00:00:00.000 - 00:01:02.380

So Malcolm, I wonder if you could begin by telling me about your childhood, where you lived, siblings, your parents, etc. Do you want to do that? I was the only child of a Church of Ireland director and his schoolteacher wife. I was born when my father was in charge of a little mission church in central Belfast which was attached to the cathedral. We then moved to the country not long after I was born. When I was three and a half we moved back to the city where my father was rector of a parish in industrial north Belfast for thirteen and a half years.

00:01:02.380 - 00:02:15.580

Then just before my seventeenth birthday my father moved to be vicar of Ballymacarrick, the shipyard parish in Belfast, historically a very important piece of church building with a comparatively large congregation. He had three curates and he served his last twenty odd years as vicar of Ballymacarrick, becoming for the last ten years archdeacon of the diocese. My father was very much involved in his retirement in education, management of schools and at the age of eighty he announced that he was going to give up being chairman. He was chairman of the school governors of three separate schools in three different parts of east Belfast, a primary school, a secondary school and a special school. He gave them all up within a space of six months in and around his eightieth birthday.

00:02:17.140 - 00:03:49.840

My mother was a school teacher, though she didn't teach after she was married except supply teaching. When I was a kid she would go off maybe half a term this year, a term next year and nothing at all the year after. She was doing supply teaching which she seemed to enjoy but she spent her time being effectively my father's curate as the Church of Ireland calls them, unpaid curate, running around doing things in the parish. It was very much an ecclesiastical – ecclesiastical is the wrong – I don't mean that word. It was very much a church house. We lived on the premises. The church, the rectory where we lived, my father was a rector of the parish, the church school and the headmaster's house were all on one piece of two acres of land in the middle of an industrial village on the edge of Belfast.

00:04:01.360 - 00:05:29.040

That's family background. My father was from West Ulster. In turn his mother was from Exeter. His father was also from West Ulster, my grandfather. My grandfather was a schoolteacher who then became a clergyman. He trained as a schoolteacher, qualified in 1900 and worked as a teacher for 15 years and then went and trained as a clergyman and was a clergyman for the next 35 years. My mother's family were farmers from South Kildare, 40 miles south-west of Dublin. Respectable farmers. My grandparents always had – in fact both sets of grandparents – always had a servant. Not lots of servants but a servant who for most of the time lived in both houses.

00:05:29.960 - 00:06:40.940

In Castleburg Rectory where my grandfather was rector and also in Ballyculene, the farm in South Kildare. So I come from what I suppose you would describe as a middle-class family right back through. Which gives me, I suppose, a perspective of the solidity and dependability of society which perhaps I shouldn't have that perspective. Though both sets of grandparents and indeed my parents lived through times that were difficult in Ireland. Indeed we hope to go in three months' time with a whole stack of cousins to the 100th anniversary of my grandparents' wedding.

00:06:42.520 - 00:07:49.580

They were married on quite an auspicious day, though they did not realise how auspicious it was to become. They were married on Easter Monday, 1916. They then went off for a family honeymoon and only two or three weeks later did they find out that there had been a little bit of a trouble in Dublin. They were married in the country about 70 miles west of Dublin but they didn't know anything about the fact that 500 men had stood up and fought the British Army. Because of course it wasn't of any consequence. It was something that only became important after the end of the First World War when the people who had done the rebelling kept on reminding everybody they'd done the rebelling.

00:07:49.580 - 00:08:54.140

It only became important after the Irish political party collapsed in a heap. So my parents, both sets of parents, had to live through difficulties. My grandfather and grandmother in the north where of course Northern Ireland was being established with the full agreement of my grandparents. And where there could have been a lot of trouble but there wasn't. The Republic, where there was a bit of trouble in 1922 and 1923 when they had a civil war, two factions in the Republic fought one another to the bitter death. But it didn't seem to affect my grandparents at all. They were aware of it.

00:08:55.140 - 00:10:08.200

My parents learnt about that as part of their family history. Though I'm an only child we have quite a large family both in the south, my mother's family connections, and now none of us in Northern Ireland. My father's connections. We've all left Northern Ireland, every one of us. The last of us to leave Northern Ireland left 30 years ago. The major feature of my childhood was that I had polio at the age of four weeks which didn't affect my brains. It meant that I didn't walk very well and all of those sorts of things.

