Male Homosexuality 1945-70: Transnational Scientific and Social Knowledge in British and West European Contexts

Home , Antony Grey, Frank Coppa, Gay Liberation Front, Martin Dannecker, Operation Skorpion, Peter Wildeblood

Male Homosexuality 1945-70: Transnational Scientific and Social Knowledge in British and west European contexts

A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities

2020

Julia A. E. Maclachlan School of Arts, Languages and Cultures

Table of Contents

List of Figures ...... 3

Abbreviations ...... 4

Abstract ...... 5

Declaration ...... 6

Acknowledgements ...... 8

Introduction ...... 9

Chapter 1: The Transnational Origins of the Wolfenden Report ...... 38

Chapter 2: ‘Why Not?’ Transnational Influences in British Sexual Rights Activism, 1950-1970 ...... 97

Chapter 3: The Languages of Sexual Equality in Western Europe, 1950-1970 . 160

Chapter 4: ‘To get freedom, one went abroad a lot’: Homosexual Tourism in the Post-War Decades ...... 206

Conclusion ...... 254

Bibliography ...... 262

Word Count: 76,271

List of Figures

Figure 1 Antony Grey in Amsterdam (1963): Antony Grey, Quest for Justice. Towards Homosexual Emancipation (London, 1992), (pg. 125).

Figure 2 Bob Angelo and English friend in Amsterdam (1963): Antony Grey, Quest for Justice. Towards Homosexual Emancipation (London, 1992), (pg. 125).

Figure 3 Still image. Scenes of intimacy and men dancing together at the COC clubhouse: James Butler (dir.), This Week 458: Homosexuals, ITV, 22nd October 1964, (pg. 140).

Figure 4 Still image. Interview with a Dutch man at the COC clubhouse and British men: James Butler (dir.), This Week 458: Homosexuals, ITV, 22nd October 1964, (pg. 140).

Figure 5 Erotic photographs in homophile publications, (pg. 171).

1.) Photograph by Tan Hin Kong, published in Der Kreis 2 (1953). p. 17. 2.) Arcadie 1 (1954), p.1. 3.) Der Weg 10:1 (1960), p.1. 4) Die Gefährten 1 (1952), pp. 15-16. 5.) Die Gefährten 1 (1952), pp. 15-16. 6.) Photograph by Athletic Model Guild, California, published in Der Ring 1:4 (1955), p. 123.

Figure 6 Man Around Ltd advertisements in Gay News: n.a. ‘Man Around Ltd’, in Gay News (26 January-8 February 1978), p. 9, (pg. 251).

Abbreviations

AHR American Historical Review CDU Christlich Demokratische Union, Germany CCL Centre Culturel Belge CND Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament COC Cultuur- en Ontspanningscentrum CVP Christelijke Volkspartij, Belgium DNF’48 Det Norske Forbundet av 1948 DOK De Oden Kring (The Odeon Club) GLF Gay Liberation Front HCA Hall-Carpenter Archives HLRS Homosexual Law Reform Society ICSE International Committee For Sexual Equality INGO International Nongovernmental Organisation ISTD Institute for the Study and Treatment of Delinquency IYHA International Youth Hostels Association KVP Katholieke Volkspartij, Netherlands LGBT Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender LGBTIQ Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex LSE London School of Economics and Political Science MCL Manchester Central Library MRP Mouvement Républicain Populaire, France NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organisation NWHLRC North West Homosexual Law Reform Committee SPD Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, Germany TNA The National Archives UN United Nations UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation

Abstract

This doctoral thesis examines transnational flows of scientific and social knowledge which shaped the understanding and experience of sexually dissident masculinities in Britain in a period of west European reconstruction and Cold War politics. Focussing on male homosexuality, the research traces how European sexual knowledge was translated into a British context, with its distinct national legislative and discursive framework between the end of the Second World and the emergence of a more radical gay rights movement in the 1970s. Placing homosexuality within networks of European sexological research, international political activism and subcultural activity, the thesis establishes how these influences reshaped official approaches and the self-conception of homosexual men in Britain. My thesis expands scholarship which has addressed male homosexuality and the regulation of dissident masculinities within distinct national frameworks. This is achieved with a transnational methodology which foregrounds the significance of cross-border exchanges in shaping national and local sexual norms and identities. Over four chapters, the thesis examines interconnections between British and continental European histories of homosexuality, highlighting that processes of knowledge diffusion and cultural adaptation were complex and constrained by distinct cultural and political traditions. Chapter One analyses the transnational origins of the Wolfenden Report, a key document which shaped 1967 law reform. Chapter Two investigates how the political and social aspirations of British homophile and gay rights groups in the 1950s and 1960s were shaped by wider transnational movements for homosexual equality, while Chapter Three traces how an international political language of sexual equality was translated into the British context. The final chapter charts the more informal encounters and networks of cultural communication forged by homosexual men themselves during the post-war tourist boom. My use of extensive and underutilised archival sources includes the papers of the Wolfenden Committee at the British National Archives, documents relating to international homophile organisations at the National Archives of the Netherlands, a large collection of contemporary domestic and international homosexual journals which were accessed at the LSE Hall-Carpenter Archives and a number of international LGBT archives, as well as Oral Histories at the British Library Sound Archive. These sources are used to map contemporary homosexual experience and to challenge narratives of British post-war sexual rights movements as isolated and separate.

Declaration

No portion of the work referred to in the thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification at this or any other university or other institute of learning.

Copyright Statement i. The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules to this thesis) owns certain copyright or related rights in it (the “Copyright”) and s/he has given The University of Manchester certain rights to use such Copyright, including for administrative purposes. ii. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts and whether in hard or electronic copy, may be made only in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) and regulations issued under it or, where appropriate, in accordance with licensing agreements which the University has from time to time. This page must form part of any such copies made. iii. The ownership of certain Copyright, patents, designs, trademarks and other intellectual property (the “Intellectual Property”) and any reproductions of copyright works in the thesis, for example graphs and tables (“Reproductions”), which may be described in this thesis, may not be owned by the author and may be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property and Reproductions cannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions.

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Acknowledgements

I would first like to thank my supervisors, Prof Frank Mort and Dr Christian Goeschel. Their expert advice, encouragement and insight have been vital to my project. Over the past four years I have always looked forward to discussing new ideas in our meetings, which continuously inspired me to take my work in new directions. Furthermore, I cannot thank them enough for taking the time to write countless references for research trips and overseas exchanges, but also for providing support when the project, at times, felt overwhelming. I cannot thank them enough and am truly grateful to them. Thanks must also go to Dr Charlotte Wildman, Prof Peter Gatrell and Dr Leif Jerram who all contributed to this thesis as panel members and brought important impulses to this project. In particular, Charlie’s simple, but brilliant, advice to ‘let the sources speak’ has been invaluable. I am also incredibly grateful to the academics who welcomed me at their institutions during my overseas stays at the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munich (2017) and the European University Institute (2018). In particular, I would like to thank Prof Dr Elke Seefried, Dr Bernhard Gotto, Prof Dr Michael Schwartz, Prof Pieter Judson and Prof Laura Lee Downs for their interest in my project and stimulating discussions. My research has been jointly funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), as well as the President's Doctoral Scholar Award. I was honoured to receive this generous funding, as well as additional grants to undertake a number of research trips both in the UK and abroad. Over the past four years, I have spent many weeks in archives and this project would not have been possible without the advice of knowledgeable and dedicated archivists. Many of them truly went above and beyond to assist my research. Special thanks must go to the team at the Skeivt Arkiv, the Norwegian national archive for queer and LGBT history, Bergen. While I was not able to visit the archive in person, Birger Berge, Digital Archivist, located relevant sources and helped with translations from Norwegian. Within the postgraduate community at the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures I have found some truly amazing colleagues and friends. Above all, I am grateful to Kat Mawford for the wonderful times we had when sharing an office, her kindness and generosity and always taking the time to listen. Outside of academia, I want to thank the incredible community of people who have lived at 500 Wilmslow Road over the past four years. They helped to make Manchester my home and are the best group of friends anyone could wish for. My family has also been a huge source of support. I have lost count of how many times Ken, Cathy, Amanda and Ian have hosted me on research trips to London. After a long day of work it was always wonderful to return to a home-cooked meal and great conversation. I feel lucky to have such supportive parents and siblings. Even though we live far apart from each other, they have always been there for me and visits home have been an incredible source of comfort. Lastly, I want to thank Mark who has been with me throughout this journey and has experienced first-hand the highs and lows of completing a PhD. His ability to make me smile, put things into perspective and impressive cookery skills have made all the difference and this thesis is dedicated to him.

Introduction

This thesis places the interconnections between British and European histories of homosexuality between the end of the Second World War and the emergence of a radical gay rights movement beginning in the 1970s at the heart of its investigation. It examines entanglements between British expert discourses and an international body of sexual knowledge, the connections between sexual rights activists in Britain and continental Europe, the social and cultural currents across western Europe that shaped political languages of sexual equality and the encounters of British men with European sexual cultures.

Let us open with John Chesterman’s story. Chesterman was one of the many British homosexuals who would encounter more liberal approaches to homosexuality in continental Europe and bring these impressions back to Britain.

He was enabled by post-war affluence which saw an expansion of personal mobility across western Europe during the 1950s and 1960s. Born in Australia in

1935 to an upper-middle-class family with a father who was an officer in the

Indian army, Chesterman spent his early years moving around British army camps in India, before moving to a boarding school in Dorset after the end of the Second

World War. Chesterman had realised he was homosexual in his early teens and embarked on several ‘romances’ with other students at the school. He began an architecture course at the University of Bristol, where he worked as a male prostitute to fund his studies, giving him insights into the ‘extraordinary and neurotic homosexual underworld’ of 1950s Britain, as well as requiring him to

9 live a ‘complete double existence’. According to Chesterman, ‘there was no question of coming out - discovery meant blackmail and suicide’.1

By the middle of the 1950s, Chesterman was studying architecture at

Leeds University and visited Amsterdam on a research trip to survey new Dutch building developments, including the first shopping centres that had begun to appear in cities around western Europe. Chesterman’s journey would mark a major turning point in his life, bringing him into contact with progressive Dutch attitudes, which saw homosexual men both visible and partially accepted in wider society. In contrast, the criminalisation of homosexuality in Britain meant that homosexual men lived their lives in secrecy, remaining at the margins of society, with Chesterman recalling that he had never seen ‘more than a dozen gay men in one place’ and those that did dare to congregate used aliases to conceal their identities. Summing up many years later, Chesterman stated that this trip illustrated to him that ‘people’s attitudes towards gayness in Holland were utterly different from anything in this country’.2

Chesterman’s experience of Amsterdam, which he would visit many times throughout his life and especially during his later years as an activist in the Gay

Liberation Front (GLF) and founder of the Gay International Times (1970) took on an intimate dimension when he fell in love with a young Dutch man by the name of Henrick Franz van Beek, or Henk for short. Far from a model student,

Chesterman split up from his university group and spent his days with Henk, strolling through the Vondel Park, which would later become a major cruising spot within the city and, to Chesterman’s astonishment, meeting Henk’s family,

1 John Chesterman interviewed by Margot Farnham (13th October 1993), Hall Carpenter Oral History Project, British Library Sound Archive, C456/123. 2 John Chesterman interviewed by Margot Farnham.

10 which he thought ‘an amazingly bold thing to do’.3 On the last day of the trip,

Chesterman rejoined the group to return to England, feeling afraid to leave Henk behind, together with the real sense of freedom he had experienced in Amsterdam.

He felt unable to answer his fellow students’ questions about who the young man was who was crying on the platform, stating that he ‘didn't dare open his mouth, it was a sudden clash of the old and the new and of two different cultures on a major scale’.4 Chesterman’s return to Britain brought this contrast into even sharper relief on a highly personal level. He became the victim of blackmail, a regular feature of British homosexual lives in the post-war decades, enabled by official approaches which brought any homosexual conduct into conflict with the law.

Chesterman was forced to come out to his family, an occasion he remembered as the ‘worst weekend of [his] life’, his father pointedly stating that he was ‘the first criminal in the family’. His and Henk’s story ended tragically after Henk surprisingly visited Chesterman at his family home, explaining that he had given up his job in Amsterdam to come and live with him. Chesterman’s parents, well aware that the young Dutch man was their son’s lover, immediately took Henk back to the train station. Only a few days later, Chesterman received news that

Henk had suffered a haemorrhage which paralysed the right side of his body and caused his death. Convinced the illness was caused by the shock of what had happened, Chesterman described that he felt responsible and went into a ‘state of numbness’.5

While his home country became associated with the trauma of losing Henk,

Chesterman returned to Amsterdam many times, eventually moving to the city in

3 John Chesterman interviewed by Margot Farnham. 4 John Chesterman interviewed by Margot Farnham. 5 John Chesterman interviewed by Margot Farnham.

11 the 1970s to live in a houseboat community of gay men.6 His political and cultural aspirations for his later work towards gay liberation in Britain were undoubtedly shaped by his visits to Amsterdam, stating that it:

had everything that London didn’t, it had baths and bars and a gay society and gay hotels. It was just unbelievable, and it was that taste of Amsterdam as it turned out, that eventually gave us all the strength to go ahead with gay liberation […] we had an example, it was only sort of, you know, a night ferry away and we could go get all the things that no one would let us have in this country, so that made life an awful lot easier and much clearer as to what we were after.7 Chesterman’s recollections showed how the city provided a practical utopia for British gay men, offering a location in which homosexual identities could be explored and affirmed. Yet his story was not only remarkable in exposing the vast differences in the social and legal positions of homosexual men across Europe, but in revealing how encounters with foreign sexual cultures were translated into a British context. In linking his experiences of Amsterdam with his later political work, Chesterman revealed that contacts with progressive sexual cultures empowered homosexual men by shifting their horizons and offering a template for sexual reform in Britain. Far from constituting closed systems, national sexual cultures were seen to have permeable boundaries, as points of connection were established by actors such as Chesterman, who disseminated and negotiated an international body of thought on sexual equality.

Chesterman’s story prompts an exploration of the deep transnational contexts which shaped social and moral change in Britain during the post-war period. Chesterman’s life history points to four major argumentative features that underpin my research. My analysis links British narratives of sexual liberalisation

6 John Chesterman interviewed by Margot Farnham. 7 John Chesterman interviewed by Margot Farnham.

12 with continental histories of social change between the end of the Second World

War and the 1970s, exploring first the transnational origins of British official approaches, before turning to political activism, the political languages of sexual equality and processes of personal legitimisation and affirmation by homosexual men themselves. I argue that transnational flows of scientific and social knowledge shaped the understanding and experience of sexually dissident masculinities in Britain during a period of west European reconstruction and Cold

War politics that saw increased points of connection between European states and individuals. Chesterman’s visit to Amsterdam occurred within this wider shift towards increased European cooperation, which, as Tony Judt has remarked, would eventually form the ‘germ of a new and stable system of inter-state relations’.8 The late 1940s and early 1950s saw western European states accept joint responsibility in upholding human rights and the rule of law in the Council of Europe (1949), as well as forging economic alliances, such as the European

Coal and Steel Community (1951).9 Furthermore, key European states became part of the Euro-Atlantic military alliance NATO (North Atlantic Treaty

Organization, 1949) within the geopolitical system framed by the Cold War, establishing the crucial strategic role of western Europe in the fight against Soviet

Russia.10 In addition, citizens across Europe shared experiences of socio-cultural change, as the origins of protest movements, such as the peace movement, the

8 Tony Judt, Postwar. A History of Europe since 1945 (London, 2005), p. 242. 9 The founding states of the Council of Europe included the United Kingdom, Ireland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France and Italy. The EEC included West Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France and Italy. For early European integration see Bruno de Witte, ‘The European Union as an International Legal Experiment’, in Gráinne de Búrcan and Joseph Weiler (eds.), The Worlds of European Constitutionalism (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 21-28. For Britain’s uneasy relationship with European integration in the post-war period see Nicholas Crowson, Britain and Europe: A Political History Since 1918 (Abingdon, 2010), pp.53-77. 10 Alexandra Gheciu, NATO in the New Europe: The Politics of International Socialization After the Cold War (Stanford, 2005), pp. 34-40.

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and the rise of the New Left could be traced back to the 1950s.11

Despite these shared experiences, the west European political, cultural and legal landscape was hardly homogeneous, but a diverse patchwork of distinct national traditions. Homosexuality was not criminalised in countries that had adopted the Napoleonic Code, as had France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium,

Spain and Portugal.12 In the Netherlands homosexual men enjoyed considerable freedoms compared to many neighbouring countries, as experienced by John

Chesterman on his first visit in the mid-1950s. Most strikingly, they were able to freely socialise, as a respectable homosocial scene had emerged in Amsterdam during the 1950s and 1960s, which remained mostly untroubled by the police and soon attracted homosexual visitors from abroad. Furthermore, homophile organisations provided a first port of call for men seeking counselling, advice or contacts and also represented the interests of the emerging homosexual community in wider civil society.13

Germany, Britain and the Scandinavian countries on the other hand followed separate legal traditions.14 In Britain, the legal and cultural climate was particularly inhospitable for homosexual men. Not only were sexual acts between men criminalised, but an antagonistic tabloid discourse increasingly stigmatised

11 Martin Klimke and Joachim Scharloth (eds.), 1968 in Europe. A History of Protest and Activism, 1956-1977 (Basingstoke, 2008). For ‘New Social Movements’ see Jürgen Habermas, ‘New Social Movements’, Telos 21 (1981), pp. 33-37. 12 For Napoleonic Code see Louis Crompton, Homosexuality and Civilization (London, 2006), pp. 527-528. 13 Gert Hekma, ‘Queer Amsterdam’, in Jennifer V. Evans and Matt Cook (eds.), Queer Cities, Queer Cultures: Europe since 1945 (London, 2014), pp.118-121. 14 Some West German States adopted the Code Napoleon, however, with German unification in 1871 the Penal Code of the German Empire was passed. This was based on the Penal Code of the North German Confederation.

14 homosexuality.15 Furthermore, the defection of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean in 1951 and the exposure of John Vassall as a Soviet spy in 1962 created a supposed link between homosexuality and treason, which portrayed homosexual men as a threat to national security. 16 As Nicholas Edsall has demonstrated,

Britain was under significant cultural pressure from the United States as a key ally in questions of strategic military importance due to heightened Cold War tensions.17 Indeed, British spy cases mirrored US rhetoric during the ‘Lavender

Scare’, which had linked American anti-homosexual sentiment to the fight against communism, and marked homosexuals as unpatriotic and subversive elements in society, with the mass removal of homosexual men from government positions.18

Norway, unlike its Scandinavian neighbours, continued to criminalise homosexuality until 1972. Yet, despite its culturally conservative climate,

Norwegian homosexuals were able to live relatively free from obvious persecution.19 In West Germany, §175 which criminalised male homosexual acts had been tightened under the Nazis, increasing penalties for same-sex acts and expanding its application to a range of non-penetrative sexual behaviours.20 The law remained in effect until 1969 and its strict application throughout the 1950s

15 Justin Bengry, ‘Queer Profits: Homosexual Scandal and the Origins of Legal Reform’, in Heike Bauer and Matt Cook (eds.), Queer 1950s. Rethinking Sexuality in the Postwar Years (New York, 2012), pp. 170-171; Patrick Higgins, Heterosexual Dictatorship. Male Homosexuality in Postwar Britain (London, 1996), pp. 275-276. 16 For Burgess and Maclean see Andrew Lownie, Stalin's Englishman: Guy Burgess, the Cold War, and the Cambridge Spy Ring (New York, 2016); Frank Mort, Capital Affairs: London and the Making of the Permissive Society (London, 2010), pp.104-106. 17 Nicholas C. Edsall, Toward Stonewall: Homosexuality and Society in the Modern Western World (London, 2003), pp. 290-291. 18 For the ‘Lavender Scare’ see David K. Johnson, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government (London, 2009). 19 William Eskridge and Darren Spedale, Gay Marriage: for Better Or for Worse?: What We've Learned from the Evidence (Oxford, 2006), pp. 62-64. 20 Andreas Pretzel, Homosexuellenpolitik in der frühen Bundesrepublik (Hamburg, 2010), pp. 24- 26.

15 not only saw rising rates of prosecution but also more severe penalties for male same-sex behaviour, linked in particular to fears over the corruption of youth.21

In other ways too, western European countries were hardly uniform. In particular, the moral authority of the churches and their approaches towards homosexuality varied widely throughout Europe, challenging sweeping narratives of secularisation. The Catholic churches in particular increased their membership in the 1940s and 1950s and remained significant with the rise of associated

Christian democratic parties, particularly in Germany, the Netherlands, France,

Belgium and Italy.22 Christian democracy supported traditional religious and family values and was committed to social welfare policies, while firmly protecting private property, constituting a powerful ideological opposition to communism in the context of the Cold War.23 Narratives of declining church influence have also been challenged for states which were not predominantly

Catholic, such as the Scandinavian countries and Britain. Callum Brown has demonstrated that the 1950s witnessed a church revival in Britain and has posited that until 1963 Britain was a ‘highly religious nation’.24 In Britain, the Anglican

Church and the English Catholic Church prepared statements in the mid-1950s, which rejected homosexuality on a theological basis, but argued that as an issue of morality homosexuality should fall under the remit of the churches, rather than the

21 Pretzel, Homosexuellenpolitik, pp. 24-26. 22 Judt, Postwar, p. 228. 23 Frank Coppa, ‘Pope Pius XII and the Cold War: The Post-War Confrontation between Catholicism and Communism’, in Dianne Kirby (ed.), Religion and the Cold War (Basingstoke, 2003), pp. 60-63; Maria Mitchell, The Origins of Christian Democracy: Politics and Confession in Modern Germany (Ann Arbor, 2012), pp. 115-117; Paul Freston, ‘Christianity: Protestantism’, in Jeffrey Haynes (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Religion and Politics (Abingdon, 2009), pp. 26-47. 24 Callum G. Brown, The Death of Christian Britain. Understanding Secularisation 1800-2000 (London, 2001), p. 9.

16 criminal law.25 Nevertheless, the Wolfenden Report, the result of a three-year government departmental committee on homosexuality and prostitution, which sought advice from scientific experts, the legal profession and religious groups, marginalised religious discourses. It drew instead on a philosophy of legal utilitarianism, while the Homosexual Law Reform Society (HLRS) framed its arguments towards decriminalisation within a secular humanitarian and scientific liberalism. In Germany on the other hand, significant impulses towards decriminalisation came from liberal Protestant circles, while the German Catholic

Church remained more firmly committed to maintaining §175 of the German

Penal Code.26

My thesis takes these national specificities seriously, but nevertheless makes the case to connect British histories of social and political change more closely with the historiography of continental Europe via a transnational methodology. While most scholars of transnational history agree that transnational methodologies offer a valuable path to decentring the nation, tensions remain over what significance should be awarded to the nation state as a unit of analysis.

Histories of international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) and non-state actors in particular have demonstrated the value of moving beyond a framework focussed on the nation state to identify wider currents of social and political thought that were formulated in transnational social spaces and cut across national

25 Church of England Moral Welfare Council, The Problem of Homosexuality: An Interim Report (Oxford, 1954); Roman Catholic Advisory Committee, Report of the Roman Catholic Advisory Committee on Prostitution and Homosexual Offences and the Existing Law, text reprinted in Dublin Review 471 (Summer 1956), pp. 60-65. 26 Gottfried Lorenz, ‘Hamburg als Homosexuellenhauptstadt der 1950er Jahre’, in Andreas Pretzel and Volker Weiss (eds.), Ohnmacht und Aufbegehren. Homosexuelle Männer in der frühen Bundesrepublik (Hamburg, 2010), pp. 138-142; Clayton J. Whisnant, Male Homosexuality in West Germany: Between Persecution and Freedom, 1945-69 (Basingstoke, 2012), pp. 179-181.

17 boundaries.27 Research conducted on transnational advocacy networks, which has posited that these organisations ‘make international resources available to new actors in domestic political and social struggles’, has been particularly useful in determining how early networks of sexual rights activists were forged and how new norms and social knowledge moved into Britain along these lines of communication.28

Nevertheless, the nation state remained central in structuring how an international body of thought was received and translated. Here, my methodology distinguishes itself clearly from global history approaches. Although this field is closely related to transnational history, it takes a broader spatial and temporal view to uncover interconnections and constituting forces that spanned the globe, placing far less emphasis on distinct societies and national cultures.29 I take inspiration from the work of historians Akira Iriye and Ian Tyrell, who have understood transnational histories as an opportunity to contextualise and decentre national accounts by identifying broader social and cultural movements and ideas which crossed national borders.30 This thesis also draws closely on the approach outlined by Pierre Yves Saunier, who has positioned transnational history as enhancing national historiographies by adding the ‘history of entanglements

27 Ian Tyrell, ‘American Exceptionalism in an Age of International History’, The American Historical Review 96:4 (1991), p. 1044. For studies of INGOs see Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politic (London, 1998); Akira Iriye, Global Community: The Role of International Organizations in the Making of the Contemporary World (Berkeley, 2002); John Boli and George Thomas (eds.), Constructing World Culture: International Nongovernmental Organizations since 1875 (Stanford, 1999). 28 Keck and Sikkink, Activists beyond Borders. pp. 1, 35-37, 211. 29 Sebastian Conrad, What Is Global History? (Oxford, 2016), pp. 62-72; Patrick O’Brien, ‘Historiographical Traditions and Modern Imperatives for the Restoration of Global History’, Journal of Global History 1 (2006), pp. 3-39. 30 Akira Iriye, ‘The Internationalization of History,’ American Historical Review 94:1 (1989), p. 2; Tyrell, ‘American Exceptionalism’. See also Ian Tyrell, ‘What is Transnational History’ (2007), [accessed on 11th November 2016]; Thomas Bender, ‘The "La Pietra Report": Project on Internationalizing the Study of American History (Excerpt)’, Amerikastudien / American Studies, 48:1 (2003) pp. 33-40; Akira Iriye, ‘Transnational History’, Contemporary European History 13:2 (2004), p. 213.

18 between countries to the checklist of national history writing’.31My thesis therefore places Britain at the heart of its transnational investigation. I argue that while national processes of cultural change were subject to external stimuli, the confines of the nation state constrained how these influences could be interpreted and adapted to fit variously Britain’s distinct legal context, legacies of political and social thought and national traditions of social activism and protest.

I agree with Andreas Wimmer and Nina Glick Schiller’s criticisms of

‘methodological nationalism’, an approach which has reinforced the idea that nation states are closed systems in which social change takes place, without probing for permeable boundaries to nationally-constituted structures.32 This assumption is inherent to the majority of nationally-focussed historiographies, while criticisms of insularity have been levelled against British history in particular, with Catherine Hall outlining that British history has long followed a

‘domestic logic’.33 Frank Mort has remarked that this focus is replicated through history curriculums at British universities, stating that ‘in the UK British history is still the history’, informing the research interests of new generations of historians.34 I concur with both Mort and Hall and am particularly influenced by

Hall’s assessment that modern British historians should direct attention to

‘constitutive outsides’. 35 This approach is central to my research as I argue that

31 Pierre-Yves Saunier, Transnational History (London, 2003), p. 2. 32 Andreas Wimmer and Nina Glick Schiller, ‘Methodological Nationalism, the Social Sciences, and the Study of Migration: An Essay in Historical Epistemology’, International Migration Review, 37:3 (2006), pp. 576-610. 33 Catherine Hall, ‘The State of Modern British History’, History Workshop Journal 72 (2011), p. 207. 34 Frank Mort, ‘Intellectual Pluralism and the Future of British History’, History Workshop Journal 72 (2011), p. 214. Challenges to American exceptionalism based on understandings of national uniqueness made by Ian Tyrell are equally applicable to modern British history, which has long highlighted disparate political traditions in addition to its geographical position at the edge of continental Europe. See Tyrell, ‘American Exceptionalism’, pp. 1034-1035. 35 Hall, ‘The State of Modern British History’, p. 207. A number of scholars who have reviewed the state of modern British history in the last decade, such as David Feldman and John Lawrence

19 liberalising approaches to homosexuality were not produced in the vacuum of the

British nation state.

‘New Imperial History’ has provided a productive response to the question of British interconnectedness.36 Yet far less attention has been directed towards the entanglements between Britain and its closest geographical neighbours. Gareth Stedman Jones’ recent work, which takes a pan-European perspective to explore political languages of class and revolution marks an important intervention in this area and speaks to flows of political ideas which cut across national boundaries during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.37 Judt’s Postwar (2005) has shown what can be gained from taking a wider European perspective, telling the story of a divided Europe in the immediate aftermath of the war, in contrast to an increasingly integrated continent by the end of the twentieth century.38 Judt provides a complex account of cultural and social shifts, which emphasised how specific national cultures responded to have called for historians to confront the interconnections between Britain and the wider world. See David Feldman and Jon Lawrence, ‘Introduction’, in David Feldman and Jon Lawrence (eds.) Structures and Transformations in Modern British History (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 18-20. 36 See for example John MacKenzie, ‘Empire and Metropolitan Cultures’, in Andrew Porter (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire - Vol. III: the Nineteenth Century (1999), pp. 270-293; Catherine Hall and Sonja Rose (eds.) At Home with the Empire: Metropolitan Culture and the Imperial World (Cambridge, 2006), David Cannadine, Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire (Harmondsworth, 2001); Andrew Thompson, Empire Strikes Back: The Impact of Imperialism on Britain from the mid-Nineteenth Century (Harlow, 2005); Krishan Kumar, The Making of English National Identity (Cambridge, 2003); Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Context (London, 1995); Chris Waters, ‘"Dark Strangers" in Our Midst: Discourses of Race and Nation in Britain, 1947-1963’, Journal of British Studies 36:2 (1997), pp. 207-238. 37 Gareth Stedman Jones, ‘Elusive Signifiers: 1848 and the Language of “Class Struggle”’, in Douglas Moggach and Gareth Stedman Jones (eds.), The 1848 Revolutions and European Political Thought (Cambridge, 2018), pp. 429-451; Gareth Stedman Jones, ‘European Socialism from the 1790s to the 1890s’ in Warren Breckman and Peter Gordon (eds.), The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought: Volume I, The Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 2019), pp. 196-231. 38 Judt, Postwar. See also Konrad Jarausch, Out of Ashes: A New History of Europe in the Twentieth Century (Oxford, 2015). For a pan-European history that focusses more closely on political currents see Ian Kershaw, Roller-Coaster: Europe, 1950-2017 (London, 2018). Philipp Ther has explicitly taken inspiration from Judt, but directs his focus towards the period following the fall of the Soviet Union and re-examines European history through the lens of the transformations brought on by the economic paradigm shift from Keynesianism to neoliberalist policy. See Philipp Ther, Europe since 1989: A History, translated by Charlotte Hughes- Kreutzmüller (Princeton, 2016).

20 pan-European phenomena, such as the nuclear threat, post-war affluence and the rise of social democracy, as well as highlighting how these currents moved between and across cultures.

Histories of protest and new social movements have taken distinct historical fissures as a starting point to explore how these events were experienced across Europe. Both Transnational Moments of Change: Europe 1945, 1968,

1989 (2004) edited by Gerd-Rainer Horn and Padraic Kennedy and 1968 in

Europe. A History of Protest and Activism, 1956-1977 (2008), a volume edited by

Martin Klimke and Joachim Scharloth have underlined the transnational roots and experience of subcultural movements and protest.39 Holger Nehring’s research on

British and West German nuclear disarmament activism in the 1950s and 1960s has further testified to the efficacy of a transnational approach. He has demonstrated how both movements translated an international peace discourse and global anxieties over the nuclear threat into distinct local and national frameworks, which nevertheless placed the nation state at the heart of its rhetoric and campaigning strategies.40 Building on this research, my thesis makes the case to reposition modern British history within the web of its international connections. Such an approach should shift the balance from an emphasis on

British entanglements with its global Empire and the commonwealth towards a greater consideration of the ways in which Britain was embedded in processes of social and cultural change across Europe.

39 Klimke and Scharloth, 1968 in Europe; Gerd-Rainer Horn and Padraic Kennedy (eds.), Transnational Moments of Change: Europe 1945, 1968, 1989 (Oxford, 2004). 40 Holger Nehring, ‘National Internationalists: British and West German Protests against Nuclear Weapons, the Politics of Transnational Communications and the Social History of the Cold War, 1957-1964’, Contemporary European History 14:4 (2005), pp. 559-582. See also Holger Nehring, ‘Towards a Transnational History of “A Peaceable Kingdom”: Peace Movements in Post-1945 Britain’, in Benjamin Ziemann (ed.), Peace Movements in Western Europe, Japan and the USA since 1945 (Bochum, 2005), pp. 21-47.

More specifically, this study responds to appeals made by Margot

Canaday at the 2009 American Historical Review (AHR) Forum on

‘Transnational Sexualities’ that transnational approaches should confront how fundamental aspects of the experience and understanding of sex are translated across societies and cultures.41 Several innovative studies have taken the international homophile movement as a starting point in order to demonstrate how sexual and social knowledge was circulated to homosexual men across Europe during the 1950s and 1960s, providing the basis for the construction of a shared homosexual identity. Leila Rupp’s study of the International Committee for

Sexual Equality (ICSE) has demonstrated that this organisation was itself committed to a transnational approach, which was based on an understanding of a shared European challenge and a common identity built around same-sex desire and a middle-class belief in rational scientific argument.42 Julian Jackson has further identified that a ‘common enterprise of enlightenment’, inspired by post- war human rights discourses was a unifying feature of this movement.43

However, where these studies on homophile activism have touched on

Britain, they have positioned it as an outlier, due to a hesitancy to embrace a

41 Margot Canaday, ‘Thinking Sex in the Transnational Turn: An Introduction’, The American Historical Review 114:5 (2009), pp. 1250-1257. In addition, George Chauncey and Elizabeth Povinelli that outlined that historians of sexuality should move beyond national frameworks. See Elizabeth Povinelli and George Chauncey, ‘Thinking Sex Transnationally. An Introduction’, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 5:4 (1999), pp. 439-450. 42 Leila J. Rupp, ‘The Persistence of Transnational Organizing: The Case of the Homophile Movement’, American History Review 116:4 (2011), p. 1017. A shortened and amended version of the article was published as a book chapter in 2014, however, I will be referring to the original, more extensive, article throughout this thesis, as it give a more in-depth analysis of the organisation and working methods of the ICSE. See Leila J. Rupp, ‘The European Origins of Transnational Organising: The International Committee for Sexual Equality’, in Phillip M. Ayoub and David Paternotte (eds.), LGBT Activism and the Making of Europe: A Rainbow Europe? (Basingstoke, 2014), pp. 29-49. A more in-depth discussion of the homophile movement and identity can be found in Chapter Two of this thesis. For international ties of the US homophile movement see David S. Churchill, ‘Transnationalism and Homophile Political Culture in the Postwar Decades’, GLQ 15:1 (2009), pp. 31-65. 43 Julian Jackson, ‘The Homophile Movement’, in David Paternotte and Manon Tremblay (eds.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Lesbian and Gay Activism (Abingdon, 2015), p. 33; Churchill, ‘Transnationalism’, pp. 33-38.

22 homophile identity. Jackson has asserted that the HLRS was more of a ‘lobbying organisation’ than a homophile group, while David Minto has argued that in the case of the HLRS ‘homophile internationalism’ was ‘strained to the limit’, despite regular exchanges with European sexual rights groups.44 I argue that this overemphasised the importance placed on a common identity in enabling dynamic processes of exchange, glossing over more subtle routes of European influences on British sexual rights activism and debates. These saw European campaigners attempt to influence British official approaches through the targeted distribution of information, while British activists adapted distinct strategies from the homophile movement.

Minto’s research into the ties of the HLRS and European campaigners has provided the most detailed account of these transnational connections to date. His research focusses on Antony Grey, one of the key campaigners of the HLRS during the 1960s, to demonstrate that despite Grey’s guarded approach, his campaign took key impulses from the European homophile movement. 45 This investigation has been informed by Minto’s research, but I argue that points of connection between homophile activism and British debates on homosexuality were more multi-faceted and could be found outside of the structures of the HLRS, as scientific and medical experts, regional campaigners, journalists and individuals came into contact with a European body of thought on sexual rights and disseminated their experiences to wider British audiences. I draw on Jackson in this respect, who has demonstrated how national histories of homosexuality can be enhanced by considering transnational entanglements. In Living in Arcadia:

44 Jackson, ‘The Homophile Movement’, p. 33; David Minto, ‘Mr Grey Goes to Washington: The Homophile Internationalism of Britain’s Homosexual Law Reform Society’, in Brian Lewis (ed.), British Queer History. New Approaches and Perspectives (Manchester, 2013), p. 238. 45 Minto, ‘Mr Grey’, pp. 219-243.

Homosexuality, Politics, and Morality in France from the Liberation to AIDS

(2009), first and foremost a history of the French homophile organisation Arcadie, he has outlined how its culture and mission were informed by an international movement for sexual equality, stating that Arcadie ‘can only be understood […] as part of a “homophile international”’.46 British histories of homosexuality can profit from this same attention to wider currents and transnational exchanges in seeking to uncover how homosexual identities were produced and understood in the post-war period. While I acknowledge looser ties with the international homophile movement, I nevertheless challenge narratives of British debates on homosexuality as isolated or parochial.

My research seeks to historicise these processes of exchange, foregrounding processes of translation and adaptation and paying particular attention to the interlocutors of international sexual and social knowledge. Here I also engage with Tyrell, who has posited that ‘historians need to track the movements of personnel – who they knew, who they influenced, where they went, what form of organisations they used’.47 I argue that these key actors must not only be understood as agents of transmission, but that historians must also pay attention to their personal backgrounds and locate them within wider structures of class belonging and political beliefs. This thesis takes Britain as a starting point and identifies key actors who shaped British discussions on homosexuality, covering doctors and experts who testified to the Wolfenden Committee, campaigners and more ordinary men who went abroad in the post-war period to track their engagements with foreign sexual cultures. These lines of enquiry have

46 Julian Jackson, Living in Arcadia: Homosexuality, Politics, and Morality in France from the Liberation to AIDS (London, 2009), p. 112. 47 Ian Tyrell, ‘Reflections on the Transnational Turn in United States History: Theory and Practice’, Journal of Global History 4:3 (2009), p. 467.

24 guided my investigation across western Europe to include the Netherlands,

France, Germany, Switzerland, Scandinavia and the Mediterranean countries, revealing diverse points of connection between Britain and continental Europe.48

My research focusses on male homosexuality. A key reason lies in the fact that shifting British official and legislative approaches and activists’ arguments towards legal reform did not engage with same-sex relationships between women.

Indeed, lesbianism did not receive the same amount of legal scrutiny, despite an increased legislative interest in female sexual deviancy during the 1920s.49

Furthermore, male and female homosociability in the post-war decades formed distinct social worlds and the majority of homophile and sexual rights groups I analyse were structured around male membership.50 There were few intersections between gay and lesbian movements during the 1950s and 1960s and within the scope of the thesis I felt it was not possible or appropriate to combine both in sufficient depth. Undoubtedly, the transnational ties of British lesbian movements are an area that merit further research.

Building on a transnational methodology, my research intervenes in three major historiographical debates. First, it engages with scholarship which has considered homosexual identities in the context of leisure, socio-economic markets and consumption practices. Recent innovative historical scholarship on gay experiences in the 1950s and 1960s has been influenced in particular by the

‘spatial turn’ and many of these studies have taken a micro-historical approach,

48 David Minto has conducted research into ties between Antony Grey and the US homophile movement: Minto, ‘Mr Grey’. 49 Laura Doan, ‘“Gross Indecency Between Women”: Policing Lesbians or Policing Lesbian Police?’, Social and Legal Studies 6:4 (1997), p. 534; Alison Oram and Annmarie Turnbull, The Lesbian History Sourcebook: Love and Sex Between Women in Britain from 1780-1970 (London, 2001), p. 157. 50 Rupp, ‘Transnational Organising’, p. 1019. Arcadie was an exception in this respect as it admitted women, however their numbers were small. See Jackson, Living in Arcadia ,p. 14.

25 locating homosocial spaces of leisure and consumption in the city. The shift towards local studies which reclaimed queer histories of distinct localities was inaugurated in the mid-1990s, with the publication of George Chauncey’s Gay

New York Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-

1940 (1994) and studies of lesbian sociability by Elisabeth Lapovsky Kennedy,

Madeleine Davies and Esther Newton.51 These studies located vibrant queer communities centred around distinct forms of commercialised leisure, with

Chauncey’s study challenging the ‘myth of invisibility’ to assert that homosexual subcultures were interwoven with public life in New York City between the 1890s and 1930s. Scholarship by Matt Houlbrook and Frank Mort has made significant contributions to British studies on the interactions between place, consumption and sexual identities.52 Both authors have variously emphasised that the city actively produced homosexual identities and queer subjectivities. I draw on their work to argue that the constitutive powers of place were also felt by gay men during short-term visits to locations abroad. A burgeoning tourist industry opened up routes towards homosexual self-legitimisation during this period, allowing men to adopt local expressions of same-sex desire, albeit temporarily. Nevertheless, I challenge the focus that these studies have placed on London as the prime site of social and cultural change. Instead, a transnational perspective can decentre this

51 George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (New York, 1994). Elisabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Madeleine Davis, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold (London, 1993); Esther Newton, Cherry Grove, Fire Island: Sixty Years in America's First Gay and Lesbian Town (Boston, 1993). For further studies of urban gay life see Stephen Whittle, The Margins of the City. Gay Men’s Urban Lives (Aldershot, 1994); Gordon Brent Ingram, Anne-Marie Bouthillette and Yolanda Retter (eds.), Queers in Space: Communities/ Public Places/ Sites of Resistance (Seattle, 1997); Lawrence Knopp, ‘Sexuality and Urban Space: Gay Male Identity Politics in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia’, in Ruth Fincher and Jane Jacobs (eds.), Cities of Difference (London, 1998), pp. 149-161; Matt Cook and Jennifer V. Evans (eds.) Queer Cities, Queer Cultures. Europe since 1945 (London, 2014). 52 Frank Mort, Capital Affairs; Matt Houlbrook, Queer London. Perils and Pleasure in the Sexual Metropolis 1918-1957 (London, 2005). See also Richard Hornsey, The Spiv and the Architect. Unruly Life in Postwar London (Minneapolis, 2010).

26 metropolitan focus by uncovering vibrant regional campaigns that engaged with the international homophile movement.

Secondly, my thesis intervenes into wider debates on queer identities to challenge the notion that the homosexual self was constituted exclusively within bounded national frameworks.53 I argue that transnational encounters shaped queer subjectivities in Britain, as identities and intimate desires were negotiated through engagements with continental sexual knowledge and experiences. I draw on the work of Chauncey and Elisabeth Povinelli who outlined that scholars of sexuality must probe the external social worlds that became overlaid onto bodies to shape identities within wider transnational currents.54 Sociological scholarship that has considered globalised sexual identities alongside an expansion of western consumer cultures has revealed how distinct cultural forms were disseminated globally and adopted to signify belonging to an international gay community and articulate a global gay consciousness.55 While most of these studies have located the emergence of a globalised gay community in the post-Stonewall moment, the proto-networks through which political demands, consumer cultures and sexual experiences moved across national borders crystallised in the post-war decades. I investigate how local identities were shaped by international currents, such as the dissemination of continental sexual theories that offered homosexual men a path

53A number of authors have implicitly reinforced that notion that homosexual identities were produced in the vacuum of the British nation state. See for example Jeffrey Weeks, Coming Out: Homosexual Politics in Britain from the Nineteenth Century to the Present, revised edition (London, 1990); Matt Cook, Robert Mills, Randolph Trumbach and Harry Cocks (eds.), A Gay History of Britain: Love and Sex Between Men Since the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2007). 54 Povinelli, Chauncey, ‘Thinking Sex Transnationally’, pp. 443-444. 55 Dennis Altman, ‘Rupture or Continuity? The Internationalization of Gay Identities’, Social Text 48 (1996), pp. 77-94; Dennis Altman; Global Sex (Chicago, 2001); Jon Binnie, The Globalization of Sexuality (London, 2004). See also Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan, ‘Global Identities: Theorizing Transnational Studies of Sexuality’, GLQ 7:4 (2001), pp. 663-679; Mark Padilla, Jennifer Hirsch and Miguel Munoz-Laboy (eds.), Love and Globalization: Transformations of Intimacy in the Contemporary World (Nashville, 2008); William Leap and Tom Boellstorff (eds.), Speaking in Queer Tongues: Globalization and Gay Language (Chicago, 2011).

27 towards legitimising and understanding their sexual desires, as well as internationalised discourses of sexual rights, homophile activism and personal experiences of foreign sexual cultures. I draw on Kenneth Plummer’s understanding of the ‘globalisation and glocalisation of intimacies’, which described ‘processes through which local cultures pick up, and usually transform, many features of the personal life displayed across the globe’.56 Plummer’s framework has been particularly useful in revealing how sexual knowledge generated outside of Britain became adapted according to local and national traditions.

The third debate with which I engage centres on political languages of sexual rights, drawing on the work of scholars who have identified human rights and citizenship as central themes in post-war homophile discourses.57 I expand contemporary discussions of sexual citizenship, which argue that language is central to processes of civic integration and resisting discrimination.58 David

Churchill has produced an in-depth account of how vocabularies of citizenship and human rights functioned as tools through which North American homophiles made political demands.59 I develop his scholarship to investigate how these languages, forged in a post-Fascist and Cold War context, were in play across western Europe. Furthermore, I position political languages not exclusively as instruments of political activism, but argue that the ways in which these vocabularies were mobilised revealed how individuals positioned themselves vis-

56 Ken Plummer, ‘The Square of Intimate Citizenship: Some Preliminary Proposals’, Citizenship Studies, 5:3 (2001), pp. 237-253. 57 David S. Churchill, ‘Transnationalism and Homophile Political Culture in the Postwar Decades’, GLQ 15:1 (2008), p. 33; Jackson, ‘The Homophile Movement’, p. 32; Jackson, Living in Arcadia, pp. 112-113;Rupp, ‘Transnational Organizing’, pp. 1030-1032. 58 Carl Stychin, Governing Sexuality: The Changing Politics of Citizenship and Law Reform (Oxford, 2003), pp. 12-15. 59 Churchill, ‘Transnationalism’, pp. 31-65.

à-vis the state and the wider homosexual community. In analysing the vocabularies through which activists’ demands were made and how these acted on identities, I draw on poststructuralist approaches to political cultures.60 In particular, I have been influenced by the work of Gareth Stedman Jones, who has argued that political consciousness was not shaped exclusively by social or economic realities, but was a specific product of political and social discursive practices.61 Yet on the question of authorship, I break with poststructuralist approaches and engage with the work of Judith Walkowitz in particular. Her understanding has been that historians can uncover the origins of distinct cultural moments by demonstrating that social actors selectively drew on ‘existing cultural tools’ to organise their self-representations.62 I argue that in order to understand how homosexual identities were constructed and internalised in the post-war decades, historians should acknowledge the role of widely disseminated discourses of rights and citizenship in shaping homosexual subjectivities, but also pay close attention to authorship by identifying how and by whom they were applied.

My thesis is based on a wide range of national and international sources.

My extensive use of British archival sources has included the National Archives, which house minutes and documents relating to the work of the Wolfenden

Committee, collections at the Hall Carpenter Archives, which hold documents

60 See Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, translated from French by Robert Hurley (London, 1978); Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, translated, with an introduction and additional notes by Alan Bass (London, 1978); Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, 2nd edition (London, 2001). 61 Gareth Stedman Jones, Languages of Class. Studies in English Working Class History, 1832- 1982 (Oxford, 1983). See also Patrick Joyce, Visions of the People: Industrial England and the Question of Class, C.1848-1914 (Cambridge, 1993); James Vernon, Politics and the People: A Study in English Political Culture, 1815-1867 (Cambridge, 1993); Judith Surkis, ‘When Was the Linguistic Turn? A Genealogy’, American Historical Review 117 (2012), pp. 700-722. 62 Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (Chicago, 2013), pp. 9-10.

29 relating to the HLRS and a selection of domestic and international gay journals, as well as the archives at Manchester Central Library, which holds the papers of the

North Western Homosexual Law Reform Committee (NWHLRC). For historians, transnational methodologies hold a number of challenges with regards to source materials. Researchers need to be able to read and translate foreign materials, while the geographical spread of archives makes access both costly and time- consuming. Homophile publications which provided testimony of homosexual cultures and lifestyles during the post-war period formed a central feature of my analysis. While a small number of homophile publications have been digitised, there are no digital holdings for the vast majority of journals investigated. These publications were accessed on research trips to the Forum Homosexualität

Archive in Munich, the archives of the Schwules Museum Berlin and the Dutch

National Archives (Nationaal Archief) in The Hague, which also holds extensive materials relating to the ICSE and the homophile organisation Cultuur- en

Ontspanningscentrum (COC).

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, magazines and newsletters which promoted greater sexual equality for homosexuals proliferated across Europe.63

These publications were integral to the articulation of a collective homosexual identity in the post-war decades, as in many cases emerging homophile communities were connected through the readership of these journals, particularly in countries where homosexuality remained criminalised and few reputable meeting places for homosexuals existed.64 Across Europe, the practices of reading homophile publications were often covert during a period which was characterised

63 Bernhard Rosenkranz and Gottfried Lorenz, Hamburg auf anderen Wegen: die Geschichte des schwulen Lebens in der Hansestadt (Hamburg, 2012), p. 80. 64 Jackson, ‘The Homophile Movement’, pp. 37-38.

30 by a pervasive and hostile public discourse which conceptualised same-sex desire as a threat both to individuals and to the nation as a whole. Therefore, magazines were rarely openly available on newsstands and under constant threat of being banned or censored.65 Here, historians also face an issue of anonymity, as many homophile authors used pseudonyms to conceal their identities, complicating a biographic assessment of their writing.66 Where possible, I have included authors’ real names, but in some cases this was not possible despite extensive research.

Yet, it has to be acknowledged that the naming of authors opens up ethical considerations. While real names of more prominent homophile activists are well known, lesser-known contributors or men who wrote to homophile organisations may have wished to remain anonymous. Nevertheless, in the context of this thesis

I felt it was important to include names to give these men a more distinct voice. If any of this work is published at a later date, the ethics of naming or anonymising will be reviewed.

Many homophile journals did not run for profit, but functioned as the key means of communication for national organisations founded after the war. They were funded through membership and subscription fees with key campaigners accepting responsibility for editorial content. Examples were the COC publications Vriendschap (Friendship, 1949) and De Schakel (The Link, 1955),

Vennen (The Friend, 1949) the magazine associated with the Danish Forbundet af

65 Futur and Arcadie were banned from open sale and advertising in the early 1950s. See Olivier Jablonski, ‘The Birth of a French Homosexual Press in the 1950s’, Journal of Homosexuality, 41:3-4 (2002), pp. 239-240. For censorship of German publications see: Rosenkranz and Lorenz, Hamburg auf anderen Wegen, p. 70. For privacy concerns of homosexual men see George Harris to Albany Trust, exact date unknown [1963], HCA/Albany Trust/7/3 (Hall-Carpenter Archives); Patrick Bishop to Albany Trust, 20th October 1963, HCA/Albany Trust/7/3. 66 For use of pseudonyms in the homophile movement see Rupp, ‘Transnational Organising’, p. 1028.

1948, or Arcadie, named for the French organisation of the same name.67 In

Germany, there was no national homophile organisation and therefore a number of commercially-run magazines, such as Die Insel (The Island, 1951), Der Weg zu

Freundschaft und Toleranz (The Path to Friendship and Tolerance, 1952), or Die

Freunde (The Friends, 1951), were published to satisfy the demand for news on the fight against §175, personal ads and lighter entertainment. These were mostly based in Hamburg and generally had no more than two members of staff and relied heavily on the work of volunteer writers.68

No official publication for homosexuals existed in Britain until after the publication of the Wolfenden Report in 1957. As Houlbrook has observed, homosexuality was constructed as a source for wider moral anxiety during the post-war years.69 In contrast, the homophile publications which already existed in other western European countries during the 1950s were able to disrupt and correct dominant narratives of sexual danger and deviancy which had been ascribed to homosexual men, offering a forum in which to articulate a self- determined homosexual identity. This vision of homosexuality foregrounded emotions, the wish to establish meaningful and loving same-sex relationships and the recognition of homosexual achievements and personhood.70 It was not until the early 1960s that the Albany Trust publications Man and Society (1961) and the HLRS newsletter Spectrum (1963) were founded.71 However, far from being dedicated publications for homosexuals, both were aimed at an intentionally broad

67 For inception and publishing history of the Arcadie journal, see: Jackson, Living in Arcadia, pp. 73-79. 68 Rosenkranz and Lorenz, Hamburg auf anderen Wegen, p. 80. 69 Houlbrook, Queer London, pp. 236-240. For press coverage of queer trials and homosexual scandal see Bengry, ‘Queer Profits’, pp. 170-175. 70 Benno Gammerl, ‘Eine makellose Liebe? Emotionale Praktiken und der homophile Kampf um Anerkennung’, in Bernhard Gotto and Elke Seefried (eds.), Männer mit "Makel": Männlichkeiten und gesellschaftlicher Wandel in der frühen Bundesrepublik (Berlin, 2017), pp. 104-113. 71 Antony Grey, Quest for Justice. Towards Homosexual Emancipation (London, 1992), pp. 48, 58.

32 homosexual and heterosexual readership and designed to influence wider public opinion. I analyse this material by means of a historically grounded textual analysis, which pays particular attention to the contemporary themes of equality, rights and sexual freedom, to establish how linguistic forms were circulated and adapted across western Europe.

Oral histories deposited in the Sound Archives at the British Library offer significant insights into how contacts with European sexual cultures shaped homosexual subjectivities. These include the Hall-Carpenter Oral History

Archives, which illuminate homosexual identities in Britain between 1945 and

1970, the Before Stonewall Collection, a community oral history project about older lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in the UK carried out in the early 2000s and the Tony Deane Collection, an oral history project on queer commercial scenes between 1960 and 1980. A close reading of these extensive and under-utilized oral histories shows how international travel and tourism became integral in shifting the horizons of homosexual men in Britain, while oral history interviews conducted with key campaigners such as Antony Grey, Tony

Dyson and Allan Horsfall illuminate the strategies and aspirations of British activists.

Oral histories present methodological challenges, particularly concerning the reliability of personal memory and the representativeness of individual life histories. Oral histories, as personal memories, become entwined with wider social and cultural influences, the interviewee’s intentional or unintentional shaping of their personal narrative during the interview process and the

33 misremembering of historical detail.72 Furthermore, the gap between the experience the researcher seeks to illuminate and the interview can be significant, complicating an accurate recall of past experiences, particularly if memories relate to highly personal or even painful issues the interviewee may have scarcely discussed in intervening years. The oral history interviews analysed in this thesis were mostly conducted around thirty years after the period investigated in my study and they highlighted the extent to which more modern thinking and vocabulary shaped the retelling of past experiences, with almost all men using the term ‘gay’, rather than the contemporary ‘homosexual’.73 However, the interviewees’ memories of their travels abroad were surprisingly detailed, pointing to the fact that holidays were marked out as extraordinary periods in personal life stories and were perceived as transformative and memorable experiences.

As Penny Summerfield has argued, oral histories can provide valuable insights for historians who are concerned with questions of personal experience, emotions and identity, as they illuminate how the self is constructed in personal memory.74 Personal testimonies do help illuminate how experiences became meaningful within respondents’ life histories. The interviews used in this thesis demonstrate how oral histories can serve to uncover experience and subjectivity, as the interviewees reflected on the ways in which they had come to terms with their sexual identities, as well as how they emotionally experienced a wide range

72 Penny Summerfield, Histories of the Self. Personal Narrative and Historical Practice (Abingdon, 2019), pp. 107-109. 73 Throughout this thesis I will employ the historical term homosexual. 74 Summerfield, Histories of the Self, pp. 126-128; Penny Summerfield, ‘Oral History as an Autobiographical Practice’, Miranda 12 (2016), p.1. See also: Penny Summerfield, ‘Culture and Composure: Creating Narratives of the Gendered Self in Oral History Interviews’, Cultural and Social History 1:1 (2004), pp. 65-93; Charlotte Linde, Life Stories: the Creation of Coherence (Oxford, 1993).

