Mike Newman was born in west London in October 1942. He gained a government sponsored place at an independent grammar school. After school he was the first member of his family to attend University, he chose to go to Durham. After graduating he returned briefly to London, where he qualified to teach, and got a job in one of Sir Alec Clegg’s pioneering comprehensive schools in the West Riding of Yorkshire, where he has lived since 1965. He married a young woman there but divorced after three years. In 1973 he left teaching and retrained as a careers adviser, a job he did from 1976 to his retirement in 2008. Responding to a wish for a complete change, he came out as gay in 2005, met Dennis Killin in London, and they registered one of the new civil partnerships.
Dennis Killin was born in Luton, Bedfordshire in 1952. He was found to have only half average vision in one eye and a quarter in the other, sufficient to mean he is registered as blind. He was also born with diminished or absent fingers. He went to ‘normal’ infant schools, but was offered a place in a boarding school for the visually impaired in Coventry when he reached seven, which his parents accepted. It was thus less of a wrench to leave home, with his parents’ marriage breaking up, when he reached the school leaving age. Extraordinarily, he was never entered for any exams, given he would very likely to have passed them, given additional time and support. He came out as gay, and had different partners, different locations and different jobs for some time, though his disability and lack of paper qualifications prevented him from getting employment suited to his abilities. He became a campaigning activist on both disability and gay issues, particularly after arriving in London, where he lived for over twenty years. He met Mike Newman in 2005, and registered their civil partnership and moved to Yorkshire in 2006.
Pioneers and progress 