00:10:11.480 - 00:11:17.000

And parents I think sort of rolled up their sleeves and said, well he's had polio, he's got a bad leg, he's got a bad arm, he's got da da da da, what are we going to do, we'll just keep going and plod on and plod on they did. I get the impression that in working class England the way in which kids with disabilities were dealt with in the 40s and 50s was very different from the way in which my parents dealt with me. My parents just simply said get on with it and on with it I got. And they did what they would have done, they've always maintained that they would have done anyway, which was to send me to prep school, which is a day school, from the age of six to thirteen, six to twelve my birthday's in August.

00:11:17.580 - 00:11:46.320

And then off to school, boarding school at the age of thirteen, just after my thirteenth birthday. I went to the same school that my father had been to. The rug I had over my bed, you were allowed to bring an extra rug, was the rug my mother had over her bed when she was at boarding school. There's a sort of sense of history about a lot of these things.

00:11:51.520 - 00:12:52.200

I did reasonably well at school. Like many kids I shone at prep school and then when I got to school I found that there were the products of half a dozen prep schools there and just because I had shone at one of them didn't mean to say I was going to shine at the school, but I did reasonably well. I got one A level when I was fifteen and two more when I was sixteen and decided to go to Birmingham University where I was involved a lot with mathematics but also with social sciences at secondary school. So I went and did a degree in mathematics, economics and statistics.

00:12:52.200 - 00:13:21.060

Oh, my husband's done that sort of thing. Where did he go? He went to Southampton and did economics and then he did a Masters in Bath in development economics. We were essentially becoming mathematical economists or econometricians and that was an interesting development and it was a fascinating course.

00:13:21.060 - 00:14:39.880

There were only ten of us and we were dealt with well I think by Birmingham and the fact that there were only ten of us and we were in the same classes throughout the three years meant we got to know one another fairly well. I lived in a hall of residence on the campus for my entire three years which was great, absolutely wonderful and I'm very proud of the fact that it was the first ever mixed hall of residence in England. It only became a mixed hall of residence two years before I went. I went in sixty-five, they had an experimental group of men in sixty-three and then in sixty-four it became properly mixed. But by sixty-five other universities were catching on and so every now and again the warden would pin up a notice saying we are expecting visitors from, and I remember Nottingham being one of them, but there were others.

00:14:40.940 - 00:15:49.880

And so this crowd of funny ladies would come round and look at this pioneering hall of residence and they would ask us what seemed to us all to be bloody stupid questions and yes that's right. So that's my university. I did a year postgraduate and I went to be a university lecturer straight away. I went to the University of Dundee where I taught for four years. I then went to the University of Durham as a lecturer for four more years. I then took a sort of sideways move because I got the chance to do something different. I had by this point become a social statistician rather than an econometrician and I got the opportunity to set up a degree in social research methods, a joint honours degree in sociology and social research at what was then called Newcastle Polytechnic.

00:15:51.260 - 00:17:13.140

I ran that until, I went there in 1977 and the degree was approved. There were long processes in those days to get degrees approved. It was finally approved in 1980 and I ran it until 1989. When I then went to work for the Council for National Academic Awards, which you may or may not have heard of, it was the national organisation that gave the degrees that polytechnics had. Colleges were not allowed to give their own degrees. They were given by one central body called the Council for National Academic Awards. I went and worked there. There was a headquarters team of advisors who went around organising and advising. I did that for three years and came back to what by then had become Northumbria and took over, no it didn't take over, it wasn't in existence, an academic development and quality assurance unit for the university.

00:17:16.160 - 00:18:17.900

Which located, as it happens, in Coach Lane, which was the headquarters of the Faculty of Health, where I had my office. I did that role with a team, I'm pleased to say, of there were seven of us plus two admin staff. Going around giving advice and offering, running seminars for staff, developing degree courses and all the rest of it, making sure that the institution was well organised for the giving of its own degrees. In particular, we'd merged with the health authorities, nursing colleges, so we had to do a lot to do with dealing with nurse tutors who became lecturers in the university. Where's the gay rights bit?