34 of social and political changes during the post-war decades. In addition, oral histories can offer a path to exploring cultural exchanges outside of elite circles, as they offer a means to uncover the voices of marginalised individuals or groups who remained ‘hidden from history’.75 Many of the men profiled in the final chapter of this thesis came from modest working-class or lower-middle-class backgrounds and therefore challenge the notion that contacts with continental

European sexual cultures were limited to elite cosmopolitan circles.

Across four chapters this thesis examines touchpoints between British histories of homosexuality and continental Europe, moving from official approaches to the work of activists and to informal and personal encounters.

Chapter One locates the transnational origins of the Wolfenden Report, which represented a crucial shift in British official approaches towards male homosexuality based on a scientific reading of male same-sex desire. It investigates the ways in which sexual knowledge was continuously circulated across western Europe beginning in the late nineteenth century and embeds the discussions of the Wolfenden Committee within networks of wider exchanges between British and European sexologists. I pay particular attention to how and by whom this expert knowledge was handled and interpreted, examining in particular the role of professional groups in debates on homosexuality and investigating processes of translation and adaptation to distinct national frameworks. This chapter demonstrates that distinct scientific theories about modern sexuality were adopted by homosexual men to understand their desires and resist concepts of abnormality, opening up routes to more positive affirmations.

75 Summerfield, Histories of the Self, p. 107.

Chapter Two examines the links between British and continental European sexual equality campaigners. It shows how British activists worked to make progressive European sexual cultures visible to a wider British public, in order to challenge anxieties over a change in the legal position of homosexual men. The chapter explores how different campaigning groups responded to the impulses given by the international homophile movement, outlining specificities of class, place and community in order to demonstrate that provincial campaigners were often more closely aligned with the ideals of European homophile movements than the campaign of the HLRS.

Chapter Three analyses the political languages through which homosexual men legitimised and organised their self-representations and demands for equality in the post-war decades. I focus on the vocabularies of human rights and citizenship, as well as exploring how the political languages of liberalism, social democracy and Christian democracy could function as discursive sites of resistance. At the heart of this chapter lies a comparative reading of influential publications from homosexual rights organisations, which projected distinctive ideals of civic integration. I emphasise that vocabularies of rights and citizenship were by no means deployed consistently across western European countries, but took on inflections which reflected distinct political and cultural traditions.

Chapter Four moves parts of the investigation beyond the 1960s to investigate micro-level encounters forged by consumer cultures and a burgeoning tourism industry. I argue that post-war affluence offered homosexual men a route towards self-affirmation via foreign travel to environments in which same-sex desire could be expressed more openly. It investigates homosexual tourism via a number of unifying themes, paying particular attention to notions of freedom and

36 adventure, public imaginings of the holiday, contrasts between northern and southern Europe and understandings of continental European locations as sites of sexual freedom. Taken together, the four chapters explore the multi-faceted interconnections between British and European histories of male homosexuality in the post-war decades.

Chapter 1:

The Transnational Origins of the Wolfenden Report

When the Report of the Departmental Committee on Homosexual Offences and

Prostitution, more commonly referred to as the Wolfenden Report, was published on 4th September 1957, the news reverberated around the European homophile community. The October issue of Vriendschap, the official national publication of the Dutch homophile organisation Cultuur- en Ontspanningscentrum (COC), dedicated three pages to the report, as well as translating key passages in full. It paid particular attention to the new legislative approach, which proposed a sharper distinction of public morality and the realm of private consent in Britain and formed the basis for the recommendation that homosexual acts taking place between two men over the age of twenty-one in private should no longer be considered a criminal offence.1 The Dutch author further tied the publication of the Wolfenden Report into debates around sexual freedom and citizenship, which had preoccupied continental sexual rights organisations since the late 1940s.2 ‘At last’, the article concluded, ‘the bomb has dropped in England and it now must be realised that homosexuals are also British citizens and above all ordinary people, with the right to be treated and judged as humans’.3

The Swiss homophile publication Der Kreis, which had been the only publication for homosexuals to continue publishing throughout the Second World

War, was also quick to report on the news coming from England.4 Though

Scorpion, the pseudonym used by contributor Daniel Spahni, wrote in 1954 that

1 Author’s translation from Dutch: K.A.P, ‘Het Rapport Wolfenden’, Vriendshap 12:10 (1957), pp. 138-140. Home Office, Scottish Home Department, Report of the Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution Cmnd. 247 (London: HMSO, 1957). 2 For a deeper discussion of the role of homophile discourses see Chapter Three. 3 K.A.P, ‘Het Rapport Wolfenden’, p. 140. 4 Karl-Heinz Steinle, Der Kreis: Mitglieder, Künstler, Autoren (Berlin, 1999), p. 15.

Britain seemed ‘a distant land, from which we [continentals] feel separated by a thousand obstacles far greater than just the few kilometres of the English Channel’, the same author produced an in-depth article on the Wolfenden Report in October

1957 in which he proclaimed that ‘[the report] is worth rejoicing over as it testifies to the considerable evolution that has been made in the minds of our excellent English friends’.5 Far from simply constituting a matter of casual interest, the report was understood to have increasing national relevance, as

Conservative forces sought to limit the freedom of Swiss homosexuals with some even calling for a tightening of laws in the domestic penal code.6

This chapter places the discussions of the Wolfenden Committee in a transnational context. To date, historical research has defined the Committee’s work through a predominantly national, or even metropolitan framework. For example, Frank Mort has demonstrated that the Committee’s investigation of sexual behaviours was based on an analysis of distinct metropolitan micro- environments, particularly in London’s West End, which formed the basis for policy recommendations on a national scale. 7 Jeffrey Weeks, on the other hand, has highlighted the impact of the Wolfenden Report for the creation of the ‘new moral economy’ in Britain by providing a template for the permissive legislation

5 Author’s translation from French: Scorpion [Daniel Spahni], ‘Honnoi soit qui mal y pense’, Der Kreis 2 (1954), pp. 21-22; Scorpion, ‘Remous chez Albion‘, Der Kreis 10 (1957), pp. 22-23. 6 Ernst Ostertag, ‘Wolfenden Report’, Schwulengeschichte.CH (2005), [accessed 27th June 2018]. 7 Frank Mort, Capital Affairs: London and the Making of the Permissive Society (New Haven, 2010), pp. 141-142; 151-173. See also Matt Houlbrook, Queer London. Perils and Pleasures of the Sexual Metropolis, 1918-1957 (London, 2005), pp. 219-263; Brian Lewis, Wolfenden’s Witnesses. Homosexuality in Postwar Britain (Basingstoke, 2016).

39 of the 1960s which redefined the relationship between public morality and individual freedom by privatising selective aspects of sexual conduct.8

Furthermore, the report has been seen as instrumental in shifting the legal and social position of homosexual men in Britain, as it formed the basis for the decriminalisation of homosexuality with the 1967 Sexual Offences Act.9 It was as a result of this act that gay men’s legal position, queer self-understanding and social life in Britain were profoundly transformed, resulting in greater self- confidence within the gay community alongside more overt expressions of sexual identity and publicly visible forms of same-sex culture. 10

The reception of the report in the European homophile press demonstrated that the debates which preoccupied the Wolfenden Committee were by no means nationally bounded, nor exclusive to a British context. Its findings were closely reported on and in some cases adapted to correspond to distinct legal challenges faced by homosexuals abroad, particularly in West Germany. Post-war discourses on homosexuality revealed parallels across western European countries, pointing to a continuous and dynamic exchange of ideas on homosexuality across national borders. In particular, trust in experts and scientific discourses on same-sex desire, a key feature of the post-war belief in the ability of scientific expertise to address social problems, was by no means unique to British discussions on homosexuality.

The names of prolific post-war sex researchers such as Alfred Kinsey, Gordon

Westwood, as well as earlier nineteenth-century sexologists such as Karl-Heinrich

8 Jeffrey Weeks, Sex Politics and Society, The Regulation of Sexuality Since 1800, 3rd revised edition (Abingdon, 2014), pp. 311-314. See also Stuart Hall, ‘Reformism and the Legislation of Consent’, in National Deviancy Conference (eds.), Permissiveness and Control: the Fate of the Sixties Legislation (London, 1980), pp. 12-15. 9 Lewis, Wolfenden’s Witnesses, pp. 3-9; Patrick Higgins, Heterosexual Dictatorship. Male Homosexuality in Postwar Britain (London, 1996), pp. 132-148. 10 Frank Mort, Cultures of Consumption. Masculinities and Social Space in Late Twentieth Century Britain (London, 1996), pp. 164-170.

Ulrichs and Magnus Hirschfeld appeared in homophile publications and legal documents across west European countries during the 1950s.11

This chapter focusses on the period from the end of the Second World War until the publication of the Wolfenden Report in 1957. It challenges the notion that the Wolfenden Report was the outcome of a fundamentally British debate on homosexuality and demonstrates that British post-war understandings of dissident sexualities were generated through dynamic processes of transnational exchange.

While Chapter Two of this thesis focusses on tangible exchanges between homosexual rights activists across western Europe, through letter exchanges and mutual visits, this chapter highlights the scientific discourses which underpinned the discussions of the Wolfenden Committee in a transnational context. It illuminates the ways in which post-war understandings of homosexuality were disseminated across borders and adapted to distinct national frameworks, as well as casting a light on divergences in how this sexual knowledge was applied in treatments of homosexuality across Europe. A particular focus is on West

Germany, where homosexuality remained criminalised until 1969, giving insights into how sexual knowledge was mobilised to legitimise reform efforts outside of

Britain. By the post-war period, British sexual science was embedded in internationalised networks of sexual scholarship, while distinct emphases on the reception of this knowledge pointed to national specificities and asymmetries.

In the context of this chapter, the deliberations of the Wolfenden

Committee and memoranda submitted by expert witnesses constituted a key

11 Gordon Westwood was the pseudonym used by the sociologist Michael Schofield. Nikolas Rose, Governing the Soul. The Shaping of Private Life, 2nd edition (London, 1999), pp. 228-230; Mike Savage, Identities and Social Change in Britain Since 1940: The Politics of Method (Oxford, 2010), pp. 66-67.

41 source. When the Wolfenden Committee first met in 1954, homosexuality was not explicitly identified in British law – instead, it fell under the legislation for

‘unnatural offences’ or ‘gross indecency’. Therefore, to provide a concrete proposal for the amendment of the law, Wolfenden had to clearly define not only homosexuality, but also ‘the homosexual’.12 To achieve this, the Committee heard from no less than 200 witnesses and organisations over three years. As Brian

Lewis has remarked, they offered the most complete cross-section of perspectives on how homosexuality was framed in post-war Britain, producing a comprehensive understanding of the medical, social and psychological aspects.13

In analysing how sexual knowledge was applied to sexual law reform in western Europe, homophile publications offered insights into how homosexual men mobilised modern science to argue for a liberalisation of anti-homosexuality laws and increased tolerance for homosexuals. There is no comparable range of sources in Britain during the early 1950s, as Man and Society, the first British journal for homosexuals was not published until 1958, as strict censorship laws, the continuing criminalisation of same-sex acts and a fear of blackmail all constrained open discussions of same-sex desire in a dedicated homophile press.14

Nevertheless, a close analysis of British expert testimonies alongside continental

European debates on homosexuality can illuminate the processes which generated and consolidated sexual knowledge, as well as revealing the diverse contexts in which it became meaningful.

12 Weeks, Sex Politics and Society, pp. 311-314. 13 Brian Lewis, Wolfenden’s Witnesses. Homosexuality in Postwar Britain (Basingstoke, 2016), p. 4. 14 Houlbrook, Queer London, pp. 236-239.

This chapter explores how this sexual knowledge was circulated across

Europe and demonstrates that the evolution of scientific thought on homosexuality did not follow a linear narrative of societal liberalisation and increasing tolerance towards dissident sexualities. Exchanges between British and continental sexologists reveal continuities between early sexological and psychological frameworks and 1950s discussions of homosexuality, showing how these complex and often competing explanatory models co-existed and were used concurrently by experts, commentators and homosexual men themselves.15 Writing in the

German journal Der Ring in 1955, André Baudry, the founder of the French homophile publication Arcadie, declared that homosexuality was of ‘ontological, psychological and physiological origin’, demonstrating that the demarcations between various scientific approaches to homosexuality remained blurred in the post-war period.16 I therefore draw on Chiara Beccalossi’s perspective on transnational sexological exchanges between Britain and Italy and direct less attention to divisions and ruptures between divergent approaches, instead emphasising that competing theories evolved synchronously. Earlier understandings of homosexuality were not displaced, but frequently overlaid with new concepts, or integrated into new approaches. 17

15 Chris Waters, ‘Disorders of the Mind, Disorders of the Body Social: Peter Wildeblood and the Making of the Modern Homosexual’, in Becky Conekin, Frank Mort and Chris Waters (eds.), Moments of Modernity. Reconstructing Britain 1945-1964 (London, 1999), pp. 134-136; 143. Heike Bauer has illuminated facets of the continuities between nineteenth century sexology and 1950s sex research in her chapter on Magnus Hirschfeld’s legacy on Alfred Kinsey’s research. See Heike Bauer, ‘Sexology Backward: Hirschfeld, Kinsey and the Reshaping of Sex Research in the 1950s’, in Heike Bauer and Matt Cook (eds.), Queer 1950s: Reshaping Sexuality in the Postwar Years (Basingstoke, 2012), pp. 133-149. 16 This article was published in Der Ring in German, French and English: André Baudry, ‘Homosexuality in France’, Der Ring 1:2 (1955), p. 45. For Baudry see Julian Jackson, Living in Arcadia: Homosexuality, Politics, and Morality in France from the Liberation to AIDS (Chicago, 2009), pp. 58-61. 17Chiara Beccalossi, Female Sexual Inversion: Same-Sex Desires in Italian and British Sexology, ca. 1870-1920 (Basingstoke, 2012), p. 4.

The study of sexology is well established in historical research. Scholars have produced a comprehensive picture of the highly internationalised inaugural period of sexology up to the Second World War, which disrupted and destroyed many of the early international forums of sexological research.18 However, few studies have extended this attention to transnational exchanges on dissident masculinities to the post-1945 period in ways that demonstrate the ongoing influence of nineteenth-century scientific frameworks on 1950s understandings of same-sex desire. One notable exception is Chris Waters’ article on the influence of European émigré criminologists and statisticians in the emergence of social scientific research on homosexuality in Britain.19 This chapter will expand

Waters’ analysis by investigating continuities between post-war understandings of homosexuality and European sexological research undertaken over a longer time period.

The first section of this chapter investigates the transmission of medical frameworks of same-sex desire to show how the privileged knowledge of scientific experts occupied a central role in post-war homosexual reform discourses across western Europe. The second section explores the productive

18 See for example: Lucy Bland and Laura Doan (eds.), Sexology in Culture: Labelling Bodies and Desires (Cambridge, 1998); Harry Oosterhuis, Stepchildren of Nature. Krafft-Ebing, Psychiatry, and the Making of Sexual Identity (London, 2000); Lesley A. Hall and Roy Porter, The Facts of Life: The Creation of Sexual Knowledge in Britain, 1650-1950 (New Haven, 1995); Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, 1990); Vernon A. Rosario (ed.), Science and Homosexualities (New York, 1997); Jeffrey Weeks, Coming Out. Homosexual Politics in Britain from the Nineteenth Century to the Present, revised edition (London, 1990); Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society; Heike Bauer (ed.), Sexology and Translation: Cultural and Scientific Encounters Across the Modern World (Philadelphia, 2015); Heike Bauer, English Literary Sexology: Translations of Inversion, 1860-1930 (Basingstoke, 2009); Nicholas Matte, ‘International Sexual Reform and Sexology in Europe, 1897-1933’, Canadian Bulletin of Medical History 22:2 (2005), pp. 253-270. 19 Chris Waters, ‘The Homosexual as a Social Being, 1945-1968’, The Journal of British Studies 51:3 (2012), pp. 685 -710. A shortened version of the article was published in 2013, however, I will be referring to the original, more extensive, article throughout this thesis. See Chris Waters, ‘The Homosexual as a Social Being’, in Brian Lewis (ed.), British Queer History: New Approaches and Perspectives (Manchester, 2013), pp. 188-218. See also Bauer, ‘Sexology Backward’.

44 partnership between social scientific and psychoanalytic approaches, which had become increasingly influential in the British post-war moment. Here, it illuminates how composite approaches, which combined sexual knowledge first generated in continental Europe, were in turn disseminated across national boundaries to inform the debates of sex reformers. The final section turns to biological understandings of homosexuality, seen as a national variance, revealing how these approaches disrupted a paradigm of sexual abnormality to demand legal reform.

1. The Expert in Sexual Reform

Even though the Wolfenden Report was the first British official publication to articulate a sociological concept of a homosexual identity and way of life as Frank

Mort has demonstrated, both the deliberations of the Committee and the final report reinforced a medical and psychological model of homosexuality.20 While the Committee ultimately rejected the understanding of homosexuality as a disease, the report’s approach included a careful and differentiated consideration of arguments supporting and opposing pathologising approaches. Although the final report was criticised for oversimplifying the clinical picture, it drew on the authority of medical experts to establish legitimacy, highlighting how the evidence which shaped the Committee’s understanding of homosexuality was underpinned by the authority of medical witnesses and doctors.21

20 For detailed analysis of how the Wolfenden Report made the social lives of homosexual men visible see Frank Mort, ‘Mapping Sexual London: The Wolfenden Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution 1954-1957’, New Formations 37 (1999) pp. 92-113; Mort, Capital Affairs, pp. 151-172. 21 Report of the Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution, p. 11. For reservations by medical members of the committee see Report of the Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution, pp. 123-124; Peter Scott, ‘Psychiatric Aspects of the Wolfenden Report: I’, The British Journal of Delinquency 9:1 (1958), p. 22.

The discussions of the Wolfenden Committee, which sought to determine the causes and medical basis of same-sex desire stood in the tradition of the medicalisation and scientific discursive practice of sexuality, which Michel

Foucault has termed ‘scientia sexualis’. Sexual science in Foucault’s understanding was concerned with uncovering the ‘truth of sex’, as well as exposing the mechanisms and processes which governed human sexual experience.22 Alongside the inception of numerous academic disciplines which sought to interrogate human experience scientifically, Foucault argued that the nineteenth-century medicalisation of the body was central to a new regime of power and social management, opening up sexuality to ‘therapeutic or normalising interventions’.23 Both the questioning by the committee, as well as the evidence supplied by medical experts demonstrated that medical science provided authority for the regulation of sexual behaviours in the name of a healthy social body. As Stuart Hall has remarked, the Wolfenden Committee was not indebted to a liberalising impulse, but was a response to a ‘moral panic’ surrounding publicly visible incidences of sexual deviance, perceived to have sharply risen in the post-war period and constituting a danger to the nuclear family.24

This heightened anxiety around dangerous sexualities in the context of profound social changes in post-war Britain was further exacerbated by the publication of criminal statistics, which appeared to indicate a marked increase in

22 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, translated from French by Robert Hurley (New York, 1978), pp. 64-69. 23 Foucault, The History of Sexuality, pp. 51, 68; 116-120. 24 Stuart Hall, ‘Reformism’, pp. 12-15.

46 sexual offences.25 While more diligent record keeping and increased policing could explain these rising figures, Mort has assessed that generalised ‘feelings of moral dislocation’ experienced in Britain were mirrored across western Europe, with higher reporting of sex offences and drug use.26 Such anxieties were reflected in a joint memorandum of the National Council of Social Service and the

Association for Mental Health, which referred to homosexual men as ‘deviants’ and drew on medical models of homosexuality, pointing both to endocrine disruptions and psychopathological frameworks to assert that:

… Since the homosexual cannot exist out of contact with other people, society has a right and duty to give protection against homosexual practices to those members, especially the young, who may be most susceptible to seduction and who may themselves suffer permanently from such approaches. 27

This vocabulary of sexual pathology and seduction pointed to a tradition of deploying a medicalised language of disease and contagion to control and regulate bodies associated with social disorder in Victorian Britain.28 The reliance of the

Wolfenden Committee on medical experts to provide authority revealed that the links between sexual knowledge and the power of the state to regulate and discipline the bodies of its citizens, a concept termed ‘biopower’ by Michel

Foucault, became even more significant in the mid-twentieth century.29 This period saw an expansion of the authority of medical and scientific experts, who

25 Interview N. R. Fox-Andrews, P.A.O. Mc Grath, R. Ormrod and R.E. Seaton on behalf of the General Council of the Bar, 20th February 1956, The National Archives (hereafter TNA), PRO HO 345/16. 26 Mort, Capital Affairs, pp.40-42. 27 Memorandum of a Joint Group appointed by the National Council of Social Service and the National Association for Mental Health, TNA PRO HO 345/8. 28 Judith Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and the State (Cambridge, 1980); Lynda Nead, Myths of Sexuality. Representations of Women in Victorian Britain (Oxford, 1988). 29 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, p. 139.

47 became more deeply involved in the processes of moral reform inside the institutions of the welfare state.30

The privileged knowledge of the expert was central both to the proceedings of the Wolfenden Committee and its final recommendations. Expert witnesses first submitted written memoranda followed by oral hearings, which adhered to an earlier model of British official exchanges, akin to hearings in a court of law, during which Committee members could probe and clarify the expert knowledge presented to them.31 Chairman John Wolfenden thought it crucial to convey that the Committee had based its recommendations on a careful evaluation and synthesis of vast amounts of scientific evidence. He therefore insisted that the finished report should

emphasise that committee members had gone through a lengthy education process which the majority of the public had not shared, and the experience gained by the committee would have to be transmitted to the public at large. 32

While Mort has remarked that the committee members viewed ‘abstract continental theorising’ unfavourably, the conceptual frameworks and terminologies invoked by expert witnesses were first conceived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in German-speaking nations. 33 Scott

Spector has posited that both homosexual activism and an emergent homosexual consciousness had its roots in Germany, Switzerland and Austria.34 However, by the 1950s, these continental roots had been obscured and were only implicitly

30 Frank Mort, Dangerous Sexualities: Medico-Moral Politics in England Since 1830, 2nd edition (London, 2000), pp. 130-132. 31 Mort, Capital Affairs, p. 179. 32 TNA PRO HO345/6, Summary Record of General Exchange of Views at the 14th Meeting (5th October, 1955). 33 Mort, Capital Affairs, p. 151; Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Tendencies (Durham, 1993), p. 66. 34 Scott Spector, ‘Introduction’, in Scott Spector, Helmut Puff and Dagmar Herzog (eds.), After the History of Sexuality. German Genealogies with and beyond Foucault (Oxford, 2012), p. 3.

48 visible in contemporary understandings of homosexuality, as they had by then become part of the British scientific canon. These scientific foundations were negotiated between the Committee and British expert witnesses through memoranda and oral testimonies, which implicitly reflected a much longer tradition of transnational exchanges on male homosexuality.

The three key schools of thought on homosexuality, whose influence remained evident in the expert testimonies delivered to the Wolfenden Committee and had first been crystallised in German-speaking nations, replaced a religion- based concept of sexual sin with scientific understandings of same-sex desire.

Firstly, the theory of homosexuality as a natural variance, conceived initially by

Karl Heinrich Ulrichs in the 1860s, who understood homosexuals to form a ‘Third

Sex’ in which a female soul inhabited a male body. Secondly, sexual pathology, which understood same-sax desire as a ‘functional degeneration’, pioneered by

Richard von Krafft-Ebing, and thirdly, Freudian psychoanalytic theories of homosexuality, which understood homosexual desire as a result of arrested psychosexual development in adolescence. 35

It is important to note that there was no sharp delineation or clear linear progression between these contrasting approaches, with different schools of thought evolving and competing throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and continuing to shape discussions of same-sex desire into the post-war period. Despite their theoretical divergence, taken together they challenged the understanding of homosexuality as a crime or sin and shared a common concern in the naming, labelling and classifying of sexual experiences

35 Rita Felski, ‘Introduction’, in Lucy Bland and Laura Doan (eds.) Sexology in Culture. Labelling Bodies and Desires (Oxford, 1998), pp. 1-9; Kenneth Lewes, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Male Homosexuality (New York, 1988), pp. 30-33.

49 and identities, with case studies forming the basis for research.36 Furthermore, they were unified by a reformist stance which politicised sexual knowledge to advocate more tolerant approaches towards homosexuality legally and socially.37

Scientific understandings of human sexuality therefore did not remain confined to an academic context, but formed the basis for processes of personal sexual legitimisation by campaigners. Indeed, as became evident in the expert testimonies delivered to the Wolfenden Committee, theories which ascribed a medical, psychological or genetic basis to same-sex desire could be mobilised to provide potent arguments for the decriminalisation of homosexuality, as they challenged understandings of homosexual behaviours as voluntary immoral acts.

The Committee’s discussions on the causes and nature of homosexuality mostly revolved around a medicalised model of same-sex desire and were guided in particular by Dr Desmond Curran, a psychiatrist at St. George’s hospital in

Tooting and Dr Joseph Whitby, a general practitioner based in North London.38

Whitby and Curran would set the parameters for the discussions and questioning of witnesses and were instrumental in condensing and interpreting the evidence they submitted.39 While the evidence presented to the Committee was understood to be at the cutting edge of British medical science, the medical model of homosexuality on which many of witnesses drew reflected a sexual modernity first conceived in continental Europe in the final decades of the nineteenth century, inaugurated by Austro-German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing

36 Katie Sutton, ‘Sexological Cases and the Prehistory of Gender Identity Politics in Interwar Germany’, in Joy Damousi et al (eds.), Case Studies and the Dissemination of Knowledge (Abingdon, 2015), pp. 88-90. See also Joseph Bristow, ‘Symond’s History, Ellis’s Heredity: Sexual Inversion’, in Lucy Bland and Laura Doan (eds.), Sexology in Culture: Labelling Bodies and Desires (Cambridge, 1998), p. 90. 37 Felski, ‘Introduction’, pp. 4-5. 38 For Whitby and Curran see Lewis, Wolfenden’s Witnesses, pp. 7-8. 39 Notes by Doctors Whitby and Curran for Basis of Discussion for Meeting on 4th January, TNA PRO HO 345/3; Memorandum by Doctors Whitby and Curran (undated), TNA PRO HO 345/9.

50 and expanded by German psychiatrist Albert Moll. As Harry Oosterhuis has argued, it was based on the labelling and categorising of dissident sexualities, the recognition of the diversity of sexual attraction, as well as the rejection of an understanding of homosexuality as a vice by arguing that same-sex desire was a congenital morbid condition.40

Krafft-Ebing understood homosexuality as a degenerate neuropsychiatric condition, relying on a pathophysiological model of hereditary degeneration. He first wrote on the subject of homosexuality in 1877 and published his highly influential forensic work Psychopathia Sexualis in 1886. In it, he drew on the working methods of contemporary medicine, collecting case histories and establishing terminologies, as well as a minutely differentiated classification system of abnormal sexualities.41 Psychopathia Sexualis was first translated into

English in 1892 and introduced to British audiences through the works of British sexologists Havelock Ellis and Edward Carpenter. Both Ellis and Carpenter critically studied Krafft-Ebing’s medico-forensic work, but cautioned that his theories were severely limited in reaching a scientific understanding of homosexuality, as his observations were confined to clinical cases and did not consider healthy and functioning individuals.42

40 Harry Oosterhuis, ‘Sexual Modernity in the Works of Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Albert Moll’, Medical History 56:2 (2012), pp. 133- 135. 41 Oosterhuis, Stepchildren of Nature, pp. 131-138; Klaus Müller, ‘Die Historische Konstruktion des Homosexuellen und die Codierung der Geschlechterdifferenz’, in Hannelore Bublitz (ed.), Das Geschlecht der Moderne: Genealogie und Archäologie der Geschlechterdifferenz (Frankfurt, 1998), p. 144; Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis, mit Besonderer Berücksichtigung der Conträren Sexualempfindung. Eine Klinisch-Forensische Studie, 9th edition (Stuttgart, 1894 [1886]). 42 Havelock Ellis, Sexual Inversion, 3rd edition (Philadelphia, 1915 [1897]), p. 70. Despite Symonds’ involvement, his authorship was removed from subsequent editions of Sexual Inversion, as Symonds’widow feared it would cause irrevocable damage to his reputation, see: Sean Brady, John Addington Symonds and Homosexuality. A Critical Edition of Sources (Basingstoke, 2012), p. 32.

A clinical perspective was particularly evident in post-war notions of remedial interventions to homosexuality and experts’ attempts to establish systems of classification. Questions around whether homosexuality was inborn or acquired would preoccupy the committee for much of its deliberations and both frameworks were frequently applied in concurrence to distinguish between different classes of homosexuals, using a number of terminologies – ‘true’,

‘essential’ or ‘genetic inverts’, and ‘acquired inverts’ or ‘perverts’.43 These classifications determined doctors’ prognoses, as was illustrated by the testimony of the British Medical Council, an authoritative voice of medical science:

Clinically, the orientation of the essential homosexual is commonly regarded as irreversible and not amenable to treatment, though the individuals may be deterred from overt homosexual activity and helped to make good social adjustment. Many homosexuals in the acquired group are amenable to treatment and their homosexual tendencies are regarded as possibly reversible.44

Even though understandings of homosexuality as hereditary degeneration had largely fallen out of favour with clinicians by the post-war period, this testimony demonstrated that taxonomies and labelling of non-normative sexualities, as well as notions of treatment continued to structure medicalised discussions of homosexuality into the 1950s. 45

Despite the Wolfenden Committee’s ultimate rejection of a pathologising model of homosexuality, Krafft-Ebing’s theoretical framework, which situated homosexuality in the nexus of law and medicine and carved out a place for the

43 See for example discussions of aetiology and classification in oral evidence given by Eustace Chesser, Clifford Allen and Sessions Hodge: Notes of a Meeting, 31st October, TNA PRO HO 345/14, p.7. See also Lewis, Wolfenden’s Witnesses, pp. 103-104. 44 Memorandum of Evidence Prepared by a Special Committee of the Council of the British Medical Association, November 1955, TNA PRO HO 345/9, p. 6. 45 Memorandum by Doctors Whitby and Curran (undated), TNA PRO HO 345/9.

52 expert in moral reform discourses, revealed striking parallels to the discussions of the Wolfenden Committee in drawing on medical science to inform social and legal debates.46 Psychopathia Sexualis demonstrated that sexual knowledge could be applied to legal debates, as Krafft-Ebing mobilised his understanding of homosexuality as a disease rather than a vice as a persuasive argument to support the German sexual equality movement led by German sex reformer Magnus

Hirschfeld, beginning in the final decade of the nineteenth century.47

The connection between individual criminal responsibility and notions of homosexuality as a disease was a key pillar of the Wolfenden Report’s exploration of homosexuality, which stated that

sickness implies irresponsibility, or at least diminished responsibility. Hence it becomes important in this connection to examine the criteria of ‘disease’ and also to examine the claim that these consequences follow.48

This model of exploring criminal culpability through the lens of modern medicine was not unique to the Wolfenden Committee or British legal discourses and was particularly evident in West Germany where homosexual men faced a similar legal situation as their British counterparts under §175 of the German Penal Code, which provided the basis for the criminalisation of homosexual acts. Official

German approaches towards legal reform revealed that medical expertise provided a central pillar in the decision making processes of the Große

Strafrechtskomission, the commission which fundamentally reshaped West

46 Rosario, Science and Homosexualities, pp. 70-71. 47 Oosterhuis, Stepchildren, pp. 139-150; Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis, pp. 389-390. 48 Report of the Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution, p. 13.

German Criminal Law during the 1950s and 1960s and included a revision of

§175.49

When the German commission turned to the reform of the law relating to homosexuality in 1958, it undertook a comparative review of international laws and literature, including the findings of the Wolfenden Report and the Griffin

Report, published by the English Catholic advisory committee in 1956. Senior legal secretary Karl Lackner advised his fellow committee members that with few exceptions ‘countries which threatened homosexual conduct between adult men with punishment had become scarce’. 50 He drew attention to the recommendations of the Wolfenden Committee, demonstrating that sexual knowledge articulated within a distinct national context could be adapted to reform discourses abroad.

The West German Penal Law Commission embarked on a fact-finding mission, which was in many aspects comparable to the work of the Wolfenden

Committee. While the witnesses to the Wolfenden Committee included Christian and moral reformers, such as the Roman Catholic Advisory Committee, the Public

Morality Council and the Church of England Moral Welfare Council, the German commission privileged legal and medical expertise more overtly through its selection of expert witnesses.51 These included individual psychologists and psychiatrists, as well as representatives from professional psychiatric and

49 Christian Schäfer, "Widernatürliche Unzucht" (§§ 175, 175a, 175b, 182 a.F. StGB): Reformdiskussion und Gesetzgebung seit 1945 (Berlin, 2006), pp. 127-141; Robert G. Moeller, ‘Public Acts, Private Anxieties, and the Fight to Decriminalise Male Homosexuality in West Germany’, Feminist Studies 36:3 (2010), pp. 532-533; n.a., ‘82. Sitzung am 29. April 1958’, in Große Strafrechtskomission (eds.), Niederschriften über die Sitzungen der Großen Strafrechtskomission; 8. Band; Besonderer Teil; 76. Bis 90. Sitzung (Bonn, 1959), pp. 211- 242. 50 Schäfer, Widernatürliche Unzucht, 141-142; ‘82. Sitzung am 29. April 1958’, in Große Strafrechtskomission (eds.), Niederschriften, pp. 227-228. 51 For religious and moral reformers see Lewis, Wolfenden’s Witnesses, pp. 233-234.

54 psychoanalytical societies, such as the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychatrie und

Nervenheilkunde and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychotherapie und

Tiefenpsychologie.52 Both British and West German official approaches towards reforming sexual legislation therefore appealed to the expert, demonstrating that scientific expertise held a privileged place over moral regulation in post-war understandings of how modern democracies should shape the laws governing sexuality. While the West German Penal Law Commission ultimately suggested a revision of §175, widespread public hostility towards homosexuality and a highly socially conservative CDU government under Konrad Adenauer conceived of a liberalisation of §175 as endangering young people. Efforts towards reform remained unsuccessful in West Germany until 1969 under a more progressive

SPD government led by Willy Brandt. 53

In contrast to Britain, the channels through which sexual knowledge was negotiated were more pluralistic in Germany. Throughout the 1950s, German medical professionals took on roles as sexual rights activists, seeking to reform laws relating to homosexuality outside of government forums. German sexologists met in interdisciplinary settings, such as the ‘Deutsche Gesellschaft für

Sexualforschung’ (German Society of Sexology), a medical and legal working group, which hosted its first congress organised by the Frankfurt ‘Institut für

Sexualwissenschaft’ in April 1950.54 The event was led by Hans Giese, an openly homosexual sexologist and former National Socialist, and featured contributions from doctors, anatomists, psychiatrists and lawyers.55 While there was no clear

52 Schäfer, Widernatürliche Unzucht, 131-136. 53 Moeller, ‘Public Acts’, pp. 534-534. 54 Dr. S. ‘Sexualforscher tagten in Frankfurt’, in Der Kreis 18:5, p. 27. 55 Dagmar Herzog, Sex after Fascism: Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany (Princeton, 2007), p. 132.

55 consensus at the congress regarding the causes of homosexuality, with ongoing debates on whether same-sex attraction constituted a natural variance, a psychiatric disease or whether it was the result of conditioning in early childhood.

Nevertheless attendees resolved that homosexual acts between consenting adults should be decriminalised, stating that:

Punishment of same-sex relationships between adult men does not yield any success, in contrast, it enables other crimes, such as blackmail and violent assault. According to the insights of psychology, psychiatry and criminal justice, there is a kind of homosexuality which cannot be curtailed by punishment as it is an innate human urge. 56

Far from limiting their findings to an academic forum, the conference organisers addressed a petition to all parliamentarians in the Bundestag and members of the

Bundesrat on 1st November 1950, which reiterated that their proposals for law reform was based on scientific expertise. Their recommendations pointed to parallels in the recommendations made by the Wolfenden Committee in 1957.57

They recommended decriminalising homosexual acts between consenting adults, but made provisions for a continued criminalisation of male prostitution and importuning, as well as the safeguarding of minors. In addition, even though the distinction between public and private space was articulated more explicitly in the recommendations of the Wolfenden Report, leaving significant scope for the prosecution of homosexual acts in spaces deemed public by law enforcement in

Britain, the German petition also referenced continued penalties for homosexual behaviours in public, stating that ‘public nuisance already constitutes a punishable

56Author’s translation from German: Zusammenfassung des Ergebnisses der Arbeitstagung, abgedruckt in Zeitschrift für Sexualforschung 1 (1950), p. 312, text quoted in full in Schäfer, Widernatürliche Unzucht, pp. 83-84. 57 Christian Schäfer, Widernatürliche Unzucht, pp. 311-312.

56 offence according to §183 of the German Penal Code’.58 The petition of the

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sexualforschung proved influential and was cited at the

Deutscher Juristentag (German National Lawyers Meeting) in 1951 by lawyer

Heinrich Ackermann who argued explicitly for the decriminalisation of homosexuality between consenting adults.59 The expert and his privileged knowledge could therefore be invoked by campaigners and interest groups who sought access to political decision-making processes and were not part of government institutions.

The rigid questioning of expert witnesses by the Wolfenden Committee involved the structure of submitted memoranda, with committee members subsequently working to probe the arguments put forward by witnesses. These constrained exchanges, which offered no space for dialogue between experts, were mediated through Home Office officials and committee members. In contrast, conversations between German sex researchers took place at interdisciplinary conferences, where organisers with a liberal and reformist outlook set the agenda. German sex researchers drew on the legacy of the sexual reform movement led by the German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, one of the most influential pre-war sexologists both in Germany and abroad. Hirschfeld’s belief that justice could be achieved through science formed the basis of his reform attempts, using scientific sexual knowledge as a tool to achieving social justice and to repeal § 175 of the German Penal Code.60 Hirschfeld’s legacy

58 For public/private dichotomy in Britain see Hall, ‘Reformism’, p. 12-15; Moeller, ‘Private Acts’, pp. 531-32. 59 Christian Schäfer, Widernatürliche Unzucht, p. 86. 60 Hirschfeld’s motto was ‘Per Scientiam ad Justitiam’ – ‘through science to justice’, see James Streakley, ‘Per Scientiam ad Justitiam: Magnus Hirschfeld and the Sexual Politics of Innate Homosexuality’, in Vernon Rosario (ed.), Science and Homosexualities (London, 1997), pp. 140- 142; Frank Bösch, Öffentliche Geheimnisse. Skandale, Politik und Medien in Deutschland und Großbritannien 1880-1914 (London, 2011), p. 49.

57 proved influential to the German sexual reformers in the post-war period and he was understood as the movement’s spiritual father by 1950s homophile publications.61 Professional and expert debate about homosexuality could develop more organically in non-official forums in Germany, which placed the consolidation of sexual knowledge outside of the structures of government.

Homosexual men who took on roles as activists in West Germany also placed trust in experts and medical knowledge. They not only recognised that professionals could offer help in alleviating the psychological strain that homosexual men faced, but believed they could be important allies in the fight towards sexual equality. Humanitas, the official publication of the German homophile organisation Gesellschaft für Menschenrechte, stated that

apart from the American researcher Kinsey, there are other doctors and scientists across the world, including Germany, who see the perpetuation of the exceptional laws against homosexuals as untenable and inhumane. There are enough doctors in our ranks who stand willing to assist those seeking support.62

Transnational currents of sexual scientific knowledge were also evident in the publications of the French homophile organisation Arcadie. A belief in modern science was evident in its inaugural issue, albeit intermingled with a more spiritual approach, reflecting the deeply held religious beliefs of the editor André

Baudry.63 Baudry saw an individual’s sexual life as ‘the actualisation of his intellectual and spiritual life, which creates the self’. 64 In his introduction he drew on the works of Marc Oraison, a psychoanalyst and theologian, as well as citing medical scientist Alan Gregg’s introduction to the Kinsey report, which stated that

61 Hermann Weber, ‘Magnus Hirschfeld zum Gedenken’, Die Gefährten 1:1 (1952), pp. 10-12. 62 n.a., ‘Wichtiger Hinweis’, Humanitas 2:3 (1954) , p. 91 63 Jackson, Living in Arcadia, p. 61. 64 Author’s translation from French: André Baudry, ‘Nova et Verita’, Arcadie 1:1 (1954) , p. 16.

‘the history of medicine proves that in so far as man seeks to know himself and face his whole nature, he has become free from bewildered fear, despondent shame, or arrogant hypocrisy’.65 Expert knowledge, it appeared, not only provided a justification for a liberalisation of laws, but also provided crucial tools for homosexual self-understanding and self-acceptance.

There were a far greater number of channels through which sexual knowledge could be transmitted to more lay circles in west European countries than in Britain. Arcadie observed the conspicuous absence of British works on homosexuality, remarking that hardly anything of note had been published since

Havelock Ellis’ Sexual Inversion in 1898 and Edward Carpenter’s The

Intermediate Sex in 1910.66 Lesley Hall has shown how strict censorship and obscenity laws restricted the access of the British public to published works of sexology in the inter-war years.67 This legacy of sexual knowledge as privileged to the realm of experts remained dominant in the 1950s, as scientific thought on homosexuality remained confined to medical and academic publications, while a more sensational tabloid discourse played a key role in transmitting sexual knowledge to a wider public. As Adrian Bingham has argued, this format remained highly moralising and hostile towards homosexuality in the early 1950s.

Although journalists’ deployment of medical terminology contributed to a more complex discussion of homosexuality, many had only a superficial understanding of the scientific concepts they invoked.68 Transmissions of credible sexual knowledge in Britain therefore ran along the lines of class. Although British

65 André Baudry, ‘Nova et Verita’, Arcadie 1:1 (1954), p. 17. 66 Peter Rayner, ‘L’Homophilie en Angleterre’, Arcadie 1:2 (1954), p. 47. 67 Lesley A. Hall, Sex, Gender and Social Change in Britain since 1880, 2nd edition (Basingstoke, 2013), pp. 96-98. 68 Adrian Bingham, Family Newspapers?: Sex, Private Life, and the British Popular Press 1918- 1978 (Oxford, 2009), pp. 180-183.

59 homosexuals from privileged backgrounds, such as Peter Wildeblood, who testified to the Wolfenden Committee as one of three homosexual men invited to give evidence due to their ‘social connections and status’, were able to draw fluidly on a range of sexual theories, there were few channels through which this expertise could be transmitted to homosexual men outside of elite circles.69

In contrast, sexual knowledge was more accessible to homosexual men in continental Europe. Even more downmarket German homophile journals such as

Der Weg zu Freundschaft und Toleranz referenced cutting edge scientific literature on same-sex desire as well as discussing late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century theories of homosexuality, alongside erotic photography and more light-hearted short stories. This demonstrated that scientific understandings of homosexuality could play a crucial role in shaping homosexual self- understanding.70 The appetite for scientific works on homosexuality was such that one issue of the Dutch homophile publication Vriendschap featured an in-depth discussion of Edward Carpenter’s 1908 work The Intermediate Sex and reprints from Alfred Kinsey et al’s 1949 article ‘Concepts of Normality and Abnormality in Sexual Behaviour’ in which Kinsey and his co-authors determined that understandings of homosexuality as abnormal were socially determined with no scientific basis.71 While it is doubtful that such articles were accessible to popular audiences, as they required a degree of scientific literacy, they nevertheless propagated sexual knowledge outside of strictly academic and elite circles.

69 Mort, Capital Affairs, p. 180; Houlbrook, Queer London, p, 255. 70 Jackson, Living in Arcadia, pp. 130-132. 71 Alfred Kinsey et al., ‘Concepts of Normality and Abnormality in Sexual Behaviour’, in P.H. Hock, J. Zubin (eds.), Psychosexual Development in Health Disease (New York, 1949) , reprinted as Alfred Kinsey, ‘Normaal en Abnormal in het Sexuele Gedrag’, Vriendshap 9:1 (1954), pp. 13- 16.

Sexual knowledge circulated via transnational networks and medical and legal questions thus became closely linked over questions of homosexuality in the post- war period, particularly in countries in which homosexuality remained a criminal offence. The expert and the knowledge he represented occupied a central place in sexual reform discourses throughout western Europe. However, access to this scientific body of thought was more democratic outside of Britain, as activists campaigning for increased tolerance propagated sexual theory for their readers.

2. Competing Discourses and Composite Approaches

While medico-pathological approaches had been partly superseded by the 1950s, both psychoanalytic and sociological understandings of homosexuality became increasingly influential in British debates over homosexuality. The Wolfenden

Report itself was one of the documents which increasingly brought the social dimensions of homosexuality to light in post-war Britain, typologising homosexual men, as well as revealing spaces of homosociability in London and the movements of gay men across the city.72 Even though much of Wolfenden’s social investigation relied on the testimony of police officials, techniques which made homosexual men visible as part of a minority group in wider society were employed against the backdrop of criminological and statistical approaches developed in the United States and continental Europe before the war. This placed sociological understandings of homosexuality firmly within transnational networks of academic exchange, across which empirical social research approaches and quantitative methodologies were disseminated.

72 See Mort, ‘Mapping Sexual London’, pp. 92-113; Mort, Capital Affairs, pp. 151-172. See also: Waters, ‘The Homosexual as a Social Being’, p. 700.

However, the evolution of scientific thought on homosexuality did not fit neatly within a linear narrative of the rise of social sciences, as continental sexual theory continued to inform a complex set of competing explanatory models on which the members of the Wolfenden Committee and its witnesses drew. A number of expert witnesses called up by the committee subscribed to psychoanalytic theory, pioneered in the 1890s by the Austrian neurologist

Sigmund Freud and first popularised in Britain following the Great War. Graham

Richards has suggested that Freudian thought was disseminated in Britain via a four-tier model of scientific popularisation through a cascade of Freudian works translated into English, which were read and further propagated to psychology graduates and educators by elite British psychoanalysts.73 Transnational forums of psychoanalysis offered further opportunities for international collaboration and exchanges of knowledge during the first decades of the twentieth century. These included international conferences, the work of the International Psychoanalytic

Association and its publication arm, the Internazionale Zeitschrift für ärtzliche

Psychoanalyse, edited jointly by the British psychoanalyst Ernest Jones, the

Hungarian neurologist Sándor Ferenczi and the Austrian psychoanalyst Otto

Rank.74 The further popularisation of psychoanalysis through the press, literary works, as well as cinema, led psychoanalytic language to be adapted to a popular vernacular.75 However, while psychoanalytic thought and language permeated

British society, there was also a pronounced resistance to wider acceptance of

Freud’s radical continental sexual theories at the start of the twentieth century, in

73 Graham Richards, ‘Britain on the Couch: The Popularization of Psychoanalysis in Britain 1918- 1940’, Science in Context 13:2 (2000), pp. 185-186. 74 Brenda Maddox, Freud’s Wizard: The Enigma of Earnest Jones (London, 2006), p. 103. 75 Richards, ‘Britain on the Couch’, pp. 183-230; Dean Rapp, ‘The Early Discovery of Freud by the British General Educated Public, 1912-1919’, Social History of Medicine 3:2 (1990), pp. 217- 243.

62 a cultural climate still strongly influenced by the purity movements first founded in the 1880s and its preoccupation with policing obscene materials.76

During the post-war years, psychoanalytic and social scientific approaches to homosexuality frequently became overlaid, as in the works of Gordon Westwood, the pen-name of the social scientist Michael Schofield.77 Westwood’s pioneering works on homosexuality, published in 1953 and 1960, drew on psychoanalytic theory and vocabulary, deploying a language of ‘repression’, ‘neuroses’ and the

‘unconscious’ in his discussion of the aetiology of same-sex desire. This scholarship simultaneously explored the social world of the homosexual, using the working methods of the social sciences, based on case-studies, qualitative methods of data collection such as observation and statistical analysis.78 The memorandum prepared for the Wolfenden Committee by the German émigré criminologist Max Grünhut further testified to this coalition of the social sciences and psychoanalytical understandings of homosexuality, as it used a statistical analysis to evaluate the efficacy of psychotherapy for homosexual offenders.79

As Richard Hornsey has argued, the links between psychology and the social sciences had a wide-reaching cultural impact, forming a therapeutic alliance within the post-war British state. Official approaches, such as that of the

Wolfenden Committee, sought the dual authority of psychological and sociological experts, who could offer approaches to control ‘a cast of problematic figures who seemed dangerously out of place within the post-war urban

76 Rapp, ‘Discovery of Freud’, pp. 229-230, 242-243; Richards, ‘Britain on the Couch’, pp. 191- 194. 77 Waters, ‘The Homosexual as a Social Being’, pp. 702-703. 78 Gordon Westwood [Michael Schofield], Society and the Homosexual (New York, 1953); Gordon Westwood [Michael Schofield], A Minority. A Report on the Life of the Male Homosexual in Great Britain (London, 1960). 79 Memorandum on the Mental Treatment of Probationers found guilty of Homosexual Offences, submitted by Max Grünhut, Reader in Criminology, University of Oxford, TNA PRO HO 345/9.

63 landscape’.80 Neo-Foucauldian social theorist Nikolas Rose has emphasised the role of these experts in official discourses, who were expected to analyse, categorise and regulate citizens’ behaviours, thereby facilitating normative governance in liberal democracies.81 In the context of the post-war moral panics surrounding deviant sexualities in Britain, composite approaches which could both quantify and remedy social problems by drawing on continental psychoanalysis, as well as the working methods of the social sciences, fell on particularly fertile ground.

Within the field of criminology in particular, psychoanalysis provided a vocabulary and framework to address threats to social and political stability.82

Institutions which rigorously subscribed to psychoanalytic theory in addressing mental and societal disorders, such as the Tavistock Clinic, the Institute for the

Study and Treatment of Delinquency (ISTD) and the associated Portman Clinic were called upon by the government to address a wide variety of social and sexual problems. These organisations gave evidence not only to the Wolfenden

Committee, but to numerous state committees, illustrating how firmly psychoanalytic theory had taken hold over official discourses.83As both Michal

Shapira and Chris Waters have demonstrated, psychoanalytic theory provided one of the most powerful readings of homosexuality during the post-war decades.84

This was confirmed by expert witnesses to the Wolfenden Committee who based their testimony on psychoanalytic theory to argue that homosexuality represented

80 Richard Hornsey, The Spiv and the Architect: Unruly Life in Postwar London (London, 2010), p. 26. 81 Nikolas Rose, Inventing Our Selves: Psychology, Power, and Personhood (Cambridge, 1998), p. 155. 82 Michal Shapira, The War Inside. Psychoanalysis, Total War, and the Making of the Democratic Self in Postwar Britain (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 170-189. 83 For a sketch of evidence provided to official inquiries by the ISTD see: Shapira, War, p. 185. 84 Shapira, War, pp. 188-197; Waters, ‘Disorders’, pp. 140-143.

64 a form of immature sexuality, drawing on a Freudian model of sexual development whereby every human undergoes a homosexual phase in adolescence, which is left behind in further sexual development. 85

There were divergent emphases on how such frameworks were applied across

Europe within sexual reform discourses. The most striking contrasts lay in the question over whether homosexuality constituted a psychological illness and whether psychoanalysis could provide successful treatment for homosexuals, pointing to the influence of key individuals in the dissemination and adaptation of sexual knowledge across national boundaries. In Britain and the United States,

Ernest Jones was a prominent figure in the popularisation of psychoanalysis and continually drove the professionalisation of the discipline, as well as encouraging the publication of English language materials from the 1920s onwards.86 He not only practised and taught the psychoanalytic method, but also encouraged the creation of international forums of psychoanalytic exchange, granting him far- reaching influence and allowing him to shape dominant British psychoanalysis.87

Furthermore, Jones played an influential role in shifting the centre of psychoanalysis westwards from Austria-Hungary by relocating continental psychoanalysts to Britain. He first invited the prominent Austrian psychoanalyst

Melanie Klein to London in 1925, and, after the Nazis came to power and the

‘Anschluss’ of Austria in 1938, he organised the escape of many Jewish

85 Evidence submitted by Dr Winifred Rushroth, Medical Director of the Davidson Clinic, Edinburgh, TNA PRO HO 345/7; Memorandum of a Joint Committee Representing the Institute for the Study and Treatment of Delinquency and the Portman Clinic (ISTD), TNA PRO HO 345/9; Memorandum of Evidence from the Tavistock Clinic, July 1955, TNA PRO 345/8. 86 Maddox, Freud’s Wizard, pp. 145-150. 87 Maddox, Freud’s Wizard, pp. 111, 150-151; Jean-Michel Quindoz, Reading Freud. A Chronological Exploration of Feud’s Writings (New York, 2004), pp. 168-169.

65 psychoanalysts from Germany and Austria, among them Sigmund Freud and his family.88

Despite Jones’ close following of Freud’s own theories, his view on homosexuality diverged from his mentor on two key points. Firstly, Jones privileged environmental over biological factors in the aetiology of homosexuality.89 Secondly, while Freud maintained a permissive stance towards homosexuality and was able to reconcile this theory with the position that homosexuality was not necessarily an illness, Jones pathologised all forms of homosexuality, as he believed this was an expression of a fixation formed during an early stage of a child’s development. This significantly influenced the legacy of psychoanalysis as a discipline in Britain. British psychoanalysts were more inclined to believe that psychotherapy could alter the sexual object choice of their homosexual patients and the discipline maintained a strong pathologising bias towards homosexuality throughout the twentieth century. 90

This tendency was apparent in the testimony of psychoanalytic experts to the

Wolfenden Committee. The evidence submitted by the Tavistock Clinic for example supported legal reform and unequivocally asserted that its practitioners regarded ‘all forms of homosexuality as a species of psychological illness’, as well as providing case-studies of successful psychotherapy, which included the analysis of homosexual patients’ dreams and explorations of the relationship

88 Maddox, Freud’s Wizard, pp. 181-190, 222, 230-238. 89 Frank J. Sulloway, Freud, Biologist of the Mind: Beyond the Psychoanalytic Legend, 2nd edition (London, 1992), p. 438. 90 Daniel Twomey, ‘British Psychoanalytic Attitudes Towards Homosexuality’, Journal of Gay & Lesbian Psychotherapy, 7 (2003), pp. 8-11; Waters, ‘Havelock Ellis’, pp. 88-90.

66 between mother and child in early childhood.91 Psychiatrist Clifford Allen also applied a pathological model of homosexuality as a form of immature sexual development, but favoured repressive treatments for homosexual offenders. He recommended psychotherapy for certain forms of homosexuality but advocated that individuals who could ‘pose a threat to society’ should be confined to special institutions.92

The prominent psychoanalyst Edward Glover, who drafted the joint memorandum of the ISTD and the Portman Clinic for Wolfenden produced a nuanced yet sometimes contradictory reading of Freudian psychoanalysis. Closely following Freud’s understanding of the innate bisexuality of all human beings,

Glover stated that ‘man is constitutionally a bisexual animal’, before going on to firmly endorse that homosexuality did not manifest as a form of gender inversion, but a person’s object choice.93 Furthermore, he applied a Freudian perspective of sexual orientation being set from birth or earliest childhood to argue that same-sex desire could not be viewed as an isolated episode of vice. In a sometimes paradoxical line of argument he suggested that homosexuality could in many instances be a natural deviation which could not be classed as an illness, while other cases had to be categorised as mental disorders. Glover argued that homosexuality itself should not be treated as a crime and advocated tolerance over treatment as the key approach to addressing homosexuality.94 Michal Shapira has

91 Memorandum of Evidence from the Tavistock Clinics, July 1955, TNA PRO HO 345/8, p. 2. See also Supplementary Memorandum from the Tavistock Clinic, March 1956, TNA PRO HO 345/8. 92 Memorandum on Homosexuality Submitted by Dr Clifford Allen, TNA PRO 345/7, p. 3. 93 Memorandum by a Joint Committee Representing the Institute for the Study and Treatment of Delinquency and the Portman Clinic (ISTD), TNA PRO HO 345/9, p. 3.; For theory of innate bisexuality see: Sigmund Freud, Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, translation by A.A. Brill (New York, 1920). See also Shapira, War Inside, pp. 190-192. 94 Memorandum by a Joint Committee Representing the Institute for the Study and Treatment of Delinquency and the Portman Clinic (ISTD.), TNA PRO HO 345/9, pp. 9, 16.

