Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Queer London & The Post-War Moral Panic

Episode Date: July 9, 2024

In the wake of the Second World War, a moral panic swept through Britain around a rise in homosexuality.London was the heart of this scare because of how thriving and vibrant the gay scene was.How did lawmakers react during time? What affect did class have on the gay experience? And amongst the darkness of the period, what joy could be found?Joining Kate today to explore this time is Peter Parker, author of Some Men In London: Queer Life, 1945-1959.This episode was edited by Tom Delargy. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Voting is open for the Listener's Choice Award at the British Podcast Awards, so if you enjoy what we're doing, we'd love it if you took a quick follow this link and click on Betwixt the Sheets: https://www.britishpodcastawards.com/votingEnjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign here for up to 50% for 3 months using code BETWIXT.You can take part in our listener survey here.Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. I am here with your fair do's warning, because before we can proceed with the podcast, I have to tell you, this is an adult podcast spoken by adults

to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way, covering a range of adult subjects, and you should be an adult too. And whilst you're here, oh, lovely of loveliest betwixtas, if you enjoy in the podcast, it would be truly and absolutely wonderful if you could spare a couple of seconds

to vote for us in the Listeners' Choice Awards at the British Podcast Awards. You can do that by simply going to the website, www.w.w.britishpodcastawards.com forward slash voting and clicking on betwixt the sheets. We got into the top 10 last year, and that's because of you spectacular people. I think with a bit of effort, we can take it this year. Let's do it. Right, on with the show. It's May 1945 and the war is finally over. Hank, fuck.

And just as we joined the Jubilant. crowds in London's Piccadilly Circus, the sense of freedom is palpable. Truly, I can't remember seeing so many men, especially, expressing so much joy. Airmen, sailors, seamen is everywhere. It's a fabulous sight. And they seem to be having a marvellous time. With Soho, a stone's throwaway, the gay community is having an absolute blast in wonderful plain sight. But when the confetti has settled on these celebrations, how will queer life take shape in the post-war? What highs and lows will it experience and how will the country and politicians react to it? Hint, not well.

What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect confidence of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up and pushing the funny. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, I feel no time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Derry. Oh, and welcome back to Patrixie. the history of sex scandal in society. With me, Kate Lester. In the years that followed the

Second World War, a real social conservatism settled into British life, and the queer community faced intense scrutiny and hardship. That's not to say it wasn't without joy, oh no, but their joy had to be kept underground and in the shadows. This was a time when gay men were more commonly referred to as perverts, and that was the politicians saying that. The press had their say, too, declaring that even though homosexuality was present throughout England, it was, and I quote, for the black rotten heart of the thing, look to London's golden centre.

Yikes. In what ways did this subculture thrive in London? What effect did social class have on gay men? And why was the medical community getting involved? Exploring the post-war queer experience with us is Peter Parker, author of Some Men in London, Queer Life, 1945 to 1959, to help us find out about the lived experiences of the gay community

and how a moral panic erupted in those post-war years. By the way, if you're curious to hear what the gay experience was like during the war years, be sure to listen back to our episode, Loveless and Fighting in World War II with Luke Turner. Now, without further ado, on with the show. Hello, and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Peter Parker. How are you doing?

I'm doing fine. I'm at that stage where the book is not quite out and it's that anxious moment where, when do the reviews start? And I mean, there has been a bit of publicity in advance, so that's good. But it's that moment of thinking, there's nothing really more I can do with this. Yes, exactly. What have I done? Well, if it helps, I was lucky enough to be sent a sneaky PDF and I think it's absolutely

wonderful. I've adored flicking through it. Just for anyone that's tuning in that's unaware of you and your work, can you just explain what this anthology is? Well, it's called some men in London, queer life 1945 to 1959. And it's the first part of a project, which is actually queer life 1945 to 1967. So we start on VE Day, which seemed a reasonable place to start. And we end with the passing of the Sexual Offenses Act, which partially decriminalized homosexuality. And because it's arranged chronologically, it is moving two steps forward, three steps back, towards changes of attitude