00:18:17.900 - 00:19:24.800

Moving back, when did you become aware of your sexual identity and how did you come out, or was it a gradual thing over many years? Yes, I think it's probably fair to say that I was fairly slow at sexuality, full stop. As an undergraduate, I was more involved in university politics. I had lots of friends, both boys and girls. I was more concerned with the way in which the place organised itself. I was involved in what was then called the Guild of Undergraduates, the student union of the University of Birmingham, significantly.

00:19:28.300 - 00:20:33.460

I enjoyed that. I was also involved with the chaplaincy, the ecumenical chaplaincy, which was fascinating. I became involved with the student Christian movement, which in those days was the left wing of the two organisations that existed in most universities, the other one being the Christian Union. The student Christian movement died a death during the late 70s, early and mid 80s really. Maybe even before that it was dying. But in places like Birmingham in the mid 60s, and indeed in Dundee when I went there as a lecturer, and indeed in Durham when I went there as a lecturer, it was still very much a student group of some size.

00:20:33.460 - 00:21:54.500

When did I actually get involved with anybody? I suppose that was really in Dundee. Yes. And various, I suppose you would describe them as, fumbled attempts to make sense of relationships. That's the best way to describe it. It wasn't really until… and that was 69 to 73. But the time I went from Dundee to Durham, by this point of course I was now 25, 26 in 1973. So, I was really quite late in getting things going properly. Was I held up by society's attitudes? It's difficult to know whether I was.

00:21:54.500 - 00:22:40.000

I could construe what was happening as me being too frightened to make decisions, but actually I don't think that was the case. I think it was just that I didn't need to make decisions about anything. I saw myself as an academic. And an academic with social and political interests. And that was your primary identity? Yes. Yes, that's right.

00:22:50.180 - 00:23:39.720

Okay. I got involved in the beginnings of that sort of by accident. Some of the staff of SCM, Student Christian Movement, they had regional staff that covered several universities. And so I got to know several of them as a student and then as a postgraduate and then as a lecturer in Dundee and then also as a lecturer in Durham. And so some of them knew that I would have identified myself as being gay if I'd been pushed.

00:23:40.500 - 00:24:29.780

Yeah. So by the time they were coming to produce an issue of the SCM magazine, which was produced every six times a year or something, they had a special supplement on the gay issue, I was nobbled and asked if I would act as editor of it and put it together. And that was itself quite an interesting experience because it meant that I had to get to know a number of people to find out what to do and get them to write things. And that was the supplement was called Towards the Theology of Gay Marriage and I was looking to see if I could find a copy of it. And I'm not sure. There may be one in one of those files.

00:24:43.360 - 00:25:27.360

Yes. It was actually produced in the autumn of 75, by which point LGCM had held a meeting in April 75, at least a group of people had held a meeting. Yeah, 76 it was officially. Yes, but we'd had a meeting in April, May 75. And that got things going. I was at that because of preparing for this supplement. It took about a year to get it all organised. And so I was already involved in these things. Why don't you go to that meeting, which is being held at, so I did.

00:25:33.260 - 00:25:58.040

So you were there right at the start? Yes, I was. Yes, I was there. I was at the very start. And I was put on the committee at the beginning in 75. I'm the sort of person who's not put on committees. And I mean, I'm quite happy with that because that's the style. And you're still on lots of committees. Yes, different ones these days. That's no harm.

00:26:01.120 - 00:26:29.820

I'm looking at this because I really ought to remind myself. Where are we? Page chapter three. Here we are. There should be a note in here telling me. Yes, the first proper meeting of LGCM, calling itself the Gay Christian Movement, was in April 76. Okay.

00:26:32.940 - 00:27:06.720

The next meeting, the next annual meeting, was held on the 26th of March 1977. Right, okay. We had got ourselves as a committee organised to invite a chap called Michael Keeling, who at that point was a lecturer in theology at the University of St Andrews. Incidentally, the fact that St Andrews and Dundee were only 12 miles apart didn't mean to say that I knew him when I was in Dundee because I didn't.

00:27:07.620 - 00:27:38.080

I just came across him entirely in a different context. And we'd invited Michael to give a lecture at the AGM. The organisation, LGCM, was fairly academic in that sense. And about a fortnight before, he backed out. Oh, okay.

00:27:38.920 - 00:28:17.880

And we were left in a mess. And so what they said to me was, Malcolm, you know what we're talking about. Read us a paper. So I sat down and spent a couple of weeks trying to make sense of what I was going to say. And in due course, I delivered a paper entitled Towards a Theology of Gay Liberation, the framework for the debate.

