Coal Seams & Queer Dreams

The Market Gate Pub, Skelmersdale

words by Stephen Welsh

On any given day you can usually find me on a tram, train, or bus—headed to an arts, culture, or heritage venue, space, or event—wearing any number of different “hats.” Frequently these hats are literal, but most times they’re figurative, as I move from place to place as a creative freelancer. In early June 2021 I was on a bus, shooting through former coalfield and mill towns in-between Manchester and Leigh. With my committee member “hat” on, I was on my way to represent the National Lottery Heritage Fund North at the opening of the Revealing Wigan Archives project.

This multi-million pound project was jointly funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund North and Wigan Council, and its aim was to improve access to local archives housed in the Grade II listed Leigh Town Hall. This included an up-to-date local history exhibition, something within which immediately caught my eye—a display dedicated to “The Grandfather of the modern gay rights movement in Britain,” Allan Horsfall.

Allan was a Lancashire lad, born in 1927 under the shadow of Pendle Hill no less. For most of his astounding LGBTQ+ rights campaigning career—which lasted until his death in 2012—he was based in the North West, and during his time in Atherton he founded the North-Western Homosexual Law Reform Committee (NWHLRC) in 1964. According to Peter Tatchell, an- other formidable LGBTQ+ rights campaigner, Allan created the NWHLRC because he considered the Ho- mosexual Law Reform Society to be “...too London-cen- tred, aloof, intellectual, and closeted...”

With his National Coal Board clerk “hat” on, Allan and his partner Harold were entitled to live at a prop- erty in Atherton owned by his employer; an 1870s miner’s cottage on Robert Street, number three to be precise. In a bold move, he listed this address as the NWHLRC’s point of contact, and proceeded to distribute thousands of campaign leaflets. Labour MPs claimed that this would agitate their coal mining constituents, on the contrary, as Allan made clear in a recording for the Millthorpe Project in 2009, that he and Harold “...never had any repercussions from the public at all, no nastiness, no breaking windows, no shit through the letterbox, no abusive letters...”

Allan Horsfall's Cottage

Like Allan, I also lived at number three in a Lancashire town atop a coal seam. But I lived in Skelmersdale, in a 1970s semi-detached with my parents, older brothers, and sister. And of course, our Staffordshire Bull Terrier, Max. By the time I came out at the age of 17 in 1999—to little surprise and lots of love from my family—Allan was still fighting for LGBTQ+ rights at the age of 72, including battling to repeal Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988. As a queer kid growing up in the glare of this homophobic piece of Thatcherite legislation, it meant that LGBTQ+ youth couldn’t expect any support from councils or schools because they were barred from “promoting homosexuality by teaching or by publishing material.”

Section 28 was eventually repealed in England and Wales in 2003, but its discriminatory legacy not only affected schools, but other council—run services too, including galleries, libraries, archives, and museums. According to public historian Dr Claire Hayward “...15 years worth of collecting, exploring and celebrating LGBT histories was missed as a result of Section 28…” This meant that although Allan’s fight for queer liberation took place only several bus stops away from my hometown, it wasn’t until I was an adult that I was any the wiser about it.

Artists and Greater Mancunians, Al Holmes and Al Taylor, otherwise known as AL and AL, were similarly kept in the dark about Allan’s legacy. But in 2020 they were commissioned by Manchester Pride’s arts and culture programme, Superbia, to shed some light on it. Inspired by number three Robert Street, they took the coordinates of this legendary address and illuminated them in kaleidoscopic neon lights in a piece called Coordinates of Equality. It was displayed in AL and AL’s ICONS show—a celebration of local heroes—in the Galleries shopping complex in the very heart of Wigan.

Section 28 protestor in Manchester (2000)

Towns like Wigan and Leigh across the North of England are now embracing their LGBTQ+ heritage. Blackpool’s Grundy Art Gallery recently showcased images from Stuart Linden Rhodes’ archive showing the seaside town’s queer scene from the 1990s in the exhibition We’re Still Here! and projects like West Yorkshire, Queer Stories, and Pride of Place: England’s LGBTQ Heritage have highlighted the queer history and heritage of towns like Halifax and Huddersfield. 

After the opening, I didn’t head back to Manchester, which is where I live now with my husband Luke (and not at number three in case you were wondering), but I jumped on a bus towards Skelmersdale to pay my family a visit. Like lots of other queer people, I moved from a small town to a large city in pursuit of my dreams, but Revealing Wigan Archives and Coordinates of Equality serve as useful reminders that LGBTQ+ people not only survive but thrive, just like Allan did, in places outside of those instantly recognisable queer urban areas. As the bus snaked through towns and villages like Orrell and Upholland, with my curator’s “hat” on, I wondered just how many other LGBTQ+ stories were out there waiting to be revealed and illuminated.

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Stephen Welsh is a Cultural Practitioner and committee member of National Lottery Heritage Fund North.

image credits

Market Gate Pub - User 'Rept0n1x' at Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Alan Horsfall's Cottage - Pride of Place: England's LGBTQ Heritage. historypins.org.

Section 28 protestor - User 'Schmediator' at Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)