and losing her seat, after which she turned to local government.

After moving to Cumbria, both women threw themselves into the local community. Maureen served on the local parish council and the Lake District National Park Authority for many years while Babs wrote about Harriet Martineau and performed her speeches in the town. For the next 3 decades they remained in Ambleside, until their deaths a year apart, in February 2020 and 2021. They are buried together in the parish church.

In the 1980s Alston developed a small but thriving community of feminists and lesbians, its cheap housing providing unmarried women with the opportunity to create a home. In the previous decade it had drawn in hippies, who paved the way for later generations of fringe groups, although gay men were apparently less welcome than their queer sisters. As part of OutReach Cumbria’s Celebrate oral history project, Alix Martin spoke about the “overwhelming feeling that I was coming home” when she first came to Alston following a brutal stabbing in Wales and, despite having moved away several times, she has always come back to Cumbria.

Walking alone in the Lake District gave Yorkshire-born Jeremy Gavins an unrivalled sense of freedom and peace, first from his homophobic home life and later from the trauma of electroshock aversion therapy, which his Catholic high school forced him to undergo in the early 1970s.

Aversion therapy was a cruel conversion practice provided by the NHS between 1965 and 1973, which was designed to ‘cure’ homosexual desires or gender dysphoria by associating them with the pain of electric shocks. Hundreds of queer people were subjected to it and continue to suffer the physical and mental effects decades later. Some of the Celebrate project’s participants recall their parents suggesting the therapy after coming out. Jeremy Gavins experience PTSD and depression after the therapy, but continued to find solace in the Lake District, eventually moving here in the 80s, where he became a dry stone waller and conservationist.¹¹

Notes

1. ‘No Uncut ‘Sister George’ for Barrow’, Evening Mail, 8 October 1969, 9. ↩︎
2. ‘Television and our moral values’, North Western Evening Mail, 19 January 1973, 4. ↩︎
3. ‘TV and our moral values’, North Western Evening Mail, 23 January 1973, 4. ↩︎
4. ‘Dialling Away a Taboo’, Cumberland News, 31 October 1980, 6. ↩︎
5. Armstrong, S. (2026). ‘A Boy Called Mary’, Queer Cumbria available at https://www.queercumbria.com/a-boy-called-mary/. ↩︎
6. Blacklock, S. (2024). I Knew I’d Done Nothing Wrong: Life as a Gay Christian in Cumbria, 1940s to 2020s, Ulverston: Pixeltweaks. 44 ↩︎
7. Blacklock (2024), 48 ↩︎
8. Blacklock (2024), 49 ↩︎
9. ‘Deaths’, Cumberland and Westmorland Herald, 16 November 1991, 9. ↩︎
10. ‘Descent into Darkness’, Gay Times, June 1992. ↩︎
11. Gavins, J. (2018). Is it About that Boy?: The shocking trauma of aversion therapy, York: JGSCR Publishing. ↩︎