Issue 26

INFORMATION

Gay News People: Denis Lemon, Michael Mason, Peter Mundy, Stephen MacLean, Mike Nightingale, Tim Skinner, Jean-Claude Thevenin (Design), Pascal Danot (Photography), David Seligman, David Rushton (Design Assistant).
Gay News Special Friends: Roger Baker, Denis Cohn, Barry Conley, Laurence Collinson, Brian Dax, Antony Grey, Peter MacMillan, Manus Sasonkin, Bernard Searey, David Sherlock, David Hart, Maxie Bacon, Tim Morris, Derek Jardine, Christopher Ambury, Carl Hill, Richard Watkins and Ian C Dunn (Scottish Correspondent).
Special thanks to: Richard & Norman, Ken & Allan, David & Anthony, Peter & Adrian, Peter, Eric, Ken, David, Richard, and all the other Friends and Loved Ones.

The 1970s have a bad reputation in popular memory but they were a time of great social change as well as all the upheaval as the Post War Consensus came to an end. Proving it, we have BBC Radio London hosting an LGBT+ phone-in, something that the forthcoming commercial rival LBC (and the non-London ILR stations BRMB, Clyde and Piccadilly) would also do. And we have the advice columnist Anna Raeburn being, like all the best advice columnists, loudly pro-gay. She would become one of the voices on another BBC Radio London competitor, Capital Radio, which launched in October 1973. In other news, British Transport Advertising, the billboard division of the much-missed British Rail, wouldn’t accept an advertisement for Gay News. No reasons were given. Reviews in this issue include The Art of Sensual Massage by Gordon Inkeles and Murray Todris and Neither One of Us by Gladys Knight and the Pips.

The survey of MPs in issue 25 has proved controversial, mainly for naming John Gough as one of the authors, to the displeasure of his local CHE branch.

“…we’ve had a great many problems – it has been a meeting point for undesirables for several years… trouble on the male side that is. We did have it floodlit at the suggestion of the police.” – Mr Curtis of Barnet Council explaining why there was now a security officer with an alsatian stationed outside the cottage on the North Circular (page 5)