67 argued that the often inconsistent statements of Glover’s memorandum followed a dual agenda of encouraging legal reform, while simultaneously establishing a place for the regulatory expert within official state discourses and interventions.95

Official German approaches towards legal reform revealed that psychoanalytic expertise also provided a foundation in the decision-making processes of the

Große Strafrechtskomission, demonstrating that psychoanalytic theory offered a shared framework for interpreting dissident sexualities in social and legal reform agendas across western Europe. The collection of evidence from medical professionals by West German lawmakers was guided by a set of fixed questions, which were based on a patho-psychological understanding of homosexuality, deploying a theory of homosexuality which saw same-sex desire as an interruption of healthy sexual development. This was particularly relevant in a cultural climate characterised by anxieties over the corruption of young people, who were seen to be in particular danger due to shifts in family structures in the aftermath of the war and the absence of father figures.96 The commission’s line of questioning also privileged psychoanalytic approaches regarding questions of treatment, yet as Christian Schäfer has demonstrated, opinions on the efficacy of treatment diverged between expert witnesses.97 While a majority thought that homosexuality could be treatable in certain specific circumstances, only the

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychotherapie und Tiefenpsychologie (German

Society for Psychotherapy and Depth Psychology) gave a favourable prognosis for most cases, while members of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychatrie und

Nervenheilkunde (German Society for Psychiatry and Neurology) and the

95 Shapira, War Inside, pp. 192-194. 96 Moeller, ‘Private Acts’, p. 532. 97 Christian Schäfer, Widernatürliche Unzucht, p. 134.

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gerichtliche und Soziale Medizin (German Society for

Forensic and Social Medicine) remained highly sceptical of the efficacy of psychanalytic therapy in redirecting sexual desire.

While West German lawmakers subscribed to the authority of psychoanalytic experts, homosexual men and doctors connected to the homophile movement were far more doubtful of the ability of psychoanalytic approaches to provide insight or even remedy same-sex desire. In a personal statement on the treatment of homosexuality published in Der Kreis, Wolfgang E. Bredtschneider, a psychiatrist from Frankfurt pointed to ‘a hostility against psychoanalysis […] even by excellent people’ in Germany, as well as outlining that ‘there is less resentment and antipathy towards psychoanalysis in America than is still the case here’.98 Even though Bredtscheider subscribed to psychoanalytic theory as the most useful framework to understanding same-sex desire and ‘why it has become a problem in our culture’, he remained sceptical of the efficacy of psychoanalysis as a treatment for homosexuality.99 In his statement, Bredtschneider quoted the famous letter Freud had written to the concerned mother of a homosexual son, which had been written in 1935 but was only discovered in 1951, in which Freud stated that homosexuality was ‘no vice, no degradation, it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function produced by a certain arrest of sexual development’. 100 Taking a similar line to Freud,

Bredtschneider argued that while he believed homosexuality resulted from a form

98 Author’s translation from German: Dr med Wolfgang E. Bredtschneider, ‘Über die Behandlung der Homosexualität. Eine persönliche Stellungnahme’, Der Kreis 22:7 (1954), pp. 2-8. 99 Author’s translation from German: Bredtschneider, ‘Homosexualität’, p. 2. 100 A Letter from Freud to a mother of a homosexual [1935], Historical Notes: A Letter from Freud in: The American Journal of Psychiatry 107:10 (1951), pp. 786-787.

69 of arrested development in adolescence he did not think that homosexuality was necessarily a mental illness.101

Clayton Whisnant has asserted that psychoanalytic aetiologies of homosexuality proved influential to German homosexuals’ self-exploration in the post-war decades based on reader letters in German homophile publications.102

However, many physicians in support homosexual emancipation remained highly sceptical of the promise that psychoanalysis could redirect sexual desire. Rudolph

Klimmer, a German physician and sexologist in East Germany who regularly published in West German and Swiss homophile publications and was credited by the German magazine Die Gefährten for ‘breaking the 14-year long silence about the problems faced by [homosexuals] after the collapse of the Third Reich and reopening the scientific discussion on homosexuality’, cautioned against treatment attempts.103 He further critiqued psychoanalytic approaches for locating same-sex desire in a framework of sexual perversion, which prioritised the exploration of sexual urges while neglecting genuine feelings of love between same-sex partners.104 German campaigners took a particularly defiant stance against psychoanalytic theories which conceived of same-sex desire in a paradigm of perversion and sickness.105 Ernst Ludwig Driess, a psychologist from Darmstadt writing in Die Gefährten under the penname Ludwig Drisdar, accepted that there was a place for psychoanalysts in offering mental health support to homosexual men, yet clarified that:

101 Lewes, Psychoanalytic Theory, pp. 30-31. 102 Clayton J. Whisnant, Male Homosexuality in West Germany: Between Persecution and Freedom, 1945-69 (Basingstoke, 2012), pp 39-43. 103 Author’s translation from German: Rudolph Klimmer, ‘Die Homosexualität und ihre Bestrafung’, Die Gefährten 1:3 (1952), p. 2. 104 Rudolf Klimmer, ‘Trugschlüsse der Psychoanalyse’, Der Kreis 18:1 (1950), pp. 2-5. 105 Jackson has demonstrated that French homophiles also rejected psychoanalytic approaches with a pathologising bias. See Jackson, Living in Arcadia, pp. 118-119.

We oppose the equation of homoeroticism with sexual aberrations (perversions), or even the insinuation of disease. We homosexuals do not feel sick.106

While Driess’ antipathy towards pathologising theories of psychoanalysis was undoubtedly shaped by his own traumatic experiences of imprisonment and involuntary stays in psychiatric institutions during the late 1940s and early 1950s, he nevertheless represented a widely held distrust towards the psychoanalytic treatment of homosexuality in homophile circles.107

Tensions between continental European - especially German-speaking - and Anglo-Saxon emphases in applying Freudian theory to same-sex desire became apparent in an article by an American psychoanalyst reprinted in Der

Kreis in 1952. It reinforced that while Anglo-Saxon psychoanalysts adopted a

Freudian body of thought, their approaches towards homosexuality were much more heavily indebted to an understanding of same-sex desire as an outcome and symptom of neurosis and a belief that homosexuality was amenable to treatment.

The author expressed hope that the discovery of Freud’s 1935 letter would caution

‘overactive psychoanalysts’ seeking to treat homosexuals, while the editors of Der

Kreis annotated that Swiss psychotherapists would ‘welcome the letter and the confirmation of their similarly held beliefs’.108 These discussions on how

Freudian theory could be applied to same-sex desire demonstrated that psychoanalytic knowledge continued to be actively negotiated across Europe and the USA in the post-war decades, but was framed by distinct national contexts.

106 Author’s translation from German: Ludwig Drisdar [Ernst Ludwig Driess], ‘Unsere Forderungen und eine notwendige Klarstellung’, Die Gefährten 1:1 (1952), pp. 7-9. For Ernst Ludwig Driess see Raimund Wolfert, ‘Emanzipationsbestrebungen in der Tradition Magnus Hirschfelds nach 1945. Das Beispiel Ernst Ludwig Driess’, in Initiative Queer Nations (eds.), Jahrbuch Sexualitäten 2019 (Göttingen, 2019), pp. 71-96. 107 Wolfert, ‘Emanzipationsbestrebungen’, pp. 71-96. 108 Dr. E.H. (USA), ‘Ein neuer Baustein für die Zukunft’, Der Kreis 20:2 (1952), pp. 2-4.

The arrival of sociological understandings of homosexuality post-1945 added a highly influential framework within which dissident sexualities could be considered. Social researchers, such as Michael Schofield [Gordon Westwood] and Donald J. West, increasingly sought to make the social lives of homosexual men visible, divorcing homosexuality from notions of pathology and heredity. 109

This was accompanied by a shift in methodology from individual case studies, which had focussed primarily on ‘abnormal’ and transgressive sexual behaviours, towards large scale studies, which employed quantitative statistical methods and were more concerned with determining what represented the sexual behaviour of ordinary people.110

The concern of the Wolfenden Committee with facts and quantitative evidence reflected a renewed and revitalised emphasis on social regulation in post-war Britain, which looked towards the social sciences, as well as technical experts and scientists to render the social world of the homosexual legible and offer answers to societal problems by guiding managerial interventions and rational planning.111 Locating homosexuality within what Chris Waters has termed a ‘social problem paradigm’, the Wolfenden Committee attempted to assess ‘The Extent of the Problem’.112 Specifically, it wanted to know how prevalent homosexuality was in the general population and if the perceived rise of sex crimes could be empirically validated. The finished report voiced the

Committee’s dissatisfaction over available statistics, noting that no broad sociological investigation akin to Alfred Kinsey’s broad-scale study of sexual

109 Waters, ‘The Homosexual as a Social Being’, pp. 685-687; Westwood, Society and the Homosexual; Donald J. West, Homosexuality: Its Nature and Causes (London, 1955). 110 Heike Bauer, ‘Sexology Backward’, p. 133. 111 Higgins, Heterosexual Dictatorship, p. 19. 112 Waters, ‘The Homosexual as a Social Being’, pp. 697; Report of the Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution (London, 1957), pp. 17-20.

72 behaviour in America existed in Britain, and that instead data was obtained almost exclusively from medical and criminal records. It attested to the authority of quantitative empirical research by including statistical evidence relating to homosexual offences, but resisted from drawing any conclusions other than that homosexuality was only ‘practised by a small minority of the population and should be seen in proper perspective’.113 At the same time, the Committee was concerned with the ‘dark figure’ of homosexuality. This concerned crimes unrecorded by the police, a concept which was reinforced by an extract of the

Cambridge study on sexual offences, which was circulated to the Committee before its publication, drafted by the émigré criminologist Leon Radzinowicz.114

These attempts to make deviant sexual behaviours visible through statistical analysis not only served as evidence, but also moved homosexual men from the realm of individual pathology to an understanding of homosexual individuals as part of a minority group within wider society.115

While Britain had an established tradition of social investigation reaching back to the mid-nineteenth century, such as the studies of Henry Mayhew, Charles

Booth and Edwin Chadwick, the professionalisation of the social sciences and their application in contexts of policy-making took place relatively late in Britain, compared to many other western European countries.116 Instead, social investigation prior to the Second World War was largely driven by privately- funded reform societies, such as the Fabian Society or Victorian social purity

113 Report of the Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution (London, 1957), pp. 17-20. 114 Leon Radzinowicz (ed.), Sexual Offences. A Report of the Cambridge Department of Criminal Science (London, 1957). 115 Waters, ‘The Homosexual as a Social Being’, pp. 696-708. 116 David Englander, Poverty and Poor Law Reform in Nineteenth-Century Britain: From Chadwick to Booth, 1834-1914 (Abingdon 2013), pp. 17-20. 116 Englander, Poverty and Poor Law, pp. 62-65.

73 movements. 117 As Bjorn Wittrock et al have demonstrated, almost all European societies had witnessed calls by elite scientists to apply empirical research to understand and guide societal transformation processes and modernisation from the early twentieth century onwards. However, movements towards a professionalisation of the discipline were particularly strong in countries which had experienced profound societal changes, such as Germany and Italy, which had undergone national unification processes in the late nineteenth century, and

France, which had seen substantial changes to its political structure. In the USA, quantitative social scientific research had expanded rapidly in response to the planning and administration needs of World War I. 118

In this context, it was refugee criminologists who had fled Nazi persecution, in particular German Hermann Mannheim, Jewish-German criminologist Max Grünhut and Polish Leon Radzinowicz, who introduced key quantitative methods, pioneered in continental Europe before the war, to Britain and produced new understandings of homosexuality which considered the role of the homosexual in wider society. 119 Mannheim argued that the ‘formation of social and anti-social groups of homosexuals and their activities’ should be central

117 Bjorn Wittrock, Peter Wagner and Hellmut Wollmann, ‘Social Science and the Modern State: Policy Knowledge and Political Institutions in Western Europe and the United States’, in Peter Wagner et al (eds.), Social Sciences and Modern States: National Experiences and Theoretical Crossroads (Cambridge, 1991), p. 33. 118 Wittrock, ‘Social Science’, pp. 28-85, pp. 33-36; Gerhard A. Ritter, Soziale Frage und Sozialpolitik in Deutschland seit Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts (Wiesbaden, 1998); Dorothy Ross, ‘Changing Contours of the Social Sciences Disciplines’, in Theodore M. Porter and Dorothy Ross (eds.), The Cambridge History of Science: Volume 7, The Modern Social Sciences (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 205-237; Sarah E. Igo. The Averaged American. Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public (London, 2008), pp. 3-9. 119 Waters, ‘The Homosexual’, pp. 697-698; Edward Sagarin and Robert Kelly, ‘Karl Mannheim and the Sociology of Knowledge’, Salmagundi 10/11 (1969- 1970), pp. 292-302; Roger Hood, ‘Hermann Mannheim and Max Grünhut: Criminological Pioneers in London and Oxford’, The British Journal of Criminology 44:4 (2004), pp. 469-495.

74 to criminological investigations of homosexuality, stimulating a systematic sociological inquiry into homosexuality in Britain.120

As Waters has demonstrated, these émigré scientists were instrumental in shaping the emergence of the social sciences and criminology in Britain.121

Radzinowicz in particular inaugurated an empirical reform of criminology in

Britain geared towards greater social utility. In 1940, Radzinowicz emphatically called for scientists to consider crime ‘scientifically, in the light of tested facts, practical achievements, controlled experiments and comparative investigation’.122

Radzinowicz had an international career, which took him to Paris, Geneva and

Warsaw, before arriving in Britain.123 He drew widely on European literature and also applied methods of comparative statistical analyses, which he had employed in his research in Poland in the 1930s, to his discussions of the British penal system, drawing on a wide comparison of European nations.124 In his 1999 retrospective Adventures in Criminology, Radzinowicz intertwined his personal narrative as a criminologist with the emergence of the discipline, and linked his interest in international perspectives on criminology to his personal experience.125

Émigré scientists not only understood themselves as part of a European research community, they were also able to draw on research undertaken in continental Europe due to their multilingual abilities and international academic

120 Hermann Mannheim, quoted in n.a., ‘Discussion of the Sociological Aspects of Homosexuality’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 40:10 (1947), pp. 585-587. 121 Waters, ‘The Homosexual as a Social Being’, pp. 696-699. 122 Leon Radzinowicz et al (eds.), English Studies in Criminal Science Vol. 1 (Cambridge Studies in Criminology), (London, 1940), pp. 9-10. 123 Roger Hood, ‘Leon Radzinowicz, 1906-1999’, Proceedings of the Royal Academy 111 (2001), pp. 638-641; Terence Morris, ‘Obituary: Sir Leon Radzinowicz’, The Guardian (1st January 2000), [accessed on 11 October 2017]. 124 Hood, ‘Radzinowicz’, pp. 642-644. 125 Leon Radzinowicz, Adventures in Criminology (London, 2002 [1999]), p. 70.

75 training. They therefore functioned as points of connection between international scientific discourses and the British academic and legislative establishment, drawing on their continental intellectual heritage and engagement with international research to recommend amendments of British criminal law.

Radczinowicz, Mannheim and Grünhut used their understanding of various

European criminal justice systems to expand on criminological theory and conduct comparative criminological studies.126 This wider European legal perspective on homosexuality is evident for example in Sexual Offences, a 1957

Report of the Cambridge Department of Criminal Science, directed by

Radzinowicz.127 The report explicitly placed British legislative approaches towards male homosexuality within a wider European context and encouraged the evaluation of British policies in direct comparison with other European nations.128

Against the backdrop of intensified comparative studies and international collaboration, the Wolfenden Committee tentatively engaged in an international comparative legal perspective during some of the sessions. In particular, the committee wanted to assess how a change in the law could affect the incidence of homosexuality - if it would open the ‘flood gates of license’ and it looked to other

European countries to do so. Following a discussion of the Swedish legal system, the committee agreed to gather evidence from the Netherlands, as a Code

Napoleon country, Sweden, which had decriminalised homosexuality in 1944, and

126 For selected works on comparative law see Leon Radzinowicz, ‘International Collaboration in Criminal Science’, Law Quarterly Review 58:1, pp. 110-139; Hermann Mannheim, Comparative Criminology (London, 1965); Max Grünhut, Penal Reform: A Comparative Study (Oxford, 1946). 127 Radzinowicz, Sexual Offences. 128 Radzinowicz, Sexual Offences, pp. 429.

West Germany, where all homosexual acts between men remained criminalised.129

Initially, some committee members went so far as to discuss visiting countries ‘closely akin to our own social attitude’, as well as inviting eminent foreign criminal psychologists to testify.130 Ultimately, this international fact- finding mission took a more paper-driven route.131 Committee Secretary, Conwy

Roberts, corresponded with the foreign ministries of Sweden, Denmark, the

Netherlands and Germany to inquire about official approaches towards homosexuality and the prevalence of same-sex behaviours in each country.132 The published Wolfenden Report included an appendix which detailed legal approaches in eleven European countries and argued that, while a relevant statistical comparison with states that had relaxed the law was not possible as no criminal statistics existed, only very few European countries continued to punish homosexual acts between consenting adults in private.133

Émigrés were also key actors in the transfer and negotiation of progressive continental ideas on homosexuality in post-war Britain. Mannheim was a founder editor of the British Journal of Delinquency, a position which put him in close contact with European criminologists and social scientists. International cooperation and coordination between research bodies was a stated aim of the journal authored by Mannheim, Emanuel Miller and eminent psychoanalyst

129 Summary Record of General Exchange of Views at the 14th Meeting (5th October, 1955), TNA PRO HO345/6, p. 2, 6. 130 Summary Record of General Exchange of Views at the 14th Meeting (5th October, 1955), TNA PRO HO345/6, p. 6. 131 Letter to W.C. Conwy Roberts from Rodney Smith, 17th October 1955, TNA PRO HO 345/2. 132 Robert’s correspondence with foreign ministries: TNA PRO HO 345/9. 133 Report of the Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution (London, 1957), p. 24.

Edward Glover. 134 The journal functioned as a key point of connection in the transfer of international legal thought on homosexuality by publishing cutting- edge research by European experts. In 1954, it published The Homosexual in

Society, a pioneering paper by the Dutch criminologist Gerrit Theodoor Kempe, which according to Chris Waters ‘marked something of a watershed in writing published in Britain about homosexuality’.135 At a time when male homosexuality was still firmly framed as a social problem, Kempe’s article instead introduced the notion of homosexual men as a social group, with distinct group characteristics and a ‘typical way of life’.136

Kempe’s article inverted the understanding of homosexuality as a social problem that had dominated debates since the end of the Second World War – it was not the homosexual, but his marginalisation by the wider community that created societal tension.137 According to Kempe, a deep social scientific investigation of homosexuals as a minority group could foster a greater understanding between the marginalised group and wider society. Liberal and progressive commentators further argued that this knowledge could then be used to inform policies which would improve group relations and social cohesion.138

The ISTD, where Mannheim was active alongside psychoanalyst Edward Glover, was key in negotiating these progressive approaches between the expert realm of criminological discourse and the Wolfenden Committee. While the ISTD was firmly indebted to psychoanalytic approaches to crime, its influential

134 Hermann Mannheim, Emanuel Miller and Edward Glover, ‘Editorial Announcement’, The British Journal of Delinquency 1:1 (1950), pp. 3-4; Waters, ‘The Homosexual as a Social Being’’, pp. 696. 135 Waters, ‘The Homosexual as a Social Being’, p. 697 - 698. 136 Gerrit Theodoor Kempe, ‘The Homosexual in Society,’ British Journal of Delinquency 5:1 (1954), pp. 4. 137 Waters, ‘The Homosexual a Social Being’, pp. 697. 138 Waters, ‘The Homosexual a Social Being’, pp. 696-698.

78 memorandum to the Wolfenden Committee echoed Kempe’s call for tolerance, arguing that in a ‘large proportion of cases, there is no answer to homosexuality save tolerance on the part of the intolerant anti-homosexual groups in the community’ and firmly stated that homosexuality did not constitute a crime.139

While the arrival of continental thought on homosexuality, which located homosexuals in wider society, proved productive to British readings of homosexuality, British recompositions of this sexual knowledge were in turn disseminated and eagerly received across Europe through the homophile press.

Gordon Westwood’s 1952 work Society and the Homosexual, which approached same-sex desire both from a sociological and a psychoanalytic perspective, was favourably reviewed in European publications. Arcadie stated that the book treated the subject of homosexuality with ‘understanding and sympathy’ and commended Westwood for revealing the social world of homosexual men ‘on the street corners, the queer bars, the half-dozen special private clubs’, thus breaking the silence around same-sex desire which, as the publication asserted, ‘causes much harm [in Great Britain] and it is nonsense to believe that this protects society’. 140 While the German publication Vox was critical of Westwood’s assessment that homosexuality constituted a mental illness, it praised the author for his multi-level exploration of homosexual desire and stated that ‘it would be good if every judge or public prosecutor involved in a case relating to §175 would carefully study a book such as this’.141 These comments demonstrated that British

139 Memorandum by a Joint Committee Representing the Institute for the Study and Treatment of Delinquency and the Portman Clinic (ISTD), TNA PRO HO 345/9, pp. 9, 16. 140 Author’s translation from French: Peter Rayner, ‘L’Homophilie en Angleterre’, Arcadie 1:2 (1954), pp. 45-47. 141 Author’s translation from German: Christian Graf, ‘Sexuelle Minderheit im Spiegel ausländischer Literatur’, Vox. Stimme freier Menschen 1:1 (1953), pp. 30-31.

79 research on homosexuality permeated national boundaries, and could also be applied to legal and social debates abroad.

Further stimulus for a social scientific investigation of homosexuality came from the United States, in particular from Alfred Kinsey’s study of human sexual behaviours. Kinsey was one of the most direct and powerful influences on the Wolfenden Committee, as his findings were discussed in detail during deliberations and witness hearings. In addition a number of committee members were able to draw on Kinsey’s experience first-hand during a face to face meeting with the famous sexologist in October 1955.142 As Mort has convincingly argued,

Kinsey's objective and morally-neutral theorisation of homosexuality significantly influenced Wolfenden’s pragmatic ethos on homosexuality.143

The publishing history of Kinsey’s first report Sexual Behavior in the

Human Male (1948) revealed divergent public discourses on sex across Europe in the post-war decades, as the reactions to the study’s findings varied greatly in continental Europe and Britain. In Germany, the publishing of the Kinsey Report presented a new way of talking about sex, which replaced moral or religious sexual norms with supposedly objective information.144 In Italy, the ‘Bomba

Kappa’ (the K-Bomb) disrupted a highly conservative cultural climate, in which sex was a moral taboo, guarded over by the Catholic Church. Penelope Morris has revealed a dichotomy in the Italian reception of the Kinsey report, which was simultaneously wary of the dangers of a sweeping ‘Americanisation’ of Italian

142 Notes of a Meeting held at 53, Drayton Gardens, S.W. 10, on Saturday 29th October, 1955, HO 345/9. 143 Mort, Capital Affairs, pp. 167-169. 144 Sybille Steinbacher, Wie der Sex nach Deutschland kam (Berlin, 2011), p. 166-170. See also: Elizabeth Heineman, Before Porn was Legal: The Erotica Empire of Beate Uhse (Chicago, 2011).

80 culture, but also perceived of the USA as a modern and progressive template for future Italian development.145

Kinsey’s 1948 study evoked a strong and enthusiastic response from homophile organisations across western Europe. Homosexual men in West Germany contacted Kinsey to enlist his help in working towards the decriminalisation of homosexuality, while the report was framed as a ‘message de délivrance’ by

French anarcho-communist author and gay rights activist Daniel Guérin.146

According to the German homophile publication Die Gefährten, its readers had familiarised themselves with the report to such an extent that ‘it is not necessary to reprint the extensive statistical material of the report in our pages’.147 The publication saw the Kinsey report as an effective weapon in their ‘fight against

Christian sexual morality’, a struggle in which homosexuals had both ‘justice and truth’ on their side, reinforcing the central role of scientific knowledge in German sexual reform. 148

Kinsey’s rejection of a rigid binary of sexual attraction and his dismissal of the terms ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ could be embraced by homosexual men as a framework to understand their own sexuality, as well as providing evidence for the liberalisation of laws and sexual equality discourses in wider society.

Moreover, Kinsey’s data-driven approach marked a watershed in the

145 Penelope Morris, ‘“Let’s not talk about Italian Sex”: The Reception of the Kinsey Reports in Italy’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies 18:1 (2013), pp. 18-19; Gianni Corbi and Enrico Rosetti, ‘Rapporto Internazionale Sul Compartemento Amorosi della Giuventu’, L’Espresso (20th July 1958); Simona Bondavalli, Fictions of Youth. Pier Paolo Pasolini, Adolescence, Fascism (London, 2015), pp. 87-88. 146 Dagmar Herzog, ‘The Reception of the Kinsey Reports in Europe’, Sexuality and Culture 10:1 (2006), p. 42; Daniel Guérin, ‘Le Message de délivrance de Kinsey’, France Observateur (30th August 1956), p. 14; Christine Cano, ‘The Kinsey Report in France’, Contemporary French Civilization 35:1 (2011), p. 47. For Guérin see Jackson, Living in Arcadia, pp. 95-96. 147 Author’s translation from German: Lud Drisdar, ‘Was lehrt uns der Kinsey Report?’, Die Gefährten 1:4 (1952), pp. 8-12. 148 Author’s translation from German: Drisdar, ‘Was lehrt uns der Kinsey Report?’, pp. 8-12.

81 understanding of non-normative sexual behaviours by employing a non- moralising and quantitative approach.149 His documentation of the remarkable prevalence of homosexual proclivities normalised homosexuality, while his sliding scale, on which 0 marked exclusively heterosexual attraction and 6 exclusively homosexual attraction, disrupted the existing homo-hetero binary and captured a more complex spectrum of human sexuality. That this proved compelling to homosexual men was apparent in the written testimony of one anonymous homosexual doctor supplied to the Wolfenden Committee. He not only drew on Kinsey’s figures to argue for the naturalness of homosexuality, but also ranked himself in column 5 on the Kinsey Scale, ‘predominantly homosexual, but incidentally heterosexual’, demonstrating how such a framework could be applied to establish homosexual selfhood outside of medical notions of individual pathology.150

In Britain, the first Kinsey report was received with far less interest.

Bingham has traced the initial hesitancy of the British press to present the findings of the Kinsey report to a general reluctance to discuss matters of sex, grounded in the sustained legacy of Victorian public morality discourses, which still shrouded them in euphemism or languages of moral outrage. 151 However, the four years which separated the first and second Kinsey reports were marked by a striking proliferation in candid public discourse about sex. The publication of the second

149 Kinsey, Sexual Behaviour, p. 3. 150 Memorandum on certain aspects of the problem of Male Homosexuality as seen by a Homosexual Medical Practitioner, TNA PRO HO 345/8. 151 Adrian Bingham, ‘The “K-Bomb”: Social Surveys, the Popular Press, and British Sexual Culture in the 1940s and 1950s’, Journal of British Studies 50 (2011), pp. 160-162. See also Herzog, ‘Kinsey Reports in Europe’, p. 40; Adrian Bingham, Family Newspapers?: Sex, Private Life, and the British Popular Press 1918-1978 (Oxford, 2009), pp. 97-99; Justin Bengry, ‘Queer Profits: Homosexual Scandal and the Origins of Legal Reform, in Heike Bauer and Matt Cook, Queer 1950s. Rethinking Sexuality in the Postwar Years (New York, 2012), pp. 170-171; Higgins, Heterosexual Dictatorship, pp. 275-276.

Kinsey report Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female in 1953 resulted in a media frenzy with both daily and Sunday newspapers publishing extensive features on the report’s findings.152 The deliberations and expert testimonies of the

Wolfenden Committee attested to Kinsey’s authority, drawing in particular on his approach of scientific objectivity to legitimise official debates and recommend legal reform based on expert evidence. Furthermore, Kinsey’s study gave the

Committee an important indication of the prevalence of non-normative sexual behaviours, revealing that ninety-five per cent of the male population in the USA had engaged in illicit sexual acts punishable under the law.153

In dialogue with other witnesses, the Wolfenden Committee discussed these figures to try to establish the incidence of homosexuality in Britain. During the meeting with members of the Royal Medico-Psychological Society, witnesses stated that the figures were credible, in particular the estimation that 4% of the population were exclusively homosexual.154 Wolfenden’s published report was more cautious in quoting firm figures, but by applying Kinsey’s statistical findings to a British framework, it demonstrated not only an attempt to make homosexuality visible in numerical terms, but also established homosexual men as a small, but substantial minority group in wider society. 155

Continental sexual knowledge, circulated in Britain by émigré psychoanalysts, social scientists and American sexologists like Kinsey, was crucial in shaping post-war understandings of homosexuality in western Europe. Nevertheless, there

152 Bingham, ‘The “K-Bomb’, pp. 156-179. 153 Igo, The Averaged American, p. 256; Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, Alfred C. Kinsey: Sex The Measure of All Things (London, 1998), p. 270; Kinsey, Sexual Behaviour, p. 392. 154 Notes of a meeting with members of the Royal Medico-Psychological Association, 31st October 1955, TNA PRO HO 345/14. For further discussion of Kinsey figures see Summary Record of General Discussions at the twenty-first meeting, TNA PRO HO 345/9, p.3. 155 Report of the Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution, p. 17.

83 existed significant asymmetries in how this knowledge was applied. Continental theory was highly malleable, as well as being mobilised to support different reform aims. British and German official discourses were receptive to the regulating possibilities of psychoanalytic theory, while homosexual campaigners resisted normalising variants of psychoanalysis. Post-war British discussions on homosexuality also revealed that imported sexual knowledge could be reconstituted to fit the requirements of the modern British democracy, but also that this knowledge formed part of a feedback loop of continental theory, as this body of thought was in turn received by scientists and campaigners abroad.

3. Legitimations of the Self

Biological theories of homosexuality as a natural variation, which framed homosexuality not as a morbid condition amenable to treatment, but as a sexual identity which recognised sexuality as part of total personality, offered an alternative approach to understanding same-sex desire. Theories of homosexuality as natural and inborn disrupted notions of sexual abnormality and were deployed by homosexual men across Europe as a strategy of personal legitimation. More than other frameworks which were prevalent during the 1950s, theories which ascribed a genetic basis for same-sex desire offered tools for more radical and defiant affirmations of the homosexual self.

In the discussions of the Wolfenden Committee, the boundaries between biological and sociological schools of thought were not sharply demarcated, but permeable and to a certain extent inter-related. Indeed, as Waters has demonstrated, the language of Freudian psychoanalysis and theories of natural deviation were often intermingled, particularly in the autobiographical self-

84 fashioning of British homosexuals.156 The Wolfenden Report’s extensive discussion of the nature and causes of homosexuality acknowledged the possibility of a genetic predisposition to homosexuality in contrast to pathological understandings of same-sex desire. This was based on evidence submitted by witnesses such as Dr Eustace Chesser, the Institute of Biology, the Joint

Memorandum of Zoologists and Geneticists by Professor C.D. Darlington, Sir

Ronald Fisher and Dr. Julian Huxley, as well as by Lionel Penrose, Professor of

Eugenics at University College London, who submitted evidence as part of the

BMA’s memorandum.

These witnesses offered a genetic perspective on homosexuality, which understood same-sex attraction as a natural biological variation. 157 Many contemporary commentators and expert witnesses to the Wolfenden Committee attributed notions of homosexuality as a natural deviation to Havelock Ellis, as well as referencing the twin studies conducted by the German-born American psychiatrist Franz Josef Kallmann in the early 1950s, which strongly indicated a genetic foundation for homosexuality.158 Yet, the intellectual foundations of this framework need to be situated in a longer tradition of transnational exchanges between British and continental sexologists dating from the nineteenth century.

The Prussian sexologist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs framed homosexuality as a natural variance that could not be criminalised and coined the term ‘Urning’ to

156 Waters, ‘Havelock Ellis’, pp. 165-171. 157 Report of the Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution, pp. 14-15; Memorandum on Homosexuality Submitted by Dr. Eustace Chesser, TNA PRO HO 345/8; Memorandum submitted by the Institute of Biology, TNA PRO HO 345/8; Memorandum Submitted by Professor C.D. Darlington, Sir Ronald Fisher and Dr. Julian Huxley, TNA PRO HO 345/9; Memorandum of Evidence Prepared by a Special Committee of the Council of the British Medical Association, November 1955, TNA PRO HO 345/9. 158 Mort, Capital Affairs, p. 180.

85 denote a sexual identity characterised by same-sex attraction.159 His conceptualisation of homosexual desire was grounded in a case-history methodology which divorced sexual identity from the body, disrupting dominant binary concepts of gender. Ulrichs’ paradigm of homosexuality, defining the category of a ‘Third Sex’ in which a ‘female soul’ inhabited a male body, remained highly influential throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century.160 The notion of homosexuality as a natural inborn condition was particularly relevant to early twentieth-century British sexology. Kate Fisher and

Jana Funke have asserted that British sexology departed from the emphasis earlier continental sexologists such as Krafft-Ebing had placed on the morbidity of same- sex relations through critical readings of continental theory. Instead, the work of

British sex researchers refined and evolved European sexual knowledge and added to an expanding body of knowledge that treated homosexuality as a natural variance rather than a disease. 161

This departure from pathological theories was particularly evident in the work of Havelock Ellis and John Addington Symonds. When Ellis published

Sexual Inversion in collaboration with Symonds in 1897, it was the first comprehensive English medical textbook on homosexuality in the United

Kingdom. Ellis and Symonds intended to create a paradigm of male homosexuality, which had up to this point remained conspicuously absent from

159 Hubert C. Kennedy, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, Pioneer of the Modern Gay Movement (San Francisco, 2002), pp. 59-66. 160 Karl-Heinrich Ulrichs, Forschungen über das Räthsel der mannmännlichen Liebe (Leipzig, 1864). See also Joseph Bristow, ‘Symond’s History, Ellis’s Heredity’, p. 90; Bauer, Literary Sexology, pp. 23-28. 161 Kate Fisher and Jana Funke, ‘British Sexual Science beyond the Medical: Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Historical and Cross-Cultural Translations’, in Heike Bauer (ed.), Sexology and Translation. Cultural and Scientific Encounters across the Modern World (Philadelphia, 2015), pp. 95-114.

British medical discussions.162 Their conclusion that homosexuality was in the majority of cases congenital, not acquired, was influenced in particular by their engagement with the theories of German psychiatrist Karl Friedrich Otto

Westphal and Ulrichs, both of whom argued that an inborn condition could not be deemed a vice. Ellis and Symonds transposed this argument on to the state of the

British law, thereby challenging the late Victorian medico-legal understanding of homosexuality as a crime, and advocating a more compassionate approach to the social, ethical and legal dimensions of homosexuality. 163

Ellis’ language of sexual inversion permeated the memoranda and discussions of the Wolfenden Committee, not just in a medical context, but also in the evidence of legal professionals, reformers and Christian morality groups, who applied the concept of inversion to mark a distinct category of homosexuality. The taxonomy of ‘true inverts’ was applied to forms of homosexuality which were seen as genetically determined and incurable, in opposition to cases in which homosexuality was understood as acquired.164 Yet such systems of classification misinterpreted Ellis’ model of homosexuality as a natural deviation, which argued that any theory of same-sex attraction as episodic, situational or acquired was

‘wholly unworkable’.165 While questions of classification that applied a concept of ‘inversion’ as a counterpoint to ‘perversion’ unmistakably occupied the

Wolfenden Committee, its members were ultimately cautious about dividing

162 Brady, Symonds, p. 29; See: Ellis to Symonds, 1st July 1892, Bristol University Special Collections: DM 109/30, published in Brady, Symonds, p. 222. 163 Havelock Ellis, My Life (London, 1939), 349-350; Ellis, Sexual Inversion, pp. 65-75, 208-216; Sean Brady, Symonds, p. 25; Bristow, ‘Symond’s History, Ellis’s Heredity’, p. 92. 164 See for example Interim Report of a Sub-Committee of the Public Morality Council, TNA PRO HO 345/7; The Homosexual, the Law and Society. Evidence Submitted by the Church of England Moral Welfare Council, TNA PRO HO 345/7; Interview of N.R. Fox-Andrews, P.A.O. McGrath, R. Ormrod and R.E. Seaton, on behalf of the General Council of the Bar, 20 February 1956, TNA PRO HO 345/16; see also Lewis, Wolfenden’s Witnesses, pp. 233-234. 165 Ellis, Sexual Inversion, p. 182.

87 homosexual men into distinct and sharply delineated categories - instead tentatively suggesting a continuum of homo- and heterosexuality without sharp delineations, an approach clearly indebted to Kinsey.166

While Ellis’ reworking of continental sexual theory provided a compelling framework for the establishing of homosexual taxonomies in the 1950s, the works of Edward Carpenter further illustrated how continental sexual knowledge could be adapted to British discussions of homosexuality. Carpenter was familiar with the works of a range of continental sexologists, such as Krafft-Ebing, Albert Moll and Otto de Joux, as well as Lamarckian philosophy, Hindu mysticism and the poetry of Walt Whitman, which helped him to accept and understand his own homosexual desires.167 He drew particularly on Ulrichs’ work not only in terminology, by adopting the terms ‘Urnings’ and ‘Uranian’ alongside the more descriptive ‘intermediate sex’, but also followed Ulrichs’ model of homosexuals constituting a ‘Third Sex’.168

As a prominent figure of the British socialist movement, which sought to change society through gradual reform rather than revolution, Carpenter presented a utopian vision for a future tolerant society. This was based on the belief that homosexuals could act as a positive force in a sexually and morally liberated nation, alluding to extraordinary intellectual and artistic talents, which he saw as particularly prevalent among homosexuals.169 While theories of homosexuality in

German-speaking nations became more firmly embedded within medical

166 Report of the Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution, p. 12. See also Wolfenden’s remarks in a meeting with the Magistrates Association: Notes of a Meeting, 1st February 1956, TNA PRO HO 345/16. 167 Florence Tamagne, A History of Homosexuality in Europe, Vol. I & II: Berlin, London Paris 1919-1939 (New York, 2006), p. 86; Emmanuel Cooper, The Sexual Perspective: Homosexuality and Art in the Last 100 Years in the West, 3rd edition (New York, 2005), p. 108. 168 Edward Carpenter, The Intermediate Sex, 2nd edition (London, 1912), pp. 19-36. 169 Carpenter, Intermediate, p. 114.

88 discourses, socialism and sexual rights became interrelated with the British socialist movement, in particular the Fellowship of the New Life and the Fabian

Society, who believed that sexual liberty would facilitate social change.170

Continental sexological theory was thereby reformulated, as it became firmly enmeshed with the political motivations of sexual rights activists such as

Carpenter.

However, the impact of Carpenter’s body of work did not remain confined to a British context. The Intermediate Sex, which foregrounded the complex emotional and intellectual inner life of homosexual men, experienced a resurgence in European homophile publications in the post-war period, as activists rediscovered his writings in a move to challenge perceptions of sexual abnormality. While Arcadie asked its reader in 1955 ‘who, in France, knows

Edward Carpenter?’, Vriendshap had reviewed The Intermediate Sex the previous year to come to the conclusion that the ‘sympathetic booklet’ occupied ‘a very current position, in which we find ourselves right now’.171 In a sharp criticism of medicalised theories of sexual degeneracy and psychoanalysis, Vriendschap asserted that progress for homosexuals had been delayed by these approaches, stating that

One can conclude that Carpenter […] could see with a clear eye what we can only now see again thanks to our experiences with marriage, divorce and education reforms, and, most importantly, the homosexual movement and activism.172

170 William Pannapacker, Revised Lives: Whitman, Religion, and Constructions of Identity in Nineteenth-Century Anglo-American Culture (London, 2005), pp. 116-118. 171 Author’s translation from Dutch: Floris van Mechelen [Henri Methorst], ‘Boekbespreking. Edward Carpenter “The Intermediate Sex”’, Vriendschap 9:1 (1954), pp. 11-12. Author’s translation from French: n.a., ‘Edward Carpenter’, Arcadie 2:4 (1955) p. 37. 172 Author’s translation from Dutch: Floris van Mechelen [Henri Methorst], ‘Boekbespreking’, pp. 11-12.

Vriendschap’s assessment of Carpenter’s work not only demonstrated an antipathy towards pathologising theories of homosexuality in homophile circles, but also highlighted that understandings of homosexuality which had been formulated in Britain were adopted as a powerful tool to challenge the status quo by European sexual rights campaigners.

The intellectual foundations first set out by continental sexology and elaborated by British sex reformers continued to form an essential framework for the discussion of homosexuality into the middle of the twentieth century, as

Wolfenden’s expert witnesses demonstrated. For example, Chesser’s memorandum invoked Ellis and Symonds, as well as Carpenter’s works, to demonstrate how persuasively notions of homosexuality as an inborn deviation could be applied to argue for legal reform. In his written evidence and Live and

Let Live, his 1958 call for reform, Chesser drew on Carpenter’s terminology of homosexuality as an ‘intermediate sex’ and the notion of homosexuality as a benign biological mutation. In a legal sense, he believed that homosexual acts between consenting adults in private should not be criminalised. Instead, he argued that it was the offence which should be judged and not the sexual orientation of the offender, mirroring the legal utilitarianism which characterised the recommendations of the Wolfenden Report itself. Using the third sex paradigm, Chesser argued that homosexuals formed a separate category of sexual identity - ‘a creature of a different species from the rest of us’ and advocated civilised tolerance towards homosexuality, which he regarded as an irreversible condition.173

173 Memorandum submitted by Dr. Eustace Chesser, TNA PRO HO 345/08; Eustace Chesser, Live and Let Live. The Moral of the Wolfenden Report (London, 1958), pp. 18-25.

Demands for the acceptance of sexual difference in society, based on the understanding of homosexuality as a natural variation, were equally evident in the writings of European campaigners for sexual equality. The German publication

Die Gefährten, for example, stated that ‘we want to achieve that our otherness is accepted as fact, without discriminating against us or slinging mud’.174 Biological theories of same-sex attraction therefore not only legitimised a liberalisation of anti-homosexuality laws but could also be deployed to demand respect for homosexuals in wider society.

One of the most poignant examples of the dynamics of transnational exchange was evident in comparisons of homosexuality to colour blindness as a harmless biological variation. The concept of colour blindness was first introduced by Symonds, based on a close reading of Ulrichs’ theories, which were embedded within a legal framework of the universality of human rights.175 From

Ulrichs’ legal arguments against the prosecution of same-sex acts, Symonds argued that ‘to deal with him [the homosexual] according to your code is no less monstrous than if you were to punish the colour-blind, or the deaf and dumb, or albinoes, or crooked-back cripples.’176 This analogy also featured in Ellis and

Symonds’ exchanges and was later expanded by Ellis to include colour hearing, or synaesthesia, which likened homosexuality to a special skill or unusual awareness and allowed the argument that genetic abnormalities did not invariably constitute an illness.177 After Sexual Inversion was first published in 1896, the comparison to synaesthesia appeared in the works of several continental scientists. French

174 Author’s translation from German: n.a., ‘Wir und die Anderen’, Die Gefährten 1:1 (1952), pp. 12-13. 175 John Addington Symonds, A Problem in Modern Ethics (London, 1896), pp. 84-85. 176 Symonds, A Problem in Modern Ethics, p. 112. 177 Symonds to Ellis, Ellis, Sexual Inversion, pp. 186-187.

91 psychologist Théodule Ribot and French physician Charles Féré both applied the concept, as did Hirschfeld, who drew from it wider societal implications by invoking homosexuality as a group identity, remarking that Symonds’ comparison to colour blindness marked homosexuals not as degenerated, but simply as part of a minority. 178

This concept was enduring as it served as a powerful rhetorical device for arguing the benign nature of homosexuality, as colour-blindness was widespread and the condition was familiar even to laypeople. It featured especially prominently in Peter Wildeblood’s testimony to the Wolfenden Committee.

Wildeblood questioned the justification of punishing homosexual men or forcing them into treatment by drawing on Ellis and the concept of homosexuality as a natural variation indeed akin to colour blindness.179 A memorandum edited jointly by three eminent geneticists further expanded Ellis’ comparison to colour- blindness by referring to homosexuality as a condition similar to left-handedness.

It cautioned that attempts to change a child’s handedness had proved harmful, thereby situating cures for homosexuality within a context of antiquated therapeutic interventions and presenting a powerful case for legal reform.180

While Wildeblood, a Daily Mail correspondent who had served a twelve- month sentence for homosexual offences in Wormwood Scrubs in 1954, presented his own homosexuality cautiously as an ‘unfortunate condition’, continental

178 Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2, 3rd revised and enlarged edition (Frankfurt, 2018 [1923]), p. 316; Magnus Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualität des Mannes und des Weibes (Berlin, 1914), pp. 372-374; Charles Féré, ‘La descencance d’un inverti’, in Revue Genérale de Clinique et Thérapeutique (Paris, 1896); Théodule Ribot, The Psychology of the Emotions (London, 1897), pp. 257-258. 179 Statement submitted by Mr. Peter Wildeblood, TNA PRO HO 345/8; Notes of a Meeting, 24th May 1955, TNA PRO HO 345/13, p. 26. 180 Memorandum submitted by Professor C.D. Darlington, Sir Ronald Fisher and Dr Julian Huxley, PRO TNA HO 345/8, p. 2.

European campaigners for sexual rights formulated more radical validations of same-sex attraction. These were frequently based on biological theories of same- sex desire, which disrupted dominant paradigms of pathology and perversion.

Jack Argo, a pseudonym used by the German journalist Johannes Werres, reviewed research presented to the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sexualforschung by

German physician W.W. Schlegel in 1954. His paper asserted that both homosexuality and heterosexuality were inborn and hereditary in most cases.181

Argo stated that this research was 'epoch-making' and deployed it to challenge moralising discourses that saw procreation as the sole legitimisation for sexuality:

One cannot make the judgement: ‘This love has no point; therefore it must not exist’, instead one has to logically conclude that: ‘This love exists, therefore, it must have a point’. 182

Argo further drew on Schlegel's research, which had concluded that human sexuality played a crucial role in allowing ‘the individual to develop and flourish’, to argue for the homosexual's right to sexual and emotional self-actualisation and crucially, a change in the German Federal law.

Argo was not alone in drawing on scientific works that moved human sexual desire out of the nexus of procreation to articulate a more radical legitimisation for sexual fulfilment. Writing in Die Gefährten, regular contributor

Lud Drisdar [Ernst Ludwig Driess] stated that sexology had proved that sex not only served a purpose in sexual reproduction but also aided ‘psychological relaxation’. He condemned the ‘handful of laws’ which ‘attempted to normalise

181 Ernst Ostertag, ‘Johannes Werres’, Schwulengeschichte.CH , (2005) [accessed 15 August 2019]. For Johannes Werres see also Rupp, ‘Persistence of Transnational Organizing’, p. 1020. 182 Author’s translation from German: Jack Argo, ‘Prägung oder konstitutionelle Anlage?’, Der Kreis 23:5 (1955), pp. 8- 10.

93 human sexuality’ and instead demanded ‘our [homosexuals] right to sexual activity’. 183 In opposition to what he saw as the hypocrisy of the state and the wider public, which regarded only marital sex between a man and a woman as morally legitimate, he opined that sexual science had ‘perfectly and undeniably demonstrated that the sexual urge may present itself in countless variations’.184 By invoking a naturally diverse spectrum of sexual identities, he provided an understanding of same-sex desire that was both persuasive and appealing to homosexual men, who were faced with discrimination and societal hostility, based on their supposed abnormality.

In the opening piece of the same issue, Hermann Weber, who had been a member of Hirschfeld’s Scientific and Humanitarian Committee during the 1920s, articulated an unapologetic defence of same-sex desire, based on the belief that

‘sexual science has shown that this love [homosexuality] is also founded in nature and therefore cannot be called unnatural’.185 Far from simply attempting to justify homosexual attraction, he argued that ‘we encourage this [homosexual] desire, as every person, including the homosexual, has a right to this love’.186 Theories which ascribed a biological basis for same-sex desire could therefore be deployed by homosexual men to legitimise the self, outside of the nexus of pathology and perversion. While British homosexual men and public commentators were more likely to draw on theories of natural variation to argue for the diminished culpability of homosexuality, homosexuals in West Germany drew on the same

183 Author’s translation from German: Lud Drisdar, ‘Unsere Forderungen und eine notwendige Klarstellung’, Die Gefährten 1:1 (1952), pp. 7-9. 184 Author’s translation from German: Drisdar, ‘Unsere Forderungen’, p. 7. 185 Author’s translation from German: Hermann Weber, ‘Zum Geleit’, Die Gefährten 1:1 (1952), pp. 1-3. For Weber see Whisnant, Male Homosexuality, p. 77. 186 Weber, ‘Zum Geleit’, pp. 1-3.

94 scientific foundations to make more radical demands for equality, regarding the right to sexual fulfilment.

Conclusion

This chapter has argued that the processes of knowledge creation which engendered the production of the Wolfenden Report were more deeply embedded within continental discourses of same-sex desire than has so far been suggested by historical research. Key scientific frameworks for understanding homosexuality in post-war Britain were not produced solely in the vacuum of the British nation state. Rather, they were generated through the translation and adaptation of continental sexual knowledge, specifically from scientific discourses crystallised within German-speaking nations over a long historical period, as well as an engagement with US and continental social scientific research methodologies. Yet this scientific expertise was not applied exclusively to British discourses on homosexuality; medical, sociological, psychological and biological foundations were universally mobilised as a vehicle for social and political change across much of western Europe.

What did set Britain apart was how strictly sexual knowledge was privileged to the realm of the expert and scrutinised by state officials, whereas sexual theories became increasingly democratised in the European homophile press and subject to discussion in interdisciplinary scientific forums. Furthermore, considering British post-war discourses on homosexuality within a transnational framework has demonstrated that interpretations of the same body of thought could reveal distinct national inflections which were as much determined by cultural contexts, as they were by the position of the interlocutor. Discussions

95 which took place in closer proximity to official discourses were more attentive to theories that offered the potential to regulate and ‘cure’ the homosexual.

Homosexual men across western Europe, on the other hand, mostly remained sceptical of normalising interventions and found compelling evidence to support demands for the right to love and sexual fulfilment in approaches which ascribed a biological basis for same-sex attraction.

Finally, this chapter has demonstrated that the development of scientific thought on homosexuality by no means constituted a linear progression. Indeed, the complex discussions of the Wolfenden Committee and the broad range of approaches discussed in the European homophile press demonstrated that there was no singular scientific framework for understanding and discussing homosexuality during the 1950s. Diverging theories of homosexuality were by no means static, but were often interrelated and competed for intellectual space. They demonstrated not only that sexual knowledge was highly contested, but also that the boundaries between divergent frameworks were only loosely defined in post- war west European understandings of homosexuality.

Chapter 2:

‘Why Not?’1 Transnational Influences in British Sexual Rights Activism, 1950-1970

When Anthony Grey, one of the key campaigners for the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Britain visited the Netherlands in 1961, he was struck by how tolerant the Dutch public and law enforcement appeared towards homosexuality.2

Grey was among thousands of foreign gay men who visited Amsterdam every year, coinciding with the boom in mass tourism in the 1950s and 1960s, enabled by the greater availability of private transport and workers’ entitlement to paid holidays.3 The clubhouse of the Dutch homophile organisation Cultuur- en

Ontspanningscentrum (COC), which offered cultural and recreational activities for gay men, saw the number of foreign visitors steadily rising from 1650 in 1956 to almost 6000 in 1960, prompting COC founder Bob Angelo, the pseudonym employed by Dutch actor Niek Engelschman, to state categorically that ‘the

Netherlands and Amsterdam are islands of human freedom for minorities inwhich that [sic] “homoerotic tourism” arises’.4

Grey was drawn to the ‘very gay atmosphere’ of Amsterdam and noted the progressive social integration of gay men, which enabled the establishment of a respectable and overt scene, contrasting starkly with commercial forms of

1 Antony Grey, ‘Why Not’ [1961], in Antony Grey, Speaking Out: Writings on Sex, Law, Politics and Society, 1954-1995 (London, 1997), pp. 61-63. 2 Antony Grey was the pseudonym employed by Antony Edgar Garside Wright. 3 Tony Judt, Postwar. A History of Europe Since 1945 (London, 2005), pp. 340-343. For an in- depth discussion of homosexual tourism in the post-war period see Chapter Four. 4 n.a., ‘Balance Sheet ICSE 1956’ (exact date unknown, 1956), NL-HaNA, COC/166; Bob Angelo to Antony Grey, 13th January 1961, HCA/Albany Trust/7/3, Hall-Carpenter Archives (hereafter HCA).

97 homosociability in Britain.5 In London, the places where homosexual men could meet were divided along class lines, with discreet members-only clubs affording privacy for well-to-do customers, while men from poorer backgrounds socialised in downmarket establishments in the city’s more disreputable areas.6

Shortly after his return from Amsterdam, Grey recorded his feelings in a short article, titled ‘Why Not?’ which remained unpublished at the time, but captured that this visit had presented to Grey an alternative model of society.7 In the Netherlands, homosexuality was not only accepted, but gay men could live ordinary and respectable lives, free from fear of prosecution or blackmail. Grey’s article described the clubhouse of the COC, where gay men could socialise and dance, stating that it was ‘so normal, so ordinary’, while the opening paragraph poignantly challenged British attitudes towards homosexuality:

Men. Dancing Together. Women dancing together is O.K.: we’re used to that. But men. Dancing together! At first the sight of men dancing together astonishes an Englishman. And yet: why not? 8

Grey’s article not only illuminated how diverse conditions were for gay men across western Europe, but also how an engagement with foreign political and sexual cultures could shape the expectations and aspirations of gay rights

5 Antony Grey interviewed by Margot Farnham (14th February 1990), Hall-Carpenter Oral History Project, British Library Sound Archive, C456/71. For the integration of homosexual men in the Netherlands see for example Gert Hekma, ‘Queer Amsterdam, 1945-2010’, in Jennifer V. Evans and Matt Cook (eds.), Queer Cities, Queer Cultures: Europe since 1945 (London, 2014), pp. 118- 134; Gert Hekma and Jan Willem Duyvendak, ‘The Netherlands: Depoliticization of Homosexuality and Homosexualization of Politics’, in Manon Tremblay, David Paternotte and Carol Johnson (eds.), The Lesbian and Gay Movement and the State. Comparative Insights into a Transformed Relationship (Abingdon, 2016), pp. 103-117; Judith Schuyf and André Krouwel, ‘The Dutch Lesbian and Gay Movement. The Politics of Accommodation’, in Barry Adam, Jan Willem Duyvendak and André Krouwel (eds.), The Global Emergence of Gay and Lesbian Politics. National Imprints of a Worldwide Movement (Philadelphia, 1999), pp. 158-183. 6 For commercial homosexual establishments in Britain see Matt Houlbrook, Queer London: Perils and Pleasures of the Sexual Metropolis, 1918-1957 (London, 2005), pp. 90-92. 7 Grey, ‘Why Not’, pp. 61-63. See also David Minto, ‘Mr Grey Goes to Washington: the Homophile Internationalism of Britain’s Homosexual Law Reform Society’, in Brian Lewis (ed.), British Queer History. New Approaches and Perspectives (Manchester, 2013), p. 223. 8 Grey, ‘Why Not’, pp. 61-63.

98 campaigners in other nations. As Leila Rupp has outlined, activism spread from the Netherlands across Europe, where the International Committee for Sexual

Equality (ICSE), established by the Dutch COC, worked to unite domestic homophile organisations by politicising the cosmopolitanism traditionally associated with elite homosexual culture.9

Grey’s visit to Amsterdam occurred within a trajectory of shared European experiences. In Britain, the decriminalisation of male homosexuality took place within a broad spectrum of liberal-humanitarian reforms, the foundations of which had emerged in the 1950s and also included the abolition of capital punishment

(1965), as well as the reform of abortion (1967) and divorce laws (1969). This was by no means an exclusively British phenomenon, as liberalising tendencies were felt across continental Europe from the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, driven by economic affluence and liberal and social democratic governments, which advocated the creation of welfare states, while reducing the state’s influence over citizens’ private lives and opinions.10

In this chapter, I investigate how wider transnational movements for homosexual equality shaped the political and social aspirations of British homosexual rights organisations in the 1950s and 1960s, focussing on the institutional connections between sexual rights groups and links between

9 For homophile internationalism see Leila Rupp, ‘The Persistence of Transnational Organizing: The Case of the Homophile Movement’, American History Review 116:4 (2011), p. 1017. A fuller discussion of homosexual cosmopolitanism can be found in Rupp’s updated and shortened article, see Leila J. Rupp, The European Origins of Transnational Organising: The International Committee for Sexual Equality’, in Phillip M. Ayoub and David Paternotte (eds.), LGBT Activism and the Making of Europe: A Rainbow Europe? (Basingstoke, 2014), pp. 35-40. 10 Judt, Postwar, pp. 370-377; Paul Kubicek, European Politics, 2nd edition (London, 2017), pp. 364-366; Gerassimos Moschonas, In the Name of Social Democracy: The Great Transformation, 1945 to the Present (London, 2002), pp. 215-219; Rosemary Wakeman, ‘The Golden Age of Prosperity’, in Rosemary Wakeman (ed.), Themes in Modern European History Since 1945 (London, 2003), pp. 45-65.