in the 1960s and the eventual passing the sexual offences at. And Penguins said, let's just start in 1945, because in the wake of the Second World War, there was a sort of moral panic. So many men had been away at the war and children were being brought up without a male presence. So the two things that in London, people seem to think that's happening is that there was a mass rise of hooliganism because boys had not been thwacked by their fathers. Also, because of the sort of psychology of those days, without a masculine presence, it was thought, you know, these boys had all been brought up by women and therefore were likely to be effeminate or gay, which of course is not something we believe in now, but at the time, there was a great feeling of this. So I

really started it in sort of the 1st of January, 1945. Then I thought, actually, this is a bit arbitrary. Why not let's start on VE Day? So I start on VE.E. day with two very different diarists, one going out carousing and picking up sailors and taking them home on VE night, and the other, the MP Chipschannon in his house in Belgravia, having a party for the likes of Terence Rattigan and Noel Coward and politicians and the good and the great. And I thought that was a nice way to start with a contrast to show that I was covering as wide a spectrum of class and circumstances that I could. One of the things that surprised me about it was obviously I knew that post-war homosexuality was criminalised and that the medical profession were vile and that there was so much stigma and it was awful.

But it really came out of your book how vibrant the gay scene was. I also wanted that because although I wanted to highlight or at least show the bad side, the dark side, the depressing side, I thought, have you had a whole book like that, people would get about halfway through and say, oh, I can't bear to read any more of these guys. ghastly stories. I mean, also to show that it is true, and it's like in lots of historical occasions where people are being oppressed in some way. It's not an excuse to oppress people, but people can sort of survive within it. And I think that sort of camp humour and people being funny about even their worst nightmares, it shows a sort of resilience and a sort of thriving culture that's just bubbling along under the surface. So the countless pubs and clubs that were running, mostly full of guardsmen.

I didn't know that. I was really surprised by just like the diaries and the letters where they're just like, oh, yeah, and they're just talking about going to the pubs and cruising and men openly they're kissing one another. I don't know why, but I just assumed it would be much more secretive than it comes across. And lots of guardsmen, that seems to be a real thing. Yes, I mean, the guards going way back to the Victorian period, were always happy to supplement the king or queen's shilling by picking up men.

And this is, I mean, it was an old tradition. And indeed, senior guardsmen would induct new recruits and say, you know, well, if you want to make a bit of money, here's the pubs to go to here, the street corners to hang out on. And it just became part of life. So, I mean, Hyde Park Corner, marble arch, there was always guardsmen hanging around and in the parks near barracks or the pubs near barracks. But putting aside guardsmen, there were also pubs that just got a reputation. And it was that sort of game of cat and mouse because the police would hear that there were a lot of pubs full of men and very few women and quite a few servicemen. And they would keep watch on them and then sometimes raid them and arrest people. And the publicans would always say, oh, well, you know, I had no idea.

I mean, they quite clearly, there were these sort of screamers with makeup or calling each other by women's names and talking loudly about their latest congress. quests. But, you know, I think, you know, all strength to those publicans who did run these places. And then there were all sorts of different bars running from little cafes right through to the smarter clubs, one of which was known as the Puffs Atheneum, because it was so grand. But in the House of Lords and House of Commons, politicians would say these appalling, buggery clubs that exist. And actually, they were really places where people could go, not necessarily to pick people up the clubs. It would be somewhere they could go and not have to be looking over their shoulder the whole time.

They would just go and drink, they'd meet people, they'd chat. They might go off with one of them or two of them or whatever. But, you know, on the whole, it was a social thing. And because they'd been driven underground, you know, these were the sort of places they could go to. But then, of course, there were the pubs as well where you often had a very mixed clientele or places got known for being bohemian, which was sort of code. It's easy to think of this particular time in history of there being a very strong class divide when it comes to queer culture.

