soundings issue 3 Summer 1996 Peter Wildeblood Hero without applause Simon Edge For oppressed minorities, the selection of heroes and heroines can be both a liberating and a subversive act. Simon Edge argues that for, the lesbian and gay community, dependent for its structure on transitory commercialism, there is no guarantee that the right people will be venerated Sometimes, when a man is dying, he directs that his body shall be given to the doctors, so that the causes of his suffering and death may be investigated, and the knowledge used to help others. I cannot give my body yet; only my heart and my mind, trusting that by this gift I can give some hope and courage to other men like myself, and to the rest of the world some understanding. I am a homosexual. Looking at homosexuality in medical terms, even in the form of an analogy, usually sets the hackles rising these days; even the World Health Organisation has belatedly decided that same-sex attraction is not an illness. But these words feel different. There is a portentous tone to the opening passage of this musty book, suggesting a historic moment. 'In the last few years there has been much discussion of this question, and many authoritative men and women have given their views about the prevalence, nature, prevention, punishment and cure of homosexuality,' the writer goes on. 'There have not, I think, been any among them who could say, as I do now: "I am a homosexual."' The book is indeed historic. The passages come from Against the Law, an 175 Soundings autobiographical account by the Fleet Street journalist Peter Wildeblood of the most celebrated British homosexual trial of the 1950s.1 The unexpected outburst of public sympathy for the convicted defendants, who included the young peer Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, set in motion the long, slow process of law reform which resulted in the limited decriminalisation of male homosexuality in 1967. Wildeblood's book, an impassioned plea for tolerance and a startlingly uninhibited personal account of the lifelong misery to which homosexuals of the day were condemned, is that exhilarating commodity in the world of letters: a heroic piece of writing that changed the world. Today, not just in society as a whole, but also in the very community of people who no longer need to view the discovery of their sexuality as the first day of a non­ appealable prison sentence, the book and its author are almost completely forgotten. The lone lobbyist At the time of his arrest and imprisonment in 1954, Peter Wildeblood was the diplomatic correspondent of the Daily Mail. The 1950s were a time of celebrated anti-homosexual purges, including the disgrace of the Tory minister Ian Harvey and the conviction of Sir John Gielgud. But the 'Montagu case' was the most vicious and notorious prosecution of the decade. Arrests of homosexuals had been steadily rising since the 1940s, and Churchill's Home Secretary Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe was determined to clamp down further. A key newspaper account of the day suggested that there was pressure from the US security agencies - mindful of the flight to Russia of the homosexual spies Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean - to weed out suspected homosexuals in public life. Prosecutions reached a peak in 1953 and 1954 after the appointment of Sir John Nott-Bower as Metropolitan Police Commissioner. Lord Montagu, whose habit of mixing beyond the confines of the aristocracy and the upper middle class appeared to irritate the establishment as much as the indecency offences with which he was charged, was convicted along with his cousin, Major Michael Pitt-Rivers, and Wildeblood. Two young servicemen had been encouraged to go into the witness box against them in return for immunity from prosecution. That some items of police evidence appeared to have been crudely doctored did not trouble the judge, who seemed more concerned at the iniquity of the three defendants in consorting with their social inferiors. Wildeblood and Pitt- 1. Against the Law, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1955. 176 Peter Wildeblood Rivers were each sentenced to 18 months imprisonment; Montagu received a 12- month term. If the government, police and judiciary' had hoped to whip up anti-homosexual prejudice by making an example of Montagu and his friends, they had a surprise in store. Articles in the Daily Sketch, the People, The Times, the Sunday Times, the Observer and the Daily Express aired grave anxieties about the way the legal process had been used. The Home Secretary had already been under pressure from the Church of England Moral Welfare Council and the Howard League for Penal Reform to set up a Royal Commission to review the law on homosexuality. Now he caved in, and Sir John Wolfenden, the vice-chancellor of Reading University, was appointed to head a departmental inquiry. s the only one of the three defendants to have agreed that he was homosexual, and with no hope of returning to his old job in the A notoriously blokeish world of Fleet Street, Wildeblood had little option but to confront his experiences and his sexuality head on. The fear of prosecution was so great that few others could speak privately, let alone argue for acceptance of their homosexuality in the public domain. So it is no exaggeration to say that Against the Law, written within months of Wildeblood's release from prison, was the only informed piece of writing to which the Wolfenden Commission could refer. It is self-evidently a book of its times. 'I am no more proud of my condition than I would be of having a glass eye or a hare-lip,' writes Wildeblood, in terms which would prompt howls of protest from lesbians and gay men today. But it is a passionate tract whose principal aim is to press the case for law reform, and in that, the author is utterly uncompromising. A homosexual who gives way to his impulses, even if he is doing no conceivable harm to anyone ... runs appalling risks. The fact that so many men do so shows that the law, however savage, is no deterrent. If, as people sometimes say, homosexuality is nothing but an affectation assumed by idle men who wish to be considered 'different', it is indeed strange that men should run the risk of life imprisonment in order to practise it. Single-handedly, Wildeblood constituted what would now be termed the 'gay lobby'. But the book, which also included an impassioned and incontrovertible argument for prison reform, had a far deeper impact than simply influencing the 177 Soundings ill-qualified moral arbiters who would pave the way for law reform. Wildeblood's testament broke through the vicious circle of silence and concealment which for decades had confounded any possibility of political organisation or self-defence by homosexuals themselves. Since concealment was, and is, an option, it was the most obvious reaction to oppression; but it also militated against challenging prejudice, which meant that silence itself became an instrument of oppression. As a result of his enforced 'outing' (the incongruity of the contemporary term underlines the extent of the changes which have taken place in the last four decades), Wildeblood already had his head above the parapet. In speaking out, he probably did as much as anyone to create the modern lesbian and gay movement. As its reputation spread, his book was avidly - if often secretly - snapped up by those who knew they had an interest in the subject. In a second book published the following year, Wildeblood himself describes the response he received to Against the Law.1 For the first few months an average of one reader in every ten was either writing to me or ringing me up, and I began to wonder whether I should ever have time to write another book... There were letters from judges, magistrates, doctors, barristers and clergymen, housewives and mothers and businessmen, and there were also a good many from other homosexuals... My telephone number was in the London directory, and for weeks the bell never seemed to stop ringing. It made quite a change when I answered the phone and found that the person at the other end was someone I knew. Most of the calls were from strangers: 'Is that Mr Wilde Wood? I do hope you don't mind me ringing you up. You see, I've just read your book...' The sense of liberation which isolated and lonely men felt from reading the book and making contact with the author and his circle leaps from the page. It is possible Wildeblood is exaggerating, but unlikely. I was gripped by the bravery, honesty and uncompromising eloquence of the book when I first read it as a proud and confident gay man in 1995; what must have been its impact in 1955? Saints and sinners Society tends to choose heroes and heroines who uphold its values. Such figures can often be alienating to minority communities, and it can be a subversive or 2. A Way of Life, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1956. 178 Peter Wildeblood liberating act for such communities to select their own candidates for veneration. The situation is further complicated for the lesbian and gay community by the fact that there are many figures whom society deems admirable but whose homosexuality has been deliberately written out of history. The denial of sexuality currently takes its most obviously ideological form with regard to military leaders. The contention by the Ministry of Defence that homosexuality is incompatible with military service is itself scarcely compatible with the private lives of Kitchener, Mountbatten, Montgomery and Baden-Powell - not to mention those of Alexander the Great and Richard the Lionheart.