00:28:18.420 - 00:28:38.940

Okay. And there it is. And it then got SCM, which of course in those days was also SCM Press, which is technically nothing to do with the student movement. It was a separate, financially separate… And that still exists.

00:28:39.180 - 00:29:07.280

That does still exist. It has since been bought up by one of the other big religious publishing houses. They said, why can't you make all of this into some sort of a book? So I duly did. And from delivering the paper in March 1976 through until the publication of this book in September 1977,

00:29:08.500 - 00:29:45.040

I spent that intervening 16 or 17 months. An embarrassingly large proportion of my time was spent trying to get papers sorted and getting them into some sort of context of being able to be published. I used many of the speakers at the conference, I'm sorry I should say, around about the time of the AGM of LGCM. In other words, a year after the very first meeting.

00:29:49.220 - 00:30:21.960

Not only was a conference being held by the student Christian movement entitled Towards Theology of Gay Liberation, but also LGCM was holding its proper first meeting. Those two events happened within about four or five weeks of one another. One of them happened just at the end of the spring term and the other one happened at the beginning of the summer term. The beginning of the summer term one was in Wick Court, which is outside Bristol Conference Centre.

00:30:22.940 - 00:30:53.380

And we had certainty at it, giving papers, making comments, and they were used to develop the arguments. And that became that. Okay, just for the tape, Malcolm's holding up a book that he edited entitled Towards Theology of Gay Liberation. It was published, as I say, in September, October 1977.

00:30:55.000 - 00:31:39.180

I'm, as I say, the author of one of the papers in it, as well as the editor of the whole thing. The conference from which the book emerged was a fascinating event and it went extremely well. With a range of people, from people who were worthies or about to become worthies in LGCM, right through to students in their first or second year at university. And it went extremely well in all of those respects.

00:31:41.660 - 00:32:26.300

Remembering, though, that we're talking about a world where the women's movement was developing and emerging in its own way. And the gay world only had a minority of women in it. Partly because the gay male perceptions dominated. And many women, I think, found that particularly annoying.

00:32:36.220 - 00:32:55.100

We did our best. We, the men, did our best to incorporate as many women. But listen to my language now. I'm saying we, the men, sought to incorporate the women. Just think about what that amounts to.

00:32:57.500 - 00:33:44.200

And that, I'm afraid, was a feature of the way in which LGCM developed for the first five years, ten years maybe. I think things changed later on. Perhaps not entirely, but they certainly did change. A feature of both the conference at Wick Court and, much more particularly, the first two or three big meetings of what became GCM,

00:33:45.120 - 00:33:56.500

was that they were dominated by young clergymen. Clergymen? Yes, because there were no clergywomen. Yeah, of course.

00:33:57.080 - 00:34:27.920

Dominated by young clergy. And, indeed, one of the things that we had to do was to stop them becoming so dominant that it became a group of Anglican clergy. So there were largely Anglican clergy, or Catholic as well? There were one or two Roman Catholics, so there were a handful of Methodists, but they were largely Anglican.

00:34:27.920 - 00:35:05.620

Okay. It would be difficult. I would like to say that well over half the people at that first meeting were Anglican clergy. I'm pretty certain that wasn't the case. I think it's actually much more that the ones who had a lot to say were Anglican clergy. When we put together the first executive committee, we got a very fine Roman Catholic Dominican priest, Charles Hibbert, to be the vice-president,

00:35:07.120 - 00:35:37.860

and an Anglican, Peter Ellers, to be the president. Yes, that worked for a time. But the real power behind the organisation was Jim Cotter. Yeah. He was of the brains. He was a university chaplain in Cambridge. He was in his early thirties.

00:35:39.620 - 00:36:15.340

And he effectively led the organisation from the back rather than the front. He was the honorary secretary for the first spell, but he was the brains. And he kept us all in some sort of order. Okay. I didn't interview Jim before he died, but I did the transcription, which felt quite a privilege actually.

00:36:16.020 - 00:36:27.960

Right. It was a few weeks before he died. So he did get interviewed. He got interviewed. He was the first or second person to be interviewed, and we got there just in time.