Just because you think of Noel Coward and you think of Kenneth Williams. And I suppose because they're famous, aren't they? They're in that space. And we'll talk about how they managed to, quote, quote, get away with it. But your book reveals a much broader spectrum of society than that. Yes, there is this long-held fantasy that members of the lower orders were not homosexual. unless corrupted by their social superiors. And of course, there were a lot of middle class, upper class men at that period in particular who liked what was called rough trade. So they

were attracted to working class men almost exclusively. I mean, Ian Forster, J.R. Akkad, Ishawad in his earlier years. It was quite a well-known thing. But, I mean, it's this odd mixture of popular right-wing commentators in the press and Labour politicians in Parliament, all saying the same thing. Oh no, no, it doesn't exist, not amongst the working classes. They're all, you know, they're too busy working. They haven't got time to be nancing around. Like it's a hobby. Yeah. And you look at court records and it's just completely untrue. I mean, for every schoolmaster or clergyman, you know, there are three or four or five people who are working as waiters, I mean, working in industry, factory workers, all being arrested and usually

with people of their own class. So that was very interesting to look at the court records where you just have a list. They weren't all the same, but some of the court records, it actually gave the occupation of the accused, which was very useful, because then you could see the breakdown.

And Peter Wildblood, who was involved in the Lord Montague case in 1954, which actually took place in Wiltshire, so it's only referenced in the book. But he wrote a book called Against the Law, where he sort of states, I am a homosexual, and this is what it is like.

And this book was sent to all the MPs when they were debating a change in the law. And he has a sort of table which says exactly the same thing. I think it's sometime 1995 or something. He has a breakdown of people arrested for homosexual offences. And there are far more shipbuilders and carpenters

than there are middle class men. And there was that culture. And the East End was famously had a lot of drag going on in pubs. And there were lots of pubs where, although there were people from the West End slumming it, there was a regular Cleontel, and they just didn't really care. And then when I went to Tower Hamlet's library, which is my local library, I live in Myeland and East End, I found these reports that a woman social worker who was very concerned

about both immigration and homosexuality, you could have to get a better combination of inflammatory subjects. And she got people to go out and report back. And there are all these sort of East End clubs with gay young men hanging around outside them and all of them, locals, not West End interlopers. What was it that the law said at this particular period in history? This is where it gets very complicated, yes. It does, doesn't it? Because you think that you could just go, it's illegal to be gay. If we catch anyone being gay or doing gay stuff, that's it, you're in trouble. But when you actually get into the nitty gritties of it, it's very difficult to prove.

It's very difficult to legislate against. So what was the law at this time attempting to do? Technically, being homosexual, it was not illegal. It was only if you acted upon it. It's that usual thing like the Church of England saying, you know, Gledgeman can be gay as long as they didn't sleep with anybody else. What had happened was the Laboshae Amendment, which was something rushed through Parliament at the last minute,

on action debate about the age of consent for young women. And previously, there wasn't a blanket term. And this introduced the crime of gross indecency, which was a complete coveral, so anything could be grossly indecent. This was the law under which Oscar Wilde was prosecuted. And it was still in force. And there was also a vagabond act. So people loitering in the streets could be arrested for loitering. But there were various degrees of offence.

So the buggery was the highest. And you might get 10 years for that, mostly. I mean, technically you could get a lot more. but if you look at the court records by this period, it was mostly sort of 10 years, but sometimes with hard labour until hard labour was abolished in the late 1940s. Then you have gross indecency, which is any sexual act, whatever it might be. And then there was soliciting a male person for immoral purpose. So that was basically trying to pick people up.

