Jeremy: a London gay magazine features skinheads (1970)

The fantastic Bishopsgate Institute LGBTQ+ archive has digitised issues of Jeremy, a London-based gay lifestyle magazine from the late 1960s and early 1970s.  A 1970 issue includes 'A lingering look at skinheads' (vol.1, number 8).

'The 'in' music is Reggae and Blue Beat - energetic and uniform, almost monotonous - and the dance steps are simple and regular. The complications of progressive pop and all the with-itness of that world "pisses them off" and can lead to aggro. Big dance halls, like Mecca and Top Rank, are skinhead palaces'



Jeremy included a 'Gay Guide' to London clubs in a period when gay clubs had to be discrete and generally members only.  This issue from 1970 mentions The Toucan in Gerrard Street and The Masquerade and The Boltons in Earls Court the latter's regulars 'a pretty mixed bunch, some stunning, some just stunningly weird, some in semi-drag, some just a drag, but all full of shrill bounce and life'.



Intriguingly The Union Tavern is Camberwell New Road is also mentioned with drag nights three times a week plus 'Reggae (skinhead night)' on Tuesday. Doubt if this was a specifically gay skinhead night, but there was obviously a crossover with the gay scene. The skinhead article describes skins' enthusiasms as 'football, clothes, girls (not always) and music'

The skinhead photoshoot includes one shot taken outside the Union Tavern and the Jeremy Gala at Kensington Town Hall in September 1970 included a discotheque with the DJ  Mickey 'The skinhead from last month's Jeremy'. So can only assume as well Mickey was also DJ at the Union Tavern  skinhead night.

(outside the Union Tavern - I used to drink there and recognise its distinctive frontage)

[When I was at school the term  'Jeremy' was used as a homophobic slur - 'a bit of a Jeremy' etc - which I assumed was related to the Jeremy Thorpe scandal in the 1970s (Liberal MP accused of plotting to have an ex-lover killed). But was the term in circulation before that, associated with the magazine?]

The Union Tavern is now the Golden Goose theatre. The Union Place Resource Centre - a radical community printshop - was a couple of doors down, and I drank in the Tavern after popping down there sometimes. I remember one night meeting veteran council communist Joe Thomas in there, as he died in 1990 I think this must have been in 1988/9.

East London Gay Centre attacked (1976)

The East London Gay Centre was at 19 Redmans Road, Stepney in the 1970s. As this report from 1976 describes it faced sometimes violent hostility, some of it seemingly organised and quite possibly by the far right that had a significant presence in that area at the time. In this instance 'an apparently organised group of men ran up the road shouting fascist slogans and throwing pub glasses and beer bottles' while a small party was going on at the centre. 

The centre was a place where people lived as well as socialised, and this article seemingly written by a resident suggests that this was central to being able to live an authentic life - 'Even with gay bars and clubs you can limit your gayness to one night a month or a week, and limit being gay to having sex. But you're not just gay every night at the club or when sleeping with another woman, you are gay the whole time... This is then the first point of living gay centres - by living with other gay people you can be gay the whole time'

Source: Anarchist Worker (paper of the Anarchist Workers Association), September 1976, copy held at Bishopsgate Institute archive.