99 individual campaigners. I draw on David Minto’s analysis of Antony Grey’s contacts with the European homophile movement, yet seek to decentre post-war

British sexual rights activism by including actors who worked transnationally prior to the inception of the Homosexual Law Reform Society in 1958 and investigate how provincial campaigns responded to the example set by European homophile activism during the 1960s.11 A particular focus will lie on the North

West Homosexual Law Reform Committee (NWHLRC) and tensions with the national campaign over establishing meeting places for homosexuals. I highlight that there were distinct emphases in campaigning outside of elite cosmopolitan circles and that local campaigns were often closely aligned with the aims and ideology of the international homophile movement.

I therefore challenge narratives of British post-war sexual rights activism as disparate or even parochial. While I acknowledge the specificities of the British campaign outlined by David Minto and Julian Jackson, I nevertheless reposition

British activists within the European homophile movement.12 I argue that British campaigners engaged with transnational equal rights discourses throughout the

1950s and 1960s, despite not overtly subscribing to the model of a ‘collective identity that transcended national differences’, as outlined by Rupp.13 I will highlight processes of mutual exchange and demonstrate that the HLRS attempted to make visible in Britain liberal European sexual attitudes, as well as embedding the work of British campaigners within wider European discourses of sexual equality and networks of international activism.

11 Minto, ‘Mr Grey’, pp. 219-243. 12 Minto, ‘Mr Grey’, p. 238; Julian Jackson, ‘The Homophile Movement’, in David Paternotte, Manon Tremblay (eds.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Lesbian and Gay Activism (Abingdon, 2015), p. 33. 13 Rupp, ‘Persistence of Transnational Organizing’, p. 1027.

100

This chapter will first examine the key characteristics of the European homophile movement and how European campaigners sought to influence the debates surrounding the Wolfenden Report, as well as illuminating early COC-led attempts to establish a network of activists in Britain. The chapter then investigates dynamic processes of transnational exchange, as British campaigners became increasingly embedded in international networks of sexual equality activism, tracing the ways in which they drew on notions of civilised European liberalism in their campaigning. Furthermore, I demonstrate that while the HLRS was a dominant voice in the campaign for law reform, it was by no means hegemonic. Energetic locally-run campaigns drew on distinct aspects of European sexual cultures to address the acute social needs of homosexual men outside of metropolitan elite circles. Finally, the chapter will examine the ways in which the

HLRS transmitted British experiences and successful campaigning strategies across Europe, beginning in the mid-1960s.

1. The International Homophile Movement

In May 1951, activists met in Amsterdam to attend a conference on homosexual rights, which had been organised by the Dutch COC and would take a decidedly international outlook, as the opening speech was delivered in German, French and

English.14 Among the speakers were Bob Angelo, Henri Methorst, who would become the chairman of the International Committee for Sexual Equality (ICSE), as well as a number of medical experts and intellectuals, such as the German psychiatrist Ernst Ludwig Driess, who had published in German homophile publications under the pen name Lud Drisdar, and the psychiatrist and sex

14 Rolf, ‘ICSE Kongress’, Der Kreis 7 (1951), p. 130. See also Rupp, ‘Transnational Organising’, p. 1014.

101 educator Dr Wolfgang Bredtschneider.15 The conference was also attended by

British men, most prominently Rom Landau, an author and diplomat, whose paper examined ethical and religious aspects of homosexuality.16 In addition, the

German pacifist Kurt Hiller sent a letter to the conference from London, to where he had fled during the war, emphatically calling to unite national efforts to create a ‘homophile international’. 17

Leila Rupp has argued that the homophile movement of the 1950s was not in fact an isolated movement, but had intellectual and conceptual ties to the inter- war World League of Sexual Reform, drawing on an established legacy of elite homosexual internationalism. 18 In addition, the term ‘homophile’ itself linked the post-war sexual equality movement to the inter-war era, as the term had first been coined by the German psychologist and homosexual activist Karl-Günther

Heimsoth in 1924. 19 As Jackson has demonstrated, the term gained traction when it was first adopted by the COC in the 1940s, followed by other homosexual movements in Europe and the United States.20 Furthermore, Benno Gammerl has shown that the term homophile was an important tool towards normalising homosexuality. It allowed homosexual men to challenge the derogatory sexualisation of same-sex desire by emphasising emotions and same-sex love,

15 See Chapter One for more detailed biographical information on Ernst Ludwig Driess and Dr Wolfgang Bredtschneider. 16 ICSE, Report of First ICSE Congress 1951, NL-HaNA, COC/158. For biographical information on Rom Landau see n.a., ‘Register of the Rom Landau Middle East Collection’, Online Archive of California [accessed on 19th September 2019]. 17 Letter Kurt Hiller, reprinted in n.a., ‘Report of First ICSE Congress 1951’, NL-HaNA, COC/158. 18 Rupp, ‘Transnational Organising’, pp. 1014-1018. 19 Laurie Marhoefer, Sex and the Weimar Republic: German Homosexual Emancipation and the Rise of the Nazis (Toronto, 2015), pp. 153-156. 20 Jackson, ‘The Homophile Movement’, p. 31.

102 enabling activists to challenge notions of homosexuality as deviant.21 To this end, homophile publications drew on a language of friendship and companionship, capturing a breadth of human emotion, including non-sexual forms of affection.

This also became manifest in many of the publications’ titles such as Die

Gefährten (The Companions, Germany, 1952-1954), Die Freunde (The Friends,

Germany, 1951-1952), Dein Freund – Zeitschrift für Freundschaft und

Verständigung (Your Friend – Magazine for Friendship and Understanding,

Germany, 1954), Der Weg zu Freundschaft und Toleranz (The Path to Friendship and Tolerance, Germany, 1952-1970); Vriendschap (Friendship, The Netherlands, from 1947) and Vennen (Friend, Denmark, 1949 to 1974).22

The theme of friendship proved potent in shaping a collective European homophile identity and discourse. Rupp has outlined that a shared sexual identity could bridge national divides following the Second World War, as western

European countries pursued closer alliances with their neighbours amid mounting

Cold War tensions.23 While the homophile movements of the 1950s and 1960s were subjected to criticism by the more radical and liberationist campaigners of the 1970s and 1980s for their conservatism and ‘politics of assimilation’, they nevertheless exhibited an acute awareness of a shared European or even global

21 Benno Gammerl, ‘Eine makellose Liebe’, in Bernhard Gotto and Elke Seefried (eds.), Männer mit "Makel" Männlichkeiten und gesellschaftlicher Wandel in der frühen Bundesrepublik (Berlin, 2017), pp. 110. 22 For theme of ‘Friendship’ in homophile publications, see Jackson, ‘The Homophile Movement’, p. 45. For overview of German homophile publications see: Bernhard Rosenkranz and Gottfried Lorenz (eds.), Hamburg auf anderen Wegen: Die Geschichte des schwulen Lebens in der Hansestadt (Hamburg, 2012), pp. 80-87. Chapter Three includes a more detailed analysis of the language employed by homophile publications. 23 Rupp, ‘Transnational Organising’, p. 1026; Judt, Postwar, pp. 241-245.

103 challenge, with national sexual equality groups adapting a wider transnational discourse to distinct local campaigns.24

Peter Haas’ research on ‘epistemic communities’ has offered a valuable analysis of how actors from different national backgrounds established transnational communities of knowledge-based experts, shaping international policy-making and becoming influential political actors both nationally and internationally. While this framework cannot be unreservedly applied to the homophile movement of the post-war years, as activists’ expertise was often only hesitantly recognised by authorities, Haas nevertheless outlined central mechanisms for the emergence of transnational networks of non-state actors through ‘shared normative and principled beliefs’, ‘shared causal beliefs’, ‘shared notions of validity’ as well as a ‘common policy enterprise’.25 Although the aims of various national homophile groups were by no means homogeneous, the interactions of transnational community members were nevertheless based on a shared vision of improved living conditions for homosexual men, rooted in a predominantly middle-class trust in modern science and rational argument, rather than abrupt and radical change.26

Even though some of the conference attendees came from countries in which homosexual acts were criminal offences, the conference was far from a clandestine meeting. Instead, the organisers of the conference sought to maximise

24 John d’Emilio has characterised the 1950s homophile movement as a ‘retreat to respectability’, see John D'Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities. The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 2nd edition (London, 1988), pp. 75-90. See also Jackson, ‘The Homophile Movement’, pp. 40-41; Annamarie Jagose, Queer Theory: An Introduction (New York, 1996), pp. 28-29. For criticisms of homophile movement and Gay Liberation Front see Jeffrey Weeks, Coming Out. Homosexual Politics in Britain from the Nineteenth Century to the Present, revised edition (London, 1990), pp. 185-206. 25 Peter Haas, ‘Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination’, International Organization 46:1 (1992), p. 3. 26 For homophile beliefs see Jackson, ‘The Homophile Movement’, p. 33.

104 their reach and attract international attention by projecting their discussions into the supranational realm and addressing a telegram to the United Nations (UN).

The telegram invoked the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the

United Nations General Assembly only three years before, to demand rights for homosexual minorities.27

Karl Meier, better known by his pseudonym Rolf, chief editor of the Swiss homophile publication Der Kreis, attended the conference and demonstrated the keen awareness of activists regarding the legal position of homosexuals in countries outside of their own. Rolf posited that an international organisation for sexual equality would be necessary for as long as homosexual men were regarded as ‘second or third class citizens’ in any nation across the globe.28 Rolf’s statement highlighted that the emerging homophile movement had a strongly developed international consciousness and aimed to foster an ethos of solidarity.

The strategies through which early homosexual rights groups and publications, such as the Dutch COC, Der Kreis in Switzerland, Arcadie in France and

Scandinavian organisations, such as the Norske Forbundet av 1948 sought to promote greater sexual equality included petitioning governments, educating homosexual men and the wider public by producing and distributing pamphlets and newsletters, and conducting research into sociological and psychological aspects of homosexuality.

Transnational campaigning lay at the heart of the ICSE’s strategy for achieving a shift towards greater sexual equality in Europe. Yet, the organisation also acknowledged that this would require diverse emphases and methods of

27 Rupp, ‘Transnational Organising’, p. 1014. For a more detailed analysis of rights-based language in homophile discourses see Chapter Three. 28Author’s translation from German: Rolf, ‘ICSE Kongress’, Der Kreis 7 (1951), p. 13.

105 campaigning, as a diverse western European political, cultural and legal landscape produced divergent scopes for activist activities, leading homophile groups across western Europe to set different priorities within their national and local campaigns.

French, Swiss, Danish, Swedish and Dutch homophile groups did not pursue legal reform, as homosexuality was not regarded as a criminal offence, even though all of these countries had set a higher age of consent for homosexual acts. 29 However, the cultural and moral climate was far from permissive, particularly in France where men were forbidden from dancing together in public spaces between 1949 and the end of the 1960s, while Sweden and Denmark experienced a number of highly publicised homosexual scandals, anti-homosexual rhetoric in the press and a proposed ban on homophile meetings.30 While lowering the discriminatory age of consent was not a key aim of campaigners in France and Switzerland, it constituted the main objective of the Swedish and Danish homophile groups.

Nevertheless, the relative freedom from persecution allowed activists in France,

Switzerland, Sweden and Denmark to increasingly implement strategies of breaking the silence around homosexuality and fostering a discourse around homosexual culture and identity. In other western European countries, such as

Germany, Norway and Britain, homosexuality remained a criminal offence, which required modes of campaigning aimed at decriminalisation and illustrated the

29 Hubert C. Kennedy, The Ideal Gay Man: The Story of Der Kreis (Binghampton, NY, 1999), pp. 73-76; Jens Rydström and Kati Mustola, Criminally Queer: Homosexuality and Criminal Law in Scandinavia 1842-1999 (Amsterdam, 2007), pp. 30-34. 30 Julian Jackson, ‘The Homophile Movement’, p. 34; Julian Jackson, Living in Arcadia. Homosexuality, Politics, and Morality in France from the Liberation to Aids (London, 2009), pp. 46-49; Rydström, Criminally Queer, pp. 30-34

106 great extent to which distinct national contexts constrained transnational approaches to sexual rights campaigning.31

Differences in legislative approaches and cultural attitudes were particularly marked between the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. A key reason for this contrast lay within the British and Dutch political systems and the access they allowed minority groups to the setting of political and legislative agendas. In the British political system, power was highly centralised, with governments relying on majority support to rule and requiring high levels of party discipline, affording minority groups few points of access.32 While Britain had an established tradition of lobbying organisations applying pressure from outside of the established political system, Dutch political culture was characterised by

‘politics of accommodation’. This term coined by the political scientist Arend

Lijphart described processes through which political parties sought consensus across ideological divides, despite high levels of social heterogeneity.33 Coalition governments and a close exchange between cultural and scientific elites, such as the key figures of the COC and dominant political parties, resulted in high levels of institutionalisation of minority rights discourses.34 These divergent mechanisms of granting minority groups access to the political system shaped cultures of participation and would cultivate distinct national practices of sexual equality discourses.

31 William N. Eskridge and Darren R. Spedale, Gay Marriage: for Better Or for Worse?: What We've Learned from the Evidence (Oxford, 2006), pp. 62-64; Andreas Pretzel, Homosexuellenpolitik in der frühen Bundesrepublik (Hamburg, 2010), pp. 24-26. 32 David Rayside, ‘The Structuring of Sexual Minority Activist Opportunities in the Political Mainstream: Britain, Canada, and the United States’, in Mark Blasius (ed.), Sexual Identities, Queer Politics (Oxford, 2001), pp. 35-41; Jan-Willem Duyvendak, ‘Identity Politics in France and the Netherlands: The Case of Gay and Lesbian Liberation’, in Mark Blasius (ed.), Sexual Identities, Queer Politics (Oxford, 2001), pp. 63-66. 33 Arend Lijphart, The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands, 2nd edition (London, 1975). 34 Schuyf and Krouwel, ‘Dutch Lesbian and Gay Movement’, pp. 158-179.

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The ICSE was based in the Netherlands and took advantage of this relatively liberal social and cultural climate to self-assuredly campaign for sexual equality across Europe. It was particularly active throughout the 1950s, continuing to frame sexual equality discourses within a human rights context with international congresses taking place under themes such as ‘Human Rights and the Origins of Morals’.35 Between 1951 and 1958, the ICSE organised five congresses in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Paris and Brussels, which not only served as a forum of exchange for scientific and social knowledge, but also included social gatherings, dinners and cabaret performances, which linked the exclusive forum of the ICSE to contemporary commercialised homosexual culture, as well as allowing attendees to foster friendships and international solidarity, as Rupp has shown.36 While a fancy-dress ball accompanied the first ICSE congress in 1951, the 1958 ICSE congress held in Brussels included a social evening, which saw a colourful and culturally diverse range of music and dance acts, including an Afro-

Cuban ‘ritual dance’ and “La Troupe du CCL”, a performance by members of the

Belgian homophile group Centre Culturel Belge (CCL). Two of the performers chose the Andalusian Folclóricas icon Lola Florès and American singer and actress Mae West as their stage names, both of whom were known for their playfully sexual stage personas.37 In addition, a ‘San Francisco Redlight [sic]

District Dance’ pointed to the increased contacts between the European and US homophile movements. As part of this exchange, San Francisco, where the

35 n.a., ‘Short Minutes of the Business Session’, ICSE Periodical Newsletter (January/February 1955), p. 4. 36 Rupp, ‘Transnational Organising’, pp. 1025-1027. 37 n.a., ‘Social Evening Programme, ICSE Brussels Congress 1958’, NL-HaNA, COC/160; Rupp, ‘Transnational Organising’, pp. 1025-1027. For Lola Florès and Mae West see: Tatjana Pavlovic, Despotic Bodies and Transgressive Bodies: Spanish Culture from Francisco Franco to Jesus Franco (Albany, 2003), pp. 66; Jessica Hope Jordan, The Sex Goddess in American Film, 1930- 1965: Jean Harlow, Mae West, Lana Turner, and Jayne Mansfield (Amherst, 2009), pp. 67-101.

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Mattachine Society was founded in 1951, had become a place of fascination for

European homosexuals due to its permissive and vibrant atmosphere.38

The ICSE nevertheless publicly positioned itself as a strictly objective and scientific non-profit organisation, working on a donation basis to circulate information in a periodical newsletter, published briefly in three languages. The organisation’s aims were to promote ‘the acceptation [sic] of one’s own situation through exchange, study and as far as possible simultaneous growing awareness in the different countries’.39 It was designed not only to maintain links between national activist groups, but also to educate a wider elite audience, aiming to make homosexuality respectable in the eyes of doctors, psychologists and religious leaders. The ICSE took an active role in conducting scientific research and disseminating its results, mirroring the Dutch model of pressure group politics based on exchanges at the elite level in society. Transnational homophile organisations therefore played a key role in the ‘earlier stages of norm emergence and adoption’, seeking to challenge the sovereignty of nation states by advocating and diffusing new norms and social knowledge.40

2. The Construction of a Proto-Network of Activists in Britain

Due to the organisational structure of the ICSE, which primarily approached existing national groups, the ICSE initially struggled to establish links with British

38 For US homophile movement see D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, pp. 57-128; Martin Meeker, ‘Behind the Mask of Respectability: Reconsidering the Mattachine Society and Male Homophile Practice, 1950s and 1960s’, Journal of the History of Sexuality 10:1 (2001), pp. 78-116. For ties between US and EU homophile movement see Churchill, ‘Transnationalism and Homophile Political Culture’; Minto, ‘Mr Grey’. For gay tourism in San Francisco see: Gordon Waitt and Kevin Markwell, Gay Tourism: Culture and Context (London, 2006), pp. 59-62. 39 n.a., ‘Aims of the ICSE’, ICSE Periodical Newsletter (October 1952), p. 3. 40 Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politic (London, 1998), pp. 35-37, 211.

109 collaborators.41 While working relationships were in place with several European homophile organisations in France, Germany, Switzerland and Scandinavia by the mid-1950s, the HLRS was not established in Britain until 1958, one year after the publication of the Wolfenden Report. Therefore no institutional channel existed through which communications between British and European homosexual rights supporters could take place in the early and mid-1950s.

Nevertheless, a number of influential expert witnesses who would testify to the Wolfenden Committee would come into contact with the ICSE, after a small group of interested British men began to establish a network of prospective activists under the guidance of the COC. In 1950, following the decision of the

COC to pursue the formation of ‘an international association based on the ideals of [the COC]’ which would eventually establish the ICSE, Bob Angelo contacted

Geoffrey A. Whittall, a British medical student. The COC archives revealed little about Whittall’s background, apart from the fact that he had spent time in France and Persia during the war.42 Angelo asked Whittall to take an active role in the formation of a British committee and arranged a meeting between Whittall and two British men living in Paris, Howard William and Marc Dufour, who attended the ICSE founding conference in May 1951 and consequently travelled around

Europe to establish contacts with interested campaigners and experts.43 While little is known about William, Jackson has outlined that the ICSE was sceptical of

Dufour’s involvement. Dufour worked for a travel agency in Paris and aside from his involvement with the ICSE, he sought to establish ‘holiday centres’ for

41 Rupp, ‘Transnational Organising’, pp. 1022. 42 Bob Angelo to Geoffrey Whittall, 29th December 1950, NL-HaNA, COC/161; Floris van Mechelen [Henri Methorst] to Dr Kurt Hiller, 1st May 1951, NL-HaNA, COC/ 161. 43 Bob Angelo to Geoffrey Whittall, 29th December 1950, NL-HaNA, COC/161; Geoffrey Whittall to Bob Angelo, 24th January 1951, NL-HaNA, COC/161.

110 homosexual men across Europe, an endeavour which the organisation’s leadership perceived as too hedonistic and out of line with its scientific and humanitarian ideals.44 Nevertheless, Dufour remained the ICSE’s key collaborator in France until André Baudry, who would go on to found Arcadie in 1954, made contact with the organisation in 1952, highlighting that the pool of potential international collaborators remained very limited in the early 1950s.45

In the following months, Whittall would act as cultural advisory to the

ICSE, notifying the organisation of policing methods and the application of laws in Britain. In one instance, he cautioned that leaflets which the ICSE had asked him to distribute were unsuitable for a British audience, as they could easily reach the wrong hands, stating that ‘British reserve is far from a myth’ and that instead, contacts should be made personally with utmost caution.46 Furthermore, Whittall became active in building an early network of influential British supporters. He set up meetings with Kurt Hiller, the German homosexual rights activist living in

London, Eustace Chesser, the influential psychiatrist who would deliver testimony to the Wolfenden Committee, and Norman Haire, sexologist and the publisher of

The Journal of Sex Education. After speaking to Whittall, Haire not only agreed to devote a whole meeting of the Sex Education Society to homosexuality, but also to attend the ICSE’s second international conference in Copenhagen.47

Whittall’s cooperation with the ICSE ended in 1952 over differences regarding the strategic focus of the third ICSE conference, yet many of the British

44 Jackson, Living in Arcadia, p. 69. For Dufour see also Rupp, ‘Transnational Organising’, pp. 1022. 45 Jackson, Living in Arcadia, p. 69. 46 Geoffrey Whittall to Bob Angelo, 24th January 1951, NL-HaNA, COC/161. 47 Haire died on 11 September 1952 and was not able to attend the conference. Geoffrey Whittall to Henri Methorst, 7th June 1951, NL-HaNA, COC/158.

111 contacts he had helped to establish remained. 48 Eustace Chesser continued his work with the organisation and became a member of its council in 1955.49 In

September 1953, Chesser delivered a lecture entitled Society and the Homosexual at the third international ICSE conference, which was held in the intimate setting of Bob Angelo’s Amsterdam flat.50 Alongside Dutch criminologist Gerrit

Theodoor Kempe’s lecture The Homophiles in Society, Chesser’s paper represented a cutting-edge school of thought on homosexuality, influenced by sociological research which did not frame homosexuality itself as a problem, but society’s approaches towards it.51 The conference programme included excursions through Amsterdam, as well as a tour of the COC clubhouse, which Chesser described as a ‘revelation’ and remarked that similar establishments where ‘the homosexual [hangs] up his mask together with his hat and coat in the cloakroom’, could provide a valuable template for the better integration of homosexual men into society in Britain.52 This demonstrated that limited contacts with ‘progressive’

European sexual cultures could shape the aspirations of British campaigners by providing an outline of the social change that could be achieved.

Chesser remained in regular contact with the ICSE and aided the organisation in expanding the network of British collaborators, as well as making prominent British figures aware of the work of the transnational homophile movement. Chesser supplied to the ICSE the names of other potential supporters,

48 Geoffrey Whittall to Henri Methorst, 24th January 1952, NL-HaNA, COC/161. 49 Eustace Chesser to Floris van Mechelen [Henri Methorst], 4th April 1955, NL-HaNA, COC/164. For Chesser see Lesley Hall, ‘Chesser, Eustace (1902-1973)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Online Edition, January 2011), [accessed 6th September 2017]. 50 n.a., ‘Programme for Third International Congress ICSE (12-14th September 1953, Amsterdam)’, NL-HaNA, COC/164. 51 n.a., ‘Report of Third International Congress ICSE (12-14th September 1953, Amsterdam)’, pp. 12-29, NL-HaNA, COC/158. 52 Letter from Eustace Chesser, reprinted in ICSE Periodical Newsletter (January/February 1954), p. 175.

112 such as the English novelist Aldous Huxley, as well as the psychiatrist Clifford

Allen and psychoanalyst Edward Glover, who would both testify to the

Wolfenden Committee in favour of more permissive approaches towards homosexuality. 53 Links between British medical professionals and the international homophile movement therefore provided a direct route for the transmission of progressive sexual knowledge into British official forums.

Despite the interest of a small circle of interested experts, few British men became ICSE members. The ICSE Periodical Newsletter assigned this lack of

British engagement to a pervasive climate of fear and repression, stating that

‘practically no person in Great Britain wants or dares receive publications is this field’.54 The international homophile community nevertheless took great interest in the position of homosexual men in Britain, paying close attention to the deliberations of the Wolfenden Committee. At the ICSE conference in

Copenhagen held in October 1954, the regular proceedings of the conference were interrupted to give the floor to an unofficial British visitor, introduced only as Mr.

X to ensure his anonymity. The ICSE conference files did not contain his name or occupation, but revealed he was acquainted with one of the psychiatrists who testified to the Wolfenden Committee and was known to British police as a homosexual.55 His detailed testimony of the repressive treatment of homosexuals in Britain and the proceedings of the Wolfenden Committee made a strong impression on the conference attendees. Mr. X exhibited a high degree of

53 Eustace Chesser to Floris van Mechelen [Henri Methorst], 21st March 1955, NL-HaNA, COC/163; Floris van Mechelen [Henri Methorst] to Eustace Chesser, 4th February 1960, NL- HaNA, COC/167. 54 n.a., ‘The Development of the Situation in Great Britain’, ICSE Periodical Newsletter (March 1956), p. 6. 55 Based on later letter exchanges between Bob Angelo and Henri Methorst, this man may have been Anthony Bishop, however, I could find no further evidence. See Floris van Mechelen [Henri Methorst] to Anthony Bishop, 28th April 1955, NL-HaNA, COC/163; Bob Angelo to Anthony Bishop, 28th April 1955, NL-HaNA, COC/163.

113 familiarity with the procedures which should be followed in giving evidence before an official British committee of inquiry and in his interview he would set out the strategy that the ICSE would eventually pursue in Britain, stating that:

England has to be informed of how the development was advanced elsewhere […] The ICSE can achieve a great deal. The members of the committee have to be convinced with a wealth of materials, and more importantly good materials. They will want to know how the conditions are in the Netherlands or Denmark.56

The engagement of the ICSE with British discussions on the decriminalisation of homosexuality illuminated the mechanisms through which the transnational homophile movement aimed to influence national efforts for legal reform. The

ICSE explicitly sought advice from experts in distinct local contexts, giving campaigners a nuanced understanding of specific national frameworks. In a 1956 edition of its periodical newsletter, the ICSE offered an analysis of British sexual culture and public opinion, concluding that a ‘circulous vicious between national tradition, Victorianism and antiquated law’ prevented Britain from ‘enlightening public opinion and changing the law’.57 The ICSE acknowledged that ‘the conventions of a nation and its cultural make-up’ not only strongly influenced public opinion, but could also shape the interpretation of scientific evidence.58

This understanding of cultural specificities allowed the ICSE to tailor their response to the British political and social climate.

Following the conference, the ICSE sent a letter to the committee alongside several cutting-edge studies on homosexuality, such as research conducted by Dr Alfred Kinsey, while asking ICSE members for suggestions of

56 Author’s translation from German: ICSE, ‘Protokoll der Arbeitssitzung des ICSE, 23-25, Oktober 1954, Kopenhagen’, pp.11-12, NL-HaNA, COC/164. 57 n.a., ‘The Development of the Situation in Great Britain’, ICSE Periodical Newsletter (March 1956), p. 6. 58 n.a., ‘Situation in Great Britain’, p. 6.

114 publications of ‘strictly scientific character’ which could be forwarded to the committee.59 The ICSE memorandum to the Wolfenden Committee drew on empirical studies which had demonstrated that neither medico-psychiatric treatment nor imprisonment could suppress same-sex desire. Furthermore, drawing on the recommendations of the anonymous British speaker, it applied a comparative international legal and social perspective, as well as detailing the activities of the Dutch COC and how these had improved relations between homosexual men and public authorities by fostering a mutual dialogue and an inclusive society.60 The final paragraphs of the ICSE’s memorandum appealed to a language of modernity, founded on a humanitarian ideal that formed a key facet of homophile identity:61

[…] in a modern society like ours where the highest value is attached to human personality and the spiritual health of all people, even if they belong to a minority, the modern legislator taking these factors into serious consideration, will find himself faced with the task to materialize them into laws harmonizing with the high ideals of a humanitarian society.62

The memorandum demonstrated that an abstract body of thought on sexual equality based on individualistic human rights discourse could be adapted to fit legal debates within distinct national contexts and used to make recommendations on how the relationship between the state and its citizens should be mediated, as well as outlining that homophile campaigners felt a strong sense of solidarity with homosexual men living in repressive conditions abroad.

59 n.a., ‘Miscelleanous [sic]’, ICSE Periodical Newsletter (January/February 1955), p. 2. 60 Memorandum submitted by the Foundation International Committee for Sexual Equality (Amsterdam, 1955), TNA PRO HO 345/8. 61 For an in-depth discussion of the political languages of sexual equality see Chapter Three. 62 Memorandum submitted by the Foundation International Committee for Sexual Equality (Amsterdam, 1955), TNA PRO HO 345/8.

115

Following the publication of the Wolfenden Report in September 1957, the international homophile community looked towards Britain more hopefully.

Der Kreis described the anticipation of reading the report as comparable to

‘suspense as it is rarely felt when reading a novel’ and interrupted its regular reporting and features such as short stories and poems to give a full account of the

Wolfenden Report, as well as British and international press responses.63 The editors of Der Kreis emphatically praised the work of the committee on account of its scientific objectivity and its unique approach of ‘sympathetic dispassion, cordial objectivity and the tangible will for understanding’. 64 The magazine’s editors further recognised the possible international influence of the Wolfenden

Report, stating that it could not only initiate legal reform in other states of the

Commonwealth, but also across North America by challenging antiquated moralistic legislation with scientific evidence.

3. The Relationship between the HLRS and the Homophile Movement

British debates on legal reform continued to occupy the international homophile press, with Der Kreis publishing in full the letter Tony Dyson had sent to The

Times in spring 1958 in support of the Wolfenden recommendations.65 This letter would not only initiate the formation of the Homosexual Law Reform Society, but would also set the strategy and tone of its campaign. Dyson, a lecturer in English

Literature at Bangor University, had closely followed the public debate on the

Wolfenden Report and petitioned influential figures of the cultural, scientific and

63 Author’s translation from German: n.a., ‘Der Sturm bricht los. Der Streit um den Wolfenden Report in England’, Der Kreis 10 (1957), pp. 2-4. 64 Author’s translation from German: n.a., ‘Der Sturm’, pp. 2-4. 65 Anthony Dyson, ‘Homosexual Acts. Call to Reform Law’, The Times (7th March 1958), p. 11. Reprinted in Der Kreis 7 (1958), p. 36.

116 political establishment for signatures. Several eminent personalities signed

Dyson’s letter, among them former Prime Minister Clement Attlee, the prominent surgeon Kenneth Walker, Julian Huxley, Bertrand Russell, the writer and archaeologist Jacquetta Hawkes and the novelist Angus Wilson.66 By enlisting the support of heterosexual elites and acclaimed experts and employing a language of liberal rationality, Dyson not only sought to legitimise demands for law reform, but also to demonstrate that these represented a serious and intellectual strand in

British public opinion.67

Dyson’s fear of infiltration and agents-provocateurs led him to take an approach of ‘keeping sex out of it and operating purely at the level of reason’, which was also reflected in the structure of the HLRS. 68 The organisation was divided into an executive committee and a working party, which included homosexual men, but operated furtively out of a private address at 219 Liverpool

Road in Islington. The executive committee presented the public face of the

HLRS and consisted of distinguished, mostly heterosexual, public figures. They were tasked with initiating a public debate on homosexual law reform by drafting letters and articles to the press, and influencing the debate in the House of

Commons and the House of Lords.69 The HLRS and the Albany Trust campaigned strictly for the implementation of the Wolfenden recommendations,

66 Full list of signatories: Noel Gilroy Annan, Clement Attlee, Alfred Jules Ayer, Isaiah Berlin, Leonard Birmingham [Leonard Wilson, Bishop of Birmingham], Robert Boothby, Cecil Maurice Bowra, Charlie Dunbar Broad, David Cecil, Lewis John Collins, Alex Comfort, Anthony Edward Dyson, Robert Exon [Robert Mortimer, Bishop of Exeter], Geoffrey Faber, Jacquetta Hawkes, Trevor Huddleston, Julian Huxley, Cecil Day-Lewis, William Roy Niblett, John Boynton Priestley, Bertrand Russell, Donald O. Soper, Stephen Spender, Mary Stocks, Alan John Percivale Taylor, Eustace Mandeville Wetenhall Tillyard, Alec R. Vidler, Kenneth Walker, Leslie D. Weatherhead, Cicely Veronica Wedgwood, Angus Wilson, John Wilson, Barbara Wootton. 67 Tony Dyson interviewed by Margot Farnham (27th February 1990), Hall-Carpenter Oral History Project, British Library Sound Archive, C456/74. 68 Tony Dyson interviewed by Margot Farnham. 69 Nicholas C. Edsall, Toward Stonewall: Homosexuality and Society in the Modern Western World (London, 2003), pp. 318-322.

117 applying a humanitarian perspective of improving the welfare of homosexual men, while insisting that the organisation did ‘not see homosexual law reform as striving to justify homosexuality as a way of life’. 70

This approach revealed continuities with a model of philanthropic patronage whose origins lay in Victorian political and moral reform movements, which sought to better the living conditions of disadvantaged sections of society and mediate between the elites and lower classes, while avoiding radical and abrupt change.71 There were further parallels with Victorian middle-class moral reform efforts, which applied ‘pressure from without’, relying heavily on lobbying parliament and distributing political propaganda.72 By adopting familiar approaches of pressure group politics and charitable patronage, the HLRS referred to an established template of non-revolutionary British social reform efforts, but also added distance between homosexuals, law enforcement and the media, allowing the society to frame homosexual law reform as a humanitarian issue rather than one of affirmative identity politics. The patronage of a mostly heterosexual ‘high-powered committee’ provided ‘the essential cover of respectability and protection’ needed to campaign for law reform according to

Antony Grey and would shape the operation of the HLRS throughout the 1960s. 73

70 Tony Dyson interviewed by Margot Farnham; Antony Grey, Quest for Justice. Towards Homosexual Emancipation (London, 1992), pp. 28-31; n.a., ‘Editorial’, Man and Society 1 (1961), p. 1. 71 Geoffrey A. C. Ginn, Culture, Philanthropy and the Poor in Late-Victorian London (Abingdon, 2017), pp. 38-47, pp. 252-270; Keir Waddington, Charity and the London Hospitals, 1850-1898 (Rochester, NY, 2000), pp. 21-30; Karen Halbersleben, ‘Philanthropy’, in Sally Mitchell (ed.), Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia (Abdingdon, 2011), pp. 595-597. 72 Patricia Hollis (ed.), Pressure from Without in Early Victorian England (London, 1974). See also Paul McHugh, Prostitution and Victorian Social Reform (Abingdon, 2013), pp. 125-161; Judith Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and the State (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 90-111; Michael Turner, Independent Radicalism in Early Victorian Britain (Westport, 2004). 73 Antony Grey, ‘Beyond Law Reform. A talk given to supporters of M.R.C. on 25th February 1967’, HCA/Albany Trust/1/22.

118

Unlike European homophile groups, the HLRS under Dyson’s leadership did not draw on the rhetoric of international solidarity or officially attach itself to the ICSE, even though Clive Alderson, the English language editor of the ICSE

Periodical Newsletter visited Dyson in London in January 1959, after the eminent sociologist Gordon Westwood suggested a possible cooperation between the two organisations to Henri Methorst.74 Alderson recalled that Dyson was anxious to point out that the HLRS was unable to support the ICSE in any other way than

‘working along similar lines in England’, but welcomed the suggestion of the

ICSE sending a memorandum to the Home Secretary and selected members of parliament.75 Despite regularly adopting pseudonyms, homosexual men had a clear voice in the publications and campaigns of European homophile groups, which aimed at asserting the normality of homosexuality, drawing in particular on the term ‘homophile’ to articulate a sense of self, as well as establishing a collective sexual identity.76 In contrast, the campaign of the HLRS silenced homosexuals in its official materials, relying on contributions from well-regarded and respectable public figures. The organisation did not employ the term homophile, or articulate a group homosexual identity to establish an independent voice for homosexual men, but instead positioned itself as a respectable single- issue political pressure group, which sought to gather broad public support from homosexuals and heterosexuals alike.77

Dyson described his horror at the well-publicised trials against Peter

Wildeblood, Lord Montague and Michael Pitt-Rivers as the impetus to take action

74 Gordon Westwood to Floris van Mechelen [Henri Methorst], 30th May 1958, NL-HaNA, COC/165; Bob Angelo to HLRS, 24th December 1958, NL-HaNA, COC/165. 75 Clive Alderson, ‘Report of a visit to England’, (undated, early 1959), NL-HaNA, COC/164. 76 Jackson, ‘The Homophile Movement’, p. 31. 77 Minto, ‘Mr Grey’, p. 238, Jackson, ‘The Homophile Movement’, p. 33.

119 himself and was highly aware of the ‘virulence poured out by the popular press’, which in his words regarded homosexual men as ‘a stranger, a monstrous thing’.78

The HLRS’ cautious campaigning approach was undoubtedly shaped by Dyson’s awareness of the public exposure of homosexual men by the popular press, which made homosexuality visible in dramatic and provocative ways. Frank Mort has posited that the 1950s British public culture of scandal, which revolved mainly around issues of personal moral culpability and sexuality, contrasted with coverage of political show trials on the continent which focussed on Nazi atrocities and collaborators and were intended to bring ‘legal and moral closure’ from the Third Reich.79 Reportage on homosexuality was far from favourable across Europe, particularly in Sweden and Denmark, which had experienced high- profile homosexual scandals. Nevertheless, homophiles pursued strategies intended to normalise and promote notions of a homosexual lifestyle, offering clubhouses or personal ads through which homosexual men could meet, which were conspicuously absent from the newsletters of the HLRS and the Albany

Trust.80

The contrast in campaigning strategies between the HLRS and continental homophile organisations also occurred within the spectrum of varying experiences of radical upheaval during and after the Second World War. Speaking to the

British Daily Mail journalist Monica Furlong in 1965, Bob Angelo reinforced that the Nazi persecution of minorities had fostered a more inclusive social climate in the Netherlands:

78 Tony Dyson interviewed by Margot Farnham. 79 Frank Mort, Capital Affairs: London and the Making of the Permissive Society (London, 2010), pp. 114-117. 80 Jackson, Living in Arcadia, pp. 142-143; Domenico Rizzo, ‘L'ami idéal. Canon homophile et «marché» des relations dans les années 1950’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 53:4 (2006), pp. 53-73.

120

You know we are very tolerant here, especially of minorities, I think it was the war. We saw all our Jews taken away – we had many in Amsterdam – for no reason but that they were a little bit different from the majority. The Nazi-mind, you know, likes everybody to be like everybody else.81

The violent turmoil of the war and the abrupt tightening of anti-homosexuality laws under the Nazis, as well as experiences of persecution, in particular in the

Netherlands and parts of France, created opportunities to repeal Nazi legislation and reevaluate minority rights post-1945, alongside a range of other social and political questions.82 Germany itself was a curious outlier, as §175 remained in effect and homosexual acts were only decriminalised between men over the age of twenty-one in 1969 despite the denazification of West German law in other areas.

Dagmar Herzog has traced this to German efforts to tackle the National Socialist past, which had been conceptualised as a period of moral degeneration, through the reconstruction of the German state based on traditional Christian values focussed on marriage and the nuclear family. Therefore, the strict anti- homosexual legislation of Nazi Germany was paradoxically upheld as part of the effort to distance the new German state from the Third Reich, which consequently marginalised the Nazi persecution of homosexuals.83

In contrast to the Netherlands and France, British political culture had remained largely stable, emerging from the war victorious without having endured

Nazi occupation.84 As Tony Judt poignantly remarked, ‘In France the war had revealed everything that was wrong with the nation’s political culture, in Britain,

81 Monica Furlong, ‘Can’t we follow this wise example?’, Daily Mail (1st June 1965), p. 6. 82 Jackson, Living in Arcadia, p. 113. 83 Dagmar Herzog, Sex after Fascism: Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany (Oxford, 2005), pp. 91-101, pp. 127-124. See also Pretzel, Homosexuellenpolitik, pp. 12-14. 84 Günter Grau and Rüdiger Lautmann, Lexikon zur Homosexuellenverfolgung 1933-1945: Institutionen-Kompetenzen-Betätigungsfelder (Münster, 2011), p. 38; Jackson, Living in Arcadia, pp. 39-45.

121 it seemed to confirm everything that was right and good about national institutions and habits’.85 British social and political cultures, as well as official approaches towards sexual minorities, were characterised by a much greater degree of continuity, significantly confining the scope for radical change. Indeed, Tony

Dyson eschewed any notions of radicalism, instead relying on a strategy of conformity and following the established democratic process, stating emphatically that ‘[the HLRS] didn’t want martyrs and did want to win democratically’.86

Therefore, the HLRS pursued a philosophy of moderate liberalism, adopting a sober and objective tone in its official publications to calm public fears over moral degeneration in the case of decriminalisation.87 The national focus of the HLRS and its isolation from the international homophile movement during the first years of campaigning partly lay in the fact that links to more outspoken organisations and publications such as Arcadie, Der Kreis, or the Dutch COC, which sought to foster a homosexual culture through the publishing of short stories, poems, venues for socialising and in some cases, erotic photography, could have threatened the discreet and objective image the HLRS sought to cultivate.

The individual outlook of prominent figures within European movements significantly shaped the degree to which they sought international cooperation, highlighting key challenges of transnational organising which required foreign language and organisational skills, as well as a nuanced understanding of other cultures. The transnational campaigns of European homophile groups were assisted by multilingual and culturally fluent activists, such as Henri Methorst, a key figure within the COC and the ICSE. His father was the founder and director

85 Judt, Postwar, p.161. 86 Tony Dyson interviewed by Margot Farnham. 87 Weeks, Coming Out, pp. 172-175.

122 of the Dutch Central Bureau for Statistics and Methorst’s privileged upbringing allowed him to travel the world from a young age, before pursuing a career as a conference translator which required him to travel across the globe for work.88 His elegantly written English correspondence with Antony Grey was testament to his abilities as a ‘brilliant linguist’, which became indispensable in his communications with homophile groups across Europe and North America and his editorship of the English-language ICSE Periodical Newsletter.89 Furthermore, his cosmopolitan outlook and experience of working within supranational forums, such as the European Coal and Steel Community from 1953, made him keenly aware of the challenges and possibilities of transnational organising, preparing international congresses and building relevant contacts with various national homophile organisations.90

The leadership of the HLRS was much less cosmopolitan in outlook and firmly directed its gaze inward, rather than drawing on the support of the international homophile movement. Tony Dyson came from a middle-class conservative and royalist family, but became a firm Labour supporter during his time at the University of Cambridge. Dyson was not well-travelled and struggled to ‘exorcise’ anti-German sentiments due to his childhood experiences of the

88 Rupp, ‘Transnational Organising’, p. 1019; J. Idenburg, ‘In Memoriam Prof. Dr H. W. Methorst (1868-1955)’, Statistica Neerlandica 9:3 (1955), pp. 85-88. 89 Antony Grey, ‘A Long Friendship’, (14th August 2007), [accessed on 27th May 2017]. 90 n.a., ‘Oprichting’, Congresstolken, Conference Interpreters, [accessed on 30th May 2017]; n.a., ‘Erelid Henri Methorst overleden’, COC [accessed 30th May 05 2017]. For Arcadie founder Baudry’s ties to Swiss homophile movement see Jackson, Living in Arcadia, p. 65; Kennedy, ‘The Ideal Gay Man’, pp. 53-56. For international ties of the editors of Der Kreis (Rolf Meier, Eugen Laubacher, Rudolf Jung) see: Edsall, Toward Stonewall, pp. 286-287; Kennedy, The Ideal Gay Man, pp. 18-23; Karl-Heinz Steinle, Der Kreis. Mitglieder, Künstler, Autoren (Berlin, 1999); Erich Lifka, ‘Rudolf Jung / Burkhardt, sein Leben und Werk’, in Joachim S. Hohmann (ed.), Der Kreis, Erzählungen und Fotos (Frankfurt am Main,1980), pp. 261-264.

123 evacuation and bombing of London.91 This may have led to scepticism of international collaboration and indeed, Dyson’s collected correspondence during the early years of the HLRS revealed that he focussed his campaigning network on eminent British public figures, as well as the members of the Anglican church.92

After Tony Dyson’s resignation in 1960, the philanthropists John and

Venetia Newall became joint secretaries of the HLRS, yet due to their frequent absences, Antony Grey who was acting treasurer of the society, became increasingly influential in its day-to-day operations, before himself becoming secretary of the HLRS in 1962. Grey had worked for the British Iron and Steel

Federation before accepting the post and was a skilled tactician, experienced in large-scale public relations and parliamentary work, as well as having legal qualifications.93 Grey had made limited experiences with the discreet homosexual scene of 1950s London, but had not travelled abroad before visiting Amsterdam with his partner in 1961.94

4. Dutch Clubs in Britain?

Grey’s first visit to Holland marked a watershed for the international activities of the HLRS and he would return to Amsterdam many times, both on holiday and in his function as the secretary of the HLRS. On his visits, Grey met senior figures of the Dutch homophile movement and was particularly impressed by Bob Angelo, whose speeches Grey described as ‘spellbinding’ despite speaking only a few

91 Tony Dyson interviewed by Margot Farnham. 92 Papers of Tony Dyson held at John Rylands Library, Manchester, GB133 AED/2/1. 93 Antony Grey interviewed by Margot Farnham. 94 Grey, Quest for Justice, pp. 4-5.

124 words of Dutch. 95 Grey not only toured the COC premises, which included a dance floor, bar and meeting rooms, but also explored the city and its touristic sites, as photographs of Grey and Bob Angelo visiting canals and street cafes in

Amsterdam reveal (Figure 1 and 2). 96

Figure 1: Antony Grey in Amsterdam (1963): Antony Grey, Quest for Justice. Towards Homosexual Emancipation (London, 1992).

Figure 2: Bob Angelo (right) and English friend in Amsterdam (1963): Antony Grey, Quest for Justice. Towards Homosexual Emancipation (London, 1992).

95 Antony Grey interviewed by Margot Farnham; Grey, Quest for Justice, pp. 67-69. 96 Antony Grey interviewed by Margot Farnham; Grey, Quest for Justice, pp. 67-69.

125

Grey described that this visit had been nothing less than ‘a revelation’ and he had been impressed by the work of the COC and their programme of cultural integration, motivating Grey to intensify international ties.97 Returning from his trip, he noted that:

Dutch homosexuals, though, seem to be better adjusted to life and to lack the tenseness so common over here. They can relax, accept themselves, and deal with the genuine problems which life presents without being distracted by the knowledge that they are technically criminals. And in contrast to London, there are scarcely any signs of homosexuality in the streets or public lavatories. Returning to England one finds it hard to understand why something similar cannot be done over here.98

While John and Venetia Newall took a cautious approach and rejected the notion of openly associating the HLRS with the COC or the ICSE, Grey was more open to cooperation, assuring ICSE secretary Walter Jacobs, that ‘we are all anxious to help your work in any way that we can, and look forward to exchanging the fullest possible information unofficially’.99 In a letter to Bob Angelo sent on the same day, Grey expressed that the work of the COC held ‘many important lessons for us in England, and a better knowledge of it will help us shape the future here’.100

Grey’s contacts with the homophile movement in the following years included frequent mutual visits between London and Amsterdam, as well as an intense exchange of letters and the collaboration and reprinting of articles between the

HLRS and COC newsletters. In 1963, Grey delivered a speech on British attitudes towards homosexuality at the COC clubhouse, in which he cited fear and ignorance, as well as a strong puritan streak in British society as major obstacles

97 Antony Grey interviewed by Margot Farnham. 98 Antony Grey, ‘Why Not’ (1960), p. 63. 99 Antony Grey to Walter Jacobs, 10th January 1961, HCA/Albany Trust/7/3. 100 Antony Grey to Bob Angelo, 10th January 1961, HCA/Albany Trust/7/3. See also: Minto, ‘Mr. Grey’, p. 223.

126 to law reform.101 Grey also became more heavily involved with the ICSE. In 1963, he worked with Henri Methorst to provide editorial input for the ICSE Periodical

Newsletter, which had been inactive for a number of years.102

Nevertheless, Grey’s understanding of homosexual identity revealed a complex relationship with the core beliefs of the international homophile movement, as he prioritised individualism and rejected the idea of a unifying sexual identity. Speaking to an audience of British sexual rights campaigners in

1968, Grey revealed that he did not believe a ‘homosexual community’ existed, stating instead that ‘there are only many and very diverse individuals, with some personal involvement in homosexuality as a socially unacceptable mode of sexual feeling and expression’.103 Grey’s personal reading of how the rights of the individual homosexual in Britain could be advanced meant he would only follow the example set by the COC and the ICSE in select aspects, based on a careful evaluation of public mood. Rather than working to establish a collective homosexual identity and creating spaces in which this could be freely enacted,

Grey believed that activities to improve the social conditions of homosexual men had to be ‘primarily outward looking’, aimed at swaying public opinion towards law reform.104 Herein, the HLRS under Grey’s leadership not only diverged significantly from European campaigns, but also revealed tensions with local activists over the provision of meeting places for ordinary homosexual men.

101 Antony Grey, ‘English Attitudes to Homosexuality. From a Talk given to Members of the Dutch COC, Amsterdam, April 1963’, in Grey, Speaking Out, pp. 75-77. 102 Minto, ‘Mr. Grey’, p. 25. 103 Antony Grey, ‘Beyond Law Reform. A talk given to supporters of M.R.C. on 25th February 1967’, HCA/Albany Trust/1/22. 104 Grey, ‘Beyond Law Reform’.

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Grey came to see the COC as a template for certain aspects of his work in

Britain, in particular concerning the Albany Trust, the counselling arm of the

HLRS, founded in 1958. Based on his experiences in Holland, Grey had encouraged John and Venetia Newall to model the activities of the Albany Trust on the approach of the COC, which prioritised the social inclusion of homosexual men, based on the education of the wider public, aiding homosexual men in accepting their own sexual identity, as well as offering psychological, moral and legal assistance.105 Grey circulated a memorandum detailing the activities of the

COC among members of the Albany Trust, which drew up a three-point programme in 1963 that included the ‘prevention of the homosexual problem through public education’ and the establishment of a counselling service. It also addressed ‘social adaptation’ by means of a social centre along the lines of the clubhouse of the COC, to help homosexual men to ‘come to terms with their condition, and free them from the overpowering sense of loneliness, guilt and inadequacy, which often is their lot’. 106 Yet in 1968, Grey revealed in a strictly confidential memorandum to the Albany Trust committee, that he had always adopted the ‘stalling attitude that running a social organisation, or a club, was precluded by the Trust’s charitable status’.107 While Grey tentatively supported social clubs for homosexuals in private and believed the Trust should work in

‘paving the way’ for such organisations, his stance highlighted that the national campaign saw law reform as a necessary first step for the provision of such

105 Grey, Quest for Justice, pp. 64-67; Antony Grey, ‘The Historical Development, Legal and Religious Environment, and Sociological Results and Consequences of the Dutch Homosexual Association COC’ (exact date unknown, ca. 1963), HCA/Albany Trust/7/3. 106 Albany Trust, ‘Homosexuality: Proposals for Social Action’, (1963), HCA/Albany Trust/10/3. 107 Antony Grey, Memorandum on Social Organisations for Homosexuals (1968), HCA/Albany Trust/10/33.

128 centres, despite increasing pressure from provincial campaigners and Albany

Trust supporters from the mid-1960s onwards.

Demands for locally run campaigns had been voiced since the early 1960s, when Allan Horsfall, a working-class Labour activist from rural Lancashire first broached the subject of establishing a North West branch of the organisation.108

However, the HLRS was hesitant to extend its activities beyond London, fearing it would lose control over the carefully staged campaign to influence public opinion based on a model of discretion and respectability. Venetia Newall cited fears of

‘crackpots and shifty types’ and stated she was not in favour of local committees which could ‘endanger [our work] by taking risks’.109 While the NWHLRC was founded in 1964 with support from Antony Grey, Horsfall remained critical of the elite and metropolitan focus of the HLRS. Speaking many years later, he was vocal in his opposition to the ‘so-called sophistication of London’ and ‘the great committee of the great and the good’ and disapproved of the extreme caution and elite-led approach adopted by the national campaign.110

It was on the question of meeting places for homosexual men that differences in emphasis between the HLRS and NWHLRC became most apparent.

Horsfall first discussed the possibility of ‘Amsterdam Clubs’ in Britain in Peace

News in 1963. The publication’s long pedigree of radical journalism and its central place in British counterculture offered a forum for left-wing and progressive thought and was specifically linked to the Campaign for Nuclear

108 For Horsfall see Lucy Robinson, Gay Men and the Left in Post-war Britain: How the Personal Got Political (Manchester, 2013), pp. 43-45. 109 Venetia Newall to Allan Horsfall (undated, pre-1963), Manchester Central Library (hereafter MCL), GB124.G.HOR/4. 110 Transcript of Interview with Allan Horsfall at his home in Farnworth (10th October 2011), MCL, GB124.G.HOR/4.

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Disarmament in which Horsfall was active.111 In the article, Horsfall broke directly with the approach of the HLRS which was committed to working with the consent of British lawmakers to propose following the lead of the COC:

The many readers of Peace News who are not content always passively to await the pleasure of parliament may well care to discuss whether it is necessary to await the final rejection of this discredited law before embarking on a similar project here. 112

Following the article’s publication, Horsfall was contacted by journalist and author Ray Gosling, who would become an active member of the NWHLRC.

Gosling was homosexual and understood himself as an advocate of ordinary

Britons. He was born in Northampton and spent much of his youth and early adulthood in poverty and his later reporting focussed on making British provincial and working-class lives visible.113 In their first exchange Gosling challenged

Horsfall on whether COC-style clubs were feasible in Britain. In his response,

Horsfall highlighted that he was acutely aware of the need for such spaces due to his ‘northern small-town background’, as well as outlining his motivation for taking action:

I am not moved to action in this matter by any high-minded, altruistic idealism – I am moved because this law affects me directly and personally […] What I am concerned to see is the removal of some of the hypocrisy which surrounds the whole question of homosexual meeting places. 114

111 For Peace News see Milan Rai, ‘Peace Journalism in Practice – Peace News: For Non-violent Revolution’, in Richard Keeble, John Tulloch and Florian Zollmann (eds.), Peace Journalism, War and Conflict Resolution (Oxford, 2010), pp. 207-222. 112 Allan Horsfall, ‘Homosexuality and Violence’, Peace News, 22nd March 1963, p. 10. 113 For Ray Gosling’s first autobiography see Ray Gosling, Sum Total (London, 1962). See also Simon Farquhar, ‘Ray Gosling: Writer, broadcaster and activist who fought prejudice and the class divide and championed those without a voice’, The Observe, Online Edition (20th November 2013), [accessed on 20th September 2019]. 114 Allan Horsfall to Ray Gosling, 21st April 1963, MCL GB124.G.HOR/14.

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Activists’ personal biographies were central to how transnational impulses were adapted to their own campaigning strategies. Horsfall’s calls for meeting places for homosexual men based on the Dutch model reflected his experience of growing up as a homosexual in a small town in rural Lancashire. Born in Colne in

The Emmott Arms, a local pub run by his parents in 1927, Horsfall not only became an advocate for working-class homosexuals, but also recognised the feelings of loneliness and isolation felt by many homosexual men outside of

London.115 Following their letter exchange, Horsfall and Gosling sought to work with Peace News to publish a guide for homosexual meeting places around the country. Gosling contacted the editor, asserting that ‘many homosexuals who travel across the country would be deeply grateful for this service and fight for their rights and freedom from Peace News’.116 While Horsfall and Gosling saw an acute need for non-profit social centres for homosexuals, they also sought to make commercial venues for homosexuals more visible in the interim to lessen the social isolation of homosexual men.

