As LGBTQ+ History Month begins, Miriam Balanescu speaks to three Haringey natives who have been central to shaping the borough’s queer history

Veronica McKenzie, founder of Haringey Vanguard

Kindled in 2018 and finally coming to fruition in 2021, the Haringey Vanguard collection at the Bruce Castle Museum brings together archival material, photographs and testimonies to tell the stories of Haringey’s BME LGBTQ+ residents. The project was kickstarted by filmmaker Veronica McKenzie, who initially set out to make a documentary about the Black Lesbian and Gay Centre active in the 80s.

“I was at an event and a young woman said that, as far as she could see, there wasn’t any kind of black queer history in this country and that we should start to organise spaces,” said Veronica. “I was actually at the event with somebody who was very active in the 80s and 90s. We both started saying how incredible it was that nobody knew about this history.”

Armed with her brother’s high-quality camera, she started work: “I wanted to tell the story of the Black Lesbian and Gay Centre, because that was the epitome of what people were saying we needed now – but there already had been a project back in 1985,” she explained.

Veronica claimed that the events of the past were not so dissimilar from what she was seeing in the present: “We’re seeing attacks on working classes, we’re seeing attacks on unions, we’re seeing othering of migrants and all the rest of it. We are seeing quite a lot of political similarities to what happened in the 80s. I think for a lot of people, they made a bit more effort to try to find pictures or materials that could help the project because they could see it happening again.”

Members of the local community were called upon to donate any materials they had lying around or hidden in boxes at home, and gradually a huge collection was amassed, containing everything from iconic political banners used in major protests to flyers for well-known gay nightclubs – with Veronica sometimes “jumping in an Uber” to make sure she got hold of items. “I found it quite exciting to uncover stuff and just see what they had,” she said. “It was a really lovely process.”

“Haringey has always had a very radical community, because if you look at the makeup of Haringey, it’s always been very diverse,” said Veronica. “It was very difficult to find queer spaces [in central London], so you had to move further and further out.”

Among her biggest revelations while curating the project, Veronica discovered that Section 28, a law prohibiting the “promotion of homosexuality”, all led back to Haringey.

A children’s book featuring same-sex parents was found in a local library in Haringey and sparked outrage, while the work of the Lesbian and Gay Unit at Haringey Council added to the furore. “Section 28 stemmed from a handful of people who objected to talking about LGBTQ+ issues in the classroom,” explained Veronica. “A handful of people led to national legislation, which affected thousands.”

“[Haringey Vanguard] was a way of encouraging local people to go to a local venue and f ind out the history of the area,” Veronica added. “Growing up in Haringey, it was a very difficult time – the LGBT community was very underground. I didn’t know anyone. And so, when I came out, I ended up going to places in the West End, going into places in South London, going to places in East London, not really knowing that there was all of this stuff happening in Haringey.

“Haringey always had such a negative reputation in a way. It seemed really important to rectify that, to reposition Tottenham and Haringey as actually very progressive areas in terms of the work that was being done and is being done, at the forefront of people’s fight for their rights, whether that be LGBTQ+, whether that be [those of ] the Black community. Haringey’s always been a place where people struggle for their rights, and people took on new ideas, and had those discussions that maybe were not happening in other areas.

Nicky Price, founder of Bolts
Physical spaces to exist in safely and meet others are crucial to any community, but especially groups which have been traditionally marginalised in society. In Haringey, Bolts, one of the first gay club nights in the UK, was a mainstay for LGBTQ+ residents throughout the 80s – eventually spreading across the UK and hosting the launch party for the Terrence Higgins Trust.

Nicky Price founded Bolts in 1981 together with a group of friends, based at his own venue Lazer Club in Harringay Green Lanes. He recalled how some of the period’s greatest performers found their footing within Lazer Club’s walls.

Sent a group by Innervision, which at the time was little-known on the music circuit, Nicky was disappointed to find that they preferred to “mime”. During their second performance at Bolts, he tricked the group into taking microphones onstage. When their backing track was due to play, it remained silent. “To this day they think it was the DJ who made the mistake,” Nicky said. “That group sang for the first time ever live on our stage anywhere in the world, and that was George Michael and Wham!”