00:36:28.740 - 00:37:16.500

Yes, he was a very, very, very fine man. I didn't have a great deal to do with him in the last 20 or 30 years, but certainly for the period that I had a lot to do with him, I found him to be a very impressive and gentle man. Yes. I mean, I kept in limited contact with his breathing spaces and his various little movements of small churches and things and his moves to North Wales and all the rest of it, but I couldn't claim to be seeing him every year even, or even every five years. But he was a very fine man indeed. Yeah.

00:37:18.800 - 00:37:48.360

And his job was to keep the rest of us in some sort of order. Yes. So GCM happened. GCM happened. Out of that happened various flings. Indeed, I had a Christmas card from one of them, as indeed I have had every year since, from somebody that I had a fling with at the Wick Court Conference.

00:37:48.360 - 00:38:12.560

Oh. He has just finished being Cathedral Warden of one of the South East's smaller cathedrals, but he became a schoolteacher. He was a student at the time. Yes. Yes.

00:38:16.100 - 00:39:12.580

Then that movement, that involvement with LGCM was going on at the same time as an involvement here with the development of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality, CHE, which again you will have heard of. Yeah, I've heard of, yeah. And again you will recognise as an organisation that was largely male, which in the early 70s had got itself a fairly big branch in Newcastle. And by 74 we had begun to talk about setting up something in Durham, which indeed we did. This was almost entirely separate from the LGCM thing. There were one or two overlap people.

00:39:12.840 - 00:39:57.080

Yeah. And that became, rather more than LGCM, became a focus of my social involvement. Out of that emerged, from my point of view, I moved on. Just as the book was being published we were setting up a branch of the organisation, Friend, which you will probably have come across in your history. Explain to me, yeah.

00:39:58.400 - 00:40:09.260

Simplest explanation, a gay version of the Samaritans. Okay. Sort of halfway between the Samaritans and Gay Switchboard. Okay.

00:40:09.780 - 00:40:41.200

In the middle. Yeah. Which in the late 70s, 80s and early and mid 90s was quite an organisation to make some sense of. We set up a branch in Newcastle, because that was the regional centre, I mean it was regional centre based. And I was the convener of it from 77 through to 81.

00:40:41.920 - 00:41:07.680

And again in the late 80s, for a year or so, I had an involvement with the national organisation. And indeed emerged out of that was that. How can we help you? Published by the National Council of Health Organisations.

00:41:15.340 - 00:41:24.500

What do they call their publishing company? Yes, Bedford Square Press. Okay. Which still exists.

00:41:27.440 - 00:42:04.240

The National Council of Voluntary Organisations were concerned then, and I guess more recently, to find people who could write about the way in which voluntary organisations were developing and what they were doing. And so that's how that emerged. It had a previous history with the title Can We Help You? with Gay Men's Press, which was developing itself as a publishing company. Yeah.

00:42:06.360 - 00:42:47.220

And it was written. And then there was a big financial problem at Gay Men's Press and they pulled out of a number of books and almost went bust. And I was left in 86 with a completed book, with it handed back to me by a fission by Gay Men's Press saying, as you will know, this is one of a number of books we are unable to publish because of the state of our financial da-da-da-da-da. We hope you'll be able to find an alternative da-da-da-da.

00:42:47.220 - 00:43:01.100

So it took two and a half years for it to get published. But it got published. It got published. And indeed those are my two major contributions to the literature on the gay movement.

00:43:01.360 - 00:43:18.620

Yeah. There's not a lot else. I mean, I've written articles for this and that and the other over the years, before, during and after that. Impressive though. But nothing of any major consequence.

00:43:19.580 - 00:44:14.780

The only other thing that I'll throw in at them just now, because it's appropriate at this context. I'm sorry, if I'm rambling, you must tell me to stop rambling. There was a point in the early 80s when Friend had to make a very difficult decision, Friend the organisation nationally, as to what they were going to do, we were going to do about AIDS. And whether we were going to try to run the AIDS crisis ourselves or deliberately avoid it and encourage others to set up AIDS-related organisations.

00:44:14.780 - 00:44:53.920

And we took the decision in about 82, early 83, that we would back off from AIDS, let other people get on and do that. Okay. And various organisations got set up. One that you'll probably have come across, the Terence Higgins Trust. Another you'll have come across, the London Lighthouse. They didn't exist in the early 80s, they only came into existence as the 80s went on.

