Join queer performer and activist DAN DE LA MOTTE in conversation with GAY NEWS founding editor ANDREW LUMSDEN and CAPITAL GAY founding editor GRAHAM MCKERROW at NEWINGTON GREEN MEETING HOUSE to commemorate LGBT+ History Month 2023
In the 1970s and 1980s Britain’s leading gay press was Gay News and Capital Gay. These papers reported on the most pertinent issues of the day, from police raids and entrapment, to the HIV/AIDS crisis and Section 28. Explore just why and how they were founded, and their significance and legacy with founding editors Andrew Lumsden and Graham McKerrow, in conversation with Dan de la Motte.
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Gay News, a fortnightly newspaper the size of the modern Observer, was launched 50 years ago on 22 June 1972 in time for the first Pride march in London and lasted until issue 263 in April 1983.
For 10p, equivalent now to £1.40, you got 25,000 words, including some by Blossom, a drag queen in a Bounds Green north London gay commune. You got mockery of the paedophile Jimmy Saville on the cover, details of where to contact liberation groups, whereabouts of the best drag acts, sexual health information, personal ads, and as this exhibition displays, pithy and poignant cartoons.
Capital Gay (1981-1995) was started by Gay News reporters Michael Mason and Graham McKerrow to reach thousands of people coming out and using the rapidly growing commercial pub and club scene but who were alienated from the political movement. The paper existed to tell them about the scene and about the activities of the police, courts, politicians, employers, unions, religious leaders, street thugs and the media – and what the political movement was doing to respond to attacks on the community.