Gosling was critical of the fact that the most well-known venue for homosexuals, The Rockingham, located behind Shaftsbury Avenue in London, remained inaccessible to men outside of elite metropolitan circles, stating that ‘not many British homosexuals want, or can use this club – collar and tie, elite sponsored and supported as it is by MPs, the Establishment and Big Business’.117

Gosling’s comments highlighted that those from privileged social backgrounds

115 Peter Tatchell, ‘Allan Horsfall’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (7th January 2016),

131 could frequent discreet clubs tacitly accepted by the authorities. However, men who did not ‘fulfil the requirements of respectability’ due to their social class, ethnicity or appearance remained excluded, as Matt Houlbrook has revealed.118 In addition, an absence of published and readily available information further inhibited access to homosocial cultures. Even though Peace News editor Hugh

Brook felt there was a strong case for producing a pamphlet on homosexual meeting places, the publications committee ultimately felt that it could not take sponsorship of the project.119 Nevertheless, Horsfall and Gosling’s attempt to work with the radical left-wing press without direct consultation of the HLRS highlighted the limits of its liberal cosmopolitan campaign.

In contrast to Horsfall’s modest working-class upbringing, Grey was§ the son of a chartered accountant and had read history at Cambridge, moving comfortably within the elite homosexual circles described by Gosling. He had an intimate knowledge of the homosexual geography of 1960s London and often visited The Fitzroy Tavern, which had ‘retained the boisterously bohemian atmosphere of wartime London’ and remained unencumbered by the police, which Grey suggested was due to ‘its generous contributions to the police benevolent funds’.120 He also frequented The Rockingham - the space outlined by

Gosling as highly exclusionary - remembering its ‘striped regency wallpaper, elegant (some said piss-elegant) furnishings and white grand piano giving it an air of equivocal respectability’.121

118 Houlbrook, Queer London, p. 243. 119 Hugh Brock to Ray Gosling, 12th June 1963, MCL GB124.G.HOR/14; Hugh Brock to Ray Gosling, 2nd July 1963, MCL GB124.G.HOR/14. 120 Grey, Quest for Justice, pp. 4-5. 121 Grey, Quest for Justice, pp. 4-5.

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Furthermore, Grey felt at ease with the elite cosmopolitanism that characterised the transnational activism of the homophile movement. Grey had travelled widely throughout the 1960s, making several visits to Amsterdam as well as the clubhouse of the Danish homophile organisation Det Norske

Forbundet av 1948 (DNF’48) and travelling across North America in 1967 to meet representatives of the North American homophile organisation ONE.122 He participated in distinct performances of cultural cosmopolitanism, related closely to practices of consumption in modern market economies. Termed ‘aesthetic cosmopolitanism’ by sociologist John Urry, this outlook was characterised by high levels of personal mobility, an openness towards engaging with the ‘other’ and ‘an ability to locate one’s own society and its culture in terms of a wide- ranging historical and geographical knowledge’.123 Grey exhibited a high degree of cultural fluency, which rendered nuances of foreign social and political cultures legible to him. He was pro-European in a wider sense and pro-Dutch in particular, describing that he experienced feelings of ‘congeniality’ and ‘at-homeness’ in

Holland, and admired what he described as ‘an uncommon mixture of very down- to-earthness and radicalism’ which enabled progress in social issues.124 The campaign of the HLRS was therefore built around an idealised homosexual man, who was assumed to be sophisticated, respectable and able to move through privileged spaces both in Britain and by means of foreign travel.125

122 Grey, ‘Beyond Law Reform’. For Grey’s travels in the US see Minto, ‘Mr. Grey’, pp. 230-235. 123 John Urry, Consuming Places (London, 1995), p. 167. See also Jennie Molz, ‘Cosmopolitanism and Consumption’, in Maria Rovisco and Magdalena Nowicka (eds.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Cosmopolitanism (Abingdon, 2011), pp. 34-36; Ulf Hannerz, ‘Cosmopolitans and Locals in World Culture’, Theory, Culture and Society, 7:2–3 (1990), pp. 237-251. 124 Antony Grey interviewed by Margot Farnham. 125 Houlbrook, Queer London, p. 243.

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Grey’s personal background and adherence to a 1950s model of respectable homosexuality was reflected in the activities of the HLRS during the

1960s. The campaign was firmly committed to working within established institutions, relying heavily on elite sponsorship and eschewing political radicalism. He reiterated this position in 1967 when he stated that the greatest danger for sexual equality was posed by ‘the sort of people who go around banging drums and wanting to be militant and saying “Let’s all get together and have a great big Homosexual Club”’.126 Grey further highlighted that the HLRS campaign had not been ‘a coming together from below’, as had been the case in homophile movements in North America, Holland or Scandinavia. Instead, a high-powered committee had been essential in promoting the idea of law reform amongst the wider public, as well as preventing ‘hare-brained schemes, people trying to chain themselves to the railings or wave flags in Whitehall’.127 While

Grey believed such a measured approach was necessary in order to prevent alienating public opinion during a period of ongoing hostilities towards homosexual men, the campaign run by the HLRS was nevertheless exclusionary and class-specific, privileging men who were able to adhere to a template of respectable homosexuality.

While the campaign of the HLRS was based on an assumption of social and spatial mobility, provincial campaigns demonstrated a greater awareness of the financial and cultural limits placed on homosexual men outside of privileged circles and their limited access to centres of power and decision-makers in the capital. The NWHLRC under the leadership of Alan Horsfall and social worker

Colin Harvey reflected a left-wing political tradition of self-organised

126 Antony Grey, ‘Beyond Law Reform’. 127 Antony Grey, ‘Beyond Law Reform’.

134 mobilisation, which sought to operate more closely to the political grassroots.128

As Lucy Robinson has remarked, Horsfall was remarkable in attempting to challenge the idea of homosexual rights as an exclusively middle-class issue.129

Horsfall, whose role at the National Coal Board took him across mining communities in the North, believed that a change in the law could not be achieved by a campaign run exclusively from London, based on his experiences of canvassing at Labour party events:

I’d been to Labour party national conferences and talked to MPs around the bar and found that broadly speaking they were sympathetic but said immediately ‘of course our constituents wouldn’t put up with it at all, so we daren’t say anything publicly’. That was the attitude of most of them. […] It was a genuine fear – constituency feeling – I think. That was why I could see that a campaign from London, which was Antony Grey’s outfit, was valuable but not sufficient, because they have to see things done in provincial places without the sky falling in.130

Horsfall therefore concentrated on distributing pamphlets on law reform to local

Labour parties, councillors and MPs in the North West, but also invoked his experiences in local activism to make a case for law reform on a national basis.

Writing to the Home Secretary Frank Soskice in 1965 he reported that ‘our appeal for positive and active support has been steady’ and noted that there had been an

‘almost complete absence of any opposition to our work’.131 Drawing on his experience in grassroots campaigning, Horsfall advised the Home Secretary that

‘any government could implement the Wolfenden Committee’s recommendations on homosexual offences without fear of the political consequences’.132 Local campaigns which targeted northern working-class communities could therefore be

128 Robinson, Gay Men, p. 43. 129 Robinson, Gay Men, pp. 43-45. 130 Transcript of Interview with Allan Horsfall. 131 Allan Horsfall to Home Secretary Sir Frank Soskice, 9th May 1965, MCL GB124.G.HOR/1/2. 132 Allan Horsfall to Home Secretary Sir Frank Soskice.

135 effectively mobilised to illustrate a shift in public opinion throughout the country and challenge politicians’ understanding that law reform would be a highly unpopular move with voters outside of metropolitan circles.

The NWHLRC not only adopted distinct campaigning strategies, but was decidedly more radical in outlook than the national campaign of the HLRS and indeed more impatient to see changes to the social reality of homosexual men. In an article drafted for Peace News, but apparently unpublished, Horsfall criticised the ‘timidity and hesitancy’ of the HLRS, alongside its ‘father-knows-best attitude’.133 He saw the reason for this cautious approach in the fact that the campaign had for too long been ‘exclusively London-based’ and suggested that the HLRS saw ‘at least part of its task as being to protect the government from undue embarrassment’.134 Horsfall’s scepticism towards a metropolitan and elite- led campaign reflected a long tradition of working-class self-help, transferring a model of cooperative self-led economic improvement to the arena of sexual rights.135 His strategy aimed at allowing homosexual men to ‘play a part in shaping their own destiny’ and advocated an egalitarian campaign, which more closely reflected the model of European and North American homophile activism by giving a prominent voice to homosexuals. 136 Horsfall also made a case for

133 Allan Horsfall, ‘The Long Road to Homosexual Justice’, Article Draft for Peace News, MCL GB124.G.HOR/14. For radicalism of NWHLRC see: Weeks, Coming Out, p.181. 134 Horsfall, ‘The Long Road’. See also Weeks, Coming Out, p. 181. 135 For working-class self-help see: Eric Hopkins, Working-Class Self-Help in Nineteenth-Century England: Responses to Industrialization (Abingdon, 2016); Martin Daunton, Wealth and Welfare: An Economic and Social History of Britain, 1851-1951 (2007); Martin Pugh, ‘Working-class Experience and State Social Welfare, 1908-1914: Old Age Pensions Reconsidered’, Historical Journal 45:4 (2002), pp. 775-796; Pat Thane, ‘The Working Class and State “Welfare” in Britain, 1880-1914’ Historical Journal 27:4 (1984), pp. 877-900. See also Robinson, Gay Men, p. 44. 136 Horsfall, ‘The Long Road’.

136 including a wide range of sexual identities, arguing against the politics of respectability and assimilation adopted by the HLRS:137

It should not be overlooked that the “camp” homosexual has as much right as anybody to seek to change this savage law, however embarrassing or ill-considered some of his actions may seem to be. It is difficult to see how any attempt to exclude him from a public campaign could be either practicable or justifiable.138

While the campaign of the HLRS occupied a centre ground which attempted to appeal to influent personalities across the political spectrum based around a sanitised model of respectable homosexuality, Horsfall engaged in a more radical left-wing politics. This demonstrated that even though the HLRS was the dominant voice in the British campaign for homosexual law reform, activists outside of the metropolis dissented from its strategy to propose a more inclusive campaign with clear parallels to homophile activism, based on an understanding of homosexuals as a minority group who should self-organise to demand rights.

Despite tensions over the provision of meeting places for homosexuals in

Britain, Dutch clubs for homosexuals remained prominent both within the

NWHLRC and the campaign of the HLRS. While such meeting places constituted a matter of immediate policy for campaigners in the North West, particularly in the latter half of the 1960s, Grey recognised that making progressive Dutch social attitudes visible to British audiences was an invaluable tool for shifting public opinion. Grey had spent twelve years working for the Secretary’s Department of the British Iron and Steel Federation and drew on his experience in public relations and lobbying to aid British journalists in visiting the COC premises,

137 For politics of respectability, see D'Emilio, Sexual Politics, 75-90; Jackson, ‘The Homophile Movement’, pp. 40-41. 138 Horsfall, ‘The Long Road’.

137 making a wider British public familiar with the Dutch approach of civilised tolerance towards homosexuality.139 Grey recalled that he had personally persuaded The Observer to ‘send one of their leading reporters over [to Holland] to write an article about the club’, which he later said had ‘opened up the subject

[of homosexuality] in the British press in the mid-1960s’.140

In 1963, Roy Perrot’s article ‘A Club for Homosexuals’ appeared in The

Observer. While Perrot’s article acknowledged that the idea of a meeting place for homosexuals openly encouraged by the authorities ‘may sound unbelievable to

English people’, it adopted a moderate tone, linking Dutch attitudes to the philosophy of legal utilitarianism set out by both the Wolfenden Committee and the Church of England Moral Welfare Council, outlining that tolerance towards homosexuality alongside integration work would allow homosexual men to adapt and contribute to wider society.141 Following the Observer article, a number of

British journalists contacted the HLRS to provide factual reports on homosexuality.142 Daily Mail journalist Monica Furlong was among those who travelled to the Netherlands and addressed readers to ask why Britain didn’t follow the ‘wise example’ of the Dutch clubs.143 Furlong noted the ‘total absence of exhibitionist behaviour which, like most heterosexuals (and many homosexuals)

I find a distasteful feature of bars frequented by homosexuals in England’.144

Indeed, notions of respectability characterised this strand of measured reporting

139 Henri Methorst to Antony Grey, 16th-21st March 1961, HCA/Albany Trust/7/3; Grey, Quest for Justice, pp. 4-5. For Grey’s history of British steel industry see: J. C. Carr and W. Taplin, assisted by A. E. G. Wright, History of the British Steel Industry (Oxford, 1962); B. S. Keeling and A. E. G. Wright, The Development of the Modern Steel Industry (Harlow, 1964). 140 Antony Grey interviewed by Margot Farnham. 141 Roy Perrot, ‘A Club for Homosexuals’ The Observer (13th January 1963), p. 28. See also Minto, ‘Mr. Grey’, p. 224. 142 Grey, Quest for Justice, p. 82. 143 Furlong, ‘Wise example?’. 144 Furlong, ‘Wise example?’.

138 on Dutch sexual cultures, often poignantly counterposed with the perceived unsavoury nature of unregulated commercial venues for homosexual men in

Britain.

In addition, the ITV presenter Bryan Magee visited the COC for a television programme on male homosexuality filmed both in England and in

Holland, which included an interview with COC secretary John Fopma, shots of men dancing together on the clubhouse dancefloor and scenes of intimacy, such as one man putting his hand on another man’s knee (Figure 3). The broadcast also included interviews with homosexual men in front of the camera, which starkly contrasted the social position of homosexual men in Britain and the Netherlands in an implicit appeal to British viewers. This disparity was also reproduced visually: a Dutch visitor of the COC spoke directly to camera, stating that ‘to me there are no disadvantages [to being homosexual]’. In contrast, the British men who appeared ‘anonymously and in shadow’ were regular supporters of the HLRS and many of them expressed the view that they would not be homosexual if they had a choice (Figure 4).145

145 Grey, Quest for Justice, p. 68. See Figure 3 and 4, p. 140.

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Figure 3: Scenes of intimacy and men dancing together at the COC clubhouse: James Butler (dir.), This Week 458: Homosexuals, ITV, 22nd October 1964.

Figure 4: Interview with a Dutch man at the COC clubhouse (top left). Contrasting with this, the English interviewees whose faces were obscured: James Butler (dir.), This Week 458: Homosexuals, ITV, 22nd October 1964.

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In his book One in Twenty, published two years after the television broadcast, Magee described the scenes he encountered on the dancefloor of De

Odeon Kring (DOK), Amsterdam’s commercial club for homosexuals, in graphic detail, yet explicitly challenged the notion that these were in fact as extraordinary as it would first appear to a British observer:

The dancers were crushed up against each other, locked in each other’s arms, entwined round each other, kissing while they danced, nuzzling, nibbling each other’s ears, their hands wandering over each other’s bodies - exactly, as I say, as you would find in any successful nightclub, except that the dancers were all men. I had a curious feeling that it was all, at one and the same time, ordinary and extraordinary.146

Magee’s book was praised as ‘sensible’, ‘level-headed’ and ‘humane’ in the

British press and marked part of a wider political shift towards a modernisation of

British society in the mid-1960s, which was accompanied by a less sensationalist media discourse on homosexuality. This reportage employed impressions of the normality of homosexuality encountered by British journalists in the Netherlands to disrupt prevailing British attitudes towards homosexuality as deviant.147

Grey’s deployment of what he saw as continental European social attitudes stood alongside increased points of contact between British and western and southern European cultures. While multicultural enclaves had existed in London, particularly in Soho, since the late nineteenth century, these had dichotomous connotations and were often associated with disorder, chaos and danger.148 Yet, as

146 Bryan Magee, One in Twenty, A Study of Homosexuality in Men and Women (London, 1966), p.106. 147 Gillian Tindall, ‘Strangers and Brothers’, The Guardian (18th March 1966), p. 6.; Geoffrey Gorer, ‘Guys and Dolls’, The Observer (13th March 1966), p. 26; n.a., ‘Recent Publicity’, Spectrum Newsletter 7 (1964), p. 2. See also Weeks, Coming Out, pp. 173-175. 148 Judith Walkowitz,‘“The Vision of Salome”: Cosmopolitanism and Erotic Dancing in Central London, 1908-1918’, The American Historical Review 108:2 (2003), pp. 338-339. See also Judith Walkowitz, Nights Out: Life in Cosmopolitan London (New Haven, 2012), pp. 17-43.

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Frank Mort has observed, beginning in the 1950s, ‘Cosmopolitanism was redefined as “Continentalism”’, drawing heavily on Mediterranean tastes and imagery.149 This highly selective cultural diversity was both unthreatening and familiar to British observers and held positive connotations which were linked to forms of aspirational consumption.150 While the consumption of foreign cuisines remained largely limited to intellectual and metropolitan elites during the 1950s, by the 1960s Mediterranean food writing as pioneered by Elisabeth David had arrived more firmly in the mainstream of society, accompanied by a positive cultural imagery of Mediterranean Europe.151Alongside an increase in foreign travel and the greater political integration of Europe, this allowed a popular imagination of continental Europe as both sophisticated and civilised. This engagement with European cultures of consumption and the expansion of cosmopolitan attitudes played a crucial role in extending the social and moral horizon of the British public.152 By making selective aspects of European sexual attitudes, which relied heavily on his perception of Dutch liberalism, visible to a

British audience, Grey was a key actor in shifting the social imagination of the

British public, presenting the Dutch homosexual experience as an alternate, but conceivable, social reality.

While the transmission of European attitudes towards homosexuality played a key role in the public campaign of the HLRS, calls for the establishment of homosexual meeting places intensified in the latter half of the 1960s. Many

149 Mort, Capital Affairs, p. 241. 150 Mort, Capital Affairs, p. 241. 151 Mort, Capital Affairs, pp. 237-241; Rachel Cooke, ‘The Enduring Legacy of Elizabeth David, Britain's first Lady of Food’, The Guardian, Online Edition (8th December 2013), [accessed 30th December 2017]. 152 Hannerz, ‘Cosmopolitans’, p. 239.

142 supporters of the Albany Trust and the HLRS expressed disappointment at arguments that its status as a charitable organisation precluded the trust from establishing such venues. HLRS supporter Raymond Foster, living in London

Marylebone, wrote to the NWHLRC to profess he was ‘distressed’ to hear about the Albany Trust’s reluctance to take ‘any more concrete steps towards the provision of social clubs’, while E.G.W. Tregaskis from Southend-on-Sea informed the committee he saw ‘widespread social need’ for ‘responsibly run clubs’ and admitted he was deeply disappointed by the organisation’s hesitancy.153 Grey himself acknowledged that the position taken by the HLRS had

‘invariably cause[d] disappointment and discontent at what [was] regarded as ‘the

Trust’s neglect of a widely felt need.’154 Letters from homosexual men which form part of the Allan Horsfall collection at Manchester Central Library illustrated a palpable sense of despair and loneliness among men who felt socially isolated. John Sankey, a thirty-five-year-old former Sunday School teacher living in South Manchester, confessed he felt suicidal and was drinking too much due to his isolation, stating that ‘I only want to reach over in the night and touch someone else and know I am not alone anymore’.155 He felt uncomfortable in commercial clubs, which could be highly exclusionary, based both on social status and appearance and in a postscript to his letter added:

Why cannot we have a club to go to, not for sexual orgies, but somewhere to just be accepted for who we are. I have thought of this so often, and yet where do we start, and how can we tell others like myself? We are so

153 Raymond Foster to NWHLRC, 21st September 1968, MCL GB124.G.HOR/5; E.G.W. Tregaskis, 8th September 1968, MCL GB124.G.HOR/5. 154 Raymond Foster to NWHLRC, 21st September 1968, MCL GB124.G.HOR/5; Grey, ‘Social Organisations’. 155 John Sankey to NWHLRC, 18th September 1967, MCL GB124.G.HOR/5.

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isolated that we cannot even begin! I know all about homosexuality, yet I know nothing.156

Sankey’s letter reflected his personal struggle for self-acceptance, as well as making a powerful case for spaces in which homosexual men could be their authentic selves without having to conform to specific cultures of homosociability, as was often necessary in commercial venues.157

Following the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Britain in 1967, the

NWHLRC took concrete action towards establishing meeting places for homosexual men after the committee decided to focus its efforts on the ‘many varied social and personal problems which remain’.158 Horsfall formed Esquire

Clubs Ltd as an independent company with plans to run a network of clubs in the

North West of England.159 Adopting the homophile model of positioning homosexual men as a distinct community within wider society with specific rights and needs, the NWHLRC announced that ‘this is a minority group which like all minority groups needs its own special facilities without trying to cut off from society’.160 The committee stressed that it had found the need for meeting places to be particularly great in smaller towns and set out the egalitarian ideal under which the new not-for-profit clubs would be run:

The need is not for exclusive queer clubs but for intimate clubs with a gay informal atmosphere where homosexuals could meet, bring their sister to, their friends both homosexual and heterosexual. It would also be a place

156 John Sankey to NWHLRC. 157 For exclusionary nature of homosexual commercial cultures, particularly in London see Houlbrook, Queer London, p. 265. 158 n.a., ‘Information about Esquire Clubs Ltd’, 1st April 1968, MCL GB124.G.HOR/5. 159 For Esquire Clubs see Sebastian Buckle, The Way Out: A History of Homosexuality in Modern Britain (London, 2015), p. 71; Edsall, Toward Stonewall, p. 334; Weeks, Coming Out, pp. 182, 210. 160 For homophile model see Marc Stein, Rethinking the Gay and Lesbian Movement (London, 2012), pp. 46- 49, Jackson, Living in Arcadia, pp. 112-113.

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where they are not obliged to drink – as is the case with most of the bars where they meet now.161

The clubs, which would provide ‘food, friendship, drink, dancing and entertainment’, cultural activities and discussion groups not only revealed clear parallels with Dutch clubs for homosexuals in their mission statement. A leaflet produced by Esquire Clubs Ltd in 1968 explicitly announced the clubs would have ‘extended facilities, rather more like the COC’, indicating that the Dutch homophile organisation was by then well known by a broad homosexual audience.162 Clifford Smith received the leaflet at The Flamingo, a commercial club for homosexual men in Wolverhampton. In a letter to Esquire Clubs Ltd he stated that ‘your mention of the COC tells me all I feel I need to know before joining’, as well as requesting fifty additional leaflets for distribution, outlining a high level of interest in the new venture in provincial towns even beyond the

North West.163

Plans to establish social clubs for homosexuals also brought campaigners and members of the NWHLRC into direct contact with the international homophile movement as they sought to draw on the ‘experience of all who have been connected with similar developments in other countries’.164 Even though

Grey regarded the North West committee, as a ‘rather naïve and somewhat intemperate “ginger group” on our left wing’, particularly over the idea of establishing social clubs, he facilitated contact between Esquire Groups Ltd and

161 n.a., ‘ Information about Esquire Clubs Ltd’. 162 n.a., ‘Do you want an Esquire Club?’, MCL GB124.G.HOR/14. 163 Clifford Smith to Esquire Clubs Ltd, 2nd June 1968, MCL GB124.G.HOR/5. 164 Allan Horsfall to J.W. Menkveld, 11th March 1968, MCL GB124.G.HOR/5.

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COC officials.165 In June 1968, COC general secretary Jan Willem Menkveld and former secretary Jan de Groot flew into Manchester. They stayed at the home of

NWHLRC Chairman Colin Harvey in Heaton Moor, just outside of the city, suggesting that the visit provided an occasion to forge personal connections, as well as discussing the ‘ways to alleviate the many social problems with which homosexuals here are still faced’.166

Of particular interest to the NWHLRC was the COC’s attitude towards young people attending its venues, the integration of counselling services and problems experienced in the general management of the clubs.167 The meeting was also attended by Tom Frost, a psychiatric social worker, who was in the process of setting up counselling services and a social facility for homosexuals in

Coventry. Frost who was running ‘something of a one man show’, revealed that the expertise of the COC was perceived as crucial to British endeavours for homosexual meeting places, stating that he ‘needed to gain as much know-how as possible’ from the Dutch visitors.168 Campaigners in the North West also sought to mirror the Dutch approach of a close dialogue with local authorities and experts, arranging a consultation between the visiting COC officials and local social workers and doctors to make the benefits of responsibly run social clubs better known. In addition, a meeting was held at the Rockingham Club in Manchester, a commercial homosexual venue close to Manchester University which Esquire planned to take over, giving members the opportunity to meet Menkveld and de

165 Antony Grey to Michael De-La-Noy, 7th October 1969, HCA/Albany Trust/10/33; Antony Grey to Allan Horsfall, 27th February 1968, MCL GB124.G.HOR/5. 166 Allan Horsfall to J.W. Menkveld, 11th March 1968. 167 Allan Horsfall to J.W. Menkveld, 30th May 1968, MCL GB124.G.HOR/5. 168 Tom Frost to Allan Horsfall, [undated, likely spring 1968], MCL GB124.G.HOR/5.

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Groot and to ask questions about the COC organisation and social clubs.169 The visit of the Dutch campaigners demonstrated that by the late 1960s, contacts between British campaigners and the international homophile movement were no longer restricted to the HLRS, as provincial campaigners opened up channels of communication which would not only guide regional activists in their attempts to establish British social clubs for homosexuals, but also made wider homosexual audiences increasingly familiar with the work of the COC.

Throughout 1968 and 1969, Esquire received a wealth of correspondence from men across the country who were interested in joining the clubs. A.J.F.

Nightingale, living in Kent, inquired if there were plans to establish Esquire Clubs in London. While he knew about commercial venues in London, he did not feel comfortable there as ‘they have many undesirables there’ and described the mental strain he felt due to having to conceal his sexuality in an ‘unsympathetic world’. ‘At times’, he wrote, ‘living a “double life” without ever speaking honestly to anybody for months on end, places one in terribly nervous terrain’.170

John Knaggs, a fifty- six-year-old man from Somerset had become a member of

Esquire Clubs and hoped projects which brought homosexuals into contact with each other would help ‘the younger generation to lead more fruitful and fuller and better lives’, as he had been ‘brainwashed and conditioned to think of myself as something revolting’.171 P.W. Stott contacted the organisation to express that the proposed clubs offered:

something to live and look forward to, a ray of hope and a way of life such as we have known, somewhere to meet people, somewhere to take people,

169 Allan Horsfall, ‘Esquire Clubs Ltd Newsletter’, 1st June 1968, MCL GB124.G.HOR/5. 170 A.J.F. Nightingale to Esquire Clubs Ltd, (undated, likely 1968), MCL GB124.G.HOR/5. 171 John Knaggs to Esquire Clubs Ltd, 17th October 1968, MCL GB124.G.HOR/5.

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a change from the nasty public houses, and for some the end of complete isolation.172

The letters of men who wanted to become members of Esquire Clubs revealed a genuine need for social contact and companionship, as well as a desire to end the stigma around meeting places for homosexual men. In particular, they sought a location in which they could safely enact their sexual identities and find acceptance without having to seek out homosocial spaces on the fringes of society, which required concealment and secrecy. In addition, commercial venues for homosexuals catered to distinct audiences which ran along the lines of a series of exclusions, while public spaces remained coded as heterosexual. To British men, the envisaged social clubs therefore represented a space in which heteronormativity could be safely challenged, while allowing for more inclusive expressions of same-sex desire and homosexual communality.

The Esquire Clubs venture was ultimately unsuccessful, troubled by difficulties obtaining funding and suitable locations. The project was further burdened by the fact that Leo Abse MP and Lord Arran, who had prominently supported law reform and introduced the Sexual Offences Bill in the House of

Commons and the House of Lords were unsupportive, with Grey recalling they

‘recoiled in horror’ when they heard of the proposed scheme.173 In particular, their concerns were directed at public anxieties over immoral behaviour in the clubs, as the venture gave critics of law reform an impetus to believe their ‘worst fears had been realised’.174 Esquire Clubs Ltd and the efforts of the NWHLRC to establish meeting places for homosexual men have therefore largely been neglected by

172 P.W. Stott to Esquire Clubs, undated, likely 1968, MCL GB124.G.HOR/5. 173 Grey, Quest for Justice, pp. 154-155; Weeks, Coming Out, p. 181. 174 Grey, Quest for Justice, p. 155.

148 historians of homosexual emancipation as a short-lived and ultimately failed project.175

However, an in-depth analysis of the project has not only demonstrated that there were energetic sexual rights campaigns outside of London which prioritised the social needs of ordinary homosexual men, but also that impulses taken from the international homophile movement were not exclusively relevant to the liberal metropolitan campaign of the HLRS. Furthermore, the prism of transnational influences on British sexual rights activism revealed strategic differences in campaigning activities and the self-understanding of national and provincial organisations. For Grey and the HLRS, Dutch homosexual clubs became part of a larger effort to contrast British and continental approaches towards homosexuality as part of an essentially outward-looking campaign. To achieve law reform, Grey mobilised notions of continental European societies as tolerant, but civilised, as a crucial tool towards challenging prevailing British attitudes.176 In contrast, the NWHLRC promoted the concerns and needs of homosexual men who were silenced in the national campaign, representing working-class and small town homosexuality in particular. For these campaigners, the COC offered a clear template that could alleviate the immediate social problems faced by homosexual men, while an understanding of homosexuals as a minority group in society was more closely aligned with the ideals of the international homophile movement.

175 Buckle, The Way Out, p. 71; Edsall, Toward Stonewall, p. 334; Weeks, Coming Out, pp. 182, 210; Minto, ‘Mr Grey’, p. 237. 176 Antony Grey, ‘Towards a Sexually Sane Society. Albany Trust Winter Talk, 5th March 1963’, in Grey, Speaking Out, pp. 63-70.

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5. Transmissions of British Campaigning Experiences

Despite Grey’s hesitancy to align the national activities of the HLRS with the international homophile movement, from the mid-1960s onwards, the organisation was increasingly approached by foreign campaigners seeking its expertise and guidance, becoming instrumental in disseminating and transmitting British experiences in campaigning across Europe. In drawing on these international resources, the HLRS and other European organisations working towards greater sexual equality followed a model of transnational advocacy networks, characterised by ‘shared values, a common discourse, and a dense exchange of information of information and services’.177 The HLRS campaign had been shaped by making European approaches towards homosexuality visible, but crucially the shift in public and official approaches facilitated by the organisation since the publication of the Wolfenden Report was recognised by campaigners abroad. In particular, the work of the HLRS, as well as British official and church reports on homosexuality provided a template for German and Norwegian campaigns, demonstrating that British sexual and social knowledge was critical in steering debates on penal reform abroad.

West German activists had drawn on the various reports which had been published on the subject of homosexuality in Britain since the late-1950s to steer debates on criminal law reform.178 Albrecht Dieckhoff was part of a group of

Protestant lawyers based in Hamburg who supported decriminalisation and became a key figure in making British scientific, theological and official

177 Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, ‘Transnational Advocacy Networks in International and Regional Politics’, International Journal of Social Science 159 (1999), p. 90. 178 For the modernisation of the German penal code in relation to homosexuality see Clayton J. Whisnant, Male Homosexuality in West Germany: Between Persecution and Freedom, 1945-69 (Basingstoke, 2012), pp. 166-203.

150 knowledge on homosexuality accessible to a broad German audience.179

Dieckhoff was qualified as a British Barrister-at-Law and had worked for the

British occupying forces in Hamburg. His language skills and familiarity with

British legal traditions allowed him to translate not only the Wolfenden Report and Peter Wildeblood’s 1955 autobiographical account Against the Law, but also statements produced by the British churches, most prominently the report published by the Church of England Moral Welfare Council (1954) and the report of the Roman Catholic Advisory Committee, also known as the Griffin Report

(1956), which was submitted as evidence to the Wolfenden Committee.180

Dieckhoff drew on the moral theological distinction between biblical sin and secular criminal liability, as outlined by the British Anglican and Catholic reports, which allowed progressive church members to argue for improving the living conditions of homosexual men without fundamentally challenging the understanding of homosexuality as a sin.181 While theological discourses were often marginalised in the discussions of the Wolfenden Committee and the HLRS, both of which drew more explicitly on the expert opinions of doctors, psychologists and social scientists, they were key in winning the support of liberal

German Protestants who petitioned the German government.

179 For Dieckhoff see Gottfried Lorenz, ‘Hamburg als Homosexuellenhauptstadt der 1950er Jahre’, in Andreas Pretzel, Volker Weiss (eds.), Ohnmacht und Aufbegehren. Homosexuelle Männer in der frühen Bundesrepublik (Hamburg, 2010), pp. 138-142. See also Whisnant, Male Homosexuality, p. 184. 180 Peter Wildeblood, Against the Law, new preface by Matthew Parris (London, 1999 [1955]); Church of England Moral Welfare Council, The Problem of Homosexuality: An Interim Report (Oxford, 1954); Roman Catholic Advisory Committee, Report of the Roman Catholic Advisory Committee on Prostitution and Homosexual Offences and the Existing Law, text reprinted in Dublin Review 471 (Summer 1956), pp. 60-65. 181 Dr Albrecht Dieckhoff, ‘Kriminologie und Moraltheologie in England. Der Griffin Report und der Wolfenden Report. Vortrag vor der Evangelischen Academie Loccum (am 21. Juli 1959)’, Der Weg, Sonderdruck (1959), pp. 349-358.

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Beginning in 1965, Dieckhoff and Antony Grey began corresponding regularly, with Dieckhoff requesting copies of British reports on homosexuality, as well as British parliamentary proceedings, which he disseminated to German audiences. After requesting the Hansard coverage of debates in the House of

Lords and the House of Commons in May 1965, Dieckhoff published an in-depth analysis of the obstacles facing the implementation of the Wolfenden recommendations. He concluded that the Commons had yielded to uninformed public opinion, rather than ‘aligning the penal law with that of most civilised countries’, drawing parallels to the German Ministry of Justice, which had rejected recommendations by the Große Strafrechtskommission (Great Penal Law

Commission) to decriminalise homosexuality in Germany both in 1960 and in

1962.182

However, Dieckhoff’s engagement with British proceedings was far from theoretical. As Gottfried Lorenz has demonstrated, Dieckhoff actively pursued the implementation of the Wolfenden recommendations in Germany, delivering several speeches to experts in the legal profession and the ranks of prominent liberal Protestants, as well as publishing a report with recommendations for

German penal reform, which drew on the legacy of the British investigations.183

The Protestantenbericht (1961) was explicitly positioned as a German response to the Griffin, Interim and Wolfenden reports and included a full translation of the

Griffin Report. It was intended to steer the discussions of the Bundestag, the

Federal Ministry of Justice, as well as the work of the Große

182 Albrecht Dieckhoff to Antony Grey, 7th August 1965, HCA/Albany Trust/7/20; Albrecht Dieckhoff, ‘Der Wolfenden Report vor dem Britischen Ober- und Unterhaus’, in Vorgänge: Eine kulturpolitische Korrespondenz 7 (1965), pp. 326-327. 183 Lorenz, ‘Hamburg’, pp. 138-143.

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Strafrechtskommission, which was tasked with the fundamental revision of the

German Penal Code in the 1950s and 1960s.184

Dieckhoff was not the only West German activist seeking the advice and expertise of the HLRS, demonstrating that its work was understood to hold valuable and transferrable lessons for German campaigners. Wolfgang Beurlen, a translator who had connections to the German literary scene, also contacted the

HLRS in 1965.185 Beurlen was part of a group of Hamburg citizens who drew up a petition to the Bundestag calling for the decriminalisation of homosexuality in

Germany. He had familiarised himself with the campaigning materials of the

HLRS and the Albany Trust and sought advice in building an effective campaigning strategy and organising a sexual rights group.186 While Grey pointed to differing legal and parliamentary procedures in West Germany and Britain, he nevertheless felt that the strategy of enlisting the patronage of heterosexual elites, which the HLRS had pursued in Britain could be replicated in Germany. Grey recommended seeking ‘the support of as wide a group of lawyers, Churchmen, sociologists and others as you[r group] can’, which would then be tasked with petitioning the Bundestag.187 Grey’s involvement demonstrated that the HLRS was increasingly open to international cooperation beginning in the mid-1960s,

184 Albrecht Dieckhoff, Karl Knop and Hannes Kaufmann (eds.), Wer wirft den ersten Stein: Bericht zum Interim Report der Anglikanischen Hochkirche, dem Griffin Report der englischen Katholiken und dem Wolfenden Report des Britischen Regierungsausschusses für die deutschsprachigen Protestanten, veranlasst durch den Vorsitzenden des Hamburger Protestantenvereins und benannt Der Protestanten-Bericht (Stuttgart, 1961), pp. 5-7. For Dieckhoff’s speech at the Deutscher Juristentag 1960 in Munich see n.a, ‘Die Große Strafrechtsreform vor dem Deutschen Juristentag 1960 in München’, Der Weg 10 (1960), pp. 267- 269; Christian Schäfer, "Widernatürliche Unzucht" (§§ 175, 175a, 175b, 182 a.F. StGB): Reformdiskussion und Gesetzgebung seit 1945 (Berlin, 2006), pp. 141-143. 185 Kulturstiftung Hansestadt Lübeck, Heinrich-und-Thomas-Mann-Zentrum (ed.), Jahresbericht 1998 (Lübeck, 1999), p. 20. 186 Wolfgang Beurlen to Antony Grey, 9th September 1965, HCA/Albany Trust/7/20; Wolfgang Beurlen to Antony Grey, 30th October 1965, HCA/Albany Trust/7/20. 187 Antony Grey to Wolfgang Beurlen, 20th October 1965, HCA/Albany Trust/7/20.

153 making key resources and successful campaigning strategies available to activists abroad.

Following the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Britain, Grey became more radically outspoken in his support of campaigns towards legal reform abroad.

In 1970, Grey joined the ranks of several influential European activists enlisted by

Karen-Christine Friele, chairwoman of the Norwegian homophile organisation

DNF’48 to aid in producing a pamphlet challenging the law on homosexuality in

Norway. Among them were the British psychiatrist Donald J. West, the East

German sexologist Dr Rudolph Klimmer and Dr Nico Speijer, professor of social psychiatry at the State University of Leyden in the Netherlands. Speyer had chaired an official Dutch government committee which had recommended that the age of consent for homosexual acts should be lowered to 16.188

Even though §213 of the Norwegian penal code, which made provisions to imprison men who engaged in homosexual acts for up to one year, was de facto not in use, allowing the DNF’48 to advertise their social club freely, the organisation nevertheless saw penal law reform as crucial to ending the stigma around homosexuality and paving the way for a shift in public attitudes. 189 The work of the HLRS and the Albany Trust had provided a valuable template for the work of the DNF’48 since the late 1950s. During the organisation’s general assembly in 1960, members discussed producing a pamphlet which would give ‘a short introduction into the homosexual problem’, as well as setting out the organisation’s key aims and objectives. These were based directly on HLRS brochures, which the organisation had permission to ‘plagiarize as necessary to

188 Grey, Quest for Justice, p. 198. 189 Karen- Christine Friele to Antony Grey, 10th June 1970, Skeivt Arkiv, The Norwegian National Archive for Queer and LGBT History.

154 suit our needs’.190 In addition, the DNF’48 publication Oss I Mellom (Between us) closely followed the work of the HLRS and British debates on the Wolfenden

Report.191

The engagement of Norwegian campaigners with progressive British thought on homosexuality also demonstrated central mechanisms of how specific arguments towards decriminalisation became separated from the national contexts in which they were produced and instead became part of a transnational discourse on homosexuality, which was diffused globally through travel and written communications. In particular, Friele asked Grey for permission to reprint his article ‘Sex, Morality and Happiness’, which had been published in Man and

Society in 1969, but was based on an earlier speech Grey had delivered in New

York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco on his tour of America in autumn

1967. In this speech, Grey set out the fundamental societal problem of sexual minority rights being a struggle between the separation of the liberty of the individual and authoritarian morality and argued for the stronger social integration of homosexual men, stating that it was ‘only by ultimate integration, and not by sexual apartheid that we shall reach our humanity to the full’.192 Friele recognised the universal applicability of Grey’s statement, outlining that it

cover[ed] the argument for abolishing the Norwegian law, although it does not deal with [the] Norwegian situation in particular. But the substance of the article is so excellent that every Norwegian ought to read it really.193

190 Translation from Norwegian by Birger Berge, Digital Archivist, Skeivt Arkiv: n.a.,‘Generalvorbamling’, Oss I Mellom (December 1960), p.11. 191 See for example: Farmand, ‘Avisklipp’, Oss i Mellom (April 1963), p. 9; Gunnar, ‘Tilbakeblikk av 1960, Oss i Mellom (February, 1961), pp. 1-2, n.a., ‘En Minoritet’, Oss i Mellom (August 1960), pp. 5-9. 192 Antony Grey, ‘“Sex, Morality and Happiness”, Based on a Lecture delivered in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, October/November 1967’, in Grey, Speaking Out, pp. 84-93. For Grey’s tour of the US see Minto, ‘Mr Grey’. 193 Karen-Christine Friele to Antony Grey, 10th June 1970, Skeivt Arkiv.

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The Norwegian campaign demonstrated how various strings of progressive thought on homosexuality converged in one national effort towards decriminalisation. In his letters to Friele, Grey had cautioned that the British reforms were an ‘unsatisfactory half-way house’.194 He therefore supplied the

DNF’48 with a Dutch government report, which aimed at ending all legal discrimination of homosexuals by reducing the age of consent to 16.195 To Friele, this report was a ‘gold mine’, and the DNF’48 distributed it to the Norwegian

Penal Code Committee, as well as to the Department of Justice, alongside the pamphlet §213 – an evil or a necessity, which was received positively in the

Norwegian press in October 1970. 196

Grey also agreed to write a dedicated article for the DNF’48 pamphlet, which gave a detailed evaluation of the effects of the 1967 law reform. In Grey’s view it had initiated a public debate and a repositioning of homosexuality in public opinion, which meant it was no longer perceived as ‘obscene or comical’.197 However, Grey also voiced his disappointment in the shortcomings of the 1967 act, pointing to the discriminatory age of consent, as well as continuing homophobia. Grey contrasted the situation in Britain with the more radical movement towards sexual equality in the US, which had gained traction after the

Stonewall Riots a year earlier and the more progressive integration of homosexual men into Dutch society. However, while the commercial scene was flourishing in

Amsterdam by the late 1960s, with some thirty homosexual venues existing by

194 Antony Grey to Karen-Christine Friele, 17th June 1970, Skeivt Arkiv. 195 Antony Grey to Karen- Christine Friele, 17th June 1970, Skeivt Arkiv. 196 Author’s translation from Norwegian: Det Norske Verbundet av 1948 (ed.), §213 - Onde eller nødvendighet (Oslo, 1970). 197 Translation from Norwegian by Birger Berge, Digital Archivist, Skeivt Arkiv: Antony Grey, ‘Lovendring er ikke tilstrekkelig’, in Det Norske Verbundet av 1948 (ed.), §213 - Onde eller nødvendighet (Oslo, 1970), pp. 59-63.

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1970, it is important to note that Grey may have idealised the conditions in the

Netherlands. The age of consent was not equalised until 1971, leading to vocal protests from the Dutch homosexual community.198 Nevertheless, Grey emphatically cautioned Norwegian audiences against accepting a change in the law which codified a discriminatory age of consent.199

The engagement of the HLRS with the campaigns towards the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Germany and Denmark demonstrated not only that the HLRS increasingly assisted campaigns abroad, but also that it influenced the aspirations and campaigning strategies of these organisations.

Activists in countries facing similar legal challenges as Britain had before 1967 recognised the strategies of the HLRS as innovatory and replicable, despite or even because of, their lack in radicalism, instead committing to working within the established democratic process. The exchanges between the HLRS and foreign activists also highlighted that campaigners across Europe pursued transnational cooperation as a key strategy towards social and legal change. By enlisting the help of the HLRS, activists such as Friele drew on international support to place pressure on national governments, a strategy which became increasingly relevant in the more radical post-Stonewall activism, as Phillip Ayoub has demonstrated.200

198 Hekma, ‘Queer Amsterdam’, pp. 125-127. 199 Grey, ‘Lovendring er ikke tilstrekkelig’, p. 59-63. 200 Phillip M. Ayoub, ‘A Struggle for Recognition and Rights: Expanding LGBT Activism’, in Alison Brysk and Michael Stohl, Expanding Human Rights: 21st Century Norms and Governance (Cheltenham, 2017), pp. 13-15.

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Conclusion

This chapter has outlined that British discussions on homosexual rights took key impulses from the international homophile movement during the 1950s and 1960s.

British activists, doctors and journalists established channels through which notions of civilised European sexual cultures and the work of organisations such as the COC were transmitted to public and official audiences. Furthermore,

British campaigners shared their experiences with homophile activists abroad from the mid-1960s onwards, pointing to a greater international consciousness and a closer alignment between the British national campaign and the homophile movement than has been previously suggested. Nevertheless, the hesitancy of

British campaigners to explicitly articulate unity with the transnational homophile movement revealed a complex picture of distinct national traditions of pressure- group politics and public cultures of morality. This reinforces the extent to which sexual rights discourses generated within transnational forums were shaped by distinct national legal, political and social frameworks and holds important implications for thinking about sexuality transnationally.

This chapter has demonstrated that a transnational perspective can offer a prism through which specificities of place, class and community can be located, decentering accounts of social change in Britain. In this chapter, the engagement of British campaigners with the homophile movement revealed distinct contrasts in the campaigning strategies of national and regional activists. The HLRS campaign operated in close proximity to traditional centres of power, drawing on the elite cosmopolitanism of the homophile movement to disseminate notions of civilised European sexual cultures to heterosexual audiences. The HLRS

158 campaign, which centred around a model of respectable homosexuality, was a dominant voice in British discussions on homosexuality, yet the grassroots approach of the NWHLRC demonstrated that the culture of 1960s sexual rights activism was in fact more diverse. Furthermore, the campaign in the North West demonstrated that impulses from the European homophile movement did not exclusively become relevant in liberal cosmopolitan circles, but could be interpreted by campaigners to represent the voices and needs of homosexual men from rural and working-class backgrounds. Chapter Three will move the analysis from exchanges between activist groups to how transnational languages of sexual equality were circulated across Europe and adapted to distinct national frameworks.

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Chapter 3:

The Languages of Sexual Equality in Western Europe, 1950-1970

The identities homosexual men claimed and constructed in the post-war decades were reworked, reimagined and reinterpreted through an engagement with mainstream social and political discourse, highlighting that distinct languages of sexual equality operated as normative and productive tools for empowerment.

Historians of the international homophile movement such as Julian Jackson,

David Churchill and Leila Rupp have outlined that ‘rights talk’, particularly the vernacular of human rights, was central in structuring the demands of post-war sexual rights activists across western Europe and the USA.1 This research has focussed on the transnational spaces in which this body of thought was articulated and disseminated, highlighting the role of the International Committee for Sexual

Equality (ICSE), which drew on an international language and framework of universal human rights to demand greater sexual equality.2 Scholars have argued that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights published in 1948 allowed minorities to legitimise their demands for equality in a framework of inalienable rights, as human rights increasingly became part of international law and the

United Nations (UN) were established as a forum in which they could be discussed, endorsed and overseen.

1 David S. Churchill, ‘Transnationalism and Homophile Political Culture in the Postwar Decades’, GLQ 15:1 (2008), p. 33; Julian Jackson, ‘The Homophile Movement’, in David Paternotte and Manon Tremblay (eds.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Lesbian and Gay Activism (Abingdon, 2015), p. 32; Leila J. Rupp, ‘The Persistence of Transnational Organizing: The Case of the Homophile Movement’, American History Review 116:4 (2011), pp. 1014-1015; 1030-1032; David Paternotte and Hakan Seckinelgin, ‘“Lesbian and Gay Rights are Human Rights”: Multiple Globalizations and LGBTI Activism’, in David Paternotte and Manon Tremblay (eds.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Gay and Lesbian Activism (London, 2015), pp. 210-211. 2 See in particular Rupp’s study of the ICSE: Rupp, ‘Transnational Organizing’, pp. 1014-1015. For a detailed discussion of the International Committee for Sexual Equality see Chapter Two.

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This chapter engages with scholarship on homophile ‘rights talk’ and explores how these languages were negotiated between international forums and national cultures of sexual rights, highlighting how transnational thought was diffused and applied in local contexts. Here I draw on the sociological concept of

‘glocalisation’, which has suggested that global or international currents were moulded and transformed when they were picked up by distinct local cultures.3 In contrast to the previous chapters which emphasised interconnections, this chapter shifts focus to take a more comparative perspective. It highlights the processes of interpretation and adjustment that took place as sexual rights organisations drew on an internationalised rights-based language in national struggles for recognition.

I argue that an analysis of the inflections activists placed on vocabularies of human rights and citizenship can provide a deeper understanding of national homosexual rights movements, illuminating how these languages resonated in local contexts.

The political languages at the heart of this chapter are the closely related, but nevertheless distinct, vocabularies of human rights and democratic citizenship.

Human rights provided a compelling setting within which demands for rights could be framed in the context of the early Cold War period, as the UN became a key forum in which western states challenged the politics of the Soviet Union and its allies while pursuing closer strategic and ideological alliances within the west.4

3 Kenneth Plummer, ‘The Square of Intimate Citizenship: Some Preliminary Proposals’, Citizenship Studies, 5:3 (2001), pp. 237-253; Roland Robertson, ‘Globalisation or Glocalisation?’ The Journal of International Communication 1:1 (1994), pp. 33-52; Ho Kin Tong and Lin Hong Cheung, ‘Cultural Identity and Language: A proposed Framework for Cultural Globalisation and Glocalisation’, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 32:1 (2011), pp. 55-69. 4 Donald Puchala, Katie Verlin Laatikainen and Roger Coate (eds.), United Nations Politics: International Organization in a Divided World (Abingdon, 2015), pp. 38-42; Kjersti Brathagen, ‘The Norwegian Position on a European Convention for Human Rights, 1949-1951’, in Rasmus Mariager, Karl Molin and Kjertsi Brathagen (eds.), Human Rights in Europe During the Cold War

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As Churchill has posited, drawing on a language of human rights offered homophile campaigners an opportunity to politicise their demands within a wider framework of a western commitment to liberalism and to position their discussions of sexual freedom firmly within western democratic tradition.5 This understanding of sexual rights as a matter of individual liberty must therefore be located within the culture of the Cold War which conceptualised ‘freedom’ as central to western culture, in direct opposition to the authoritarian socialism and censorship of the Soviet Union.6 Furthermore, human rights provided the emerging homophile community with a common and inherently cosmopolitan framework through which their demands could be legitimised and universalised.

Samuel Moyn has posited that a human rights ideology had little political significance until the late 1970s when it was increasingly deployed by western leaders through a foreign policy lens, a notion I explicitly challenge in this chapter.7 Far from only being productive when concentrated in the hands of political elites, human rights constituted an important framework in which minorities could construct and legitimise identities and demands for equality in the post-war decades. By claiming a stake in the post-war human rights discourse, homophile activists challenged an understanding of a ‘typical rightsholder’ who, as Francesca Romana Ammaturo has asserted in her study of sexual citizenship and human rights in relation to LGBTIQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender,

(Abdingdon, 2014), pp. 15-17; Rosa Freedman, The United Nations Human Rights Council. A Critique and Early Assessment (London, 2013), pp. 119-141. 5 Churchill, ‘Transnationalism’, pp. 34-35. 6 Churchill, ‘Transnationalism’, p. 34.; Greg Barnhisel, Cold War Modernists: Art, Literature and American Cultural Diplomacy (New York, 2015), pp. 26-29. 7 Samuel Moyn, ‘Human Rights in History’, The Nation (11th August 2010), [accessed on 5th May 2018]. See also Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia. Human Rights in History (Cambridge, MA, 2010).

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Queer and Intersex) people in Europe, had been implicitly defined around ‘male, white, middle-class, […] heterosexual and cisgender’ individuals. 8

Alongside human rights, democratic citizenship constituted an important, but understudied, arena through which sexual minorities demanded rights in the

1950s and 1960s.9 A growing body of work on ‘intimate’ or ‘sexual citizenship’ has asserted that the language of civil liberties played a key role in sexual identity politics from the 1980s onwards. 10 I argue that these vocabularies had already become significant in the post-war moment, as homophile literature deployed a vernacular of liberal democratic citizenship that had been disseminated in western

Europe and the USA in the fight against fascism and communism and continued to play a central role in the political reordering of Europe after the Second World

War.11 In addition, civil rights were one of the key principles underlying the development of welfare states across Europe, drawing on a model which defined citizenship as ‘a legal status through which an identical set of civil, political and social rights are accorded to all members of the polity’.12

My analysis of the languages through which activists’ political demands were made has undoubtedly been shaped by poststructuralist approaches, in

8 Francesca Romana Ammaturo, European Sexual Citizenship: Human Rights, Bodies and Identities (London, 2016), p. 2. 9 Churchill has illuminated how the language of citizenship was mobilised in the US homophile movement, while Jackson also points to citizenship as a key discourse in the homophile movement, but there is a need for a deeper and more systematic exploration of how these languages were applied across Europe. See Churchill, ‘Transnationalism’, pp. 37-38; Jackson, Living in Arcadia, p. 113. 10 See Kenneth Plummer, Intimate Citizenship: Private Decisions and Public Dialogues (Seattle, 2003); Carl Stychin, Governing Sexuality. The Changing Politics of Citizenship and Law Reform (London, 2003); David Evans, Sexual Citizenship: the Material Construction of Sexualities (London, 1993). 11 Thomas Mergel, ‘The Unknown and the Familiar Enemy, The Semantics of Anti-Communism in the USA and Germany’, in Willibald Steinmetz (ed.), Political Languages in the Age of Extremes (Oxford, 2011), pp. 247-251. 12 Dominique Leydet, ‘Citizenship’ The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (2017), [accessed on 14th May 2018].

163 particular the ‘linguistic turn’ which gave key impulses for thinking about shifts in social realities and discursive practices.13 Yet, I concur with feminist criticisms that poststructuralist approaches overstate the role of language in the construction of social realities while neglecting authorship and agency.14 I have been influenced by Gabrielle Spiegel’s approach, which draws on multiple theoretical schools that consider both the social and linguistic production of reality by examining the text itself and its context.15 In addition, Judith Walkowitz’s City of

Dreadful Delight has demonstrated that authorship and the material contexts of text production are fundamental to uncovering how distinct cultures were shaped.16 This chapter therefore focusses on multiple levels of text production.

Homophile texts were shaped both from above, inscribed by wider social and political cultures, but also from below, as individual actors positioned themselves within this cultural framework, isolating and reassembling elements of the discourses available to them to construct identities and organise strategies towards demanding greater sexual equality.

Churchill has described the political languages used by activists as a

‘political framework, even a set of instrumental tools’, which could be mobilised

13 For poststructuralist approaches see Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, translated from French by Robert Hurley (New York, 1978); Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, translated, with an introduction and additional notes by Alan Bass (London, 1978); Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, 2nd edition (London, 2001); Gareth Stedman Jones, Languages of Class. Studies in English Working Class History, 1832-1982 (Oxford, 1983); Patrick Joyce, Visions of the People: Industrial England and the Question of Class, C.1848-1914 (Cambridge, 1993); James Vernon, Politics and the People: A Study in English Political Culture, 1815-1867 (Cambridge, 1993). For ‘linguistic turn’ see Judith Surkis, ‘When Was the Linguistic Turn? A Genealogy’, American Historical Review 117 (2012), pp. 700-722. See also Joan Scott, ‘The Evidence of Experience’, Critical Inquiry (Summer 1991), pp. 773-797. 14 For discussion of feminist critique of the linguistic turn see Elisabeth A. Clark, ‘The Lady Vanishes: Dilemmas of a Feminist Historian after the “Linguistic Turn”, Church History 67:1 (1998), pp. 1-31. 15 Gabrielle Spiegel, ‘History, Historicism, and the Social Logic of the Text in the Middle Ages’, Speculum 65:1 (1990), pp. 59-86; James Vernon, ‘Who’s afraid of the ‘Linguistic Turn’? The Politics of Social History and its Discontents’, Social History 19:1 (1994), p. 84. 16 Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (Chicago, 2013), pp. 9-10.

164 to demand rights.17 Yet, I highlight that these frameworks were also internalised and acted on identity, revealing how authors imagined themselves vis-à-vis the state, civil society and the wider homosexual community. Homophile texts which drew on the ideals of inalienable rights and citizenship provided resources for affirmations of same-sex desire, homosexual cultures and political aspirations.