Most offences were that. For gross indecency, you actually had to be caught in the act. So if you were hanging around a lavatory and you took someone home, you could be head up for soliciting. But unless you were actually having sex with them on the premises, that would be grace and decency. So there were a lot of grace and decency. And that was sort of about, there were sort of different penalties and they changed over the years. And it depended if it was a first event or a second offense. So you could go just to the magistrates court and be fined or you could be given a shortish prison sentence.

but the maximum for soliciting was two years. So if you went to the High Court, so if there was some debate about whether you were guilty or not, or if it was a second or third or fourth off, so people would be sent, you know, they really were sent to jail. Sometimes they were just given a caution and let off, but one of the things I discovered was that women who were soliciting,

prostitutes who were soliciting, I can't remember what it is, but I think something like 63% in the 1950s were let off with a caution, compared to 1.1% of gay men who were let off with a caution. And also the fines for homosexual soliciting were much higher than the ones for female soliciting. But of course, when they put together this Wolfenden report, to report on changing the law, it was looking into homosexuality and prostitution at the same time. People slightly forget because you think Wolfenden, oh, that's the homosexual thing,

but he was also looking at prostitution. And the prostitution recommendations went through Parliament fairly quickly, whereas the report came out in 57 and, you know, it took another 10 years for the law actually to be changed. And even then with, you know, you had to be over 21, both of you. It had to be in private, which I discovered did not include hotel bedrooms. They were not considered private because you were in a sort of public building. I didn't know that. I didn't know that.

It only applied in England or Wales, so not in Scotland and Northern Ireland. And it didn't apply to anybody in the armed forces or the merchant navy. So we talk about the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967, but it really was a partial. And that's just not being finicky. It really was only partial, depending on who you were and what you were up to. It's amazing when you look back at history, how much the history of sex work and the gay history is intertwined. The two seem almost inextricably linked in legislation, in the places where people would go. Even in the Wolfton Report, which we'll talk about in a minute, it was those two things. They just seem to coexist side by side.

I know. And in the Victorian period, of course, women on the game were called gay. Yes. And then it moved over. So that's the sort of curious bit of etymology. But I think it's that thing of people who are acting outside society, not so much outside the law, but outside society. And it was to do with the British fear of sex.

Any sex was looked on fairly askance unless it was between a husband and wife in bed for the purposes of procreation. So anybody who was kicking over the traces in any way, be it prostitutes or gay men, they were often numbered together. And, you know, a lot of the newspaper reports or several that I put in, they do link them. They say, you know, London vice, horror. And they usually are not only gay men, but prostitutes as well. And they were very, very firmly linked. And, you know, the country was in steep moral decline because of the existence of these two classes of people. Was it in steep moral declares? Whenever you're researching this history, you find people going, oh my God, it's all going to hell in a handbasket. It's the worst it's ever been. And that

gets recycled again and again. But what was going on at this period that made people think this was the worst it's ever been? It's all a vice pit of awfulness. I think it was the visibility. It was becoming more visible. Perhaps people were becoming slightly less afraid, but also cases were being prosecuted more vigorously. So the number of cases was rising. But that was not necessarily because there were more gay men around. It was just that the police were being more vigilant about prosecuting. So they say, you know, terrible figures, you know, homosexuality on the rise. Well, it's more likely that it was just homosexual offenses that came to the nature of the police and came to the courts were on the rise. I mean, there is this idea that always persisted for years

that in the 1950s, the police commissioner, the home sex. and the chief magistrate together with this triumvirate who were determined to stamp out homosexuality. And quite a few modern historians of gay history have cast doubt on this. And I think they may be right technically, but there's no doubt that the police commissioner gave an interview saying that he was determined to stamp out vice. And the home secretary, although they were talking about all kinds of vice, the home secretary in the House of Commons said, while I'm home secretary, I want to protect everyone from homosexuality.

I'm going to give no quarter about prosecutions. And certainly gay people at the time writing diaries, people like Chips Chan and George Lucas, this civil servant who kept these extraordinary diaries, they both felt that police prosecutions were on the rise and police had, you know, but then, of course, it worked against them in the end because the Lord Montague-Buley case

was so badly handled by the police. There was evidence in the first case. of altered dates in people's passports. And then when they then said, well, we haven't managed to get him for this offence, but we'll get him for the others, and then got Peter Wilde Blood and Michael Pitt Rivers. And certainly, I think in every case,

but certainly in Peter Wildbloods, the police authorised a raid without a warrant, which was technically illegal. And I think people thought that actually, we may not like homosexuality, but this actually does... This isn't okay. No, and Lord Monskiu himself.

