Dennis Killin – foot soldier for two causes

Nearly all the previous chapters have been about names which will be recognised by anyone who is interested in the rights of British gay men. However, causes and campaigns are not solely conducted by the generals, but also by the foot soldiers in their armies, some of whom later became generals. Others played both roles. Antony Grey, for instance, spent much of his time on the routine tasks, by no means always acknowledged by Leo Abse, before the 1967 Act was passed – or after.

Dennis was born in Luton in 1952, the second son of the kind of marriage – and divorce – that happened everywhere in the chaos that followed the Second World War. His father was Scottish, not long out of the army, and continued in the Territorial Army for some time.  His mother was born in Canada, of German/Austrian parents.,persuaded to return to Germany to fight in the German army. They were in Danzig, now Gdansk in Poland, and were driven west to escape the Red Army.  Since this chapter was first written, he has met his brother after a gap of over forty years, and as a result of new information, is able to correct the earlier negative impression he had of his father. This image was based on the limited amount of time he spent at home during the years he was atboarding school – at the time he was born it was not uncommon for babies born with disabilities to be put into institutions. His father would not let that happen – as a result of his intervention, he has enjoyed a full and eventful life. At the end of the war his parents met. They were not able to get on, but stayed together until he, being the youngest, left school. His view of his father was formed by the fact that his father did not find expressing himself easy.

It became apparent in Dennis’ primary school years that he was disabled; he had quarter vision in one eye and half in the other, and most of his fingers are missing. His adaptation to these things is remarkable, and he reads and watches films very readily and enthusiastically. All one can say in an optimistic vein is that the disabilities have been there since birth – he has not, as many have, had to adapt to developments in later life, as many of those he has tried to help adjust to new situations. In my, admittedly not impartial, opinion, he has adjusted and coped to a remarkable degree. He says of his disability that ‘I’ve been fortunate enough in that I’m not so severely disabled that every need I have has to be supported by people. I’m lucky that I’m independent enough I can look to be able to address my own needs.’

His physical condition led to his being sent for his secondary education to an (ironically) co-educational boarding school for the visually impaired in Coventry. I say ironically in that this greatly aided his discovery that he was gay, and gave opportunities he might not normally have had to discover that part of himself. It was not a phase he outgrew. I asked him which was the more significant in his life; he felt they were ‘two sides of the same coin’, but in other people’s view often diametrically opposed, since disabled people at that time, and to some extent still, were not expected to have a sex life at all, let alone what was then illegal. The boarding aspect meant that he was not home for much of the year, so that when his parents drifted apart, about the time he was able to leave school, he did not feel distraught when they separated, and he went his separate way at the age of nineteen, and has had no contact with them since that time.

After this he moved to different places to live, including in Bridgwater, and in Bristol, before moving to London in the late seventies. He had different partners, and experienced their different problems at times, such as alcoholism and mental problems. This reinforced his awareness of the need for self reliability, and of the commonness of human frailty and difficulty in commitment many have in relationships. I had similar experiences, and this has meant for us both that our commitment to each other is very precious, partly because it is unusual.

The eighties were a crucial time if his commitment to activism. It was a time of ideological struggle, with Margaret Thatcher redefining what political objectives were and should be, reducing state commitments from the cosy middle of the road overlapping policies of the Labour and Conservative parties of the postwar years up to that point, the so-called ‘Butskellism’, welfare economics and acceptance of a middle way that few seemed to reject until the ‘Iron Lady’s’ appearance. This was a time when ideologies were sharpening; Thatcher was, in the words of her friend Ronald Reagan, the best man Britain’s got’, able to be crushed if they were from the old style Tory ranks by not wanting to be seen as rude to a lady, ironically the inheritors of Labour’s postwar grammar school education for all who could benefit from it, and determined to maintain their social rise resulting from such opportunities. On the other side Labour and the unions’ supporters had also benefited from free (unimaginable now) higher education for those from families which had never experienced it in the past, in a period where deference had greatly declined and whose articulate young were more than confident enough to say what they thought. This was the time of the Greater London Council, whose headquarters facing parliament across the river Thames defiantly raised banners proclaiming levels of unemployment in London, of the charismatic leader Ken Livingstone, and of funding for minority causes such as disability and lesbian/gay rights, for which there had been very little previous pressure. What started out as ‘political correctness gone mad’ in due course became mainstream in the wider society. The fact that much of such pressure was linked to the Labour Party and the trade unions did not mean that all such institutions or all their members supported the said causes, but this was often so, and this reflected changes in such groups – more women activists, more who had had higher education, the reduction in manual occupations and so on.

