Events tagged with "Manchester"
Clause 28 (also known as Section 28) enacted
Section 28 of the Local Government Act (also known as Clause 28) became law on 24 May 1988 requiring that... 'A local government shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality' or 'prom...
Memories tagged with "Manchester"
AIDS crisis and the media
“Birmingham didn’t seem to be so highly affected by the HIV crisis as London or Manchester partly because we didn’t have such a vibrant gay scene as places like at that time. There wasn’t a lot of money going into outreach work with gay men. There wa...
Apathy filtered into Birmingham water?
Mike felt that the lack of political awareness and involvement of the Birmingham scene was in contrast to the politicisation of the Manchester gay scene in line with the general political activism in which Manchester has a long tradition. For instanc...
Being Publicity Officer for Switchboard from 1999
Mike worked as Publicity Officer for Gay Switchboard, from 1999 - 2003. With a background in marketing and sales, he identified all the media in Birmingham and set out to build as many contacts as possible, including the main West Midlands radio stat...
First impressions of Birmingham
Mike commented that his first main impression of Birmingham was of a very big, prosperous city. He didn't want to leave Manchester but the job offer was a good one. When Mike moved to Birmingham from Manchester, he got a flat in Moseley, and lived in...
Forced out after mock shag
Mike described how "eventually I was forced to come out at work. It wasn't something that I had planned." About 1994 or 1995 he had gone to a gay bar in Manchester where he had met up with a friend that he hadn't seen for a number of years. They were...
Gettting conditioned to the gay scene
Because being gay in the police force wasn’t really acceptable, Bernard initially met the Friend group in a pub in Holloway Head (probably the Greyhound). “It was run by these older gay guys, the idea was to introduce you to the gay scene...
Impressions of the Scene 1986
Mike discussed his impressions of the differences between Manchester and Birmingham in terms of the things he would value. "Well both of the cities have changed an awful lot in the time since 1990, that's for sure but I think that Birmingham's change...
Lack of Public Investment in the Gay Village
When asked how he viewed the social scene in Birmingham today he replied that he had been very hopeful in the late 1990s because a gay village was emerging and because of what was "almost an over-supply - fourteen or fifteen gay bars at one point and...
Men only at the Gale was old-fashioned for '87
Mike also said: "One of the things that I did notice when I came here (late 80s) was that there was a real demarcation between where men socialised and where women socialised. Women tended to go to Partners whereas The Jester was almost exclusively m...
My boyfriend was the only Asian on the scene
"When I go back to Manchester, walking round the city centre, it's nowhere near as mixed culturally as Birmingham. When I first came to Birmingham in 1990, when my boyfriend was Asian, if we went out on the gay scene there were no other Asians, excep...
Nothing negative about being gay in Brum in '07
Mike explained that he felt a lot more comfortable as a gay man living in Birmingham now than he did in 1990 when he moved here from Manchester because "there is a higher visibility though not as high as it should be. There is certainly a better gay ...
People didn't come out at work in the 80s
Mike talked about his experiences of being gay at work in Birmingham compared to Manchester. "The dynamics were different in Birmingham because I was the manager and therefore had to maintain a distance about my private life, although actually I had...