He never really talked about it. and talked about his homosexuality right at the end of his life and then he wrote an autobiography where he said either in the autobiography or in press interviews he gave that he was actually very proud that his case had helped change the law. So that's happy.

We're not very happy for him because he'd already had to serve jail, but yes. I was just about to ask you then, how did the police go about securing prosecutions? Because you've touched on already that this is actually quite difficult to prove. So how does that? they do it. They made stuff up, apparently. Yes. Well, either by raiding pubs and clubs that were well

known or hanging about public lavatories, you know, the police spent a great deal of time hanging around watching, keeping watch on them. One of the things that I absolutely love in this book, one of my favourite things is an interview with two police constables, one working in the West End and one in Chelsea. And they're up before the Wolfenton Committee, the Wolfenton Committee calls in witnesses from all walks of life. But they're the people who represent the police. I mean, just in parentheses, I'd say that although the Wolfenden Committee did look at homosexuality throughout the country, a lot of its major findings came from London.

So that's another reason for sticking to London rather than going beyond. But these two policemen give an extraordinary account of what it was like. I think they come out of it reasonably well. But the police always claimed that they didn't use Agen-Provost. but it's quite clear that they did. So a policeman out of uniform would go and loiter in a urinal. And if someone smiled at him, he'd say, right, you're nicked. And then take him out and there'd be another one.

Now, the police always said they never used as general provocateurs. But it's quite clear that they did in several cases. You can see that they did. And this is in the later volume. There was a very famous case of a very rich businessman who has had up in Shepherd's Bush. for going to have several urinals. And he claimed, and the doctor said it was true that he was ill and he had to keep going in thinking he might vomit.

But he wasn't some hapless member of the public. He was actually someone who was very well connected. And a politician said, you know, we really do need to look at policing because, you know, if this distinguished old gent... I mean, I don't personally think that he was entirely innocent, but that's beside the point. But, you know, this old gent has been arrested. And there is a court reporter that a stenographer took down.

that comes into volume two. But this was one of the most interesting things I found because I never heard of this man, knew nothing about it. And it did force the government to have meetings with the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to say, look, I think we need to look at this. And he was very adamant that playing clothes police

were very useful. But the government sort of said, well, surely it would better to have policemen in uniforms standing outside your animals, because that would be a deterrent, which does suggest that the police were, more interested in actually catching people and no doubt going on the records of more arrests. And even after the Sex Offenses Act was published in 1967, Sir Joseph Simpson, who was the

chief of the Met at the time, came back to the government and said, I still wish to use plain-closed policemen where necessary. And of course, the law may have changed, but if you were actually soliciting, that wasn't in private, so that was still illegal. And in fact, arrests for homosexual offences went up after the law had changed. Wow. Because the police were concentrating on crimes that they could arrest people for. So I think Joseph Simpson is one of my least favorite characters in the book. I think he comes out of it very badly.

And some of the politicians are not rather better than him. That with Peter after the short break. So there's a definite sense that what the politicians are saying, what the police are saying, what the medical community is saying. It's vile. But did you get a sense when you were writing this that there was a shift in public attitudes towards homosexuality? Yes. Not, I think, in this volume, but by the time we get to the 60s, there is. I'm interested in these sort of social ideas that we all have.

Swinging 60s, a time of sexual liberation. Everybody was having it away with everybody. You know, nobody cared. That's fine if you were heterosexual, you had the pill for women as well. There was a whole, but you were still illegal up until 1967, if you were a man. So although there lot of men who were sort of creating the swinging 60s, they were still liable for prosecution. So the politicians, they were very keen to sort of say, oh, well, we just feel there's such public feeling against homosexuality that we can't change the law. And they always fell back on this, as well as airing their own particular prejudices. I mean, some of the speeches are quite extraordinary, extraordinarily offensive now. But they were, I mean, Rab Butler, who was a famously

liberal home secretary, he did not want the law change and he sort of shelved it for quite some time. I mean, it took a year for the House of Commons even to debate the Wolfenden report, even though they'd commissioned it. The House of the Lords debated it a bit earlier. And all too often they would say, oh, well, of course, you know, we're sophisticated chaps. We understand about these things. You know, we were all at public school. That's absolutely fine. But, you know, the man in the street won't like it and, you know, our constituents won't like it. And actually, we all talk about public opinion. Public opinion is really hard to gauge because even if you carry out surveys, who's to know who's saying the truth, particularly about a controversial subject.

