Memories by Steve Bedser
People saw your feet first at the Jester
“At that time (1985) there was a pub and a club but not much else. The first time I went to The Jester as part of my tentative coming-out - I must only just have turned 19, it was an incredibly busy, circular basement bar. The first time you walk dow...
Tuesday was stripper night
“In my early twenties, (late 80s) the whole premise was going to The Jester and then round to The Nightingale . You got your cash from the Barclay cash machine outside The Jester. People would say ‘Are you going round the corner?’ (to The Gale). The...
Other bars in the late 80s
“I vaguely recollect going to The Grosvenor House Hotel on the Hagley Road with a late night piano cabaret bar. There were also premises that moved from Albert St to Water St on the site of Subway City, called The Jug. One of the proprietors was very...
Silver Slipper the only option 70s/80s
“Another thing that is important to the gay history of Birmingham was a phenomenally busy cottage called The Silver Slipper in Station Street, long since covered in tarmac. For young gay men in the 1970s and early ‘80s, meeting people in cruising gro...
Important role of the Nightingale
“The big picture in Birmingham is the presence of The Nightingale and its history. It was established with a constitution like a working men’s club, by and for its members, for 30 years or more. It acquired its name from a former Indian restaurant, o...
Hotch potch of gay businesses
“That’s not to knock the entrepreneurs because Bill Gavan’s had an important role – a hard-nosed business person with an altruistic underbelly who has made an important contribution. Then we’ve got a hotch-potch, ranging from opportunist, 'let’s put ...
Strategic approach needed for grotty gay village
Steve considers “Now we have the Gay Village, I hesitate to call it thriving, it’s still dingy and grotty, but with the confidence to have plate glass windows – and no-one puts them in. We have a wider range of commercial operations selling beer to p...
Clause 28 sparked by tabloid fuelled paranoia
Cllr Steve Bedser explained the background to Clause 28.“Clause 28 was sparked from tabloid paranoia, constantly talking about ‘loony left’ authorities in London, Islington, and Camden, the places that created people like Ken Livingstone, who is now ...
Galvanising community action against Clause 28
“I was very involved in Birmingham and Aston University Gay Societies; I and a woman, Rachel, decided we needed to do something about Clause 28, so we produced leaflets and on New Years Eve 1987 when it was going through Parliament, stood outside The...
Gay Centre a magnet for coming out process
In the mid 1980s, Steve recalls the Lesbian and Gay Community Centre Aston, on Corporation Street. “That was closed because it lost funding from West Midlands County Council, giving credence to my hypothesis that the West Midlands is conservative wit...
Migrating to London
Steve was brought up in St Albans and moved to Birmingham when he was 19. "There was a sense that to be gay, and fit into a visible functional community, it was London or London. If you grew up gay in the West Midlands in the 80s or 90s one of the t...
LGB Co-ordinator for Unison
Steve was an activist in the Trade Union movement in NALGO and UNISON, including being the national LGB co-ordinator for a number of years, then he changed job and location, and was back to square one – the Trade Union movement couldn’t cope with him...
Filling the gap of HIV/AIDS prevention
Steve then got involved in Gay Men Fighting AIDS (GMFA) and was one of the founding Directors. “I worked in Birmingham with an agency called SLAP FM (an HIV/AIDS prevention charity) specifically looking at gay men’s prevention of HIV/AIDS. It had a t...
First out gay Councillor elected in Birmingham
Steve Bedser says “I was the only out gay councillor when elected (in 1997), I know there are other gay men, and always have been in Birmingham City Council, but only in the last two or three years are there ‘out’ gay men, and I am unaware of any les...
Being the out gay Councillor
“I am the Labour Party Councillor for Longbridge Ward, there are precious few lesbians and gay men in Longbridge, and my activity with the lesbian and gay community doesn’t win votes for me; I guess there’s an argument that it might lose votes, I’m n...