'Private parties' for lesbians at the Greyhound
1975
G: “The Greyhound in Holloway Head must have just opened (around 1975)
because I can remember Den and Sharon who’d founded it. Basically,
they’d gone round all the pubs in Birmingham to find somewhere that
would take a women only group, which would have been really difficult
because everyone was really suspicious of women’s liberation anyway,
especially men, but even women were. So, even if people had bought it
that this was just a women’s group and not a lesbian group, I think
they would have been edgy about it. So I think it must have been very
brave of them, Dan and Sharon, to have gone round. The Greyhound, which
was a cider house, so an odd sort of place, agreed to have us. They’d
got two bars and we had one of them and basically they put a Private
Party sign up on the door for Tuesday evenings. Every now and again men
would try and come in, or other people would try and come in and you’d
have to say ‘Sorry, this is a private party’.”
B: “The only night I remember any of them protesting about it was the
time I was there with only one other woman ‘cos we’d got there early
and some chap tried to come in and we said ‘Sorry, this is a private
party’ and he sort of just stared at the two of us and sort of
eventually said ‘I hope you have a very nice time’. (Laughter).
G: “Going to the loo was a pain; you had to walk through the other bar.
I don’t remember having any hassle, but you certainly got looked at
with some degree of hostility really.”
B: “Well, I have a feeling that straight women at that point may still
not have worn trousers that often for going out so just the fact that
we were trouser wearing women might still have looked odd in a city
pub”.
G: “It was also the fact that by and large, women didn’t go into pubs on their own anyway at that time - they might go in as a couple”.
Eventually the nights at The Greyhound ceased.
G: “I don’t know if it was that we got chucked out of The Greyhound or
that The Matador was proving itself to be gay-friendly and we were
supporting it.” (by the late 1970s)
Contributed by: Gill Coffin, 63, Betty Hagglund, 50