You know, people might say what they think people want them to say. And I discovered that when the Wolfenden Report was published, the Daily Mirror, which was one of the most notoriously sort of homophobic newspapers, actually carried out a survey. And it was, I can't remember the exact details, but it's something like about 14. something were in favour of changing the law and 60 against, which is not what you would think from reading the newspaper. You'd think everybody would say, we don't want this law change. The famous case of John Gilgud, who was arrested for soliciting, just after he'd had his knighthood, he was asked what his profession was. He said, Clark, which is fine. But if you've got a name like Gilgert, it's not like say Mr. Sliff, Clark. So he was immediately rumbled. And he was

rehearsing a play. The play then opened. And he had to go, on stage and he was in the wings and Sybil Thorndyke, the great English actress was also in the play and he said, I don't know what to do. She said, just go on stage, go on, on you go, just don't worry. And he received a standing ovation. So it just shows, though I do say in the book, of course, if people who went to the theatre disapproved and wanted homosexuality band, they'd have had a very thin time of it, no producers, no set designers, no actors. I mean, that's a slight exaggeration. Trudeau. Yes.

And then there was an attack by this politician called John Dean Potter. The choreographer John Cranko, who'd worked with Benjamin Britain and people and was at the Royal Upper House, was arrested for soliciting. And it was a very small paragraph in the newspaper. And this express journalist picked it up and said, you know, here we have more evidence of this sinister cabal within the theatrical profession. And of all people, John Osborne leapt to the defence was. John Osborne is very interesting character because he's ostensibly heterosexual, I think married five times, but he definitely had a gay side. And in fact, Noel Coward says, whether it's actually true, but Noel Coward said, I once asked John how homosexual he was. And he said, well, about 20%.

Well, that's quite a high percentage for someone who's married five times. He was always baiting the Lord Chamberlain, which was the Lord Chamberl's office, was in charge of theatrical censorship. Every play put on in public, in other words, not in a private club performance, had to be passed. So there's quite a lot about the Lord Chamberlain's office. And Osborne was always getting as much offensive in inverted commas material into his plays as possible, just debate the Lord Chamberlain. But, I mean, it is interesting that the stage censorship was finally abolished because of his very queer play, a patriot for me. The censor said there's absolutely no way we're doing this. there's a famous, there's a whole scene of a drag ball.

And the sense said, we can't have this. And we can't have these two men in bed together. And they said, but you can do the rest. Play would have been about two-thirds of its length. So the Royal Court declared themselves a club and said, right, we're making ourselves a club, and therefore we're no longer under the jurisdiction. And the Lord Chamberlainer's office nevertheless tried to appeal to the director of public prosecutions.

And they completely failed. And they looked so stupid that. Actually, it was this gay play that led to the abolition of stage censorship. The anthology ends with the Wolfenden Report, which we've referenced all the way through this. But I think we should give a bit of space to talking about what that actually was, what led up to it and what it said. Well, it was to do with the rise in homosexual crimes. In other words, the rise in prosecutions. And people thought, you know, we really need to look into this.

There are two main problems in London in particular, and that's homosexuality and prostitution. So they appointed a commission to look into these. So the Wolfenden Commission was made up of representatives of, you know, the church, education, politics, this, that and the other, and headed by Sir John Wolfenden, who was actually an educationist. He'd been a public school headmaster and was at the University of Reading. I think he was the Chancellor. And interestingly, he had a gay son. So that put him in a slightly difficult position because not only was he a gay son,

but he was a very flamboyantly gay son called Jeremy. And Jeremy Wilfondon said, whether it was actually true, that someone said, well, what happened when your father said he was chairing this parliamentary inquiry into homosexuality? He said, oh, my father just said, could you wear a little less makeup?