Nicky added: “For two years, George would spend most of his time at the club, especially when he was going through a hard time with his record label.”

Later in the decade, Lazer Club was hit hard by the global HIV/Aids epidemic and one of Nicky’s business partners, Philip (nicknamed “Pickles”), contracted the disease. Despite this, Philip continued working on the door at Bolts. “I wasn’t going to stop him,” said Nicky. “We lost a lot of business because people were scared. They didn’t understand what Aids was and how you contract it.”

Today, Nicky remembers the club’s heyday fondly: “The atmosphere was electric. People didn’t stop dancing.”

Nicky said that prior to Bolts’ opening, during the 70s, people were much more fearful of being openly queer. “By the time we opened up Bolts, people would leave the club as loud as they were in the club,” said Nicky. “People were loud and proud outside as well as inside.”

Femi Otitoju, former member of the Lesbian and Gay Unit
“I was one of about six women who met in a workshop for lesbians at a conference for women of African and Asian descent that was held in the neighbouring borough of Islington,” Femi Otitoju, founder of the first Black lesbian group in the UK, told me. “There was no specific provision for Black lesbians in Haringey at the time and the other women who had turned up said there wasn’t anything where they lived either.”

Femi went on to get involved with activism in multiple groups, from Stonewall to the Women’s Movement, eventually becoming one of a cluster of people working at the Lesbian and Gay Unit (LAGU) which was part of the community services department of Haringey Council. “The idea for the unit grew out of community action, mostly by lesbian and gay members of the local Labour Party,” Femi explained.

This was all during a decade which saw immense changes for the LGBTQ+ community not just in the borough but around the country. “I was inspired to get involved in lesbian and gay organising the 80s through my work on Lesbian and Gay Switchboard,” said Femi. “It’s a 24-hour helpline which was and still is run by us for us. Sometimes on a single shift I might talk to about 40 different people, all calling about something connected to sexual orientation or gender identity.

“Taking all those calls highlighted to me the life-damaging inequalities faced by members of our communities: things like the unequal age of consent for gay men which was 21 when it was 16 for everyone else. I got real insight into how easy and legal it was to discriminate against people at work, or even sack someone, on the basis of their sexuality. We could be denied housing and other services too.”

The discovery of the children’s book Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin in 1986 at a Haringey library sparked the creation of Section 28 – and LAGU was largely blamed. “If it hadn’t been that book, if it hadn’t been that library, it would have been caused by a different catalyst in different borough,” claimed Femi. “Section 28 was the manifestation of a backlash that had already begun before the LAGU came into being.”

Historic ‘Smash the Backlash’ protests against racism and discrimination in Haringey followed in 1987, a collaboration between two activist groups, The Positive Images Campaign and Haringey Black Action. Meanwhile, budgets for local authorities shrank towards the end of the 80s and LAGU was abolished – and Femi started to make other plans. “During the 80s lesbians had allied with gay men during the Aids crisis, with heterosexual woman over abortion campaigns, [and] with miners and other groups,” said Femi. “I wanted to build on those alliances, so I started my company Challenge to do just that.”

Femi emphasised the importance of remembering Haringey’s queer history today. “It is important to honour and recognise LGBTQ+ History Month to remind us not just how much we have received but also to remind ourselves how important it is to stay vigilant,” she urged. “Once discrimination takes hold, in law, in practice or in people’s minds, it can take decades to address. Section 28 went from discriminatory comments to the statutes in an incredibly short time – we simply didn’t see it coming. Knowing our history makes it easier to prevent it from happening again.”

No news is bad news

Independent news outlets like ours – reporting for the community without rich backers – are under threat of closure, turning British towns into news deserts.

The audiences they serve know less, understand less, and can do less.

If our coverage has helped you understand our community a little bit better, please consider supporting us with a monthly, or one-off donation.