00:44:55.460 - 00:45:28.580

And Friend withdrew and said, no, no, we're going to specifically continue to deal with people who have difficulties over sexuality and we're going to train volunteers to assist them to make sense of da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And that's what we did and continued. Now, where does that take me to? Yeah, in the middle of all that, I had various flings.

00:45:30.160 - 00:46:03.320

I had a boyfriend of sorts from February 79 through to September 81. That fell apart rather than split up, it just didn't happen any longer. Yeah. And in due course, I met him.

00:46:04.800 - 00:46:30.820

Him being for the tape. Met Christopher Ward. We met in May 84. Actually, funnily enough, we were both attending a service where another, since I say another because he is an Anglican cleric, another Anglican cleric was being introduced to a new parish.

00:46:30.820 - 00:46:58.100

And we were at the service that involved with that and we ended up meeting at that and sitting and gossiping in a pub and then going out together. Things moved slowly and steadily and developed and we became an entity after a fashion in our own way. We've been together for 31 and a half years. Congratulations.

00:47:00.020 - 00:47:44.120

It's a very long time these days. Yes, and I hope he isn't too fed up with me. Once I had published the book on Friend, once it had actually got published in February 89, and as I'd already said, I moved to London in the summer of 89, I pulled right back from any involvement in anything.

00:47:49.280 - 00:48:34.640

Largely because I had done the book, but that's not the most important thing. The most important thing was that I was moving to London and trying to maintain a relationship in the North East at the same time and it just didn't seem to be sensible to try and do a whole host of other supplementary activities that I had been doing. Added to which, I had been involved with Friend for 12 years, it was the time I'd done the book, it was the time I'd let them get on with it. I'd gone back onto the LGCM executive, as I said, in the late 80s for a couple of years, but that was for a very particular purpose.

00:48:35.640 - 00:49:36.360

It didn't actually involve me being involved in LGCM more than attending committee meetings and one or two difficult meetings in addition to that with church leaders. So I backed right away and for three years spent my time chasing up and down the country, chasing around the country because of course we were advising all over the place. By the time we got to 92 and I'd gone back here to Newcastle, to Northumbria as it had become, I had no real interest in getting involved again in Friend. I maintained my membership of LGCM, I kept my – friendship is not the right word with Richard Kirker.

00:49:39.440 - 00:50:24.900

Richard is a very fine chap. Organising one's way around his prickles takes some time. And occasionally, particularly if one is of firm views oneself, the prickles don't work terribly well. But I think he did a surprisingly good job in keeping LGCM going the way he did.

00:50:26.420 - 00:50:54.160

There will no doubt be others who, with the hindsight of history, will say that he ought to have done this or that or the other at various points in his history and they may or may not be right. But he kept it going and it survived. That's the important thing, it survived. Yes, changing attitudes came into existence largely as a result of a row. I understand I wasn't involved.

00:50:54.980 - 00:51:05.840

Between him and – what's the changing attitudes chap's name? Colin. Colin Coward. Yes, he was. It's Jeremy Timmons now, isn't it?

00:51:05.940 - 00:51:45.700

Yes, but Colin Coward was changing attitudes right through from the mid-90s through to two or three years ago. So for 10 or 15 years, Richard and Colin did not get on. Efforts to try and get them to relate to one another, including efforts by me but not only by any means, much more importantly by other people, failed. And the two organisations went in slightly different directions.

00:51:46.880 - 00:52:27.100

I think in lots of ways that was probably a good thing because it meant that there were two organisations appearing to do much of the same work. But in certain contexts, particularly in the context of how the Church of England was developing, there was only one part of what LZC was into. There could seem to be two different approaches to that from within a liberal-strogradical perspective. And that's no harm, particularly on occasions when they could be persuaded to agree.

00:52:29.080 - 00:53:10.780

Which meant that there was a bit more force and effort, particularly over the outcome of the 1998 Lambeth conference when the two did relate to one another and with others and make something of a show of what a farce that conference was. So I then backed out of those things and became a middle-aged human being. Which is no bad thing. No. And as you've gathered, I've been involved in various organisations.