But anyway, I mean, John Wolfenden was, you know, a decent establishment figure. And they did draw from a lot of people. So what they did was they looked into all the statistics. They then called in, as I said earlier, these witnesses. So they would talk to policemen, magistrates, teachers, boy scouts associations, the church. Representatives would either come in and be interviewed face to face, or they would be asked to make a submission. So they would write a little thing. This is what my experience of

dealing with homosexuality. They were a magistrate, for example, and that would be sent in as a written thing. And then very, very reluctantly, they thought, well, we'd probably better interview a couple of homosexuals. Peter Wildblood, the one I mentioned earlier who wrote a volunteer to himself and Wolfen didn't take to him at all. He thought he was a sort of ghastly little pansy. I mean, he didn't say quite that. But it's quite clear he didn't really trust him and he didn't like him. So they got in two of the great and the good. They were supposed to get Angus Wilson, the novelist, the gay novelist, but he was abroad at the time. So they got in someone who ran the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, who interestingly had

been married but seemed to have become gay. And Patra Varoper, who was a very famous ophthalmic surgeon, and also had a GP practice. And these were the sort of people, they knew all the sort of the great and the gay. So they were interviewed under pseudonyms to protect them. So you had really a lot of different strands of different people giving different opinions. And some of them, you know, very against any change in the law at all. I mean, one of the most astonishing submissions to the Wolfenden report was by someone who is the chief medical officer, I think, at one of the leading prisons. I don't remember which one. And he said that, well, when it comes down to it, he said, I think these people should

put their faith in Jesus Christ. That'll sort them out. And this is a chief medical officer in a prison. You think, and the British Medical Association, which also comes out of it badly, found this. They said this was such a helpful contribution to the debate that they reproduced it in full in their own submission to the Wolfenden Committee. Brilliant. Thanks, lads. Yes.

There were people who wouldn't sign off on the Wolfenden report. There were a couple of people, one from Scotland, where the law actually eventually didn't change until much, much later. And then Garonwy Reese, who was an academic at the University of the University of Bangor. And a well-known person, he had gone in there thinking that the law should be changed. And then astonishingly, he wrote a series of anonymous articles about Guy Burgess, the spy, who'd been his friend. And they were published anonymously. To say they were an unhelpful contribution to the debate is extraordinary. And he had to resign. But it was an

extraordinary thing to have done. And I don't know why he thought he'd get away with never being identified. And of course, he was within weeks. And of course, that was one of the other things that a lot of the scare was to do with the Burgess and McLean, the two spies, one of whom was gay, one of whom might have been bisexual, but was widely thought to be gay. So they became in the public mind, largely through newspapers, this idea that, you know, homosexuals weren't just a nuisance, they were actually a danger to national security. Gay spies. Yeah, gay spies.

And as I say in the book, it seems to have passed everybody's notice that at the same time, there's the Vassel case as well, John Vassel, a gay spy in the 60s. But at the same time, there were some very famous cases of heterosexual spies. And nobody said, oh, you know, anything about them. So again, it was a sort of, it was another stick to beat homosexual, to say, you know, they were traitors to their country. And there's no doubt that these two men were. And in Burgesses' case, it may have had something to do with this homosexuality, but to have this as a sort of blanket idea and to sow in the public's mind that not only were homosexuals corrupting society, they were also selling the country down the river.

It was a very useful way of having another field of a town. The Wolfenden Report, this was what led to the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality, wasn't it? Eventually. Yes, it was convened in 1954 and it published its report in 1957. And then it was debated in Parliament and the House of Lords in many occasions, only eventually passed in 1967. So it's a long... Dragging its heels. Yeah, absolutely.