Dennis becoming involved in campaigning on two issues was a busy man. With a lesbian friend, he ran the central London office of OLGA, the Organisation for Lesbian and Gay Action, which arose from a meeting in Camden in 1988 for people who supported Labour and also identified as lesbian and gay. Dennis remembered their being overwhelmingly white, middle class and male, keen to raise LGB issues in an equal opportunities context. Only a few women were involved, and the range of day to day issues, such as poverty, were relatively ignored in favour of gay men’s freedom to have sex with other gay men. Within only a few days of the meeting in which O.L.G.A. came into being, someone who scanned Hansard, the daily record of government business, saw what became known later as Section 28. This was placed into a Local Government Finance bill, using public funds and had, by the time their was a wider awareness of it among gay campaigners, had already passed through most of its stages and was well on its way to becoming law. The wording of the Bill suggested that you could promote homosexuality. And that children brought up in a household where the parents were either lesbian or gay were perceived to be living in a pretend family, even though the love and support is the same as any other more conventional family. All that could be done was to make all those who might be concerned aware of its impact on their work. A spin-off from the campaign was requests from Britain and other countries to do interviews. A group of campaigners from Britain went on a speaking tour around eighteen cities talking about Section 28, organised by some people in Amsterdam. When campaigners had gone about as far as they could, it was decided to put their energies into other issues, where it was believed more could be achieved. The frivolity of the stance of Section 28 was rapidly given a more serious tinge by the arrival of HIV and AIDS, with the famous leaflet with the picture of an iceberg, and the doom-laden, menacing but rather difficult to interpret what it was saying, text. OLGA decided at an A.G.M. to make AIDs and H.I.V. one of its main focuses. This was at an early stage of something that has gone on to affect most parts of the world. Although the issues faced by those who were either diagnosed as H.I.V. positive or who had full blown A.I.D.S. was different here in Britain and in the U.S. ,though many of the injustices people experience were similar. It was its being was so highly generalised and unclear that frightened teachers, social workers and the like so that they tended to simply keep their heads down and stop discussing the issues. There was never a single prosecution, but the climate of fear had done its work.

To give the process of campaigning a context, it is important to remember that this was before the time of universal electronic contact, now universal and dominant. The OLGA office had one person who could use the single computer for which they had use, when the colleague who knew how to use it was available, so they relied on typed or hand written letters, and telephones. The whole process was therefore much slower. It did, however, include the kind of direct action already undertaken in disability campaigning,, For example, one of the direct actions undertaken in A.I.D.S. campaigning involved blowing up condoms or attaching them to balloons and sending them over the wall of Pentonville prison, to publicise the need for protecting oneself from the threat of AIDS if having sex in prison. This was organised by the newly founded London branch of the American direct action organisation, Act-Up. It is not clear how far the prisoners were aware of what was happening, if at all.

O.L.G.A. was made aware of a number of groups in the U.S. who were using direct action, through a campaign named Act Up, as a method of using direct action as a means of highlighting numerous institutional discriminatory practices. For the first year or so, London Act Up was using the same office as O.L.G.A. After some twenty years it is easy to forget that how quickly it often was very quickly after diagnosis many people were dying, making the need for direct action all the more urgent, all happening against a backdrop of misinformation in the media. The role of gay men in the fight to tackle A.I.D.S. in the early stages should never be forgotten.

It should also not be forgotten that before getting involved in gay politics, Dennis had been involved in disability politics, at a time when it was the prevailing attitude was that a person’s disability was their own problem – it was the case that some, if not most, of the problems faced by the disabled were environmental. For Dennis, disability and being gay were two sides of the same coin. Those facing the physical impact of A.I.D.S. were not keen to be told issues they had to deal with were the same ones as those faced by disabled people. However, what helped people to get those with A.I.D.S. better support was the numbers being relatively small and resources dedicated to them being high in proportional terms. Another factor which helped A.I.D.S. to be pushed up the agenda was the fact that, at that stage of the problem it was often white middle class young men who most represented those with the condition, and they were able to present the condition in a manner that got benefits and other support to them more speedily that might otherwise have been the case.

O.L.G.A. were also made aware of another group, in South Africa, who had the same name, and who told those in London about their involvement in the Anti-Apartheid Movement. Some members of London O.L.G.A. would go down to South Africa House in Trafalgar Square on a specific day to show solidarity with lesbians and gays and their contribution to the struggle. We would like to think that their input enabled the new democratic government in South Africa to include gay rights in new constitution when the A.N.C. took power.

In Britain during the eighties the realisation that many gay men had disposable incomes meant that commercial companies started to target that section of society, even though at that time not all the laws relating to gay men had not been changed – the path to law reform can be less clear than might be expected.

It is clear that much has been achieved since the days when demonstrations involved a bucket collection, which might be used up meeting the expenses of the demo, to days in which the Disability Discrimination and Civil Partnerships Acts are on the statute book, but this does not mean that the needs have now been met, and campaigners like Dennis can put their feet up. At the time of writing, at the start of 2010, all the main parties for the forthcoming election were promising to make big budget cuts to deal with the huge deficit. Moreover, the party that looked likely to win that election, has a record of voting against matters such as civil partnerships (though the party leader, David Cameron, has since apologised for doing so) and the abolition of Section 28. The price of freedom may still be eternal vigilance! Although we in Britain have seen much change in recent years for the better, it may take a lot longer before boys growing up can be open with themselves and not feel uncomfortable about coming out to those closest to them. We do not wish to give the impression that homophobia has gone and all is well. Gay men still can and do face extreme hostility and are murdered for being gay, so until the idea that men can integrate the idea that being gay might be their personal sexuality, and they do not have to go through denial and self hatred. Those of us who have come out will have to be aware of any attempt to take away the rights we have won.