Homophiles’ textual imaginaries, narratives of homosexual emancipation and articulations of the idealised homosexual man illuminated that political languages of human rights and citizenship were not only deployed in outwardly directed demands for rights, but played a key role in constructing the homosexual self.

This chapter will first provide an overview of the publications through which homophile thought was disseminated, as well as illuminating readership of these journals. It will then turn to an in-depth analysis of the homophile human rights ideology forged in transnational forums, before assessing how an international political language of sexual equality was translated into national contexts across Europe, paying particular attention to the work of British campaigners. Finally, this chapter analyses alignment and tensions between sexual equality discourses and the political languages of citizenship, emphasising political currents of liberalism, social democracy and Christian democracy - dominant political ideologies in western Europe during the post-war decades.

Overall, this chapter will demonstrate how specific elements of transnational currents of thought were adapted to local settings to produce distinct identities,

17 Churchill, ‘Transnationalism’, p. 34. A productive reading of rights as a prime site of political contestation and an effective subversive instrument in struggles against power is also evident in Michel Foucault’s later works. See Michel Foucault, ‘Confronting Governments: Human Rights’ [1981], in James D. Faubion (ed.), Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984, Volume 3, Power (New York, 2000), pp. 474-475. On Foucault and rights see also Ben Golder, Foucault and the Politics of Rights (Stanford, 2015); Ben Golder (ed.), Re-reading Foucault: On Law, Power and Rights (London, 2013).

165 providing a deeper contextualisation of national cultures of sexual rights activism in the post-war decades.

1. Homophile Publications and Readership

While the Gay Liberation Movement of the 1970s and 1980s engaged in radical direct action and was committed to increasing the visibility of homosexuals in the public sphere, the interventions of the homophile movement were primarily text- based and often highly intellectualised. 18 During the post-war decades, attempts to promote the acceptance of homosexuality and reposition gay men within society did not occur through the claiming of public spaces, but in the pages of homophile newsletters and publications, such as Arcadie (F), ICSE Periodical

Newsletter (international, edited in the Netherlands), Man and Society (UK), Spectrum (UK), Vennen (DK), Vriendshap (NL), Der Kreis (CH), Freundschaft (DE), Hellas (DE), Der Weg zu Freundschaft und Toleranz (DE) or Humanitas

(DE), as well as pamphlets and petitions to public organisations and government bodies.

Britain was an outlier here, as it was not until the early 1960s that the

Albany Trust publications Man and Society (1961) and the HLRS newsletter

Spectrum (1963) were founded, as the ‘anti-obscenity crusade’ of the mid-1950s and a pervasive fear of blackmail held back any open discussion of homosexual

18 For Gay Liberation Movement see Jeffrey Weeks, Coming Out. Homosexual Politics from the Nineteenth Century to the Present (London, 1977), pp. 183-206; John D'Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities. The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 2nd edition (London, 1988), pp. 149-174. See also Gay Left Collective, which was active from 1975 - 1980 and produced theoretical work and text-based interventions to the position of homosexual men from a Marxist perspective, but also engaged with gay culture and community building. See Jeffrey Weeks, ‘Gay Left’ (2007), [accessed on 29th September 2018].

166 rights before the publication of the Wolfenden Report.19 Tony Dyson, who would found the Homosexual Law Reform Society (HLRS) in 1958, recounted his horror over how many homosexual men were being blackmailed during the early 1950s and saw no way in which to discuss homosexuality openly. Instead, he described withdrawing into internal dialogues, stating that ‘I couldn’t remember really anyone with whom I had a serious discussion on the matter, so it all went on in my head, but fortunately with Aristotle, Plato and Sophocles joining in’.20

This lack of a forum in which British homosexual men could freely exchange ideas and find companionship persisted during the 1960s despite the publication of Man and Society and Spectrum. Both periodicals were emphatically not positioned as homophile journals, but followed a template of pressure group publications. They were aimed at a broad readership, relying on contributions from well-respected heterosexual public figures who made the case for law reform without claiming a personal stake in the matter. As the editor of Man and Society and secretary of the HLRS, Antony Grey was proud of having secured articles from the likes of novelist J.B. Priestley, the author C.H. Rolf, who was a prominent figure in a number of social reform movements and the philosopher

Bertrand Russell.21 Indeed, publications explicitly aimed at a homosexual readership and articulating a more affirmative view of homosexual identity remained a notable absence in Britain until the late 1960s, which saw the establishment of Spartacus (1968), Jeremy (1969) and Timm (1969), as well as

Come Together (1971) and Gay News (1972), published by the Gay Liberation

19 For censorship and obscenity laws in post-war Britain see David Bradshaw, ‘American Beastliness, the Great Purge and its Aftermath (1946-1959), in David Bradshaw and Rachel Potter (eds.), Prudes on the Prowl: Fiction and Obscenity in England, 1850 to the Present Day (Oxford, 2013), pp. 138-139. 20 Tony Dyson interviewed by Margot Farnham (27th February 1990), Hall-Carpenter Oral History Project, British Library Sound Archive, C456/74. 21 Antony Grey, Quest for Justice. Towards Homosexual Empancipation (London, 1992), p. 48.

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Front (GLF).22 Yet, these more politically and sexually radical publications must be seen in the context of the gay liberation movement and distinct from the homophile era which lies at the heart of this chapter and will therefore not form part of this investigation.

Homophile periodicals of the 1950s and 1960s overwhelmingly pursued a political agenda, advocating greater acceptance of homosexuality and, in the case of West Germany and later Great Britain, legal reform. However, continental

European publications also offered readers cultural content and relevant news, as well as more lighthearted and entertaining material. On the whole, homophile publications distanced themselves from sexual radicalism with no explicit discussions of sexual practices. Short stories and literary extracts, while in some cases sexually provocative, would rarely go beyond the scope of works also discussed by literary magazines and newspapers.23 For readers, the appeal of short stories and literary extracts published by homophile publications lay precisely in this ambiguity. Several readers of the West German Der Weg zu Freundschaft und

Toleranz praised the publication for its ‘tasteful appearance’, ‘clean and serious character’, and ‘discreet, carefully selected and tasteful’ photographs, which eschewed the cheap thrills of the ‘Drei-Groschen’ magazines - the German equivalent to the penny press.24

22 Sebastian Buckle, The Way Out: A History of Homosexuality in Modern Britain (London, 2015), pp. 41-45. For Spartacus in the context of gay travel see Chapter Four. 23Churchill, ‘Transnationalism’, pp. 40-41. See for example extracts of Roger Peyrefitte’s Diplomatic Diversions in homophile publications and literary reviews of the same book: Peyrefitte, ‘Die Holzbäder’ [extract from: Roger Peyrefitte, Diplomatic Diversions (London, 1953).], Der Weg 3:8 (1953), pp. 7-9; L.A.G Strong, ‘Fiction’, The Spectator 27th March 1953, p. 396; William Barrett, ‘Colourless, Odorless: Diplomatic Diversions’, The New York Times 28th March 1954, p. BR23. 24 Author’s translation from German: n.a. ‘Zuschriften aus dem In- und Ausland’, Die Insel 1:2 (1951), pp. 24-25. Note that Die Insel, became Der Weg zu Freundschaft und Toleranz in 1953, hereafter Der Weg.

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Nevertheless, there were nuances in the levels of erotic content across homophile reviews, complicating the understanding of the homophile press as unifiedly discreet and built around notions of conventional morality and respectability. Mediterranean themes provided a more general theme in northern

European elite cultures in the post-war period, seeking to demonstrate cultural capital and sophistication through conspicuous Continental tastes. In homophile publications, allusions to Greek and Roman sculpture were a key motif in erotic photographs providing a legitimisation for the viewing of male bodies, as well as evoking an imaginary of a place of longing where homosexual men were not bound by the societal restraints they faced at home. Photographs which drew on

Greek and Roman imagery asserted notions of traditional masculinity through strong and muscular bodies, disrupting prevalent assumptions of the homosexual man as effeminate. This assertion of traditional ideals of masculinity was further reinforced by the bodybuilding boom from the late 1950s onwards, launched by

US physique magazines which attracted a substantial homosexual readership. 25

While images and illustrations in Arcadie and Der Kreis were moderately erotic and often statuesque (Figure 5.1 and 5.2), many German publications, such as Der Ring, Der Weg and Die Gefährten (Figure 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6) as well as the

French Futur were more explicit in the images they produced.26 These homoerotic photographs evoked tenderness and attraction between models, candid shots that captured models in seemingly intimate situations, fully nude bodies, though never

25 Robert Aldrich, The Seduction of the Mediterranean: Writing, Art and Homosexual Fantasy (London, 1993); Maria Wyke, ‘Herculean Muscle!: The Classicizing Rhetoric of Bodybuilding’, Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics 4:3 (1997), pp. 60-62. For homosexual readership of physique magazines see John D'Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: Second Edition (Chicago, 1983), pp. 134-136; Carlos A. Ball, The First Amendment and LGBT Equality: A Contentious History (London, 2017), p. 43-44. 26 Churchill, ‘Transnationalism’, p. 41. For erotic content in Futur see Jablonski, ‘French Homophile Press’, p. 236.

169 showing the penis, and models performing more physically animated and athletic poses.27 While the focus of this chapter lies on the political languages used by early homosexual rights campaigners rather than the visual content reproduced in homophile publications, these photographs nevertheless demonstrated that while respectability and discretion were key tenets of the homophile movement in the

1950s and 1960s there were also aspects in which this image could be subverted to encompass a broader scope of eroticism which allowed readers to explore their sexual as well as intellectual interests.

Publications were not necessarily accessible to mass audiences, as they predominantly addressed an elite, cosmopolitan readership and subscriptions could be prohibitively expensive. Some HLRS members struggled to pay the annual minimum subscription price of £1, roughly comparable to a year’s subscription of the Times Literary Supplement, undoubtedly aimed at a well-to-do upper middle class readership. 28 While some international journals were even more expensive with a British subscription to Arcadie costing 3000 FF, roughly equivalent to £3 in 1957, membership of the ICSE which included its Periodical

Newsletter cost only 20 shillings annually.29 In addition, most magazines required a high degree of cultural literacy, publishing a diverse array of cutting-edge scientific research on homosexuality, philosophical texts by the likes of Socrates and Plato, as well as Whitmanesque poetry and literary extracts from authors such as Bertrand Russell and Roger Peyrefitte.30

27 For Figure 5 see p. 171. 28 HLRS members complained about the annual minimum subscription price of £1: n.a., ‘Campaign Appeal’, Spectrum (October/November 1963), p. 2. 29 For subscriptions see ICSE Periodical Newsletter (1960), p. 10; Der Kreis, 1957 (March), p. 40. 30 For publication of scientific research in homophile publications see Chapter One. For discussions and extracts of literary and philosophical works see for example Rolf, ‘Dichter Feiern’, Der Kreis 7 (1952), pp. 7-8; n.a., ‘Mahnworte [extracts from Plato and Sokrates]’, Der Kreis 3

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Figure 5: Erotic photographs in homophile publications

1.) Photograph taken by Tan Hin Kong, Amsterdam, published in Der Kreis 2 (1953). p. 17. 2.) Arcadie 1 (1954), p.1. 3.) Der Weg 10:1 (1960), p.1. 4.-5.) Die Gefährten 1 (1952), pp. 15-16. 6.) Photograph by Athletic Model Guild, California, published in Der Ring 1:4 (1955), p, 123.

[1954], p. 1; Jean De Nice, ‘Étude Sur L'Amour Grec’, Arcadie 4 (1953), pp. 50-51; André- Claude Desmon, ‘“Le Banquet“ De Platon’, Arcadie 63 (1959), pp. 166-179; Walt Whitman, ‘When I Heard at the Close of the Day’, German Translation by Rudolph von Delius, Der Kreis 1 (1949), p. 12; Walt Whitman, ‘Cette Nuit’, French Translation by Alain, Arcadie 5 (1954), p. 15; Roger Peyrefitte, ‘Die Holzbäder’ [extract from: Roger Peyrefitte, Les Ambassades (Paris, 1953)], Der Weg 3:8 (1953), pp. 7-9. Betrand Russell, ‘Über Sitte, Vernunft und Duldsamkeit‘[extract from: Betrand Russell, Unpopular Essays (London, 1950)], pp. 4-5.

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Personal advertisements published in a number of magazines, such as De

Schakel, Der Weg and Die Insel further revealed that readers seeking contacts were often able to speak multiple languages and sought to highlight their broad cultural interests, as well as a willingness and ability to travel abroad to meet other homosexual men. Alongside an ‘athletic appearance’, level of education and social status were key criteria for the contacts homosexual men were seeking in the pages of homophile magazines. While many of these requirements were coded through indicators of the advertiser’s cultural capital - being ‘theatre-loving’, having ‘cultural interests’ or the ‘ability to correspond’ in multiple languages, one

German entrepreneur was more direct, stating he would only consider someone

‘truly educated and from a good home’.31 Readers’ ages mostly ranged from early twenties to late forties and their professions were overwhelmingly situated in an educated middle-class milieu, ranging from academics, doctors and students, to engineers and entrepreneurs. Their short self-representations, held brief by the cost of per word advertising, highlighted their interests in cultural activities rather than personal physical attributes, but also revealed that many readers were living in isolation and loneliness, and sought a profound and emotional connection with a ‘sincere’ partner. In German publications, this was signified by the catchphrase

‘Gedankenaustausch’ – which could be translated as an exchange of thoughts or ideas, though the more sentimental ‘connection of minds’ more aptly captured its meaning.32

British men took advantage of personal advertisements in European homophile magazines, which were conspicuously absent from the pages of the

31 Author’s translation from German: n.a., ‘contactadvertenties’, De Schakel 9 (1955), p. 4. 32 n.a. ‘Briefwechsel’, Die Insel 1:2 (1951), pp. 36-37; n.a., ‘Gedankenaustausch’, Der Ring 5/6 (1957), pp. 101-103.

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British Spectrum and Man and Society, indicating an international readership.33

Rather than exclusively seeking pen-pals, many of these men sought travel companions or mutual visits, which would establish informal international connections between homosexual men.34 These British readers were often older and had the financial resources to travel abroad. A middle-aged English man ran an ad in French in the Dutch publication De Schakel, seeking a travel companion for a three-week car holiday across Europe and advertised he would ‘cover small expenses for an agreeable traveller who wants to teach me in French’.35 A fifty- year-old self-described professional man from northern England advertising in the pages of the same publication, sought accommodation with a ‘good friend’ for a continental summer holiday and highlighted his ‘good education, cultural and wide interests’ and passion for music.36

The early homophile community which was constituted through the readership of these publications was therefore constructed around a series of exclusions, which ran along lines of class, educational background and the financial means to subscribe to publications or even travel to the clubhouses of homophile organisations abroad. Yet, by publishing cultural content that fell outside of explicitly political material, these magazines began to articulate a homosexual identity and consciousness which established distinct cultural, literary and visual forms as markers of sexual identity. Instead of compressing the homosexual into a one-dimensional sexual deviant, these publications offered a more complicated and nuanced picture of who the homosexual man was, or could

33 The American publication Homosexuals Today estimated that the international homophile press had around 20.000 readers in 1957. See Floris van Mechelen [Henri Methorst], ‘Other Contemporary Opinions’, ICSE Periodical Newsletter (December 1957/ January 1958), p. 3. 34 For an in-depth discussion of British homosexual tourism in the post-war decades see Chapter Four. 35 Author’s translation from French: n.a., ‘contactadvertenties’, De Schakel (April, 1964), p. 12. 36 n.a., ‘contactadvertenties’, De Schakel, (March, 1964), p. 8.

173 be, if allowed to live outside of the confines of criminality and discrimination - a responsible citizen with a complex emotional life and wide-ranging cultural and intellectual interests.

While the post-war sexual equality movement has suffered criticism by the subsequent gay liberation movement for its strategic focus on respectability and lack of radicalism, it is important to acknowledge that the homophile framework for political action corresponded to commonplace political practices during the

1950s and early 1960s. These were characterised by politics of consensus and stability in West Germany, France, Britain, the Benelux Countries and

Scandinavia.37 Despite pockets of more radical political activism, for example in campaigns for nuclear disarmament in Britain, Germany and the Benelux

Countries during the late 1950s and early 1960s, Tony Judt has described a ‘depoliticised citizenry’ and governments which sought to prevent political polarisation and destabilisation at all costs, as a central feature of the west

European post-war political settlement.38 Nevertheless, there were in fact significant nuances in political emphases between individual European reviews, presenting a complex picture of political positions carved out by individual homophile organisations and their publications.

Olivier Jablonski has asserted that the two major French homophile publications Futur and Arcadie were separated by a sharp ideological divide.39 As

Jackson has remarked, founder André Baudry took a central role in setting out

37 Eva Kolinsky, ‘Socio-Economic Change and Political Culture in West Germany’, in John Gaffney and Eva Kolinsky (eds.), Political Culture in France and Germany (RLE: German Politics): A Contemporary Perspective (London, 1991), pp. 50-53; Richard Toye, ‘From “Consensus' to 'Common Ground”: The Rhetoric of the Postwar Settlement and its Collapse’, Journal of Contemporary History 48:1 (2013), pp. 3-23. 38 Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (London, 2007), pp. 255-256, 263-264. 39 Olivier Jablonski, ‘The Birth of a French Homosexual Press in the 1950s’, Journal of Homosexuality 41:3-4 (2002), pp. 233-248.

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Arcadie’s mission and ethos, pointing to the fact that individual homophile activists had far-reaching influence in shaping distinct cultures of sexual rights activism. Baudry’s Christian background was reflected in the sombre and intellectual tone adopted by the publication, which sought to portray the ideal homophile as dignified, restrained and respectable.40 On the other hand, Futur was more politically and sexually radical in tone and avowedly anti-religious, attacking the perceived conservatism of contemporary French society.41

Furthermore, while the Swiss Der Kreis presented itself as scientifically objective and was implicitly elitist, the Dutch Vriendschap deployed a more radical language of mass mobilisation and the political grassroots, while its parent organisation Cultuur- en Ontspannings Centrum (COC) and the connected

International Committee for Sexual Equality (ICSE) were committed to proactive campaigning by directly intervening in legal reform processes abroad.42 In Britain,

Man and Society as well as the Spectrum and the public Albany Trust Winter

Talks, were decidedly political, though expressly non-partisan. Rather than aiming to politicise a clearly-delineated group constructed around same-sex desire, these were outward-facing lobbying tools, designed to educate the wider public, politicians, as well as homosexual men and issues of Man and Society were circulated to members of Parliament, as well as regular supporters of the HLRS and Albany Trust.43 Overall, the European post-war homophile press was by no means monolithic, as individual publications carved out specific niches for

40 Jackson, Living in Arcadia, pp. 58-61; Jablonski, ‘French Homosexual Press’, pp. 238-240; Churchill, ‘Transnationalism’, pp. 40-41. 41 Jackson, Living in Arcadia, pp. 50-53; Jablonski, ‘French Homosexual Press’, pp. 244-245. 42 Churchill, ‘Transnationalism’, pp. 39-41; G.B., Bern, ‘Der Kreis – Ein Kampf und Aufklärungsblatt?’, Der Kreis 5 (1959), pp. 2-3; Karl-Heinz Steinle, Der Kreis: Mitglieder, Künstler, Autoren (Berlin, 1999), pp. 7-9. 43 n.a., ‘Albany Trust Report (1963)’, HCA/Albany Trust/4/4, Hall-Carpenter Archives.

175 political and cultural content and articulated distinct visions of homosexual identity according to local traditions and contexts.

2. Political Languages of Human Rights

Within modern political culture, human rights present a key framework for the articulation, creation and promotion of norms. Michael Ignatieff has highlighted the crucial role of human rights in offering a platform that allowed individual agency to be reconciled with the universality of inherent rights, but asserted that it constituted ‘a language of moral empowerment’, which rather than prescriptively shaping culture would allow to ‘enfranchise all agents so that they can freely shape that content’.44 The deployment of human rights themes by organisations which promoted the greater acceptance of homosexuality was not itself necessarily new. This was evidenced in the names of organisations advocating for the rights of homosexuals both in Europe and in the USA in the inter-war years, such as the US Society for Human Rights, founded in 1924, or the German Bund für Menschenrechte founded in Germany in 1923.45 However, these discourses were reinvigorated by the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948. Scandinavian homophile groups, such as the Danish Forbundet av 1948 (League of 1948) and the Det

Norske Forbundet av 1948 (Norwegian League of 1948) explicitly referenced the declaration in the names of their organisations.46 Yet even though a vocabulary of human rights could offer a productive framework through which homophile activists could make demands for sexual equality, it was neither applied evenly across Europe, nor was there a universal template for how these themes could be

44 Michael Ignatieff, Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry (Princeton, 2001), p. 73. 45 Ralf Does, Magnus Hirschfeld: The Origins of the Gay Liberation Movement (2014), pp. 92-93. 46 Jackson, ‘The Homophile Movement’, p. 32; Rupp, ‘Transnational Organizing’, pp. 1030-1032.

176 deployed. This revealed that a transnational body of knowledge was transformed when it was adapted by local campaigners in struggles for recognition within their distinct cultural settings.

While the ICSE was one of the homophile organisations most firmly committed to working under a human rights banner, addressing a number of petitions to the UN and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural

Organisation (UNESCO) throughout its years of existence, early discussions among its supporters highlighted that there was no consensus of how a human rights framework could be most effectively applied and which sexual identities the ICSE should represent. 47 This tension became evident in a disapproving letter from the German sexual equality activist Kurt Hiller in which he criticised the wording of a telegram addressed to the UN by conference members in 1951.48

Drawing on a human rights framework, conference attendees had demanded that the UN should ‘initiate steps towards granting status of human, social and legal equality to homosexuel [sic] minorities throughout the world’.49 Hiller was a renowned writer and had been an outspoken pacifist in Weimar Germany before fleeing the country in 1934.50 Yet, he claimed that the telegram was ‘the typical work of amateurs, dilettanti, surrealists and aesthetes’, as he understood the committee had made it its proclaimed goal to seek equal rights for ‘the “sexual minorities” in the whole world’.51

47 For a more in-depth discussion of the organisational structures of ICSE see Chapter Two and Rupp, ‘Transnational Organizing’. 48 For Kurt Hiller’s involvement in the ICSE see Chapter Two. 49 International Congress for Sexual Equality, ‘Telegramm an die UNO’, reprinted in: Der Kreis 7 (1951), p. 1. See also reprint in Rupp, ‘Transnational Organizing’, p. 1016. 50 Hubert Kennedy, ‘Kurt Hiller’, GLBTQ Archive (2005), [accessed 8th August 2018]. 51 Kurt Hiller to Whittall, 25th May 1951, NL-HaNA, COC/158.

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It is unclear whether Hiller opposed the wording ‘the homosexual minorities’, or whether he received a misprint of the original telegram sent to the

UN that read ‘the sexual minorities’, as the telegram indeed specified that the demands were made for homosexual minorities. Nevertheless it was an illustration of the debates over who should be represented by the ICSE. Hiller went on to specify that the movement, if it wanted to be successful, would have to ‘avoid to proclaim misunderstandable generalities’ and drastically narrow down the groups of people it sought to represent, stating that ‘ravishers of children, sadists and jack-the-rippers are not the only sexual minorities unworthy to get the same right from the state as normal people, there are still others’.52

On the other side of the debate stood René Guyon, a French lawyer and sexual ethicist who had spent large portions of his life in Asia. Guyon proposed by far the most radical and inclusive reading of human rights, which asserted that all sexual minorities should have the right to free expression of their sexual desires as long as no other person’s rights were infringed. A vocabulary of universal human rights therefore offered a framework for a positive articulation of difference, in particular sexual difference, and Guyon produced a positive and affirmative reading of a wide scope of sexual behaviours and identities, which praised the ‘wonderful diversity of sexual activities’ and placed sexual joy at the heart of human contentment.53

While Guyon was a controversial figure, whose radical views on childhood sexuality came under sustained criticism, his short pamphlet on the

52 Kurt Hiller to Whittall, 25th May 1951, NL-HaNA, COC/158. 53 René Guyon, Human Rights and the Denial of Sexual Freedom (New York, 1951). Extract reprinted in Arcadie. See René Guyon, ‘Les Droits Humains et le Deni de Liberté’, Arcadie 2 (1954), pp. 17-25.

178 subject of human rights and sexual difference was circulated widely within the homophile community.54 Extracts were published in Arcadie and distributed between key members of the ICSE, as well as being appended to a number of petitions addressed to official authorities by the organisation. 55 Letter exchanges between Guyon and the committee led to discussions over whether the ICSE should expand its mission statement to include ‘sexual equality in the widest sense of the word, rather than restricting itself on the fight to achieve equality only for homosexual acts’.56 While the committee ultimately kept its exclusive focus on homosexuality, the optimistic language of the ICSE leadership evoked Guyon’s vocabulary of freedom, dignity and human happiness and perceived of human rights as a fundamentally productive site of resistance and emancipation. In a speech addressing the 1952 ICSE congress on ‘Human Rights and the Origins of

Morals’, which was also reprinted in the ICSE Periodical Newsletter, the organisation’s secretary Henri Methorst adopted a universalising rhetoric which placed the individual demands of homosexuals within an international context of moral transformation. Methorst was a multilingual translator and he articulated a homosexual community that shared demands and beliefs across national borders, legitimised by a new order of universal human rights which would see a transformation towards a more egalitarian society.57 Like Guyon, Methorst

54 Tamara Loos, ‘Respectability’s Edge: Transnational Sex Radical René Guyon’, Sexualities 0:0 (2018), pp. 1-24. 55 For circulation of Guyon’s pamphlet by ICSE, see Floris van Mechelen [pseudonym of Henri Methorst, see Chapter Two] an Dr. Brix, Wien 7 Juli 1955; NL-HaNA, COC/163; ICSE, ‘Petition of the Second International Congress for Sexual Equality assembled at Frankfurt, Germany from 29th August - 2nd September 1952’, NL-HaNA, COC/158. 56 Floris van Mechelen [Henri Methorst] to Dr. Brix, 7th July 1955, NL-HaNA, COC/163. See also letter exchanges between René Guyon and the ICSE: René Guyon to ICSE, 15th April 1955, NL- HaNA, COC/163; Floris van Mechelen [Henri Methorst] to René Guyon, 29th April 1955; NL- HaNA, COC/163. 57 Floris van Mechelen [Henri Methorst], ‘Perspectives of the Movement for Sexual Equality, its Means and Ways’, ICSE Periodical Newsletter, Congress Issue (October 1952), pp. 2-3; for Methorst’s career see: n.a., ‘COC-erelid Henri Methorst overleden’, De Volkskrant (15th July

179 conceptualised individual difference as enriching and transformative, while firmly rejecting notions of homosexuality as pathological:

A person is no longer chiefly a citizen, father, labourer, or mother, wife, social inferior, but essentially an individual with definite birth rights, functioning as a member of society. […] For this reason the texture of the social picture has become enriched by a growing awareness of individual differences and possibilities, by which unmarried men and women, people with particular abilities, masculine women and feminine men can find more than ever before their own functions and fulfilment in life.58

In his speech, Methorst echoed the linguistic resources set out by the preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but extended their scope to explicitly include sexual orientation as well as advocating for individuality and personal fulfilment within a framework of the inherent dignity of all people. However, sexual equality hardly formed a part of the UN’s primary agenda in the 1950s.

Despite efforts by homophile campaigners to persuade the UN to endorse sexual equality as part of their agenda, which included the petitions sent by the ICSE, as well as the picketing of the UN headquarters in New York by American homophile organisations in 1965, the UN remained silent on questions of sexual orientation.59

While the homophile position may have had supporters within the UN, for example in Eleanor Roosevelt, who chaired the commission to draft the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights and had many lesbian friends, as well as an alleged affair with the openly homosexual reporter Lorena Hickok, the organisation did

2007), [accessed on 8th August 2018]. 58 Floris van Mechelen [Henri Methorst], ‘Perspectives of the Movement for Sexual Equality, its Means and Ways, ICSE Periodical Newsletter, Congress Issue (October 1952), pp. 2-3. 59 Marc Stein, Rethinking the Gay and Lesbian Movement (New York, 2012), p. 76.

180 not promote or codify homosexual rights.60 Instead, the UN followed the line of not intervening in states’ autonomy in matters of sexual discrimination, on the grounds that a ‘powerful cultural reaction’ could legitimise legal provisions against homosexual behaviours.61 While the language of the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights was highly significant in shaping activists’ demands for rights, the UN was hardly an outspoken ally of the homophile movement.

Nevertheless, the ICSE leadership was not alone in promoting an understanding of same-sex desire as natural and therefore subject to equivalent protection as heterosexual behaviours within a human rights framework. The

French poet and writer Jean Cocteau sent a message to the ICSE in support of their first congress in 1951, which was also reprinted in the first issue of Arcadie in 1954, in which Cocteau praised the efforts of homophile campaigners in

‘responding to the destruction [of the war] with the drafting of new norms’, while asserting that homosexuality constituted ‘part of a vast mechanism by which nature […] strives to maintain its equilibrium’.62 Similar claims of homosexuality as natural and innate were present in countless homophile texts in the post-war years. 63 Paul Johnson has argued that the mobilisation of such understandings represented attempts ‘to establish homosexuality as a form of personhood that is

60 For Roosevelt’s affair see Susan Quinn, Eleanor And Hick: The Love Affair That Shaped a First Lady (New York, 2016). 61 Phillip Tahmindjis, ‘Sexuality and International Human Rights Law’, Journal of Homosexuality, 48:3-4 (2005), p. 22; Rosa Freedman, Failing to Protect: The UN and the Politicisation of Human Rights (Oxford, 2012), pp. 132- 133. 62 Author’s translation from French: Jean Cocteau, ‘Message de Jean Cocteau’, 1951, NL-HaNA, COC/148. See also Jean Cocteau, ‘Message de Jean Cocteau’, Arcadie 1:1 (1954), pp. 5-7. 63 See also H.S., ‘A Plea for Self-Emancipation’, Der Kreis 20:4 (1952), pp. 35-36.

181 comprehensible within the terms of liberal humanism and protectable as a “human right”’.64

Drawing on a vernacular of ‘tolerance’ and ‘brotherhood’, authors conceived of a quasi-utopian society in which self-determined freedom would promote the development of a true communitarian spirit, contributing not only to the formation of an international community, but also world peace. Erwin

Haarmann, editor of the West German publication Humanitas and chairperson of the homophile organisation Gesellschaft für Menschenrechte (Society for Human

Rights) argued that ‘the fight for humanity and the recognition of our brothers’ was a crucial strategy towards ‘reducing the evil in the world’.65 A petition drafted by the second ICSE Congress, held in Frankfurt in 1952, also invoked global kinship by referencing the attendance of 250 sexual equality campaigners, who had travelled from as far as the USA, Indonesia and China. The petition challenged §175 of the West German penal code and was sent to the West

German government, the United Nations Committee for Human Rights, the World

Health Organisation and the UNESCO. It directly linked the question of sexual equality to the mission statement of the UN, stating that the continued enforcement of anti-homosexuality laws ‘threatened the aspirations towards peace and world citizenship which are the aims of the United Nations and its many specialized organs’.66 This rhetoric represented an attempt to elevate sexual

64 Paul Johnson, Homosexuality and the European Court of Human Rights (Abingdon, 2013), pp. 33-34. 65 Author’s translation from German: Erwin Haarmann, ‘Humanität und Toleranz’, Humanitas 2:3 (1954), p. 74. On lack of reliable biographic information on key German homophile activists see: Raimund Wolfert, ‘Zwischen den Stühlen – die deutsche homophilen Bewegung der 1950er Jahre’, Bundesstiftung Magnus Hirschfeld (ed.), Forschung im Queerformat: Aktuelle Beiträge der LSBTI*-, Queer- und Geschlechterforschung (Bielefeld, 2014), p. 88. 66 ICSE, ‘Petition of the Second International Congress for Sexual Equality assembled at Frankfurt’, (1952), NL-HaNA, COC/158.

182 freedom to a matter of global strategic importance during a period which had witnessed mounting Cold War confrontations, including the Berlin Blockade

(1948-1949) and the proxy war in Korea (1950-1953).

Alongside ‘tolerance’ and ‘brotherhood’, ‘dignity’ was a key term within homophile rights discourse. Methorst for example proclaimed that his demands for equal rights were based on ‘the consciousness of my own existence, self- confidence and dignity’.67 By mobilising a vocabulary of human dignity, campaigners directly linked their appeals to the core concept of Universal

Declaration of Human Rights upon which all other entitlements rested.68 The articulation of a connection between the right to sexuality and human dignity offered a productive framework to homophile campaigners. It could not only be deployed to articulate self-worth based on the irreducible value of every human being, but could also provide a discursive strategy towards contesting state authority over sexual behaviours, as campaigners asserted that any infringement of elementary personal rights constituted ‘an attack on human dignity’. 69

Furthermore, human rights not only offered a vocabulary through which to reframe the position of homosexual men in society, but also provided an international legal framework. As early as 1953, K. Ortloff, a regular contributor to West German homophile publications, cited the recently ratified European

Convention for Human Rights to articulate a sense of outrage and defiance towards the continued discrimination of homosexual men: ‘Do we homoerots live

67 van Mechelen [Henri Methorst], ‘Perspectives of the Movement for Sexual Equality’, pp. 2-3. 68 Paolo G. Carozza, ‘Human Rights, Human Dignity, and Human Experience’, in Christopher McCrudden (ed.), Understanding Human Dignity (Oxford, 2014), pp. 620-625. 69 Erwin Haarmann, ‘Die Würde der Menschennatur’, Humanitas 2:1 (1954), pp. 17-20.

183 on a different planet? Where are our fundamental rights and freedoms? – Maybe the International Court of Justice can give an answer to this question.’70

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, activists lodged a number of complaints with the European Court for Human Rights based on Article 8 of the convention, which codified a ‘right to respect for private and family life’.71 However,

Johnson’s study of the European Court of Human Rights regarding questions of sexual orientation has demonstrated that these complaints were swiftly rejected.

This revealed that the commission did not consider legal measures taken by a state to criminalise homosexuality as an infringement of the European Convention, pointing to the fact that there was significant scope in how individual articles could be interpreted by campaigners and official authorities.72 Campaigners like

René Guyon had called into question a singular moral standard codified within

Article 29 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which asserted that the

‘just requirements of morality’ could limit individuals in their exercise of rights and freedoms, condemning it as an ‘error of principle’ and a ‘formidable danger’.73 Yet, the ruling of the court demonstrated that it was both willing to accept the premise of a singular public morality, as well as indicating a hesitation to interfere with national authority over social norms.

70 Author’s translation from German: K. Ortloff, ‘Kurz Gesagt’, Der Weg 3:12 (1953), p. 25. K. Ortloff was most likely a pseudonym, however, I could find no further biographic information on this author. For other articles on European Convention on Human Rights, see Nikodemus Neumann, ‘Menschenrechtskonvention und erotische Freiheit’, Humanitas 2:3 (1954), pp. 71-72; Nikodemus Neumann, ‘Bereich und Grenzen humanitärer Ziele’, Humanitas 3:2 (1955), pp. 418- 419. 71 Art. 8., European Convention on Human Rights, Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental (Strasbourg, 1950). 72 Johnson, European Court of Human Rights, pp. 19-29. 73 Guyon, Sexual Freedom; UN General Assembly, Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Paris, 1948), Article 29.

184

There was a distinct contrast between British and continental European approaches to human rights issues and sexual difference throughout the 1950s. In

Britain, the legal and cultural climate during the 1950s was particularly inhospitable for homosexual men and very few dared to discuss their sexuality openly.74 In the rare cases that they did, they often drew on a vocabulary of sexual pathology, framing same-sex desire as a medico-pathological condition and a burden both to themselves and society as a whole. The most prominent example was Peter Wildeblood’s autobiography Against the Law, published in 1955 after

Wildeblood was publicly outed and put on trial for committing homosexual acts.

In his autobiography, he repeatedly referred to his own sexual orientation as his

‘condition’ and conceded that

I know it cannot be ever entirely accepted by the rest of the community and I do not ask that it should. It is up to me to come to terms, first with my own condition, and secondly with other people whose lives rightly centre upon the relationship between a man and a woman. 75

Wildeblood’s apologetic approach was undoubtedly strategic and intended to elicit sympathy for law reform. Yet, it was nevertheless symptomatic of the continued influence of a medical discourse of homosexuality, which also partly dominated the deliberations of the Wolfenden Committee and made a case for law reform based on the diminished culpability of men suffering from a medico- pathological condition. While there was no consensus in the medical community over whether homosexuality had endocrinological or psychiatric roots, it was

74 Bengry, ‘Queer Profits’, pp. 170-171, Houlbrook, Queer London, pp. 236-239. 75 Peter Wildeblood, Against the Law, new preface by Matthew Parris (London, 1999 [1955]), pp. 50-52.

185 nevertheless widely understood as a disease which was harmful both to individuals and wider society and treated as such.76

However, a humanitarian discourse became increasingly prominent in

Britain after demands for the decriminalisation of homosexuality were legitimised by the publication of the Wolfenden Report in 1957. Tony Dyson’s letter to The

Times in support of the Wolfenden recommendations drew on a liberal humanist vocabulary, stating that ‘humane men of all parties’ supported reform and that the continued enforcement would do more harm than good to the community as a whole.77 Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, the focus of British campaigners lay in appealing to the wider public on behalf of homosexuals within a loosely humanitarian framework, drawing on a vernacular of charitable compassion and sympathy. Articles in Man and Society foregrounded the individual mental distress of homosexual men under headlines such as ‘Helping the Helpless’, which recounted the Rev. John Nicholls’ experiences in providing counselling services for homosexual men, or ‘Loneliness’, in which an anonymous heterosexual woman elicited sympathy for the ‘unseen and unsuspected dismalness in lonely lives’.78 Attempts to legitimise sexual difference were expressed with great caution and used primarily to provoke compassion for the suffering of homosexual men. The novelist Iris Murdoch, whose works addressed themes of morality and sexual relationships, referred to the

‘demoralising secrecy’ in which homosexual men had to live their lives and

76 See Chapter One for an in-depth discussion of the medical model of homosexuality in the 1950s. 77 Anthony Dyson, ‘Homosexual Acts. Call to Reform Law’, The Times (7th March 1958), p. 11. Signatories of the letter included former Prime Minister Clement Attlee, the prominent surgeon Kenneth Walker, writers Mary Stocks, J.B. Priestley, Stephen Spender, Julian Huxley, Bertrand Russell, Jaquetta Hawkes and Angus Wilson, as well as the political theorist Isaiah Berlin. 78 Rev. John G. Nicholls, ‘Helping the Helpless’, Man and Society 5 (1963), pp. 14-15; Professional Woman, ‘Loneliness’, Man and Society 6 (1963), pp. 22-23.

186 appealed that British society required a ‘more humane and charitable recognition of our right to differ from one another’.79

Rather than applying a language of individual human rights to produce a legitimisation of homosexual personhood, the HLRS deployed a strictly welfarist perspective of alleviating the suffering of homosexual men. Far from invoking the idioms of the inherent dignity of all people to articulate an assertive strategy of self-emancipation, the rhetoric of the HLRS in fact perpetuated a narrative of homosexual victimhood, allowing homosexual men very little agency within the organisation’s official publications and campaign. Man and Society criticised the continued criminalisation of homosexuality as ‘causing suffering, and frequently grave suffering, to millions of people’, as well as contending that until law reform was enacted Britain had ‘no right to consider our society as either humane or democratic’.80 This revealed a fundamental contrast in the work of continental

European and British sexual rights organisations. While groups such as the ICSE and the Gesellschaft für Menschenrechte articulated future imaginaries of a transformed egalitarian society based on the notion of universal human rights, the

HLRS advocated humane tolerance within broad liberal humanist terms, highlighting the tension between universalist and abstract notions of human rights norms and their locally specific applications.

In West Germany, human rights were highly institutionalised and key notions and phrasings of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were directly transposed onto the new West German constitution, assembled in Bonn in 1949

79 Iris Murdoch, ‘The Moral Decision about Homosexuality’, Man and Society 7 (1964), pp. 3-6. 80 n.a., ‘Introduction’, Man and Society 6 (1961), p. 1.

187 with a particular emphasis on human dignity as constitutive to all other rights.81

Even though West Germany was only admitted as a full member of the United

Nations General Assembly in 1973, a vocabulary of human rights provided an essential framework for the discussion of Nazi atrocities, as well as offering a lens through which the pressing questions of international law could be discussed within the Cold War context of a divided German state. A number of advocacy groups, such as the Internationale Liga für Menschenrechte (International League for Human Rights), ran their domestic and international campaigns under a human rights banner and West German political culture was shaped by a high level of awareness of basic human rights. 82 The wide diffusion across multiple levels of the political spectrum made this vocabulary readily available to political actors challenging the status quo.

In France, activists were able to draw on a strong tradition of ‘Droit d’Homme’ activism which had its origins at the end of the nineteenth century and had taken on a wider European dimension in the inter-war years with organisations such as La Fédération Internationale des Ligues des Droits d’Homme. In addition, French engagement with human rights discourses had been reinvigorated through wartime experiences of the resistance, as well as questions of moral culpability surrounding the collaboration of Vichy France with the Third

Reich.83 The French political left in particular became associated with international activism defending the rule of law, for example in their activities against McCarthyism during the 1950s, while also taking on an anti-colonial

81 Lora Wildenthal, The Language of Human Rights in West Germany (Philadelphia, 2012), p. 6. On the value of ‘human dignity’ in German Constitution see Joachim Detjen, Die Werteordnung des Grundgesetzes (Wiesbaden, 2009) , pp. 71-75. 82 Wildenthal, The Language of Human Rights, pp. 6-14; 63-83. 83 For continued impact of the human rights narrative in French cultural remembrance of the resistance, see Robert Gildea, Fighters in the Shadows: A New History of the French Resistance (London, 2015), pp. 6-9.

188 stance within the context of the Algerian War (1954-1962).84 Unlike West

German campaigners, who placed the central organs and ideology of the UN at the core of their arguments, French homophiles and wider political culture drew on a nationally specific and radicalised vision of human rights, which conceptualised France as their place of origin based on a doctrine of natural rights and the philosophy of the French Revolution. Both André Baudry and Marc

Daniel [Michel Duchein], one of Arcadie’s key contributors, framed the organisation’s activities within a distinctly French narrative of social progress and the ‘slow march towards the noble declaration of 1789’.85

In contrast, a discourse of human rights took on a much less central role in post-war British political culture.86 Indeed, the liberal humanist rhetoric of British campaigners was more consistent with an official approach which largely conceived of contemporary human rights in a foreign policy context to combat the threats of communism and fascism and was apprehensive of any supranational intervention in the promotion of the liberties of British citizens in a domestic setting.87 Rather than granting rights based on an abstract ideal of universal entitlements, British political culture drew on a notion of a gradual progression of social norms and legal practices, founded in a tradition of classic British liberalism. As Marco Duranti has remarked, for English officials individual rights were rather ‘a product of British common sense, custom, habit, and instinct than a

84 Mikael Rask Madsen, ‘The Clash: Legal Culture, National Identity and European Law’, in Peter Madsen (ed.), Challenging Identities: European Horizons (Abingdon, 2017), pp. 49; 53-54. 85 Author’s translation from French: Marc Daniel [Michel Duchein], 'Droits de l'Homme', Arcadie 180 (1968), pp. 477-478. See also André Baudry, ‘Nova et Verita’, Arcadie 1 (1954) pp. 15-17. For Michel Duchein see Jackson, Living in Arcadia, pp. 87-88. 86 Madsen, ‘The Clash’, pp. 54. 87 Madsen, ‘The Clash’, pp. 49-51; Marco Duranti, The Conservative Human Rights Revolution: European Identity, Transnational Politics, and the Origins of the European Convention (Oxford, 2017), 156-158.

189 subscription of any set of abstract maxims’. 88 In addition, British jurisprudence was in many ways distinct from continental legal systems, as it was founded in a

Common law tradition, which had codified local customs and was, as the legal historian Harry Potter has remarked, ‘essentially conservative, not revolutionary’.89 An evolutionary and measured approach to the promotion of homosexual rights was clearly evident in the campaign of the HLRS. Reflecting on the activity of the HLRS during the 1960s, Grey further remarked that the work of the British sexual rights campaigners and organisations had been

‘reformist, rather than revolutionary; that is to say they work within society, accepting it largely as it is, but seeking a better deal and more understanding for the homosexual, rather than seeking to transform or overthrow society’.90

Yet, throughout the 1960s, the HLRS intensified ties with continental homophile groups.91 In a more permissive cultural climate, the rhetoric of British sexual rights campaigners increasingly transitioned from an apologetic approach, which spoke on behalf of a minority, to a more assertive language of homosexual self-representation founded in notions of individual rights. This shift became particularly evident when Grey addressed ongoing struggles following decriminalisation in a widely circulated speech, which was also reprinted in Man and Society in 1969:

88 Duranti, The Conservative Human Rights Revolution, p. 123. See also Christopher Moores, ‘From Civil Liberties to Human Rights? British Civil Liberties Activism and Universal Human Rights’, Contemporary European History 21:2 (2012), pp. 169-192. 89 Harry Potter, Law, Liberty and the Constitution: A Brief History of the Common Law (Woodbridge, 2015), p. 2. 90 Antony Grey, ‘British Homophile Liberation: New Myths for Old’, Man and Society 14 (1973/1974), pp. 11-16. 91 David Minto, ‘Mr Grey Goes to Washington: the Homophile Internationalism of Britain’s Homosexual Law Reform Society’, in Brian Lewis (ed.), British Queer History. New Approaches and Perspectives (Manchester, 2013), pp. 224-226.

190

You will see that I believe in the essential similarity of the homosexual’s and the heterosexual’s dilemma as an individual in society […] the basic fact for us to grasp and latch on to is that we are first and foremost human beings: we are members one of another, or as John Donne said, ‘No man is an island’. […] The task before us is a formidable one. But if we persevere it must surely bring us all, in the end, to a society, which offers a happier, a healthier, and a fuller life for everyone.92

Here Grey drew on a vocabulary of individualistic rights, as well as an early twentieth-century collectivist view of the social body as a language of moral empowerment, which strongly evoked the rhetoric of campaigners such as René

Guyon and the ICSE leadership, and conceptualised sexual equality as transformative to society as a whole. An assertive reading of sexual difference based on inherent individual rights was therefore crucial in the development of an increasingly defiant mode of homosexual selfhood which resisted notions of pathology and instead conceived of same-sex desire as innate, as well as socially enriching.

3. Political Languages of Citizenship

Although British campaigners hesitated to frame their demands within an abstract notion of universal rights until the latter half of the 1960s, a rights-based discourse was by no means absent from British activism in the post-war decades. However, this vocabulary drew on a particularist notion of rights, centred on citizenship, individual civil rights and a liberal-democratic tradition which foregrounded freedom over social, political and economic equality. A citizenship discourse resonated with British homosexuals who drew on notions of the homosexual man as respectable to demand rights. As one ‘unwillingly anonymous’ reader of Man

92 Antony Grey, ‘“Sex, Morality and Happiness”, Based on a Lecture delivered in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, October/November 1967’, in Grey, Speaking Out, pp. 84-93. Also printed in Man and Society 11 (Winter 1969-1970).

191 and Society stated in 1964, ‘we [homosexual men] simply want acceptance by our fellow human beings of ourselves as the honest, self-respecting, hard-working and loyal citizens that most of us are’, before going on to insist that ‘we seek neither pity, privileges nor condescension, but merely equality in freedom with everybody else’.93 Homosexual self-representations which drew on notions of respectability and good citizenship were therefore not exclusively a strategy towards assimilation, but could be vital in articulating a sense of defiance and provide a key strategic argument towards contesting existing legal and social structures.

A vocabulary of citizenship was not unique to British sexual rights activism, as European homophile advocates attempted to expand civil liberties to homosexual men throughout the 1950s. As Jackson has asserted, the model of citizenship on which homophile campaigners drew not only comprised civil rights, but also crucially the responsibilities of citizenship, which had traditionally been structured around notions of the nuclear family and heterosexual marriage. 94

Therefore, homophile publications articulated a distinct set of assumptions about who the homosexual man should be and how he should behave in order to be accepted as a member of civil society. Menschenrecht, the predecessor of Der

Kreis addressed its readers in 1942 following the decriminalisation of same-sex acts in Switzerland, stating that: ‘The future does not only bring rights, but also responsibilities’ and implored homosexuals not to offend public decency in any way. It went on to articulate a notion of homosexuals’ moral duty to society as a

93 Unwillingly Anonymous, ‘Letter to the Editor’, Man and Society 8 (1965), pp. 27-28. 94 Jackson, ‘The Homophile Movement’, p. 35.

192 whole by declaring that ‘if we anchor this ethical requirement in our conscience, then we will defend our right to stay free citizens in a free country’.95

This rhetoric which foregrounded the accountability of the individual to wider society had a sustained influence on homophile writings throughout the

1950s, as campaigners positioned themselves against political radicalism and instead asserted that homosexual men could gain respect through leading exemplary lives, ‘taking part in public life as citizens’ and their ‘accomplishments in the workplace’.96 Prescriptive ideals with regards to the moral comportment of homosexual men were common in homophile publications in the post-war decades. These commentaries condemned ‘camp’ or ‘flamboyant’ sexualities as

‘undisciplined’ and sought to promote the acceptance of same-sex desire through an assertion of obedient citizenship and traditional ideals of masculinity.97

British discussions of the societal rights and the inclusion of homosexuals during the 1950s echoed the normative social discourse of European homophile campaigns. This rhetoric was embedded within a post-war mode of liberal urban governance, based on an active and responsible citizenry, which conceived of homosexuality within a ‘social problem paragdim’.98 Like their European counterparts, campaigners likened the desires of homosexual men for stable partnerships to that of traditional heterosexual marriage in order to gain social

95 Author’s translation from German: Rudolf Rheiner, ‘Der Weg in die Freiheit’, Menschenrecht 10 (1942), pp. 1- 4. 96 Author’s translation from German: G.B., Bern, ‘Der Kreis – Ein Kampf und Aufklärungsblatt?’, Der Kreis 5 (1959), pp. 2-3. 97 For homophile criticisms of camp of effeminate behaviours, see Jackson, ‘The Homophile Movement’, p. 35-37; Burkhardt Riechers, ‘Freundschaft und Anständigkeit. Leitbilder im Selbstverständnis Homosexueller in der frühen Bundesrepublik’, Invertito 1 (1999), pp. 33- 37; Roger Portmann, ‘"... dass er eben nicht anders konnte als wie es ihm die Natur mitgegeben hatte." Konzepte männlicher Homosexualität in den Homosexuellenzeitschriften der Schweiz 1932-1967’, Invertito 6 (2004), pp. 122-137. For idealised homosexual articulated in Arcadie see Jablonski, ‘The Birth of a French Homosexual Press’, 239-240. 98 Chris Waters, ‘The Homosexual as a Social Being, 1945-1968’, Journal of British Studies 51:3 (2012), pp. 685-710.

193 acceptance. In a 1954 letter to The Sunday Times sent from the self-described

‘depths of the closet’, Antony Grey, who would later become the secretary of the

Homosexual Law Reform Society, wrote:

One recognises of course, that no homosexual relationship can ever be ‘moral’ in the sense that marriage is the only truly moral sexual relationship; but by frowning less heavily upon the invert’s attempt to obtain a personal connection based upon affection rather than upon promiscuous behaviour akin to prostitution, society would be pointing a way to the solution of the invert’s personal problems, and thus helping to lessen his incidence as a social problem.99

Grey’s letter not only contained a plea for greater empathy for the social difficulties faced by homosexuals, but it also codified distinct assumptions of who the homosexual men were who should be included in society. Rather than promoting acceptance of a wide range of non-normative sexual identities, Grey’s letter excluded men whose behaviour was deemed ‘promiscuous’, while the ideal homosexual man was portrayed as sexually conservative and adhering as closely as possible to conventional morality.

As well as articulating distinct boundaries of acceptable homosexual behaviours, campaigners directly called on homosexuals to fulfil their duties of citizenship through active modes of political participation. Yet, registers varied significantly across western European countries. In the run-up to the 1964 general election, the HLRS employed political pressure group tactics by publishing a moderate and decidedly non-partisan piece, which advised readers to visit meetings of each party candidate in their constituency and enquire about their attitudes towards the Wolfenden proposals before making their decision.100 In

99 Antony Grey, ‘Letter to The Sunday Times’ (2nd April 1954), reprinted in Grey, Speaking Out, pp. 3-5. 100 n.a., ‘You and the Election’, Spectrum Newsletter 6 (1964), p.1.

194 contrast, in 1953 Der Weg published a passionate endorsement of the social democratic SPD against the Christian democratic CDU in the upcoming election.

It was written by Larion Gyburc-Hall, which was the pseudonym of the Aachen- based Astrologist Dr Werner Schmitz, a regular contributor to both Der Weg and

Der Kreis.101 The article deployed a vocabulary of freedom, justice and mass democratic participation which had its origins in nineteenth-century social democratic movements.102 Gyburc-Hall’s appeal which stated that it was a

‘violation of justice that the same civic duties are imposed on us, without being granted the same civic rights as everyone else’, stood in a tradition of German social democratic thinking which had placed the ‘same rights and same duties of all people independent of gender or descent’ at the core of its political programmes.103 The article also invoked the experience of the undemocratic

National Socialist state by asking voters to choose ‘democracy against this rising dictatorship’ and ‘your freedom as a citizen’, before closing with a direct appeal in the imperative mood: ‘Your vote counts, Vote! Vote! This is about you, your freedom - - your life! Vote!’.104 A vocabulary of citizenship and active political participation could therefore be adapted to legitimise both moderate and more radical approaches, demonstrating that a transnational political language of civil rights could be recontextualised to demand rights from within diverging political settings.

101 For Gyburc-Hall see: Rosenkranz and Lorenz , Hamburg auf anderen Wegen, pp. 85-86. 102 Klaus Leech, “Vorwärts” in “Die Neue Zeit”: Die sozialdemokratische Presse im langen 19. Jahrhundert (Leipzig, 2014), pp. 45, 109. 103 Author’s translation from German: Larion Gyburc-Hall [Werner Schmitz], ‘Es geht um dich’, Der Weg 3:9 (1953), pp. 4-7; Karl Kautsky (ed.), Das Erfurter Programm in seinem grundsätzlichen Theil, 2. Aufl. (Stuttgart, 1892), p. 178. See also Görlitzer Programm (1921) and Heidelberger Programm (1925). 104 Author’s translation from German: Gyburc-Hall, ‘Es geht um dich’, pp. 4-7.

195

The vocabularies of democratic citizenship and ‘the citizen’ deployed by

British and continental European campaigners were therefore closely related. Yet, at their core they registered the influence of distinct political cultures which preserved contrasting ideals of civic integration and community, as well as a divergent framing of sexual equality issues. While British sexual rights activists conceptualised law reform as an issue of the freedom of the individual vis-à-vis the power of the state, continental campaigners constructed their demands as representing a unified minority group. This was reinforced through a social infrastructure which enabled contacts between homosexual men through clubhouses, community events and personal advertisements, encouraging the construction of a homosexual group identity.

In addition, a language of ‘solidarity’ was readily available in the post-war political imaginary, revealing the sustained influence of Christian and social democratic thought in continental European democracies.105 The 1950s had witnessed a rise of Christian democratic parties across western Europe, as parties such as the Dutch KVP, the Belgian CVP/PSC, the German CDU and the French

MRP secured majorities based on moderate social and moral reform, as well as the protection of private property, providing a compelling alternative to unregulated market capitalism or socialism.106 While Christian democratic parties dominated the European political spectrum during the 1950s, both continental

Christian and social democracy placed social unity at the core of their political

105 Neil O’Sullivan, European Political Thought since 1945 (Basingstoke, 2004), p. 8-9. For a discussion of solidarity in European political discourse see Steinar Stjernø, Solidarity in Europe: The History of an Idea (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 93-164. 106 Michael Gehler and Wolfram Kaiser, Christian Democracy in Europe Since 1945 (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 163-177; Judt, Postwar, pp. 80-82.

