The demonising of homosexuals in postwar Britain

Not every human culture leaves clear and legible accounts of itself. Here we have a comparatively recent way of life which we know thousands of men led. It was proscribed, and those who lived within it had good reasons to conceal their participation and nature, usually taking care not to leave any records. Invisible and, even at this short distance, impossible completely to understand, the culture of male homosexuals in London was only partially legalised in 1967. Before that has to be interpreted through material which is intrinsically unsatisfactory.

A comparison might be drawn to the textual means historians have of understanding another proscribed culture, the early Christians in Rome. What we have are comments by outside observers, such as Tacitus or Celsus, who obviously didn’t understand, and whose views were driven by hostility. There were times when members of the secretive circle were too strident to be ignored and had to be punished. We have records of martyrs, and the investigations and persecutions of Nero and Domitian. Did these reveal typical members of the cult? It seems unlikely. And we have quantities of writing about the culture from years later which might divulge anything or nothing.

Peter Parker has assembled a fascinating amount of written material about the existence of homosexual men from 1945 until 1967, when Harold Wilson’s government, under the guidance of Roy Jenkins, legalised homosexual acts in private between two men over the age of 21. The publication of the Wolfenden Report in 1957, recommending legalisation, is a key moment at the centre of the narrative. Parker has austerely but usefully ruled out any material printed after 1967 on the grounds that hindsight affects accuracy. He excludes even Quentin Crisp’s autobiography The Naked Civil Servant, published in 1968.

What we have are fascinatingly partial accounts, some of which are valuable because they are often hilariously wide of the mark.