00:53:10.800 - 00:53:42.780

You've had your fingers in many pies, it has to be said. I have, and I'm pleased about that. Because I take the view that I have the background and the ability to take some sort of involvement in all sorts of voluntary organisations. Having chosen, if that's the right word, and we could get into a discussion about it but I don't want to at this point.

00:53:43.360 - 00:54:14.820

Chosen not to have children and therefore not spending time, money, effort looking after children apart from godchildren and cousins' children and things like that. Therefore I devote a portion of my time to various organisations that appeal to me. Yeah, very laudable. And become your children. I mean, yeah, that's just the way of it, the way these things happen.

00:54:15.440 - 00:55:01.420

And I think that if I hadn't, no, I don't know where that's going. I would have become very, very, very much sort of a dead in the hole third rate academic and it would have been very, very boring. I didn't, I became a second rate academic and slightly more interesting. Talk to me briefly about that difficult period in LGCM, St Botolph's and being thrown out and that whole episode.

00:55:01.560 - 00:55:20.040

Do you know anything about that episode at all? I do, but I'd like it for the tape if you could provide background. My understanding of that is that Malcolm Johnson, the rector of St Botolph's, a very fine man, very, very fine man. I don't even know whether he's still alive.

00:55:21.400 - 00:55:53.240

No idea. Had a partner called Robert who was an accountant, who was involved at the beginning of LGCM but very much in the background. He provided the places for us to meet. He found us the meeting at the Sir John Cass School for the opening first meeting and things like that. I mean because he was a governor and he got it all sorted and it was all lined up and all that.

00:55:53.780 - 00:56:12.000

And he did all of that sort of background stuff. He was also fairly friendly with Jim Cotter. I don't know whether that's true, I think that they became friends as a consequence. Forget that bit.

00:56:14.100 - 00:56:42.040

And when it came to finding somewhere to put in the office, he said, well you could go up in the tower. Have you ever been in St Botolph's? No. There is, in the tower, the last time I was there was the early 80s.

00:56:44.260 - 00:57:08.600

And getting there was a nightmare and I never tried it ever again. It was up a winding staircase with a rope that you had to hang on to like grim death. And you went round and round and round until you got to the top. And when you got to the top you had this big room.

00:57:11.000 - 00:57:24.280

Yes, about the size of this end of this room. But it would have failed all disability access. Absolutely, and everything else. Yes, of course, it just was impossible.

00:57:24.920 - 00:57:45.520

And Richard of course could leap up and down these stairs like nobody. And that was his office. And I remember it being a well organised office space. He had got it all sorted and he knew where everything was and all the rest of it.

00:57:47.900 - 00:58:13.940

But it was impossible for meetings, for me anyway. And so we met in the church downstairs, we met in some other bit of the church, wherever it happened to be appropriate. Yes. We apparently, though we didn't know it, we the committee didn't know it.

00:58:16.780 - 00:58:53.500

We were there only on the say-so of the rector. I actually think that I was given to understand that we had the agreement of the rector and wardens, which is the legal entity. But then the Archdeacon of London got hold of this. And he was a man of very, very firm views on the gay issue. Very, very firm.

00:58:54.820 - 00:59:18.180

And he simply turfed us out. Just like that? We got a stay of execution by going to the courts. And there was to be a hearing. Now were these the church courts or were they the civil courts?

00:59:18.580 - 00:59:53.480

I think they were church courts. But we got a stay till we could get our arguments sorted. And somebody in a fairly senior position tried to get us all to negotiate. Malcolm Johnson was in a very difficult position because he was the man in the wrong, apparently.

01:00:01.140 - 01:00:27.900

It went on for about a year. But it was very clear we were going to lose from the word go. It was very clear that the only way we could win was by the Archdeacon of London backing down. And there was no Bishop of London to tell him to back down, no sensible Bishop of London.

01:00:28.340 - 01:00:46.560

A sensible Bishop of London would have told him to back off. So we were heaved out. And Richard managed to get himself into, dear God help us I can't even remember the name of the place. Oxford House.

01:00:52.080 - 01:01:06.820

Which was part of the style of Richard. He knew somebody who knew somebody who was chairman of the trustees or something. And somebody said something to somebody and it was all sorted within a month. And in we went and that was the end of it.

01:01:07.100 - 01:01:21.720

And we were there from 1989 until 2013 I think. 2014. 25 years. 25 years in Oxford House.