196 programmes. 107 In West Germany in particular, this led to tensions over which of the two major parties could most legitimately claim the idioms of ‘solidarity’,

‘equality’ and ‘opportunity’.108 Christian democracy deployed ‘solidarity’ from the vantage point of Catholic social theory, which was rooted in scripture and the recognition of the image of god in all persons, as well as earlier biblical concepts of charity. However, it was not until the 1890s that ‘solidarity’ was introduced as a key tenet of Christian social theory in response to the vast social, economic and political transformations of the nineteenth century. ‘Solidarity’ in Christian doctrine was conceptualised as a virtue and held the understanding that individuals would share the burdens of other persons and see it as their duty to promote the rights of others.109 On the other hand, social democrats mobilised the term from within a framework of secular ethics and an emphasis on class relations. Overall, a vocabulary of common interests and social cohesion was central in west European political discourses across the core political spectrum.

Homophile campaigners articulated the responsibility of the individual to the wider homosexual community from within these political contexts, demonstrating that minority groups’ strategies for emancipation were shaped by their wider cultural setting. Research by Jablonski and Jackson has indicated that

Arcadie was profoundly shaped by a Christian social discourse, which foregrounded solidarity, alongside respect and restraint.110 Dutch publications like

De Schakel and Vriendschap also stressed a strong civic community, as well as

107 Janusz Salamon, Solidarity Beyond Borders: Ethics in a Globalising World (London, 2015), pp. 10-12. 108 Martin Geyer, ‘War over Words: The Search for a Public Language in West Germany’, in Willibald Steinmetz, Political Languages in the Age of Extremes (London, 2011), pp. 309-317. 109 Gerald J. Beyer, ‘The Meaning of Solidarity in Catholic Social Teaching’, Political Theology 15:1, pp. 8-15; Meghan Clark, The Vision of Catholic Social Thought: The Virtue of Solidarity and the Praxis of Human Rights (Minneapolis, 2014), pp. 2-8. 110 Jablosnki, ‘French Homosexual Press’, p. 239; Jackson, Living in Arcadia, pp. 68-73.

197 collective and participatory engagement. Dutch activists deployed vocabularies of civil liberties to challenge norms of passive and obedient citizenship by mobilising a more radical language of the political grassroots, but also positioned homosexual men as a cohesive social force. The publication De Schakel ran an article titled ‘healthy aggression against deadly passivity’ which stated that:

[an unprecedented movement] like ours should be on the attack. Adapted social behaviour and counting on the recognition as equivalent citizens does not mean that we should be forced out of the opposition into fatal passivity.111

The West German publication Hellas also emphasised cohesion among homosexual men, publishing an article by Erwin Haarmann, who criticised the fragmentation of individual groups and posited that, ‘the homophile people have to unite to fight for their position in civil society, they are part of it, like any other group’.112 In calling for a ‘concentration of forces’, as well as a ‘unified and strong movement’ campaigners like Haarmann not only legitimised claims for sexual rights as the legitimate demand of a vocal social group, but also articulated a group consciousness in which individual actors took responsibility for the wider homosexual community.113

Britain too underwent a wide spectrum of popularly received social democratic reforms in the post-war decades. However, a political language of solidarity was articulated less explicitly by sexual rights campaigners.114 British

111 Author’s translation from Dutch: n.a., ‘Gezonde Aggresiviteit contra Dodelijke Passiviteit’, De Schakel (March 1964), pp. 1-2. 112 Author’s translation from German: Erwin Haarmann, ‘Sind wir auf dem richtigen Wege?’, Hellas 2:5 (1954), p. 163. 113Author’s translation from German: Haarmann, ‘Sind wir auf dem richtigen Wege?’, pp. 159-164. 114 For social democratic reform in Britain see Martin Francis, ‘Economics and Ethics: the Nature of Labour's Socialism, 1945-1951’, 20th-Century British History 6 (1995), pp. 220-43; Kenneth Morgan, Britain since 1945: the People’s Peace (Oxford, 2001); Lawrence Black (ed.), Consensus or Coercion? The State, the People and Social Cohesion in Postwar Britain (Cheltenham, 2001).

198 activists were much less concerned with mass agitation through the deployment of a vernacular of intergroup unity and instead drew much more heavily on a British liberal tradition which foregrounded individual freedom. Unlike other European democracies, Britain had, with the publication of the Wolfenden Report, a decisive legal moment which would set the tone and agenda for the discussion of homosexuality. In addition, it offered a clear strategy and argument for decriminalisation which campaigners sought to implement in the decade between the publication of the Wolfenden Report and legal reform in 1967. While the West

German Große Strafrechtskommission (Great Penal Law Commission) was also working on a proposal for an amendment of the law regarding homosexuality, no document was produced which was discussed and disseminated as widely as the

Wolfenden Report, which was accompanied by extensive media coverage.115

While British activists could anchor their demands explicitly to the Wolfenden proposals, German campaigners formulated broader arguments to promote homosexual rights and acceptance in a number of arenas.116

In campaigning for law reform, British pressure groups followed a strategy of ‘piecemeal moral engineering’, in which campaigners sought to influence key decision-makers in Parliament, as Stuart Hall has observed.117 The Wolfenden

Report had set the agenda towards initiating this parliamentary process by proposing a sharper distinction between the public and private domains in its recommendation for legal reform. British activists’ language of personal freedoms which focussed on limiting state intervention in matters of private sexual conduct

115 For media coverage of Wolfenden Report see Patrick Higgins, Heterosexual Dictatorship: Male Homosexuality in Postwar Britain (London, 1996), p. 116. 116 For the work of Große Strafrechtskommission see Clayton J. Whisnant, Male Homosexuality in West Germany: Between Persecution and Freedom, 1945-69 (Basingstoke, 2012), pp. 184-189. 117 Stuart Hall, ‘Reformism and the Legislation of Consent’, National Deviancy Conference (ed.), Permissiveness and Control. The Fate of the Sixties Legislation (London, 1980), pp. 4-5.

199 therefore drew on notions of legal utilitarianism promoted in the Wolfenden

Report.118 In addition, it also echoed wider debates over state intervention and moral regulation in Britain, revealing parallels with Anthony Crosland’s and Roy

Jenkins’ endorsements of social liberalism through limiting the powers of the state to interfere in citizens’ private lives.119

While Dutch and German activists directly called homosexual men to action in a communitarian framework of democratic engagement, British campaigners closely followed the key arguments of the Wolfenden Report. The

Wolfenden Committee had justified its proposals for an amendment of the law based on the assumption that it was not ‘the function of the law to intervene in the private lives of citizens or to seek to enforce any particular pattern in behaviour’ and Anthony Grey described that this line of reasoning ‘formed the bedrock of the case of reform’. 120 Grey further held the committee’s pragmatic approach as

‘very English in its hearty dislike of the notion of policemen prying into what went on in consenting people’s bedrooms’.121 A close adherence to the legal argument set out by the Wolfenden Committee based on the understanding of sexuality as fundamentally private, placed the individual, rather than a minority group, at the heart of the issue of sexual equality in Britain. This was also mirrored throughout the rhetoric of the British campaign. Rather than deploying an inclusive group identity, expressed in continental publications through the use of pronouns ‘we’ and ‘us’, the homosexual man remained an abstract and singular individual in British publications.

118 Hall, ‘Reformism’, p. 14. 119 Roy Jenkins, The Labour Case (Harmondsworth, 1959), p. 135; Anthony Crosland, The Future of Socialism (London, 1956). See also Hall, ‘Reformism’, p. 7. 120 Grey, Quest for Justice, pp. 23-24. 121 Grey, Quest for Justice, pp. 23-24.

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Responding to a political setting in which homosexual equality was framed as an issue of safeguarding privacy from state intervention, British homosexual rights campaigners drew on a sedimented vocabulary of liberal individualism. In particular, they deployed a notion of utilitarianism, which asserted that individual freedom required significant limitations on the activities of the state in matters of morality, as became evident in the opening editorial of Man and Society in 1961:

Beyond a certain minimum contraction of freedom a man can be described as being coerced, or even enslaved, to the extent that mankind constricts his liberty. Man and Society is intended to provoke discussion of this kind of liberty, and particularly of the effect that any inhibition of man’s freedom may have on his personal adjustment, and his adaptation to society.122

This strand of argument became particularly pronounced in the wake of the

Devlin-Hart Debate, following the Lord Justice Devlin’s lecture to the British

Academy in 1959, in which he attacked the legal utilitarian approach which formed the foundation of the Wolfenden recommendations and asserted that the suppression of immoral practices formed a key area of responsibility for the law.123 In the early 1960s, a number of articles published in Man and Society challenged Devlin’s legal moralist stance. Like Devlin’s most prominent opponent, the British philosopher of law H.L.A. Hart, homosexual rights activists drew on John Stuart Mill’s utilitarian defence of individuality over state power.

British sexual rights campaigners consistently deployed a Millian vocabulary of self-determined freedom, which foregrounded the arguement that there could be

122 Antony Grey, ‘Introduction’, Man and Society 2:6 (1961), pp. 2-4. 123 Sir Patrick Devlin, ‘The Enforcement of Morals’, British Academy Maccabean Lecture in Jurisprudence, Read 18th March 1959 (Oxford, 1959). Devlin’s position was prominently opposed by legal Professor H.L.A. Hart: H.L.A. Hart, Law, Liberty and Morality (Oxford, 1963).

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‘no meaningful morality without liberty’, as well as asserting that a key feature of a modern democracy lay in the ‘freedom to choose’.124

Throughout the 1960s, defining the proper limits of state power remained a key theme in Man and Society and the HLRS worked in close cooperation with the National Council for Civil Liberties, particularly concerning police power and the rights of citizens upon arrest.125 While this cooperation embedded a homosexual rights discourse within a broader context of the struggle of minority groups and political dissidents, the rhetoric of British sexual rights campaigners nevertheless continued to foreground the freedom of the individual through the absence of external constraints. In 1969, Man and Society published an article by

Douglas Rhymes, vicar of St. Giles church, Camberwell. Rhymes was himself homosexual and, as a member of the clergy, an unusually outspoken supporter of homosexual equality. In his article, Rhymes criticised the sustained influence of authoritarian morality within British society, which attempted to impose distinct moral codes on its members:

I believe that a permissive morality is a mature morality. I believe this because I believe in freedom, and I believe that real maturity can only come from freedom. There is all too little freedom, even in our so-called permissive society […] I do not want to be told what to do by others, for I challenge their right to tell me.126

Rhymes’s arguments considered a wide range of human suffering in response to moral pressures, such as unwanted pregnancies which were carried to term due to

124 Antony Grey, ‘Law and Morality’, Man and Society 1 (1961), reprinted in Grey, Speaking Out, p. 10; Antony Grey, ‘Knout or Totem Pole’, Man and Society 6 (1963), pp. 27-29; Laura Wallace, ‘Freedom with a Difference’, Man and Society 6 (1963), p.7.; Richard Wollheim, ‘The Limits of State Action’, Man and Society 6 (1963), pp. 3-7. See also Michael Freeden, Liberal Languages: Ideological Imaginations and Twentieth-Century Progressive Thought (Princeton, 2009), pp. 174- 176. 125 Martin Ennals, ‘Civil Liberties’, Man and Society 5 (1963), pp. 11-13. 126 Douglas Rhymes, ‘Morals and Maturity’, Man and Society 11 (1969), pp. 2-10.

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Christian beliefs, as well as the loneliness experienced by homosexual men who were unable to come to terms with their own sexuality. He therefore questioned the extent to which British society had truly been transformed following the passing of liberalising laws in the late 1960s, such as the decriminalisation of homosexuality, as well as the reform of abortion (1967) and divorce laws (1969).

Rhymes advocated for a society which valued freedom and autonomous choice from the vantage point of human happiness and fulfilment based on a self- determined identity and morality.

The vernacular of democratic citizenship deployed by sexual rights campaigners across Europe in the post-war decades demonstrated that activists’ self-representations and demands for rights were embedded within distinct national political cultures and drew both on sedimented political traditions, as well as an engagement with contemporary ideals of civic integration. While continental activism drew on collectivist notions of citizenship, which borrowed heavily from Christian and social democratic understandings of social unity and constructed homosexual men as part of a political movement, British rhetoric was centered on individual freedom in response to a political agenda set by the

Wolfenden Report.

Conclusion

This chapter has demonstrated that the political languages of human rights and citizenship offered discursive tools through which homophile activists could make their demands. However, even though both vocabularies were commonplace in post-war sexual equality discourses, they were by no means deployed consistently to legitimise claims for rights and articulate strategies for emancipation.

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An engagement with dominant political cultures not only shaped the rhetoric adopted by sexual rights campaigners to legitimise their demands to lawmakers and wider society, but crucially shaped homosexual self- representations as distinct discursive strategies were put into action and internalised to articulate identities. A humanistic discourse could produce a positive and assertive reading of sexual difference, which constituted sexual equality as a key characteristic of an egalitarian society, as was evident in the work of continental campaigners. However, in the case of Britain, it could also perpetuate a narrative of homosexual victimhood. Equally, a vocabulary of citizenship could provide different strategic emphases. Across western Europe in the 1950s, it functioned as a normative social influence which tightly prescribed homosexual identities in order to gain social acceptance. However, European activists deployed a language of citizenship which emphasised unity and solidarity within a context of promoting active political participation as part of a collective, while British campaigners framed civil rights from the vantage point of individual freedom and containing the power of the state which closely followed an agenda to law reform set out by the Wolfenden Report.

Despite these divergences, the languages of citizenship and human rights have remained highly significant as discursive sites of resistance in sexual equality activism up until the present moment. In addition, the links between sexual equality and a distinctly western democratic tradition articulated by campaigners during the 1950s and 1960s has provided a foundation for a rise in homonationalist attitudes, which mobilised an understanding of western societies as egalitarian and inclusive to justify xenophobic, in particular islamophobic,

204 positions.127 Yet, as Jasbir Puar has asserted, homonationalism also points to an immense shift through which states have positioned their queer citizens as deserving of the same civil rights and protections as heterosexual populations and queer identities have become integral to the core definition of the modern

European nation state and citizenship.128 The languages of human rights and citizenship which formed the core of homophile rhetoric therefore not only had a lasting influence on sexual rights activism throughout the latter half of the twentieth century and in the new millennium, but also played a part in a broad reorientation of the political imaginary of the citizen.

127 Aleardo Zanghellini, ‘Are Gay Rights Islamophobic? A Critique of Some Uses of the Concept of Homonationalism in Activism and Academia’, Social & Legal Studies 21:3 (2012), pp. 357-374; Phil Hubbard and Eleanour Wilkinson, ‘Welcoming the World? Hospitality, Homonationalism and the London 2012 Olympics’, Antipode 47:3 (2015), pp. 598-615. 128 Jasbir Puar, ‘Rethinking Homonationalism’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 45 (2013), pp. 336-339.

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Chapter 4:

‘To get freedom, one went abroad a lot’1: Homosexual Tourism in the Post- War Decades

Where did you spend your summer hols? Sunny Sitges? Gay old Amsterdam? Tired Torremolinos? War-torn Mykonos? Or were you reduced by economic consideration to a fortnight in Torquay or even a weekend in Brighton?2

Even though Hugh O’Keefe, writing for Gay News in 1974, sought to persuade readers to consider a holiday in America due to the newly affordable airfares and

‘galloping inflation’ in many parts of Europe, the list of holiday destinations he considered as well-trodden indicated that these European destinations were not just familiar to a homosexual audience by the early 1970s, but also clearly coded as ‘gay’. This chapter tracks the movements of British homosexual men to continental European tourist destinations, such as those referenced by O’Keefe, paying particular attention to the ways in which experiences abroad acted as determinants in the product and performance of the homosexual self.

In this chapter, I extend the period of investigation into the 1970s to capture the launch of commercial operators for holidays aimed at a gay clientele.

Yet, I highlight that these ventures formalised routes taken by homosexual holidaymakers who participated in a tourism boom during the 1950s and 1960s, coinciding with the greater affordability of mass travel in the post-1945 period.3 I argue that particularly in the period preceding the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967, specific continental European locations provided a

1 Bertie Maxwell interviewed by Charlotte Cooper (19th June 2003), Before Stonewall: A Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Oral History, British Library Sound Archive, C1159/34. 2 Hugh O’Keefe, ‘USA – the Gay Way’, in Gay News (October 24-November 6, 1974), p. 9. 3 Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (London, 2007), pp. 342-344.

206 practical utopia - spaces in which the shifts that British homosexuals envisaged for a more tolerant society appeared to have been realised and in which homosexual identities could be safely enacted, enabling a temporary ‘coming out’ when this was not possible at home. These destinations enabled more overt and assertive expressions of same-sex desire and offered the possibility of exploring and confirming sexual desires and identities. Furthermore, informal contacts with local homosexual men allowed British tourists to contrast their experiences of discrimination at home with the freedom experienced abroad on a highly personal level, as well as affording a means of escape from a public climate which was characterised by a pervasive hostility towards homosexuality.

British men’s holidays abroad must be read against the backdrop of the

‘affluent society’, which historians have variously identified as beginning in 1945,

1951, or 1954 and ending with the oil crisis in 1973.4 In the post-war decades,

British consumer landscapes underwent a series of deep transformations, which not only meant a rapid expansion of consumer goods, but also of leisure industries, including tourism. Real wages doubled between 1950 and 1974, while working hours declined and most workers received two weeks of paid holiday by the 1960s, meaning that the average Briton had both more free time and greater disposable income.5 During this period, spending on leisure pursuits increased, including activities such as dining out.6 Holidays abroad were a further manifestation of this newfound prosperity, their statistics growing fourfold between 1951 and 1970.

4 Lawrence Black and Hugh Pemberton, ‘Introduction - The Uses and Abuses of Affluence’, in Lawrence Black and Hugh Pemberton (eds.), An Affluent Society? Britains’s Post-War Golden Age Revisited (Aldershot, 2004), pp. 5-6; François Bédarida, A Social History of England, 1851- 1990, translated by A.S. Forster and Jeffrey Hodgkinson, 2nd edition (London, 1991), p. 254. 5 George Bernstein, The Myth of Decline. The Rise of Britain since 1945 (London, 2004), pp. 307- 310. 6 Arthur Marwick, The Sixties. Cultural Revolution in Britain, France, Italy and the United States, c. 1958-c.1974, Bloomsbury Edition (London, 2012), p. 719.

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These developments cut across class lines, as half of unskilled workers went on holidays abroad by the 1970s.7 Yet, consumption during the post-war decades was not only an act of ‘doing’, but also a way of ‘being’, with consumers seeking to express their individuality through the consumption of distinct goods and leisure practices. Advertising recognised the value of tapping into consumers’ aspirations and their desire to mould their self-representations. Frank Mort has asserted that contemporary marketing campaigns ‘suggest[ed] associations between modern people, commodities and a distinctive quality or style of life’.8 However, for homosexual men such associations between consumption and a way of life took on a more specific dimension. Travelling abroad allowed these men to live more openly as homosexuals, offering a path to self-liberalisation, enabled by post-war affluence.

In addition, the greater accessibility of travel to continental Europe enabled homosexual men to participate in cosmopolitan practices traditionally associated with more elite and long-established homosexual cultures.9 Paul

Fussell has described how tourism and consumption could function in the production of status-specific social identities. He has argued that the tourist’s key characteristic was deriving ‘secret pleasure from posing momentarily as a member of a social class superior to his own, to play the role of a “shopper” and a spender whose life becomes significant and exciting only when he is exercising power by

7 Bernstein, The Myth of Decline, p. 317; Bédarida, A Social History of England, p. 256. 8 Frank Mort, ‘The Commercial Domain: Advertising and the Cultural Management of Demand’, in Becky Conekin, Frank Mort and Chris Waters (eds.), Moments of Modernity: Reconstructing Britain 1945-1964 (London, 1999), p. 73. For the relationship between individualism and consumption see also Matthew Hilton, Consumerism in Twentieth-Century Britain: The Search for a Historical Movement (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 219-241. 9 Leila J. Rupp, ‘The Persistence of Transnational Organizing: The Case of the Homophile Movement’, American History Review 116:4 (2011), p. 1017.

208 choosing what to buy’.10 Yet for homosexual men, foreign travel not only constituted a means to articulate belonging to a specific class, but could also express an individualised sexual identity based around the cosmopolitan internationalism which characterised homophile culture during the post-war decades.11

Richard Weight has remarked that on the whole British engagements with

Europe through tourism have remained understudied for the post-war period.12

This is particularly true for British homosexual tourism. While there has been a proliferation of research on metropolitan gay life and the development of urban gay enclaves, few scholars have investigated the movement of homosexuals between urban centres or to holiday resorts which attracted large numbers of homosexual men.13 In contrast, there exist a number of studies on late nineteenth- century British tourism to the Mediterranean, which identified Italy as a place of cultural desire for the middle and upper classes.14 Particularly noteworthy is

Robert Aldrich’s study on the place the Mediterranean held in the British homosexual imagination between the 1750s and the 1950s. However, his research on British men in southern Europe has focussed heavily on the literary and cultural elites.15 The majority of studies focussing on gay tourism have appeared

10 Paul Fussell, Abroad. British Literary Traveling Between the Wars (Oxford, 1980), p. 42. 11 For homophile identities based around cosmopolitan internationalism see Chapter Two and Rupp, ‘Transnational Organizing’, p. 1017. 12 Richard Weight, ‘Losing the Peace’, in Lawrence Black and Hugh Pemberton (eds.), An Affluent Society? Britains’s Post-War Golden Age Revisited (Aldershot, 2004), pp. 218-219. 13 For studies on gay urban life see David Bell and Gill Valentine, Mapping Desire: Geographies of Sexualities (Abingdon, 1995); Gordon Brent Ingram et al (eds.), Queers in Space: Communities, Public Places, Sites of Resistance (Seattle, 1997); Stephen Whittle (ed.), The Margins of the City. Gay Men’s Urban Lives (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1994). 14 Katarina Gephardt, The Idea of Europe in British Travel Narratives, 1789-1914 (Farnham, 2014), pp. 99-139; John Pemble, The Mediterranean Passion: Victorians and Edwardians in the South (Oxford, 1987). 15 Robert Aldrich, The Seduction of the Mediterranean: Writing, Art and Homosexual Fantasy (London, 1993), pp. 69-100. See also Chiara Beccalossi, ‘The Italian Vice’: Male Homosexuality

209 within the fields of marketing and tourism studies after the ‘Pink Pound’ was recognised as a key driver for growth in the entertainment and tourism industries in the 1980s.16 While this research gives valuable insights into the contemporary marketing of gay tourist destinations, it does not recognise the role foreign travel played for homosexual identity formation during the post-war period.

While the first three chapters of this thesis have focussed on formalised and official routes of cultural exchange, this chapter shifts attention to informal encounters and micro-exchanges between British men and European sexual cultures as experienced through tourism, based on oral history collections deposited at the National Sound Archive at the British Library.17 While the trips

British men took to the continent were individually specific, there were several unifying themes which are evidenced by the archives. In particular, this chapter will investigate how distinctly western notions of freedom and adventure forged in a Cold War context shaped the experiences of British men travelling abroad in the post-war decades. In addition, popular imaginings of the ‘holiday’ acted on the performance of homosexual identities, as the holiday came to symbolise not only commodified pleasure, but also a discreet time period in which the holidaymaker could experience freedom from established routines and prioritise personal

and British Tourism in Southern Italy, in Valeria Babini, Chiara Beccalossi and Lucy Riall (eds.), Italian Sexualities Uncovered, 1789-1914 (Basingstoke, 2015), pp. 185-227. 16 See Stephen Clift and Simon Forrest, ‘Gay Men and Tourism: Destinations and Holiday Motivations’, Tourism Management 20:5, pp. 615-625; Howard Hughes, ‘Holidays and Homosexual Identity’, Tourism Management 18:1 (1997), pp. 3-7; Howard Hughes, ‘Sexuality, Tourism and Space: The Case of Gay Visitors to Amsterdam’, in Duncan Tyler et al (eds.), Managing Tourism in Cities: Policy, Process and Practice (Chichester, 1997), pp. 163-178. 17 Hall-Carpenter Archives Oral History Collection, Before Stonewall Collection, Tony Deane Collection, Martyn Taylor Collection, and Unbecoming Men: Interviews on Masculinities and the Women's Movement, 1970-1991.

210 fulfilment and pleasure.18 Furthermore, I highlight that there were regional differences in how travellers experienced performances of same-sex desire and social behaviours such as sexual cruising and flirting. In southern Europe, homosexual tourists sought out beach resorts which offered ample opportunities for open-air cruising and the viewing of half-naked bodies in the sun. On the other hand, holidays to northern and western Europe mostly took the form of city trips.

Amsterdam and Copenhagen in particular became popular due to their infrastructure of homosexual bars and clubs and the provision for same-sex dancing.

1. Freedom and Adventure

During the 1950s, Bertie Maxwell travelled across Europe extensively. He was born in Angus, Scotland in 1927 and was working as an officer at the Dundee

Labour Exchange when he set off to Norway in 1950, a trip which gave him ‘a taste for going abroad’, before travelling to Denmark, Paris, London, Cannes and the French Riviera, Amsterdam and Berne in the following decade.19 Bertie’s experiences in continental Europe contrasted starkly with the Dundee cottaging scene where he was active, recounting that ‘there were no clubs, there were no recognised pubs, you had to know where to go, externally as it were, and that was either a pub or a field, up the hill or whatever’.20 He had his first experience with clubs where homosexual men could dance together in Copenhagen in 1953, after being introduced to the clubhouse of the Danish homophile organisation,

Forbundet af 1948, by a Danish man he had met a year earlier.

18 For ‘The Holiday’ see Fred Inglis, The Delicious History of the Holiday (London, 2000), pp. 1- 13. 19 Bertie Maxwell interviewed by Charlotte Cooper. 20 Bertie Maxwell interviewed by Charlotte Cooper.

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The clubhouse of the Forbundet af 1948 was located in the Ølandshus on the Amager island; a half-hour walk from the commercial centres of

Copenhagen’s homosexual nightlife. By the mid-1950s this included approximately a dozen bars around Nikolaj Square and the network of streets around Larsbjørnsstræde. Unlike the nearby bars and restaurants, the clubhouse mirrored the focus of the Dutch COC, as it was organised around political and social activism. It required a membership to enter and offered dedicated dance nights, yet it also functioned as a campaign hub, as well as providing a range of social activities and psychological support services for homosexual men and women.21 Bertie, who had only experienced covert homosexual meeting places in

Britain, found the contrast striking, ‘[in Copenhagen] they had this get-together and you’d go to a club which was official, unlike The Colherne [pub in Earl’s

Court, London], which was not official but it was where gay men met’.22 Visiting the clubhouse in 1950 proved exhilarating for Bertie, as it was ‘the first time ever

[…] we could dance together and I remember some queens had their shirts tied up in a knot, bare midriff, it was very advanced’.23 For Bertie, these encounters with

European sexual cultures constituted a ‘side way of liberalising oneself and making it easier all around’ and he described that he travelled abroad first and foremost to ‘get freedom’, stating that as a homosexual he felt ‘less scared’ on his travels in continental Europe than he had in Britain.24

For a British tourist, the quasi-homosexual spaces found in continental

Europe, particularly in Copenhagen, Amsterdam, as well as Mediterranean resorts

21 Peter Edelberg, ‘The Queer Road to Frisind: Copenhagen 1945 – 2012’, in Jennifer Evans and Matt Cook (eds.), Queer Cities, Queer Cultures: Europe Since 1945 (London, 2014), pp. 57-58. 22 Bertie Maxwell interviewed by Charlotte Cooper. 23 Bertie Maxwell interviewed by Charlotte Cooper. 24 Bertie Maxwell interviewed by Charlotte Cooper.

212 such as Capri, Torremolinos and Cannes and Greek islands such as Mykonos, enabled the expression and normalisation of same-sex desire, as well as meeting the needs of homosexual men for entertainment, social interaction and sexual opportunity. 25 Christopher Spence, who would become the director of the

Lighthouse Charity, a support centre for men and women living with HIV in the late 1980s, travelled extensively in western Europe during the 1960s. He was active in the HLRS and found in continental European cities an environment where homosexuals could be open in public settings:

I can remember going to Amsterdam and to Paris and to Brussels and other places and being absolutely amazed how way and behind we were. Particularly in Holland, the openness and the fact that gay men were so relaxed, gay men out in public and things, which was [sic] so much in marked contrast to how it was like here, it was quite a shock.26

By contrast, meeting places for homosexuals in Britain were mostly covert, removed from the public spaces of the street and located through unmarked doorways, as well as requiring introductions or memberships to enter. 27 Such expressions of homosexual identities were highly spatially constrained and frequently relied on coded behaviours which made homosexual men visible only

25 For heterosexual/homosexual spaces see Gill Valentine, ‘Renegotiating the “Heterosexual’ Street”, in Nancy Duncan (ed.), BodySpace: Destabilising Geographies of Gender and Sexuality (London, 1996), pp. 146-155; Jon Binnie, ‘Coming Out of Geography: Towards a Queer Epistemology?’, Environment and Planning: Society and Space 15, pp. 223-237; Daniel Bell and Gill Valentine, ‘Introduction: Orientations’, in Daniel Bell and Gill Valentine (eds.), Mapping Desire: Geographies of Sexualities (London, 1995), pp. 1-30; Wayne Myslik, ‘Renegotiating the Social/Sexual Identities of Places: Gay Communities as Safe Havens or Sites of Resistance?’, in Nancy Duncan (ed.), BodySpace: Destabilising Geographies of Gender and Sexuality (London, 1996), pp. 156-169. 26 Christopher Spence interviewed by Margot Farnham (26th September 1990), Hall Carpenter Oral History Project, British Library Sound Archive, C456/95. 27 Frank Waterhouse, ‘Before the Act…’, Mancunian Gay 11 (1982), p. 6; n.a., ‘Before Gay News’, Mancunian Gay 35 (1984), pp. 8-9; ‘Tricky Dicky’, interviewed by Tony Deane, (1980s, exact date unknown), Tony Deane Collection, British Library Sound Archive, C547/07; ‘Peter’ (22nd April 2003), interviewed by Charlotte Cooper (2003), Before Stonewall: A Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Oral History, British Library Sound Archive, C1159/07. For physical separation of homosexual spaces see also Matt Houlbrook, Queer London, Perils and Pleasure in the Metropolis, 1918-1957 (London, 2005), pp. 90-92.

213 to other homosexuals. Bertie contrasted this secrecy with the sense of ease he experienced around his own sexual identity while visiting Amsterdam, stating that

‘the whole society was just that more unashamed shall we say, there was no hiding, much more relaxed, and there was no pot, no drugs, just vibes.’28

Though Bertie thought of the extent of his travel as ‘slightly unusual’, remembering that his work colleagues declared themselves envious of his many trips, travel to the continent was becoming more accessible to a mass market and to workers on modest salaries throughout the early 1950s.29 Rising affluence, the broadening of the middle-classes and the greater affordability of mass transportation had democratised travel and the leisure industries across western

Europe in the 1950s, enabling greater numbers of Britons to travel abroad.30

Opening the third annual convention of the Association of British Travel Agents,

Alexander Maxwell, chairman of the British Travel and Holiday Association, commented on changing patterns of travel. He remarked that participants would already have seen ‘the change in the type of traveller for whom you have to cater these days, and realise[d] that your services must be designed more and more for a mass or “popular” market’.31 Rising numbers of travellers confirmed that travel was, in the words of Maxwell, ‘now for the many, rather than the few’.32 Between

1949 and 1951 the number of holidaymakers leaving the United Kingdom rose from 1.4 million to 1.7 million, according to a survey commissioned by the British

Holidays and Travel Association, a figure which more than doubled to 3.5 million

28 Bertie Maxwell interviewed by Charlotte Cooper. 29 Stefan Ramsden, Working-Class Community in the Age of Affluence (London, 2017), p. 43; Selina Todd, The People: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class, 1910-2010 (London, 2014), p. 201. 30 Judt, Postwar, pp. 342-344; Victor Middleton and L.J. Lickorish, British Tourism. The Remarkable Story of Growth (Oxford, 2007), pp. 23-25. 31 n.a., ‘3rd Convention Opens. BTHA Chief Predicts Era of Cheap Travel’, Travel Trade Gazette (21st October 1953), p.1. 32 n.a., ‘3rd Convention Opens,’, p.1

214 by 1961.33 Nevertheless, cost was still a limiting factor for continental holidays – while the cost of a week-long holiday for a single traveller in the UK averaged around £13, this increased more than threefold to £41 per head for a holiday outside of Britain.34

Mass youth travel was a distinctly new phenomenon in post-war Europe.

In his study of youth travel and European integration processes, Richard Jobs has remarked that the ‘simultaneous rise of mass tourism and international youth culture were intertwined features of post-war consumer capitalism as it expanded the leisure markets across western Europe’.35 Bertie’s first trip to Norway as a twenty-three-year-old in 1950 relied on the growing infrastructure of youth hostels across Europe, which had first appeared during the inter-war years, but proliferated after 1945.36 He had been invited to go ‘youth hostelling’ with a group of friends, travelling across Norway to Bergen and Voss.37 Youth hostels not only enabled young Europeans to travel abroad cheaply, but they were underpinned by an ideology of cultural internationalism, as the International

Youth Hostels Association (IYHA) made the cultural reconstruction of Europe one of its declared goals in the post-war period. National governments recognised the contribution a well-appointed network of youth hostels could make in fostering a spirit of cooperation and intercultural understanding through personal

33 n.a., ‘New Survey Traces Pattern of Holidays’, Modern Motoring and Travel (June, 1952), p. 38; Peter Hennessy, Having it So Good: Britain in the Fifties (London, 2006), p. 539. 34 n.a., ‘New Survey’, p. 38. 35 Richard Ivan Jobs, Backpack Ambassadors: How Youth Travel Integrated Europe (Chicago, 2017), p. 6. 36 Jobs, Backpack Ambassadors, p. 12. 37 Bertie Maxwell interviewed by Charlotte Cooper.

215 connections, supporting the construction of new hostels through grants or direct funding.38

Because air travel continued to be too costly for many holidaymakers, coach and rail offered travellers affordable transportation. New infrastructure projects, such as a high-speed rail connection between Ostend and Cologne, jointly operated by British, Belgian and German national railways, significantly reduced travel times between Britain and continental European destinations when it was opened in 1954.39 Train travel proved the most popular mode of transportation for the men profiled in this chapter, with Bertie recalling the ease with which he embarked on solo trips across western Europe, stating that while he would take a boat to Copenhagen, ‘I would simply take the train into Paris and I would simply take the train to Amsterdam’.40

A sense of adventure and the thrill of the unknown and unplanned underpinned many of the European trips that homosexual men embarked on.

European countries retained a sense of the unfamiliar and of a continent rapidly changing in the post-war period. Travel books, such as William Sansom’s Grand

Tour Today (1968), which aimed to give readers a sense of ‘being there’ rather than functioning as a guidebook, reinforced the changing nature of Europe. It highlighted newly industrialised regions in Germany and the Benelux Countries - modern bridges, roads and ‘centres with broad new concrete boulevards and massed plate glass, with traffic flyovers and the big department-store with

38 Jobs, Backpack Ambassadors, pp. 25-27. 39 Edward Kirkham, ‘Overland to Cologne’, Travel Trade Gazette (2nd July 1954), p.4. See also n.a., ‘3rd Convention Opens’, p.1; Judt, Postwar, pp. 341-342. For expansion in rail services see also Rosemary Wakeman, ‘Veblen Redivivus: Leisure and Excess in Europe’, in Dan Stone (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History (Oxford, 2012), pp. 437-438. 40 Bertie Maxwell interviewed by Charlotte Cooper.

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KONSUM symbolic in neon’.41 Sansom captured the novelty of continental

Europe for the British traveller, yet outlined that Europe was becoming steadily more accessible and interconnected, reassuring readers that ‘we know there is always a hotel or a train with our name on it’.42

For Michael James, who lived in Plymouth and came from a large

Northern Irish Catholic family, travel represented a departure from the ordinary and opportunities to encounter the unfamiliar. Fired from his job at Butlin’s, the chain of British seaside resorts in 1964 as a twenty-three-year-old, he withdrew all his savings and travelled to London. While cruising on Wimbledon Common, he met a young man whose boyfriend, an air steward, recommended Barcelona for a holiday. Feeling there was little to keep him in England, Michael spontaneously embarked on a trip to Spain, which he recalled with a palpable sense of excitement, even though the journey had taken place thirty years earlier:

They told me all about Barcelona so I went down and we booked and off I went the following week to Barcelona and I went on the train from Paris and again you have to remember… I have this thick mane of hair, skimpy jeans and a skimpy shirt and a little bag with some jeans, plimsols and sandals, nothing much, lovely tan because I’d been out all summer. We got to Portbou and we changed. We got onto the Spanish train which was straight out of a John Wayne movie, wooden slatted seats, a balcony at the back where you could sit out and wave to people … I thought this was wonderful… I love this. I sat out all morning on the little balcony on the steam train and I just watched the whole Costa Blanca, the Catalan Coast, down to Barcelona.43

Remarkable about Michael’s recollections was his use of 1960s language, such as the term ‘skimpy’, though this interview was given in the early 1990s, giving the sense that Michael himself had travelled back in time. What was also notable was

41 William Sansom, Grand Tour Today (London, 1968), p. 35. 42 Samsom, Grand Tour Today, p. 2. 43 Michael James interviewed by Margot Farnham (17th – 24th August 1993), Hall Carpenter Oral History Project, British Library Sound Archive, C456/122.

217 his invocation of the films of John Wayne, a hugely popular American cultural export during the 1950s and 1960s. Michael’s reference to Wayne seemed to refer not only to his mode of travel, but also captured a distinctly western masculine spirit of discovery and freedom prominent in popular imaginings of the Wild West and the American frontier.44 Throughout Michael’s retelling of his journey through southern Europe, there was a tangible sense of excitement and the thrill of adventure. Indeed, for James, who had never travelled before, Spain was terra incognita and laden with a sense of opportunity after leaving Britain, where he had been jobless and adrift.

Michael’s newfound sense of freedom was far from imaginary.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, national borders became increasingly permeable for tourists, as national tourist organisations attempted to remove travel restrictions where possible. Maxwell, as chairman of the British Travel and

Holidays Association, stated that it was the organisation’s goal to ‘promote travel on as broad a basis as possible – not only travel to or from our own particular country, but travel in general’ and he speculated that he saw ‘no reason why we should not be rid of passports for day trips at least’.45 While Maxwell’s optimism towards passportless travel was premature, travelling across Europe for many young travellers nevertheless came to embody freedom and independence. In addition, links between mobility and personal freedom took on a political dimension in the context of heightened Cold War tensions. Western European states’ encouragement of citizens to move freely functioned as a liberal democratic alternative to the travel restrictions imposed on Soviet citizens. This

44 Russell Meeuf, John Wayne’s World: Transnational Masculinity in the Fifties (Austin, 2013), pp. 103-106. 45 n.a., ‘Currency Hint at Torquay’, Travel Trade Gazette (23rd October 1953), p.1.

218 was brought into sharp relief during the Berlin Crisis and the construction of the

Berlin wall in 1961.46 Mobility therefore played a key role in encouraging political cohesion between western countries, as well as sharply delineating two ideologically opposed blocs.47

A sense of freedom was further reinforced by spontaneous travel which relied on cheap transportation and an increasingly well-developed network of affordable hostels, removing the need for careful planning of routes and itineraries.

Terence Dear, born in 1946 into ‘a family that were either sort of upper working class or lower middle class, depending on how you wanted to look at it’, spent a year travelling across Europe after he ‘ran away’ with his first big love, Robert, in the mid-1960s.48 Robert was Canadian and both men had met when they were working together at the Park Lane Hotel in London. Employment in the hotel service sector would have familiarised both men with a glamorous culture of international travel, yet for their trip they chose a mode of travel which captured the sense of impulsiveness and possibility afforded by the boom of international youth travel in Europe:

[We] spent a year travelling, hitchhiking around Europe in the days when there was, you know, it was amazing, everybody, lots of young people were doing it […] And you’d meet up with people and you’d go around for a few weeks in a gang and then you’d go off somewhere else. […] We were in Paris quite a while, Pamplona - we were like, “ah come on let’s go off to Pamplona and watch the bulls run through the streets”, so off we went and then we’d leave messages at American Express offices around Europe, you know, “meet you in Madrid in two weeks’ time” and that was great.49

46 Annette Vowinckel, ‘Flying Away. Civil Aviation and the Dream of Freedom in East and West’, in Peter Romij, Giles Scott-Smith and Joes Segal (eds.), Divided Dreamworlds?: The Cultural Cold War in East and West (Amsterdam, 2012), pp. 181-183. 47 Jobs, Backpack Ambassadors, p. 39. 48 Terence Dear interviewed by Mike Upton (22nd July 2004), Before Stonewall: A Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Oral History, British Library Sound Archive, C1159/101. 49 Terence Dear interviewed by Mike Upton.

219

Speaking forty years after his first journey to Europe, Terence recalled these events with a palpable sense of exhilaration. Remarkable too was the sense of kinship he felt with other young European travellers and the friendships which were formed as young travellers sought to meet up again as they followed individual routes across the continent. Terence’s sense of freedom and independence during his year in Europe contrasted starkly with his memories of life in Britain. He recounted that he had grown up in Harrow-on-the-Hill in northwest London with a caring family, yet had the sense that his future was predetermined by his parents who expected him to study theology at Lampeter to become a priest.50 In comparison, during their year abroad, Terence and Robert drifted across Europe with no fixed route or plan. This independence from schedules and commitments, but also the restrictions placed on Terence by family expectations at home, allowed both men to be impulsive, guided by their own interests or by making plans with other travellers they had met en route.

There are no records that detail how many British homosexual men went abroad during the 1950s and 1960s. While Gordon Westwood’s sociological study on homosexuality published in 1960 also included leisure activities, this was limited to regularly performed hobbies and did not investigate tourism and travel.51 A large-scale West German study, published by the sociologists Martin

Dannecker and Reimut Reiche in 1974 explored homosexual travel and leisure activities in greater detail and indicated the travel patterns of homosexual men in post-war Europe. Homosexual men, the study remarked, demonstrated an

‘astonishing level of mobility’, with 86% of surveyed homosexuals going on

50 Terence Dear interviewed by Mike Upton. 51 Gordon Westwood [Michael Schofield], A Minority. A Report on the Life of the Male Homosexual in Great Britain (London, 1960).

220 holiday in Germany or abroad in 1970 - a much higher percentage than any other population group.52 Furthermore, the study revealed that neither income and nor level of education significantly influenced whether homosexual men went on holiday, demonstrating that the willingness to travel was much greater in this group, even if this meant spending a larger share of their income. The study concluded that wanting to ‘flee from everyday life’ and being able to ‘behave in completely a homosexual manner for a limited period of time’ were key motivators for homosexual holidaymakers. The study further identified

Amsterdam, Sylt, a holiday island in Northern Germany, and Torremolinos, on the Spanish Costa del Sol, as the most popular holiday destinations for German homosexual men.

The draw of these destinations for homosexual holidaymakers was twofold.

They promised an escape from realities at home, but also held the promise of being able to enact a more authentic version of selfhood, based on a sexual identity which may have had to be concealed at home. It was striking that many homosexual men who travelled abroad sought out locations which were well- known for their existing infrastructures of homosexual bars and clubs. Being surrounded by other homosexuals not only afforded travellers a sense of safety and strength in numbers, but also allowed them to perform same-sex desire in relatively safe social settings. As Ning Wang and Jonas Larsen have both argued, far from simply consuming foreign cultures and artefacts, tourists also pursued

‘authentic sociability’ among each other, with tourism constituting ‘an emotional geography of sociability’, in which fellow travellers sought deep social

52 By comparison, 51% of married heterosexual men and 58% of single heterosexual men went on a holiday during the same period. See Martin Dannecker and Reimut Reiche (eds.), Der gewöhnliche Homosexuelle. Eine soziologische Untersuchung über männliche Homosexuelle in der Bundesrepublik (Frankfurt, 1974), pp. 136-139.

221 connections in absence of the stresses and restrictions they faced at home.53

Destinations known for their popularity among homosexual tourists could be understood as quasi-utopian spaces, where visitors could become part of an international community of like-minded travellers. Freedom was therefore a key theme for homosexual British men travelling Europe, which could take on multiple and layered meanings – the freedom of bodies to move freely across space and national borders, freedom from the monotony and obligations of everyday life and the freedom to experience erotic fulfilment away from the restrictions faced at home.

2. European Tourist Imaginaries

Specific European locations had a long tradition of being cast as sites of sexual freedom and resistance to moral attitudes in Britain by cultural and literary elites.

As Dean MacCannell has observed in The Tourist – A New Theory of the Leisure

Class (1976), ‘usually, the first contact a sightseer has with a sight is not the sight itself but with some representation thereof’.54 Tourism imaginaries have attracted particular interest from anthropologists who have sought to determine how cultural images are produced and circulated globally, while ‘geographic imaginaries’, a term coined by the literary critic Edward Said, gave key impulses towards exploring the social construction of place in Orientalism (1994).55

British literary encounters with Europe ascribed sexual meaning to distinct geographic locations, shaping cultural imaginations of parts of the continent as

53 Jonas Larsen, ‘De-exoticizing Tourist Travel: Everyday Life and Sociality on the Move’, Leisure Studies 27:1 (2008), p. 28; Ning Wang, ‘Rethinking Authenticity in Tourism Experience’, Annals of Tourism Research 26 (1999), p. 364. 54 Dean MacCannell, The Tourist. A New Theory of the Leisure Class, revised edition (London, 1999 [1976]), p. 110. 55 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York, 1979).

222 sites of homoerotic pleasure. As Aldrich has demonstrated, in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century northern elites travelled to southern Europe, in particular

Greece and Italy, in search of homoerotic encounters and sexual fulfilment. For

British writers and poets, such as Lord Byron, Oscar Wilde and John Addington

Symonds, the Mediterranean and its classical Greco-Roman cultures, characterised by an acceptance of homoerotic practices, came to be understood as the ‘true spiritual home of homosexuals’.56

While the Mediterranean remained a desirable travel destination for

British homosexuals in the twentieth century, by the inter-war years western

European capitals such as Vienna, Berlin and Paris had become increasingly popular as locations among a new generation of cultural and literary elites, particularly the close-knit group of writers surrounding Christopher Isherwood, which included Stephen Spender, John Lehmann and W.H. Auden.57 Though many of these authors did not chronicle their sexual experiences until the mid-

1960s, they belonged to an intellectual milieu which was instrumental in bringing representations of Europe into the mainstream of British society during the post- war decades.58

Sexual opportunity, based on the chaos and hedonistic spectacle of inter- war Berlin in particular, was a key element in accounts of the city published by

British authors during the 1960s and 1970s, which imagined the city as a space of

56 Aldrich, The Seduction of the Mediterranean, pp. 20; 32-38; 99. 57 For personal friendships between these writers see David Garrett Izzo, Christopher Isherwood: His Era, His Gang, and the Legacy of the Truly Strong Man (Columbia, 2001); Chris Baldick, The Modern Movement (Oxford, 2004), pp. 53-55. 58 See for example John Lehmann, The Ample Proposition. Autobiography III (London, 1966); John Lehmann, In the Purely Pagan Sense (London, 1976); Christopher Isherwood, Christopher and his Kind (London, 1976). For representations of continental Europe in post-war British culture see Frank Mort, Capital Affairs: London and the Making of the Permissive Society (London, 2010), pp. 237-241.

223 heightened sexual sensation.59 Michael Davidson, a British journalist, noted in his

1962 memoir The World, The Flesh and Myself, a ‘life-history of a lover of boys’ that in the inter-war years, Berlin was ‘the most exciting town you could conceive of’.60 According to Davidson, the sights and sounds of Berlin included ‘squalor, drunkenness, penury, a ubiquitous underworld, dramatic violence and despair, the turbulence of gangster politics, the whole spectrum of sexual lust, with some unimagined hues added’.61 As well as highlighting the tolerance he encountered in

Berlin, where he engaged in overt sexual behaviours, such as ‘embracing and spooning in public places and generally behaving outrageously’, he cast the city as a site of ‘unfailing provocative excitement’, stating that ‘one knew that adventure – intellectual, political, sensual – lay around every corner’.62

While none of the men profiled in this chapter visited Berlin, British travel journalism aimed at homosexual men demonstrated that the city remained a popular destination for British homosexuals. Cultural imaginings of the German capital as a site of hedonistic enjoyment and sexual pleasure continued to explicitly draw on the city’s inter-war legacy. An article in the first edition of the

Spartacus International Gay Guide (1970), which informed readers that homosexuality had been decriminalised in Germany in 1969, gave the impression that many tourists would have been unaware of §175 of the German penal code, which criminalised homosexual acts:

[It] is a good enough guess that you will want to sit up and take notice, because strange to relate, the law in Germany has not always been what it has now become. Most of us have probably thought that the actual legal

59 For literary representations and sex tourism in inter-war Berlin see Robert Beachy, Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity (New York, 2014), pp. 187-219. 60 Michael Davidson, The World, The Flesh and Myself, Gay Modern Classic Series (London, 1985 [1962]), p. 150. 61 Davidson, The World, p. 150. 62 Davidson, The World, pp.151-152.

224

situation has been along the lines of that of the Netherlands. However, this is not the case. […] On reflection, it is perhaps “left over” from the twenties that has induced us to believe that things were always legal in Germany. After all, at the time Marlene Dietrich made her astonishing debut in the “Blue Angel”, Berlin was wearing its vices in its buttonhole, almost like a carnation! Despite all that has happened to Berlin in the intervening years, this atmosphere has persisted.63

Cultural and literary representations of Berlin as a site of homoerotic fantasy during the inter-war years had an enduring impact on post-war imaginings of the city. The point is that British homosexual men who travelled in the 1950s and

1960s came into contact with a multiplicity of images of European countries and cities before embarking on their travels. Collectively they propagated an idea of

Europe as a place of seduction and sexual freedom that endured into the post-war decades. In this context, it is significant that this utopian gay imagery involved a massive erasure of Europe as the ‘Dark Continent’. In post-war homosexual imaginings of Germany for example there were no memories of fascist terror, which is a testament to the ways in which memories of contemporary histories were extremely partial and selective.64

3. Southern European Beach Resorts

Tony, who spent a year in Spain in 1966 as a twenty-one-year-old Oxford student, recalled it was only in Spain that he had ‘totally [come] to terms with [his

63 n.a., ‘“Outside the Barracks, by the Corner Light…” Herr Spartacus visits Germany’, JDS Publications (eds.), Spartacus International Gay Guide (Brighton, 1970), p. 29. 64 For ‘Dark Continent’ see Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century (London, 1999). It is remarkable that even in German homophile publications the persecution of homosexual men during the Third Reich was barely broached. A noteworthy exception was a multi-part series published in Humanitas. See for example L. D. Classen von Neudegg [Leo Clasen], ‘Ein Blick zurück’, Humanitas 2:3 (1954), pp. 85-86; L. D. Classen von Neudegg [Leo Clasen], ‘Ecce Homo – oder Tore zur Hölle’, Humanitas 2:12 (1954), pp. 359-360; L. D. Classen von Neudegg [Leo Clasen], ‘Aus meinem KZ-Tagebuch’, Humanitas 3:1 (1955), pp. 385-386; L. D. Classen von Neudegg [Leo Clasen], ‘Rückblick in die Nacht’, Humanitas 3:2 (1955), pp. 428-429.

225 homosexuality]’.65 He came from a working-class background and he was the first in his family to go to university. In his 2004 testimony, Tony described the difficulties he experienced in accepting a homosexual identity while growing up in Bexhill-on-Sea. Reading from his diary, he revealed that as a seventeen-year- old he was acutely aware that he had to keep his sexuality secret, yet at the same time he longed to express himself. He adopted fashions which he understood to be coded as ‘homosexual’, based on the film Victim (1961) starring Dirk Bogarde and an anti-homosexual book he had picked up from a local library, which urged young men to avoid homosexual fashions and mannerisms:

I sort of took the opportunity to start camping it up a bit and I dyed my hair ginger and started wearing this scarf, this yellow silk scarf, it was kind of like, you’re kind of beginning to say “look at me, I’m different from you lot, I don’t want to know about it”.66

Tony’s struggle to keep his desires hidden from society, while subtly attempting to signal sexual interest to other men demonstrated not only the difficulty men from small British towns faced in living openly as homosexual, but also that access to centres of homosociability was extremely limited. Influenced by Victim, which featured scenes set in a gay pub, Tony attempted to seek out the homosexual milieu in Bexhill:

I thought “that’s just like it is and where’s that then in Bexhill? Is it in Hastings, no? No it isn’t”, so I spent a lot of time kind of keeping my ears open, for whether there was any kind of clubs in Hastings and then I realised it was in Eastbourne and Eastbourne was a bit far to go. So I couldn’t be going to Eastbourne, and in fact then I discovered there wasn’t anything in Eastbourne, it was going to have to be Brighton. I had no real kind of clue where to go anyway, so I’d spend my summer evenings

65 'Tony' interviewed by Charlotte Cooper (22nd July 2004), Before Stonewall: A Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Oral History, British Library Sound Archive, C1159/12. ‘George’ also visited Spain: 'George' interviewed by Martyn Taylor (exact date unknown, 1982), Martyn Taylor Collection, British Library Sound Archive, C1245/01. 66 'Tony' interviewed by Charlotte Cooper.

226

walking up and down the seafront in Hastings, trying to follow men in white socks, you know?67

Tony described this period as an ‘isolating and difficult time’, during which

‘people led damaged lives, because they weren’t open’.68 In contrast, he spoke about his experience abroad as his ‘Spanish epiphany’.69 Reflecting on his confidence in socialising with other homosexual men and frequenting bars and pubs, he described ‘it kind of all kicked off [in Spain] and there were gay clubs and a lot of gay people there and a lot of my friends there were waiters I suppose.’70

Even though homosexuality was criminalised under the Franco regime,

Sitges, close to Barcelona, as well as Torremolinos, just outside Malaga, were key holiday destinations for homosexual men from across Europe.71 Spain occupied a paradoxical space within western Europe’s political and cultural map. As a dictatorship, which had survived the end of the Second World War, Spain was marginalised by other western democracies and economically weaker than many of its neighbours.72 Gema Perez-Sanches has identified the regulation of homosexuality as one of the key ways through which the state asserted power and moral authority over its citizens. In this context, Franco addressed fears of a perceived ‘feminisation’ of Spain through a radical and punitive assertion of

67 'Tony' interviewed by Charlotte Cooper. 68 'Tony' interviewed by Charlotte Cooper. 69 'Tony' interviewed by Charlotte Cooper. 70 'Tony' interviewed by Charlotte Cooper. 71 For homosexuality under the Franco regime see Gema Perez-Sanchez, Queer Transitions in Contemporary Spanish Culture: From Franco to LA MOVIDA (New York, 2007), pp. 11-35; Gema Perez-Sanchez, ‘Franco's Spain, Queer Nation’, University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform 33:3 (2000), pp. 359-404. 72 Carsten Humlebæk,‘In and Out of Europe. Spain 1945’, in Joachim Lund and Per Øhrgaard (eds.), Return to Normalcy Or a New Beginning: Concepts and Expectations for a Postwar Europe Around 1945 (Copenhagen, 2008), pp. 55-57.

227 traditional gender roles.73 The Spanish state aimed to contain and repress social and sexual behaviours deemed as dangerous and subversive, labelling homosexuality as ‘anti-Spanish’ and morally corrupting.74 Simultaneously, the country became increasingly attractive to foreign holidaymakers and the Spanish state relied heavily on revenue from the booming tourism industry. This not only brought liberal western social attitudes into the country, but also put Spain firmly on the tourist map as a site of sexual opportunity, following the ‘sea-sex-sun’ formula of holidaymaking established in the 1960s.75 Spain was characterised by conflicting approaches towards sexual behaviours deemed immoral by the state, as tourist resorts became sites of greater sexual permissiveness, in contrast with larger cities where homosexual subcultures were driven largely underground.76

Tony was based in Granada and spent his weekends in Torremolinos, one of the tourist sites with a flourishing homosexual culture, which had ‘quite a big gay scene, […] even in 1966’.77 By 1970, the town had nine gay venues, most of them clustered on the Pasaje Begoña, a covered arcade within an apartment complex.78 Most of the bars, such as La Cueva de Aladino (Aladdin’s Cave), Le

Monte Cristo and the Incognito Bar were marked in the 1970 Spartacus

International Gay Guide with a ‘G’, signifying ‘Camp or effeminate types

73 Perez-Sanchez, Queer Transitions, pp. 22-23. 74 Gema Perez-Sanchez, Queer Transitions, pp. 8-12; Richard Cleminson, Rosa María Medina Doménech and Isabel Vélez, ‘The Queer Margins of Spanish Cities, 1939–2010’, in Matt Cook and Jennifer V. Evans (eds.), Queer Cities, Queer Cultures: Europe since 1945 (New York, 2014), pp. 23-25. 75 Perez-Sanchez, Queer Transitions, pp. 22-23; Sasha D. Pack, ‘Tourism and Political Change in Franco’s Spain’, in Nigel Townsend (ed.), Spain Transformed: The Franco Dictatorship, 1959- 1975 (Basingstoke, 2007), pp. 53. 76 For underground activity of Spanish sexual rights activists see Perez-Sanchez, ‘Franco's Spain’, pp. 382-385. 77 'Tony' interviewed by Charlotte Cooper. 78 JDS Publications (eds.), Spartacus International Gay Guide (Brighton, 1970), p. 54; n.a.,‘Pasaje Begoña, nuestro Stonewall Inn’ [accessed 31st January 2019].