And I think a lot of people did feel that politicians were dragging their heels and quite a lot of senior churchmen and people like that were more compassionate in saying, you know, this, this really, we do need to change the law. There was an academic called A.E. Dyson who organized a letter to the time saying, we, the undersigned, think that the government should implement the recommendations of the Wolfenden report. And it was signed by, you know, it really was the great and the good from sort of philosophers, poets, men and women. And that did sort of have an effect. But it's still, you know, that was quite soon after the Wolfenton report. It was still another 10 years before it was actually passed.

But there were a lot of people writing to the newspaper saying, these people are vermin, and vermin should be exterminated, one letter goes. But there were others who were saying, you know, really, we do need to change the law because it's just unfair. And the argument was that if you were homosexual and you were in the foreign service, you were liable to blackmail for being exposed as homosexual. But, you know, if you were an adulterer, a heterosexual adulterer, it was the same. And how anybody thought that Guy Burgess was, who was always drunk and boasting about having various men and boys,

however anybody sort of thought he would be heterosexual as a complete mystery. Final question of all the stories and the narratives and the diaries and the letters and everything that you've uncovered for this anthology, I mean, you must have reacted quite emotionally to all of them. I know I did when I was reading it, but is there any that really stood out for you? Any stories that perhaps you were unfamiliar with? Well, the one I mentioned that finishes the book, that's one. There's a terrible police case where a man, the police claimed to have seen him kissing a man in the urinals at, I think, Sask Kensington Station. And the police clearly perjured themselves.

The man appealed. The man he was with had committed suicide, so he couldn't appeal. and that was just pure police corruption. And there were a couple of examples of police corruption, I thought were deeply, deeply shocking. There were other stories that I sort of found enchanting. I mean, it was very difficult to have too much fiction in because if you have an extract from a novel,

often there are several characters that you have to have a long explanation. You end up the explanation being longer than the extract. But a book I did discover was by Kitchen called Ten Pollitt plays. And it's all set in a boarding house, but one of the principal characters is a slightly hunchbanked boy of 15 who's in love with a dustman. And I thought, this is amazing. This was being published at this time. And it's very touching. It's beautifully done.

And I thought, actually, this is, A, you've got someone who was under age. But B, someone also who was disabled. And, you know, disabled people in all areas of life often don't get much of a look. And I thought it was an extraordinarily bold novel. That was very good. There are just endless stories that I love the one about Viscount Sudley, who is in fact the brother of Lord Aaron, who introduced the bill to decriminalise homosexuality. He steered it through the House of Lords.

So this was his younger brother. And it had always been said that he was gay and that he committed suicide very soon after. And in fact, a friend of mine who's a much better historian than I am, actually fortunately saw it in proof and said, actually, I've seen his death certificate. actually died. But the story I found was a wonderful story because it's just sort of comic but not entirely where this old lord had gone and picked up two men and said, are you interested in wrestling? Could I invite you back to do some wrestling? And it's like a sort of comedy sketch, really. I mean, the consequences weren't terribly funny, but no doubt the young men in question

you perfectly well, what sort of wrestling would be invited to take part in. You know, so I think there are those sort of stories that you come upon. Whenever I do research, there's always some moment, or if I'm lucky, several moments where you think, oh my goodness, this is perfect. And particularly if we're doing an anthology. Peter, you have been wonderful to talk to today. If they want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? If you look up Peter Parker writer, there's a Wikipedia entry that will direct you to the website. So it'll show what other books I've written, what events I'm doing. I'm doing quite a lot of events around this in bookshed. shots talking about the book and that's where to find me.

Thank you so much for talking to me today. I've thoroughly enjoyed myself. So have I. Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure to be on it. Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Peter for joining me. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like, review and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts. If you'd like us to explore a subject or maybe you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at betwixt at history hit.com. We've got episodes on everything from bearded ladies to flagellation brothels all coming your way. This podcast was edited by Tom Delargey and produced by Stuart Beckworth, the senior producer, with Charlotte Long.

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