Language

Abstract

In 2009, a group of gay men in Manchester under the title ‘Out in the City’ got together to record their memories of growing up in Lancashire in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.¹ Now pensioners, they remembered various aspects of life, from childhood and schooling to first love and heartbreak. These memories give invaluable insight into the experiences of working-class men in the post-war period, but also pose challenges for the historian, as they test our historical and historiographic understandings of the concept of sexuality in the period before decriminalisation. What all the men had in common was a sense that neither they, nor those around them, had the sense of a language or identity to explain the desires of their youth. Looking back with the hindsight of the gay rights movements and from the sexual landscape of today, these men were keen to highlight a reluctance in their communities to speak of being gay or queer, or of homosexuality at all.² Some even went so far as to say that gay men did not exist in the working-class world that they inhabited, outside of the odd wayward vicar or teacher who appeared in the tabloids.³ These limited examples were seen as middle-class and therefore belonging to a different breed — something entirely separate from the world evoked in these working-class oral histories. These Manchester men lamented this ignorance and the attendant invisibility that this brought to their sexuality, and came to the conclusion that their past contrasted unfavourably with their present. The story so far is a seemingly obvious one: that before decriminalisation, life could be extremely difficult and opportunities scarce for men who desired other men.