228 dominant’.79 While ‘campness’ functioned as a marker of homoeroticism, it remained stigmatised in the post-war decades, particularly in Britain where, as

Matt Houlbrook has observed, homosexual men self-policed their mannerisms and appearance to avoid being seen as effeminate, while the international homophile movement could also be hostile to men who did not conform to notions of respectability.80 Nevertheless, the aesthetics and mannerisms of ‘camp’ and flamboyancy served to sign sexual difference, as well as constructing a group identity, as Susan Sontag has remarked. She stated that ‘Camp is esoteric - something of a private code, a badge of identity even, among small urban cliques’.81 Yet, as Patrick Garlinger and Rosi Song have noted, in Spain the adoption of ‘camp’ in art and literature during the 1960s served a more overtly political purpose, in resisting the cultural repression of the Franco regime.82

‘Camp’ in Toremollinos’ bars therefore revealed layered meanings which could be read by patrons according to their cultural and political backgrounds. For the

Spanish, these establishments could function as sites of resistance, yet at the same time foreign visitors could participate in this culture drawing on a version of camp outlined by Sontag as ‘disengaged, depoliticised – or at least apolitical’.83

Torremolinos’ compact geography of homosociability, centred around the

Pasaje Begoña and the beach, which were only ten minutes apart on foot, offered ample possibilities for relaxation and social contact. The homosexual scene was easily accessible even to tourists, as Tony recalled that ‘from talking to one

[homosexual man], you would sort of get involved in where are all the bars were

79 Spartacus International Gay Guide, p. 54. 80 Houlbrook, Queer London, pp. 148, 258; Clayton Whisnant, Male Homosexuality in West Germany: Between Persecution and Freedom, 1945-69 (Basingstoke, 2012), p. 148. 81 Susan Sontag, ‘Notes on 'Camp’, Partisan Review 31:4 (1964), pp. 515-530. 82 Patrick Garlinger and Rosi Song, ‘Camp: What’s Spain got to do with it?’, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 5:1 (2004), pp. 5-7. 83 Sontag, ‘Notes on 'Camp’, p. 17.

229 then’. 84 In addition, overt cruising and cottaging took place at the far end of the public beach. For Tony, who had been celibate while he was at university in

Britain and had not spoken about his sexual orientation with fellow students, this offered an opportunity to explore his sexual desires. In resorts such as

Torremolinos, the beach as a ‘place of adventure and sexual opportunity’, was a homoerotic space where unclothed bodies could be viewed and displayed and rituals of seduction took place:85

you sort of soon realise that because people wear less and it’s more glamorous really anyway, you sort of loll about on the walks along by the beach and you sort of notice people slipping into toilets to indicate what they’re doing and you would sort of follow them along a little bit and you’d get talking and that was quite good.86

The contrast between Tony’s unsuccessful attempts at ‘getting picked up by a bloke’ on British seafronts and his experiences in Spain was striking. Yet Tony’s voyeuristic pleasure at observing the cruising that took place on the Spanish beach also demonstrated that taking part in homosexual cultures in southern European beach resorts did not necessarily require sexual contact but could be enacted through sexualised glances and bodily display.

The beach as a place of encounter and excitement featured prominently in homoerotic fiction in the post-war decades. British writers published in the Swiss homophile publication Der Kreis, such as Richard Arlen, Frank Whitfeld and O.F.

Simpson contrasted the sunshine of seaside resorts with the ‘grey skies of

England’ and conjured eroticism through the lazy viewing of tanned bodies in the

84 'Tony' interviewed by Charlotte Cooper. 85 Chris Rojek, Ways of Escape: Modern Transformations in Leisure and Travel (Basingstoke, 1993), p. 189. 86 'Tony' interviewed by Charlotte Cooper.

230 heat of the Mediterranean.87 In Frank Whitfeld’s short story ‘Italian Beach’

(1961), the protagonist, a British writer spending a long summer in an Italian beach town, whiled away the hours at the beach watching objects of his sexual desire, including a lifeguard:

I moved slowly along the beach, past the families, the sun worshippers, lovers, until I reached a position from which I could watch him. High above the beach he sat, deeply burned by the sun, with the complete relaxation that perhaps only a natural athlete can achieve. There he sat, remote, god-like in his beauty and his indifference, almost unmoving, as if unaware of the busy beach below him, calm, proud, alone, ceaselessly watching the sea. And this he did every day.88

In Whitfeld’s story the beach was defined as an erotic site through a destabilisation of normal temporal rules. Days, which seemed to stretch endlessly, allowed bodies to be suspended lazily, almost immobile, to be viewed by others.

The spatial distance between the viewer and the object of desire only intensified sexual longing and tension and was a common thread in homoerotic writing. A poem by O.F. Simpson was written from the perspective of a spectator watching a handsome man on the beach without ever making contact with the ‘hard handsome boy-god, sauntering out of reach’.89 For homosexual holidaymakers the beach was therefore not just a practical cruising ground, but a site of sexual imagination disseminated through erotic fiction.

Torremolinos was not only a key destination for homosexual holidaymakers, but became a popular resort for the booming European package holiday industry as well, a phenomenon John Urry has termed a ‘striking symbol

87 Frank Whitfeld, ‘Italian Beach’, Der Kreis 29:3 (1961), pp. 39-48; Richard Arlen, ‘Segesta’, Der Kreis 31:8 (1963), pp. 28-30; O.F. Simpson, ‘On the Beach’ Der Kreis 28:3 (1960), p. 36. For British writers featured in Der Kreis see Hubert Kennedy, The Ideal Gay Man: The Story of Der Kreis (Binghampton, NY, 1999), pp. 44-46. 88 Whitfeld, ‘Italian Beach’, p. 40. 89 Simpson, ‘On the Beach’, p. 36.

231 of post-war reconstruction in western Europe’. 90 It gained a reputation for ‘cheap and cheerful’ holidays, while critics saw the rapid expansion of hotels and tourist facilities as a classic example of overdevelopment.91 The gay scene in

Torremolinos was mostly made up of tourists, as well as hotel staff, with Tony recalling that ‘everybody knew each other and all the waiters from all the hotels who were gay were there and punters and tourists and they probably were all hotel guests of some kind’.92 Resorts such as Torremolinos therefore hardly offered an authentic engagement with Spanish culture, but an internationalised gay scene which attracted homosexual men from across Europe due to its affordability and amenities. These sites offered a mimetic version of Spanishness, or what Ann

Davies has termed a ‘masquerade of Spanishness’.93 For locals, they were first and foremost places of work with few authentic cultural offerings, while a tourist vision of Spanishness was projected through kitsch performances of select aspects of Spanish culture, such as Flamenco dancing and Sangria.94

Recreation and socialising were at the heart of Tony’s experiences in

Torremolinos. Recalling one club he visited frequently, he recalled that it was a

‘fairly tame middle-aged disco if you think about it, everyone was drinking rum and coke or beer’.95 Nevertheless, set against the background of the limited

90 Hennessy, Having it so Good, p. 539; John Urry, The Tourist Gaze, 2nd edition (London, 2006), p. 53. 91 Jim Butcher, The Moralisation of Tourism: Sun, Sand... and Saving the World? Contemporary Geographies of Leisure, Tourism and Mobility (London, 2005), pp. 37-38; Leslie France, ‘Sustainable Tourism’, in Michael Pacione, Applied Geography: Principles and Practice: An Introduction to Useful Research in Physical, Environmental and Human Geography (London, 1999), pp. 321-323. For boom in British package holidays to Spain see Lyth, ‘The Growth of British Air Package Holidays’, pp. 11-30; Hennessy, Having it so Good, p. 539. 92 ‘Tony’ interviewed by Charlotte Cooper. 93 Ann Davies, Spanish Spaces: Landscape, Space and Place in Contemporary Spanish Culture (Liverpool, 2012), p. 124. 94 Davies, Spanish Spaces, p. 124. 95 ‘Tony’ interviewed by Charlotte Cooper.

232 experiences he had with gay establishments in Britain, the bars of Torremolinos proved exhilarating:

that was the most exciting kind of drinking place I had ever been to in my life, you know? I was thinking all these people are gay! None of them were kind of scary, it was really quite good. It was quite confidence building…96

Tony recounted that his experiences in Spain had given him far greater confidence to navigate homosexual spaces back home. Before he left Britain, the majority of contacts he had made with other homosexual men had been through pen-pal services and meetups happening in clandestine locations, with Tony using pseudonyms. Upon his return in 1967 he first began visiting the small and intimate scene in Oxford, then made up of ‘a pub and a half’, before regularly travelling to London where he found the scene ‘much more specialised’.97 Tony’s experience showed that for British homosexuals continental European locations with permissive sexual cultures could enable a temporary ‘coming out’, as well as building confidence and confirming same-sex desires. However, the relative freedom enjoyed by homosexual tourists in Torremolinos came to an end in 1971.

During a large-scale raid on homosexual establishments in the town, part of a

‘drive to clean up morals’, 139 people were detained, many of them tourists and bars and clubs were forced to close.98

While many homosexual tourists sought out beach resorts known for their permissive climate during the 1960s, gay urban life in Spain, while thriving in some areas, operated under conditions of secrecy, which could be disorienting to foreign visitors. In his archive testimony, Michael James, who had arrived in

96 ‘Tony’ interviewed by Charlotte Cooper. 97 ‘Tony’ interviewed by Charlotte Cooper. 98 n.a., ‘Tourists held in nightclub raids in Spain’, The Times, June 29 1971, p. 5.

233

Barcelona by train as a twenty-three-year-old, dressed flamboyantly and with vivid red hair, dramatically recounted his bewilderment at his reception in the city in great detail, building palpable tension as the mystery unfolded:

I arrived at Barcelona with my little bags out onto this vast station concourse which was completely empty apart from rows upon row of parked yellow cabs and taxi drivers in groups chat chat chatting to each other and I’m in the station and then there’s dead silence … I pointed to this phrase in my Spanish phrasebook, “take me to an expensive pensione”, so the man read this and of course they all erupted. We drove off, I’m terrified and spaced out of my mind and they’re all cheering, I’m thinking I’m going to be cut up and robbed and everything.99

After being taken to a hotel, Michael was surprised to find the taxi driver wanted no payment for the ride, with the receptionist informing him that ‘I was told to tell you that you have honoured the drivers with your presence and any time you get into a taxi in Barcelona you will not have to pay a penny’.100 When Michael inquired further, the receptionist responded ‘you will find out, if I told you it would spoil it’.101 In Michael’s retelling, the mystery went on for days, with taxi drivers honking their horns, waving out of their windows and shouting at him. It wasn’t until Michael, who confessed to being politically unaware at the time, spoke to some ‘English queens’ he met in the city, that he realised the importance of his flamboyant appearance, which challenged the limitations placed on any form of dissidence in Spain:

And they said “you don’t know anything about Franco and what he’s done to this country, the people especially in Catalonia?”, and I said “no I don’t” and he said “well, they’re an incredibly vibrant, artistic people, and he has sat like a great tyrant on that vibrancy … and you’ve stepped off that train, bold as brass, brilliant red hair, very gay, very flamboyant and you’ve just gone “phhht” to Franco, that’s what they see you as. In all your innocence,

99 Michael James interviewed by Margot Farnham. 100 Michael James interviewed by Margot Farnham. 101 Michael James interviewed by Margot Farnham.

234

you’ve almost epitomised all the colour they’ve been sitting on for all these years and the cab drivers saw this immediately”.

Garlinger and Song’s article about the significance of camp in Spanish culture offers clues as to Michael’s unusual experience in the city. Campness, as expressed by his extravagant appearance, denoted a life of freedom in opposition to the conformity and obedience demanded by the Spanish state. 102 To Spanish onlookers, Michael unwittingly embodied bravery and resistance. While Tony had experienced the relative permissiveness of a touristic beach resort, for Michael the tension between the Spanish state’s accommodation of foreign tourists and a nationalist ideology centred on notions of hegemonic masculinity was much more palpable. He recalled a distinct sense of uneasiness and anxiety during his first days in Barcelona, forcing him to confront his status as an outsider and his sexual difference. Michael’s account demonstrated that navigating unfamiliar cities and cultures as a homosexual tourist could be intensely disorientating, particularly before the publication of the first travel guides for homosexuals at the start of the

1970s.

The city of Cannes on the French Riviera, which had been described by

Marc Daniel [Michel Duchein], a writer for the French homophile publication

Arcadie, as a centre of French homosexual life between the months of June and

September, was another seaside destination that had become popular with a sun- seeking homosexual clientele from across Europe in the 1950s and 1960s.103 Not only did the patrons in the city’s homosexual bars and clubs have an international background, but so did the male prostitutes who operated on the Promenade de la

102 Garlinger and Song, ‘Camp’, pp. 5-6. 103 For Daniel’s comments see Jeffrey Merrick and Michael Sibalis, Homosexuality in French History and Culture (London, 2013), pp. 222-223.

235

Croisette, which stretched along this part of the Mediterranean coast. Lamenting the incidence of ‘gigolos’ in Cannes in 1962, Nils Anderson wrote in Der Kreis that ‘there are too many, of all nationalities, French, of course, North Africans, as always, naturally Germans, and Italians and, infinitely rarer, English and

Americans’.104

By 1970, Cannes, which had become popular with the British upper classes in the late eighteenth century, had nineteen homosexual establishments.

However, it remained more exclusive than other southern European seaside resorts, as it was ‘very expensive even back then’ as Bertie Maxwell recalled, while The Times ran a story which stated that ‘the golden playground of the

French Riviera is becoming too golden for British visitors’, making it much less accessible to tourists.105 Nevertheless, Bertie, who had learned French while he was working in Scotland, recalled the sexual excitement of the clubs on the beachfront, where ‘you could dance with bright lights under the tree and then you’d go have sex on the beach’.106

For those willing to travel further afield, Mykonos was another beach destination that had become popular with European homosexuals who valued its more secluded atmosphere, as the island had not yet become a destination for mass tourism. Mykonos boasted ‘three splendid nudist beaches’ which were easily reached by boat, the atmosphere on board ‘gay and carefree’ not unlike ‘a floating gay bar’, as Colin Clarke, writing for Quorum in 1974, remarked.107 Like Cannes

104 Niels Anderson, ‘Cannes, Purgatoire Du Gigolo’, Der Kreis 30:11 (1962), pp. 25-27. 105 Stephen Coulter, ‘Riviera is becoming too golden for Britons’, The Sunday Times (9th August, 1964), p. 2. 106 Bertie Maxwell interviewed by Charlotte Cooper. 107 Colin Clarke, ‘Mykonos’, Quorum, 2:11 (1974), pp. 26-28.

236 and Torremolinos, Mykonos was host to an international scene of homosexual travellers seeking sexual encounters, as Clarke reassured his readers that:

If there isn’t anyone you know, it’s very easy to make friends of all nationalities and even if you don’t get it together on the beach, there are always the bars and discotheques in the evening.108

Holidays in southern European seaside resorts therefore offered British homosexuals a distinct brand of eroticism, which centred around the beach as a central site of seduction and sexual adventure. Beaches offered opportunities for cruising, the showing off and viewing of naked skin in the hot sun, cottaging in beachfront public lavatories and, once the sun had set, they were an attractive location for outdoor sex. In addition, these resorts hosted an internationalised homosexual scene, which was made up to a large extent of likeminded tourists. In addition, a number of locations offered a compact infrastructure of gay bars and clubs, where gay men could socialise and dance. Within these exclusive spaces, men could confidently enact homoerotic desire and homosexual identities, which in many cases had to be self-policed back home. Nevertheless, many of these homosexual spaces were tightly bounded, particularly in Spain under the Franco regime and relied on the tolerance of local authorities.

4. Going Dutch

While southern European resorts were popular with a sun-seeking homosexual clientele, one city that proved particularly attractive to British homosexual men was Amsterdam. Experiences of the city’s permissive sexual culture not only influenced the strategies and outlook taken by British experts and sexual rights campaigners, as this thesis explored in Chapter Two. It was also a popular

108 Clarke, ‘Mykonos’, p. 28.

237 weekend trip destination for homosexual men, due to its well-developed homosexual nightlife and accessibility via ferry from Dover or Hull to the Hook of Holland. Transportation links across the British Channel had enabled international cultural exchanges, which facilitated shifts in local sexual cultures since the inter-war years. As a transit point, Dover in particular, had become popular with writers and artists such as W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood due to its more relaxed atmosphere, as it ‘seemed almost within the jurisdiction of the Code Napoléon’, as Paul Fussell has asserted.109

In the post-war years, these processes of cultural exchange along major travel routes intensified on a micro-level as large-scale infrastructure projects, such as the car ferry terminal in Dover, enabled growing numbers of individual travellers to cross the channel. Opened in July 1952, the car ferry terminal made cross-Channel travel more efficient as well as catering to holidaymakers travelling with their own cars - an increasingly popular and cost-effective mode of foreign travel. In 1953, 124,497 vehicles made their way to and from the continent through the Dover ferry terminal, increasing by a further 25 per cent in 1954.110

For homosexual men, the proximity of Amsterdam meant it provided not just a welcome and accessible respite from the discrimination experienced in Britain, but it also provided a tangible illustration of how homosexual life in Britain could be transformed if homosexuality were decriminalised.

Peter, an art student at St. Martin’s College in London, born in 1936 to

Italian immigrant parents, first visited Amsterdam as an eighteen-year-old in the

109 Fussell, Abroad, p. 23. 110 Leslie Stone, ‘Bouquet for Customs and a Hint to Immigration’, Travel Trade Gazette (21st May 1954), p.4. See also Middleton and Lickorish, British Tourism, pp. 128-129. For rising car ownership see Bernstein, The Myth of Decline, p. 313.

238 mid-1950s which was by then, as Peter remarked, ‘famous and notorious’ for its gay bars, clubs and saunas. By contrast, he felt that homosexual life in Britain was

‘much more dishonest’, commenting that people were ‘very closeted […] locked up in their homes or other people’s homes’, pointing to the fact that there were significant limitations to how British men could behave in public or semi-public settings.111 For Bertie Maxwell, who had made first experiences with more tolerant sexual cultures in Denmark shortly after the war, Amsterdam became a destination he regularly visited throughout the 1950s, stating that ‘[going abroad] gave me a boost …. you were less scared’.112 In Amsterdam, Bertie visited clubs where homosexual men could dance together, recalling that he felt at ease, as it was ‘perfectly legal and you could go there and have great fun and be very relaxed, oh Amsterdam was much more relaxed’.113

Dancing was a key feature of Amsterdam’s homosexual nightlife. Just as

HLRS secretary Anthony Grey had declared himself at first ‘astonished’ by the sight of ‘men dancing together’ at the clubhouse of the Dutch homophile organisation Cultuur- en Ontspanningscentrum (COC) in 1960, for many ordinary

British men a visit to Amsterdam would have afforded the first contact with public, same-sex dancing.114 The COC clubhouse, which hosted dance nights to raise funds for its political causes, was one of the key venues for homosexual tourists, having opened its doors in 1952 close to the Amsterdam flower market before being forced to move to a new location in 1955. The new clubhouse, which was also known as De Schakel (The Link) was located at Korte

111 Peter interviewed by Charlotte Cooper (22nd April 2003), Before Stonewall: A Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Oral History, British Library Sound Archive, C1159/07. 112 Bertie Maxwell interviewed by Charlotte Cooper. 113 Bertie Maxwell interviewed by Charlotte Cooper. 114 Antony Grey, ‘Why Not’ [1961], in Antony Grey (ed.), Speaking Out: Writings on Sex, Law, Politics and Society, 1954-1995 (London, 1997), pp. 61-63. See Chapter Two for Grey visiting Amsterdam.

239

Leidsewarsstraat 49a, close to the bustling nightlife centre of the Leidseplein. It was connected to the DOK (De Oden Kring – The Odeon Club), a commercially- run dance club for homosexuals, via the Leidsestraat, which became known as the

‘Rue de Vaseline’ in contemporary homosexual slang.115 After entering the DOK premises through a small wooden door on the canal side, night-time revellers emerged into a semi-lit area with tables and alcoves, which also housed a small stage for cabaret performances, while ‘current dance tunes’ were played on the lowered dance floor where ‘all the couples smooching around the dancefloor were men’, as the British TV presenter Bryan Magee observed when visiting the DOK for an ITV documentary on homosexuality.116

The dance nights at both the DOK and the COC pointed to the influence of an increasingly internationalised youth culture. Contemporary pop music was played in both venues, usually a rotation of British, American and continental Top

20 hits. However, as Michael James remembered the mix of music at the DOK could be more eclectic, the DJ sometimes playing ‘an old-fashioned waltz or a polka’, which meant that ‘everyone would sort of leap from corners onto the dancefloor and sort of whirl around’.117 For Michael, who had returned from

Barcelona and was working as a window dresser at Liberty’s department store in

London by the mid-1960s, the clubs in Amsterdam and dancing with European men was ‘part and parcel of the holiday treat going over there’. He recalled that

‘English men going to these clubs and discos in the 1960s and 70s would sort of

115 Gert Hekma, ‘Amsterdamʹs Sexual Underground in the 1960s’, in Christoph Lindner and Andrew Hussey (eds.), Paris-Amsterdam Underground: Essays on Cultural Resistance, Subversion, and Diversion (Amsterdam, 2013, pp. 51-52. 116 Bryan Magee, One in Twenty. A Study of Homosexuality in Men and Women (London, 1966), pp. 102-103. 117 Michael James interviewed by Margot Farnham. For British men visiting the DOK see also ‘Willy’, interviewed by Tony Deane, (1980s, exact date unknown), Tony Deane Collection, British Library Sound Archive, C547/53.

240 hover around the dancefloor area, eyeing someone up or whatever, in the hope that some Dutchman or German would cross the floor and ask them to dance and of course it did happen’.118

This initial hesitancy displayed by British visitors pointed to the fact that they were less comfortable with forms of flirtation. Commenting on homosexual courtship in inter-war Britain, Jack Marlowe, the protagonist in John Lehmann’s novel In the Purely Pagan Sense (1976) stated that flirting consisted of carefully planned and subtle glances, micro-movements and courteous conversation:

One would gradually edge one’s way, in as unremarkable manner as possible, towards a likely lad one had spotted somewhere around the bar, and with whom one had perhaps exchanged a quick glance. One would stand beside him for a few moments, testing as it were with one’s antennae whether he was waiting for one to make a move. This would be followed by a casual remark about the weather, or some sporting event of the day.119

Due to the illegality of homosexual behaviours, any physical contact was reserved for the end of the night after both men had left the public location a few minutes apart and retired to a private home. Physical flirtation, such as touching or dancing, or any other behaviour that may have provoked unwanted attention, were therefore scarcely part of British homosexuals’ repertoire of seduction.

British men who travelled abroad during the 1960s and 1970s observed that Europeans appeared to have a much more accepting relationship with their bodies. Stephen Spender explored this in his semi-autobiographical novel The

Temple. Originally drafted in 1929, it remained unpublished until 1985. In the book, the British protagonist Paul visited Hamburg and spent time with young

Germans, bringing his previous discomfort with his own body into sharp relief:

118 Michael James interviewed by Margot Farnham. 119 Lehmann, In the Purely Pagan Sense, p. 52.

241

I do not know precisely in what the newness consists, but perhaps the key to it is in these young Germans having a new attitude toward the body. Although I have never been puritanical in outlook, I confess that till now, whatever I may have pretended to myself, I have always regarded my body as sinful, and my own physical being as something to be ashamed of and to be overcome by compensating and atoning spiritual qualities. Now I am beginning to feel that I may soon come to regard my body as a source of joy.120

Paul’s newfound physical confidence as a result of spending time in Germany highlighted that there existed significant differences in cultural norms surrounding the body, nudity and the experience of physical pleasure. While Paul had perceived his body as shameful in Britain, Germany’s more relaxed attitudes allowed him to accept his physicality. For British homosexual men visiting continental Europe during the post-war decades, these differences in attitudes, observed by Spender for the inter-war period, remained, particularly when it came to flirting and dancing with other men. Participating in homosocial behaviour in

European dance clubs required British men to adopt unfamiliar socio-sexual forms which required expressive use of the body to signal attraction.

Dance in this context was not just homoerotic, sexually charged by physical proximity and interactions between dancers, but could also constitute an act of sexual self-expression. In her study of professional dance and gender identity, Judith Lynne Hanna has defined dancing as a social act, which can perpetuate or challenge existing gender roles. In particular, she has noted that

‘when moving images created by dancers violate expected male and female roles and their conventional expressions, the novel signs on stage charge the atmosphere and stimulate performers and observers to confront the possibility of

120 Stephen Spender, The Temple (New York, 1989), p. 54.

242 altered lifestyles’.121 For the ITV filmmaker Magee, watching homosexual men take part in the same courtship behaviours as heterosexual couples reinforced a

‘feeling for the normality of homosexuality’, stating that:

In every respect except the identity of sex between dancers it was a scene I must have witnessed hundreds of times in my life, even down to the details, on the side of the dancefloor, of people drinking out of each other’s glasses, or interlocking their arms to drink; or a hand resting casually on the thigh of a partner; the giggling, the flirting, the squeezing, the laughing.122

Even though Magee was an outside observer, the life histories of homosexual men deposited at the British Library Oral History archives confirmed that they not only sought out locations where same-sex dancing was permitted, but also that these experiences led them to normalise expressions of same-sex attraction and defy notions of sexual deviance. As Bertie poignantly remarked about his visits to

Amsterdam in the 1950s: ‘I wasn’t wicked, I was just having a good time’.123

While patrons at the clubs in Amsterdam came from all over the world, with Magee encountering ‘a German, a Frenchman, an Italian, an Englishmen, an

Indian, an African and several Dutchmen’ on his tour of Amsterdam’s homosexual venues, it was remarkable how many postcards were received by the

COC from British visitors compared to other nationalities. Many of these men thanked the organisation for its hospitality, as well as articulating the relief they had felt in the Netherlands. Clifford Stocks who visited the organisation in 1959

121 Judith Lynne Hanna, Dance, Sex and Gender. Signs of Identity, Dominance, Defiance and Desire (London, 1988), p. xiii. 122 Magee, One in Twenty, pp. 106-107. 123 Bertie Maxwell interviewed by Charlotte Cooper. Bertie’s feeling of the extensive freedom of gay culture in Amsterdam was shared by other homosexual men who visited Amsterdam, see Unidentified (speaker, male), interviewed by Tony Deane, (1980s, exact date unknown), Tony Deane Collection, British Library Sound Archive, C547/43/01; Philip Timmins, interviewed by Lucy Delap (31st May 2012), Unbecoming Men: interviews on masculinities and the women's movement, 1970-1991, British Library Sound Archive, C1667/24.

243 wrote to the COC to express that ‘visiting the COC De Schakel in Korte

Leidsestraat in a way helped to make my holiday perfect as one feels much happier in such surroundings’.124 Another visitor was R.W. Horsley, who had attended the club with a friend over New Year’s Eve 1961 and thanked the establishment for ‘the hospitality and the happiness it brought us’.125 One anonymous man wrote to the club in 1963 and stated that in Amsterdam he had felt ‘happier and more at ease […] than I think I have ever done before in my life’ and added that he wished such clubs existed in England.126 Roger Hollinrake, a music research student at Merton College, Oxford in the early 1960s, who would later become an authority on both Nietzsche and Wagner, corresponded with the

COC regularly and revealed that he was ‘very much struck by the relaxed and free atmosphere of the COC’ compared to the London clubs he had visited in the past.127 For many British men, a holiday in Amsterdam came to signify not only a discreet time period in which the holidaymaker could escape the monotony of everyday life, but a period during which homoerotic fantasies and sexual freedom could be lived out, allowing for an, albeit time-limited, coming-out, when this was not possible in Britain.

Postcards sent to the COC demonstrated that for British tourists in particular, a visit to the city’s homosexual nightlife could lift the limits imposed on their experience. However, this could also reinforce the sense of living a

‘double life’ in which a homosexual identity was only assumed when abroad, as

Magee observed when he spoke to an English salesman at the DOK, who used his

124 R.W. Horsley to COC, 9th January 1962, NL-HaNA, COC/173. 125 Clifford Stocks to COC, 13th January 1959, NL-HaNA, COC/ 172. 126 Anonymous man to COC, 5th March 1963, NL-HaNA, COC/174. 127 Roger Hollinrake to COC, 5th January 1962, NL-HaNA, COC/173. For Roger Hollinrake, see: J.L.H Thomas, ‘Dr Roger Barker Hollinrake’, in Postmaster & The Merton Record (Oxford, 2014), pp. 192-193.

244 job to justify his frequent absences to his wife and children.128 Furthermore, romantic relationships forged while on holiday underlined that the sense of freedom experienced by British men was fixed to the holiday location and strictly time-limited. The Gay Liberation Front (GLF) activist John Chesterman, whose first trip to Amsterdam provided the opening vignette for this thesis, went on to visit Amsterdam many times between the mid-1950s and 1970s. Recalling the disastrous consequences provoked by his Dutch lover’s visit to his family home in

Britain, he recounted the challenges of maintaining a relationship after the holiday had ended:

This business with Henk coming here is something I saw repeated endlessly, people sort of giving up things without thinking about it. Particularly, Dutch people falling in love with British tourists and coming back to London. It's a common thing, I’ve known it to happen many many times, it’s always a disaster, but there’s something about people on holiday, almost anything seems possible, you’re outside of the usual rules of your life and you make promises and you do fall in love on holiday, it’s just one of those things.129

John’s recollections highlighted a central difficulty British homosexuals faced when attempting to maintain romantic relationships with European men. Not only could the logistics of a long-distance relationship or even relocating to another country be challenging, but crucially, being on holiday temporarily transformed the sense of self. A holiday not only disrupted established schedules and routines, but freed from the constraints and pressures of everyday life, the tourist had more opportunities to relax, seek pleasure and engage in new and exciting experiences.

More than any other activity, holidays were by their very nature an extraordinary period, during which holidaymakers prioritised the enjoyment of the present

128 Magee, One in Twenty, p. 105. 129 John Chesterman interviewed by Margot Farnham (13th October 1993), Hall Carpenter Oral History Project, British Library Sound Archive, C456/123.

245 moment. Back home, particularly when faced with hostile attitudes towards homosexuality, it could be challenging to maintain the confidence experienced abroad.

5. The Commercialisation of Gay Travel

In the late 1960s Amsterdam became one of the first destinations for organised group tours aimed at British homosexuals. Tony Stuart from the 42 Club, one of the centres of homosexual life in Brighton during the 1950s and 1960s, contacted the COC in September 1963 to organise a weekend trip to Amsterdam for thirty- six men and women, which would include a visit to the clubhouse.130 While this trip was not run for profit, but was self-organised by homosexual men and women from Brighton, it nevertheless indicated a growing appetite for package tours to popular gay destinations, which removed obstacles to travel such as the need to arrange transportation and accommodation. 131

The entertainment chosen for patrons by commercial tour operators which centred around hedonistic enjoyment and sexual opportunity pointed to a significant shift towards an increasingly assertive gay identity during the 1970s.132

Queer cultures became not only more visible, with centres of homosociabilty moving to more central locales within cities, but they also underwent a shift towards more explicitly sexualised forms of self-representation and

130 Tony Stuart, The 42 Club, Brighton to COC, 3rd September 1962, NL-HaNA, COC/173. For 42 Club see also Brighton Ourstory Project (eds.), Daring Hearts. Lesbian and Gay Lives in 50s and 60s Brighton (Brighton, 1992), p. 65. 131 Peter Lyth, ‘The Growth of British Air Package Tours, 1945-1975’, in Luciano Segreto, Carles Manera and Manfred Pohl (eds.), Europe At the Seaside: The Economic History of Mass Tourism in the Mediterranean (Oxford, 2009), pp. 11-29. 132 Jeffrey Weeks, Coming Out. Homosexual Politics in Britain from the Nineteenth Century to the Present, revised edition (London, 1990), p. 185; John D'Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities, 2nd edition (London,1998), pp. 223-239.

246 consumption.133 Gay pornography experienced a boom during the 1970s, when the first commercial production companies explicitly aimed at a homosexual clientele were established, while gay fashion increasingly drew inspiration from more sexually aggressive hyper-masculinity.134 If ‘effeminacy’ had been a visual marker of same-sex desire during the 1950s and 1960s, often derided by men who had placed respectability at the heart of their self-representations, by the 1970s it had become the ‘clone’ look of rugged masculinity. Alongside a checked shirt and moustache, Levi’s 501 jeans, an item of clothing emblematic of Americanised consumer cultures, was at the heart of the look and could be manipulated by the wearer to accentuate the crotch and signal sexual availability.135 In other ways too same-sex desire had become mass-marketable, as entrepreneurs identified gay men as affluent customers via the so-called ‘Pink Pound’ and catered for their entertainment needs by establishing bars, clubs and discotheques.136

The mass marketing of gay leisure extended to the tourist industry. In

Britain, Spartacus Magazine and the Spartacus International Gay Guide in particular pointed to the development of an increasingly commercialised mass gay travel market. Spartacus was launched in Brighton in 1968 by John D. Stamford who had been born into a working-class family and visited a theological college, before leaving the church in the mid-1960s and becoming an outspoken supporter of homosexual law reform. Stamford had run a printing business and a massage

133 Frank Mort, Cultures of Consumption. Masculinities and Social Space in Late Twentieth- Century Britain (London, 1996), p. 167. 134 For gay pornography see Jeffrey Escoffier, ‘Gay-for-Pay: Straight Men and the Making of Gay Pornography’, Qualitative Sociology 26:531 (2003), p. 534; Brian McNair, Mediated Sex: Pornography & Postmodern Culture (London, 1996), pp. 15-16. 135 Shaun Cole, 'Don We Now Our Gay Apparel’: Gay Men's Dress in the Twentieth Century (London, 2000), pp. 8, 38, 96; Martin Levine and Michael Kimmel, Gay Macho: The Life and Death of the Homosexual Clone (London, 1998), pp. 56-61; Richard Dyer, The Culture of Queers (London, 2002), pp. 67-68. 136 Mort, Cultures of Consumption, p. 168; Cole, 'Don We Now’, p. 125.

247 salon in Brighton before launching the magazine by ‘going around all the sex shops and bookshops across London and so on, literally shaking from head to foot, with a bag full of these magazines’.137 Unlike men’s physique magazines, which were not overtly aimed at a homosexual readership, but had become popular with homosexual men as a way to legitimise the viewing of nude or semi-nude male bodies, Spartacus was upfront in promoting itself as a publication ‘for homosexuals, about homosexuals, by homosexuals’.138 Alongside erotic photography and personal advertisements, a key theme in Spartacus was democratising access to centres of homosexual social life, both in the UK and abroad. Spartacus gave readers pointers on how to navigate London’s gay nightlife, recommending to a reader from Stoke-on-Trent who confessed himself nervous before his first trip to the capital to ‘always try and look well-groomed’, as well as assuring him that while ‘floating scarves tied in the neck are virtually gone now […] any chains, medallions or whatever you like to hand [sic] around your neck are alright’.139

Spartacus aimed to facilitate foreign travel for homosexual men, publishing the first Spartacus International Gay Guide in 1970. The guidebook was a directory with addresses for over 3,000 homosexual establishments across the world and was advertised as ‘an invaluable aid to the tourist, holidaymaker, traveller and anyone who really wants to get to the heart of the gay scene’.140 The guide was heavily focussed on the consumption of commercialised homosexual leisure and entertainment, producing a specific reading of holiday destinations which prioritised homosexual experience. The directory categorised venues

137 Brighton Ourstory Project (eds.), Daring Hearts, p. 96. 138 Brighton Ourstory Project (eds.), Daring Hearts, p. 95. 139 n.a., ‘Problem Page’, Spartacus 21 (1971) , p. 37 140 JDS Publications (eds.), Spartacus International Gay Guide (Brighton, 1970).

248 according to their amenities, atmosphere and clientele, using a key which included

‘OC: Outside Cruising’, ‘E: Elegant. Coat and Tie advisable’, or ‘AYOR – At your own risk’ (i.e. rough trade).141 By offering a compendium of homosexual meeting places, the Spartacus International Gay Guide enabled homosexual travellers to navigate unfamiliar homosexual territory with greater confidence, while articles on continental gay scenes educated readers in how to participate in the locally-specific consumption of homosexual leisure and entertainment. An article profiling Copenhagen’s Party Club, which hosted gay striptease nights, explained that a visit ‘first necessitates going to the Chridex bookshop in

Nansengade. There you must ask for membership of the Party Club, and book your seat in advance’.142 Spartacus was, in essence, an insider’s guide to local gay life. While elite British literary representations of gay life in Europe in the inter- war period had privileged the experience of the author, these guides placed the agency of the reader at their core, encouraging him to experience foreign sexual cultures with the confidence of a local.

The possibility of sexual adventure featured heavily in Spartacus’ travel articles, which explored various ‘cities of sin’ through first-person narratives in which the reader accompanied the author into various homoerotic locations. A reporter who visited the Thermos Sauna Bath in Amsterdam, described in explicit detail ‘the most fantastic orgy’ from which he confessed he ‘emerged exhausted an hour later’.143 Candid details also featured in the same reporter’s article on

Copenhagen, where he had ‘the good fortune to be selected to remove [the stripper’s] G-string’ at the Party Club, while also advising readers that ‘it is not

141 JDS Publications (eds.), Spartacus International Gay Guide, p. 3. 142 n.a., ‘There is nothing like a Dane!, Spartacus looks at Sin Cities’, Spartacus 18 (1970), pp. 5-6. 143 n.a., ‘There is nothing like a Dane!’, pp. 5-6.

249 uncommon for the boys in the show to make themselves available for the night if you are reasonably attractive’.144 Such graphic descriptions of erotic encounters demonstrated that by the 1970s commodified sex and the possibility of sexual thrills were key elements in the marketing of European cities as gay destinations.

Commercial tour operators established in the early 1970s, such as Man

Around Ltd and All About Travel Ltd also drew on sexualised imagery in promotions for ‘Stay Gay Holidays’. Amsterdam was promoted as ‘an exquisite city with probably the gayest nightlife in Europe’, Ibiza, as ‘the new gay resort with one of the finest climates in the Mediterranean’, alongside gay cruises around the Greek islands.145 These print advertisements ran in gay periodicals, such as the weekly paper Gay News, founded in 1972. They played on both the sophistication of foreign travel, including illustrations of European landmarks, picturesque scenes of intricate church towers, windmills and canals and the possibility of sexual adventure. Figure 6 shows an advert for a holiday in

Amsterdam, which pictured only a pair of cowboy boots, as if abandoned by a wearer who had stripped off completely. This alluded to an Americanised

‘modern cowboy’ fashion, a marker of masculinity and sexuality, emblazoned by the words ‘grab a taste of the action’.146 Similarly, the vignette for Mykonos depicted a muscled man in a relaxed pose, as if sunning on a beach and waiting for sex.147 This was the sight, it seemed to suggest, the gay traveller would

144 n.a., ‘There is nothing like a Dane!’, pp. 5-6. 145 n.a., ‘All about Travel Ltd’, in Gay News (February 12-25, 1976), p. 5; n.a. ‘Man Around Ltd’, in Gay News (January 26-February 8), p. 9; n.a., ‘Taking off with Man Around’, Gay News (June 29-July 12, 1978), p. 9. 146 Dan Tracer, ‘70s Gay Subculture Preserved In Surprising Detail In “Gay Semiotics”’(22nd January 2015), [accessed on 02/01/2019]. 147 n.a. ‘Man Around Ltd’, in Gay News (26 January - 8 February 1978), p. 9.

250 encounter when booking a holiday to Mykonos with Man Around Ltd - designed

‘with men in mind’.148

Figure 6: Man Around Ltd advertisements in Gay News: n.a. ‘Man Around Ltd’, in Gay News (26 January -8 February 1978), p. 9.

Throughout the 1970s, commercialised sexual cultures became increasingly central to homosexual tourism, with travel writers and holiday operators foregrounding hedonistic enjoyment and pleasure-seeking, as well as making these sites accessible as part of organised tours or guidebooks. In addition, homosexual men were increasingly recognised as affluent customers with disposable incomes, opening up opportunities for entrepreneurs who offered leisure and entertainment for a homosexual clientele.149 This development accompanied the market-led transformation of gay scenes across the UK during the 1970s and 1980s, following a wider shift towards more publicly visible and commodified forms of gay culture that took place after the 1967 decriminalisation of homosexuality.

148 n.a. ‘Man Around Ltd’, in Gay News (26 January - 8 February 1978), p. 9. 149 Anonymous, interviewed by Tony Deane, (1980s, exact date unknown), Tony Deane Collection, British Library Sound Archive, C547/43/01.

251

Conclusion

The recollections of the men profiled in this chapter revealed that for British homosexual men such as ‘Tony’, Bertie Maxwell, Michael James, Christopher

Spence, Terence Dear and John Chesterman, experiences of foreign travel enabled by post-war affluence were deeply transformative. Most striking in their retelling of their personal life histories were the ways in which they reflected on their own sexual identities through the lens of the experiences they had had abroad. These had allowed them to explore sexual desires, gain confidence by participating in local cultures of homosociability, as well as providing a sharp contrast to the harsher attitudes experienced at home. For many of these men, the key purpose of going abroad rested not just in touristic enjoyment, but provided a tangible way of gaining personal and sexual freedom and subverting moral and legal restrictions placed on homosexual behaviours and identities in Britain.

While many men fondly remembered travel companions or lovers they had met on their journeys, sometimes sentimentally, their memories nevertheless focussed on the construction of the self and the emotional experience of travel. In this context, specific European sites gained meaning as the location of personal sexual liberation and interviewees recalled their travels in highly emotive terms.

In particular, their testimonies contrasted feeling relieved, relaxed and less scared during their time abroad with the emotional strain involved in keeping their sexualities hidden from society in Britain. Overwhelmingly, openness, tolerance and honesty were key characteristics attributed to European sexual cultures in the testimonies surveyed in this chapter, while life in Britain was perceived as isolating and closeted. Yet these very positive images of western Europe

252 highlighted that processes of historical erasure were in play here, which glossed over memories of Europe as a site of fascism and the Second World War.

Though all these men’s experiences of travel were in some ways unique, associations between freedom and travel were a common thread in all testimonies surveyed in this chapter. The recollections revealed that Europe as a site of freedom was imagined and experienced on multiple levels. While widely disseminated cultural and literary representations had situated continental Europe as a site of sexual tolerance since the late eighteenth century, freedom and personal mobility had become a defining cultural theme in the west during the

Cold War, enabling relatively frictionless travel across European countries. In addition, travelling abroad lifted British homosexuals’ constant need for vigilance, secrecy and discretion, which allowed men to experience a more authentic sense of homosexual self. The freedom to define one’s homosexuality was not only experienced through sexual acts that were associated with significant risks at home, but also by moving through public spaces where homosexuals had a visible presence, such as beaches in gay resorts in southern Europe or homosexual scenes in European capitals. These spaces also offered the amenities for homosexual men to socialise, people-watch, drink and take part in courting rituals such as overt flirting and dancing, which remained restricted to heterosexuals in Britain.

For men who had perceived themselves as outsiders in British society, travel to

Europe constituted a radical shift in perspective which not only normalised same- sex desire, but also empowered men to come to terms with their sexuality.

253

Conclusion

This thesis began by arguing for a closer connection between British and continental European accounts of social change during the post-war decades. It has demonstrated that key aspects of how homosexuality was framed, understood and experienced in Britain during this period were subject to liberalising stimuli from western Europe. However, far from constituting a clear-cut process of modernisation through the direct adaptation of continental sexual cultures, progressive influences on British social attitudes and increasingly affirmative articulations of homosexual identities were often complex and piecemeal. More often than not they were sedimented over long historical periods and reshaped by processes of translation and adaptation.

I have sought to disrupt the ‘domestic logic’ of British narratives of social liberalisation through a transnational lens.1 British and continental west European countries shared experiences of the cultural Cold War, reformist governments and the formation of national welfare programmes. They also experienced the ‘Golden

Age’ of consumer capitalism, which enabled and intensified exchanges between

European countries through improved communication and transport links.2

Consequently, British histories of homosexuality were embedded within wider

European movements, which included the mobilisation of scientific expertise to legitimise social change as part of a distinctly western rights-based liberalism and the ideological reconstruction of Europe based around widely-disseminated notions of freedom, human rights and citizenship. Furthermore, the post-war

1 For ‘domestic logic’ in British historiography see Catherine Hall, ‘The State of Modern British History’, History Workshop Journal 72 (2011), p. 207. 2 Eric Hobsbawn has characterised the period between 1950 and 1975 as the ‘Golden Age’ see Eric Hobsbawn , Age of Extremes. The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991 (London, 1994), pp. 257-286. See also Lawrence Black and Hugh Pemberton (eds.), An Affluent Society? Britains’s Post-War Golden Age Revisited (Aldershot, 2004).

254 decades witnessed a repositioning of sexual minorities across western Europe, which saw struggles for recognition take on a profoundly political dimension, seeking to rework the relationship between the state and its citizens. By triggering discussions about which individuals should be subject to the rights and protections of the state, so-called deviant sexualities played a key role in shifting the political imaginary of the citizen within the European post-war settlement. Just how deeply these modes of activism were embedded within contemporary political and social currents becomes apparent when shifting focus to the 1970s. Gay rights activism increasingly transitioned towards more radical forms of mass protest, which mirrored broader currents of intensified political and economic dissatisfaction, activism and a loss of trust in political institutions.3 Earlier accommodationist approaches, which had sought to work through and with official and governmental institutions to effect social change, were increasingly rejected by gay men across

Europe and the USA who questioned the legitimacy of authority and placed the increased public visibility of homosexual men and women at the heart of their demands.4 National cultures of social change and protest cannot therefore be read in isolation, but must be understood as set within international processes of cultural and political transformation.

My research has reevaluated British histories of homosexuality in light of their European interconnections, by tracking the lines of exchange between

3 Tony Judt, Postwar. A History of Europe since 1945 (London, 2005), pp. 456-459; Hobsbawn , Age of Extremes, pp. 403-432. 4 For 1970s activism see for example Jeffrey Weeks, Coming Out: Homosexual Politics in Britain from the Nineteenth Century to the Present (London, 1977), pp. 183- 206; Fred Fejes, Gay Rights and Moral Panic: The Origins of America's Debate on Homosexuality (Basigstoke, 2008), pp. 30- 35; Patrick Henze, ‘Perversion of Society: Rosa von Praunheim and Martin Dannecker’s Film “It is not the Homosexual who is perverse, but the Society in which he lives (1971)” as the Initiation of the Golden Age of the Radical Left Gay Movement in West Germany’, in Janin Afken and Benedikt Wolf (eds.), Sexual Culture in Germany in the 1970s: A Golden Age for Queers?(Basingstoke, 2019), pp. 89-118; Julian Jackson, Living in Arcadia. Homosexuality, Politics, and Morality in France from the Liberation to Aids (London, 2009), pp. 203-206.

255

British actors and their counterparts on the European continent, ranging from scientific and legal experts to activists and ordinary men. It has demonstrated that reconnecting British history to the history of continental Europe offers a path to locating permeable boundaries in political and social processes and identity formation that too often have been understood to be nationally or locally constituted. My research has demonstrated that the conceptualisation and experience of homosexuality in Britain during the post-war decades was more deeply embedded within networks of transnational exchange than has been previously suggested in historical research. In particular, my analysis has expanded scholarship by Julian Jackson, Leila Rupp and David Minto by revealing diverse points of connection between British and European sexual cultures, which transcended the institutional focus of homophile organisations and the British based Homosexual Law Reform Society.5 Furthermore, while I concur with these authors that British post-war sexual rights groups did not fit the criteria of homophile activism, I have nevertheless argued that the post-war reframing of male homosexuality in Britain must be read against the backdrop of the European homophile movements and the social and sexual knowledge they produced and circulated. While the shape and direction of sexual rights activism in Britain was ultimately nationally distinct, especially around the conception of pressure-group politics, homophile activism gave key impulses to British campaigns and established forums and networks through which British experts and activists came into contact with cutting-edge social and sexual knowledge.

5 Julian Jackson, ‘The Homophile Movement’, in David Paternotte, Manon Tremblay (eds.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Lesbian and Gay Activism (Abingdon, 2015), pp. 31-44; David Minto, ‘Mr Grey Goes to Washington: the Homophile Internationalism of Britain’s Homosexual Law Reform Society’, in Brian Lewis (ed.), British Queer History. New Approaches and Perspectives (Manchester, 2013), pp. 219-243; Leila J. Rupp, ‘The Persistence of Transnational Organizing: The Case of the Homophile Movement’, American History Review 116:4 (2011), pp. 1014-1039.

256

Transnational flows of knowledge had a profound effect on scientific and social productions of homosexuality in Britain. Chapter One revealed the transnational origins of the Wolfenden Report and demonstrated that British post- war understandings of homosexuality and arguments towards law reform were formulated through a close engagement with sexual theories that had first emerged in the German-speaking world in the late nineteenth century and also with social scientific methods which were circulated across Europe and the USA following the Second World War. These frameworks were negotiated by British actors and contributed to a reframing of male homosexuality in the post-war decades, which witnessed a gradual repositioning of same-sex desire as a social phenomenon, rather than an expression of individual criminality or immorality.

The circulation of knowledge, ideas and people also acted on multiple layers of homosexual identity formation, challenging the notion that post-war constructions of the homosexual self were constituted in bounded national frameworks. Specific continental sexual theories provided the basis for a more affirmative expression of the homosexual self by disrupting notions of sexual and social deviancy. Personal experiences of western European sexual cultures, which were foregrounded in Chapter Four, further acted on homosexual and later gay subjectivities. A process of ‘coming out’ enabled by a booming post-war tourism industry allowed British homosexual men to gain confidence and normalise their sexual desires. This research emphasised that ‘place’ could have a profound and enduring impact on definitions of the homosexual self.

Interpretations of the homosexual’s position in society and imaginings of a homosexual community also underwent a shift during the post-war decades, engendered by homophile activism which centred on the idea of homosexual men

257 forming a cohesive and vocal minority group within society. Yet, the influence of this body of thought on British understandings of homosexuality was piecemeal and gradual, as Chapters Two and Three revealed a complicated relationship between British sexual rights groups and the European homophile movement regarding the idea of a homosexual community. While the national campaign of the HLRS framed homosexual rights as a humanitarian issue, as well as a matter of personal liberty, positioning homosexual men as individual actors vis-à-vis the state, sociological constructions of homosexual men as a cohesive minority group within society were more readily adopted by provincial campaigners, as well as becoming increasingly influential to the campaign of the HLRS in the late-1960s.

Taken together, transnational encounters reworked homosexual identities on multiple levels, offering strategies of personal legitimation based on sexual knowledge, a repositioning of the homosexual within his social environment and an experiential shift in social norms enabled by foreign travel. These component parts of transcultural exchange were negotiated and reassembled by individuals themselves, providing constructions of identity, which could be combined with other, more local, productions of the self.

Selective British negotiations of continental European sexual cultures functioned as an informal template for liberalisation which could be adapted variously to British legal, social and political contexts. Due to their geographical proximity and cultural similarity, continental European countries provided a compelling and conceivable model for social change in Britain. In the discussions of the Wolfenden Committee, an international comparative legal perspective challenged notions that a reform of the law would result in higher incidences of homosexual behaviours, providing a powerful case for the decriminalisation of

258 homosexuality. Chapter Two demonstrated that British supporters of sexual equality selectively adapted elements of European homophile activism in their campaigns. The Dutch COC in particular functioned as a model for the provision of counselling services and leisure facilities for homosexual men, though there were significant differences in how these were adapted by individual campaigns.

While the HLRS provided counselling services for homosexual men through the

Albany Trust, it perceived social clubs for homosexual men as too politically risky. In contrast, establishing meeting places to alleviate the loneliness experienced by homosexuals modelled on the club house of the COC became a key aim for the regional campaign of the NWHLRC. Yet the ‘model of Europe’ proved crucial to the campaigning of the HLRS as it drew on perceptions of continental European cultures as permissive yet civilised to alter the social imagination of the British public. Chapter Four demonstrated that direct contacts with European sexual cultures expanded the horizons of homosexual men by providing a clearer vision for social change in Britain.

While my thesis has highlighted social and cultural interconnections, specificities of place and nation played a crucial role in how transnational bodies of knowledge were structured and interpreted. The reworking of scientific and social concepts by local actors provided a key theme throughout the first three chapters of this thesis, revealing the influence of distinct political traditions and public cultures of morality and highlighting that transcultural exchanges more closely resembled processes of translation than direct transposition. Chapter Three in particular demonstrated that sexual meaning was by no means inherent to the cultural materials that were circulated across Europe post-1945, but that instead national cultures picked up elements that could be moulded to fit their own

259 frameworks. The ways in which campaigners mobilised widely-disseminated political vocabularies of citizenship and human rights revealed distinct strategies of homosexual emancipation, which were embedded within nationally-specific readings of rights-based discourses. In this context, a transnational lens can not only locate processes of cultural transfer, but can deepen and contextualise researchers’ understanding of why access to the same body of knowledge often resulted in divergent interpretations. Here, too, the role of the ‘translator’ must be emphasised, as individual actors whose outlook had been shaped by distinct cultural settings, but also by their socio-economic backgrounds and personal experiences, were instrumental in negotiating knowledge and ideas between cultures. Transnational histories should therefore place less focus on whether cultural transfers resulted in analogous outcomes, but examine in detail the processes of exchange themselves.

My findings have pointed up several areas that merit further research.

Firstly, my research on what I have termed micro-exchanges between Britain and continental Europe via tourism and internationalised consumer culture opens up routes for a deeper exploration of continental European influences on British identities and social attitudes, privileging experiential dimensions of cultural exchange. Richard Weight has remarked that European cultural influences on

‘Britishness’ remain understudied and could be particularly productive for the post-1970s era which witnessed a boom of package holidays to the continent, intensifying exchanges between Britain and mainland Europe.6 Much of this holidaying involved a sexual or sexualised element, whether it was the type of gay

6 Richard Weight, ‘Losing the Peace’, in Lawrence Black and Hugh Pemberton (eds.), An Affluent Society? Britains’s Post-War Golden Age Revisited (Aldershot, 2004), p. 219.

260 vacation in Ibiza or the heterosexual version of ‘sun, sex and Sangria’. In a rather different key, my research has indicated that post-war sexual rights activism sought to limit state interference on moral issues while seeking to enlarge the pool of eligible rights-holders. I believe the role of dissident sexualities in the construction of post-war European democracies warrants deeper and more systematic research, as nation states transitioned from a restrictive public morality, which was enforced through direct control and exclusion, to an acceptance of a plurality of social and sexual lifestyles and family forms. Finally, my thesis has made a broad intervention into thinking about how sexual experiences and identities were constituted. It has demonstrated that transnational influences acted on intimate desires and sexual self-understanding, revealing that the sexual self was shaped in part at least through cross-cultural exchanges. Further research could shed light on the formation of sexual subcultures in light of their international connections. Taken together, these approaches could productively extend and develop an argument that has been central to this thesis, as it has been to the recent expansion of modern histories of British and European homosexuality. Namely, that sexual dissidence is not simply an interesting but marginal by-way, but it illuminates significantly more macro-histories of the state and civil society.

261

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266

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298