Before Stonewall: Dave's Interview Clip 3 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Dave's Interview Clip 3 of 3
Reflecting on changes to the legislation affecting military gays, David ends his interview in a happier place but also has a warning for the future.
Though he's been out of the military for a long time, in this extract David finds it wonderful that the ban on gay servicemen and women has at last been lifted. He adds a note of caution, however, since he knows that the average serviceman hasn't changed that much in the thirty years since he was a soldier. He says it would still take a very brave young gay man or lesbian to come out in the Army, adding that if he was in the same situation, he'd still choose to remain living discreetly, and just do his job.
Reflecting that he's had a great time overall since leaving the Army by having a wild time travelling to gay 'hot-spots' and meeting Martin, his partner since 1976, David says he would hate to see things return to how they once were. Though envious of young gay men and women today, he feels that they need to be aware that people, who were once just like them, lived at a time when homosexuality was taboo, illegal and repressed by a society that hated them.
David ends by saying that things today aren't perfect, but they are still much better than thirty years ago, and that young gays need to be aware that it was within living memory that the oppression of homosexuals led to Dachau and Auschwitz.
David was born in Birmingham in 1948. His father worked in the aircraft industry and his mum was a housewife. David grew up with two sisters and a brother and they enjoyed a happy childhood.
On holiday in Yorkshire, when David was seven, he was sexually assaulted by a Station Master, but was too scared to tell his family about it. At the same time, he began to realise that he was attracted to other boys and had numerous sexual contacts with other boys at school.
Leaving school without any academic qualifications, David joined the Army at 16, becoming a bandsman playing the clarinet as well as serving in Germany and Northern Ireland. He had a number of covert sexual encounters during his army career, but it was when, as he admits, that he failed to follow his own rules of propriety and 'betrayed his trust', that David, who by then was a senior NCO, was reported, court-martialled and discharged from the army in 1973.
On leaving the Army, David was now free to pursue an openly gay life and met his life partner, Martin, in 1976. They have been together for over 30 years, and they now live in Luxembourg.
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GLAM Before Stonewall: LGBT Oral History Project
This fascinating and important collection, recorded onto videotape, contains the testimonies, in the form of interviews, from individuals of varying ages, backgrounds and ethnicities from across the LGBT community.
‘Before Stonewall: An Oral History of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community’ was a Heritage Lottery Funded project organised in 2003 by a Brighton-based organisation 'Gay and Lesbian Arts and Media', otherwise known as GLAM.
The project sought to record for posterity the first-hand recollections of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people from across the United Kingdom and beyond, of a time before the events in New York’s Greenwich Village which culminated in the Stonewall Riots of 1969. This was a time which was very different, and in many respects more oppressive for homosexual and transgender people, than the one we’re familiar with today.
This fascinating and important collection, recorded onto videotape, contains the testimonies, in the form of interviews, of over one-hundred individuals of varying ages, backgrounds and ethnicities from across the LGBT community. With recollections that reach back as far as the 1920s, what all of the interviews describe and reveal is the whole gamut of human experience, from the deeply tragic to the exhilaratingly joyous - all from the perspectives of a section of society that has often been considered to be ‘different from the others’.
Journalist Charlotte Cooper, who worked for the gay press at the time, co-ordinated the project’s video-recording with volunteers and conducted many of the interviews herself. Charlotte describes her time on the project as both a revelatory and profoundly moving experience.
Screen Archive South East has made available from across this collection a total of eighty four extracts from thirty individual interviews. Together they give an insightful and first-hand account of what life was like for LGBT people, both in the United Kingdom and abroad, and in both the years before Stonewall and after.
75 videos in this collection
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Before Stonewall Summary: Charlotte Cooper Clip 2 of 4
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Before Stonewall Summary: Charlotte Cooper Clip 3 of 4
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Before Stonewall Summary: Charlotte Cooper Clip 4 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Jenny's Interview Clip 1 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Jenny's Interview Clip 2 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Jenny's Interview Clip 3 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Eddie's Interview Clip 1 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Eddie's Interview Clip 2 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Eddie's Interview Clip 3 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Chris's Interview Clip 1 of 1
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Before Stonewall: Peter's Interview Clip 1 of 2
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Before Stonewall: Peter's Interview Clip 2 of 2
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Before Stonewall: Anthea's Interview Clip 1 of 1
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Before Stonewall: Geoff's Interview Clip 1 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Geoff's Interview Clip 2 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Geoff's Interview Clip 3 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Rex's Interview Clip 2 of 6
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Before Stonewall: Rex's Interview Clip 3 of 6
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Before Stonewall: Rex's Interview Clip 4 of 6
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Before Stonewall: Rex's Interview Clip 5 of 6
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Before Stonewall: Rex's Interview Clip 6 of 6
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Before Stonewall: Roger's Interview Clip 1 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Roger's Interview Clip 2 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Roger's Interview Clip 3 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Roger's Interview Clip 4 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Jane H's Interview Clip 1 of 5
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Before Stonewall: Jane H's Interview Clip 2 of 5
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Before Stonewall: Jane H's Interview Clip 4 of 5
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Before Stonewall: Jane H's Interview Clip 5 of 5
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Before Stonewall: Jacky's Interview Clip 1 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Jacky's Interview Clip 2 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Jacky's Interview Clip 3 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Jacky's Interview Clip 4 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Jane T's Interview Clip 1 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Jane T's Interview Clip 2 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Jane T's Interview Clip 3 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Jane T's Interview Clip 4 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Sue's Interview Clip 1 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Sue's Interview Clip 2 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Sue's Interview Clip 3 of 3
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Before Stonewall: David's Interview Clip 1 of 3
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Before Stonewall: David's Interview Clip 2 of 3
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Before Stonewall: David's Interview Clip 3 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Joe's Interview Clip 1 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Joe's Interview Clip 2 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Joe's Interview Clip 3 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Michael C's Interview Clip 1 of 2
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Before Stonewall: Michael C's Interview Clip 2 of 2
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Before Stonewall: John's Interview Clip 1 of 3
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Before Stonewall: John's Interview Clip 3 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Michael's Interview Clip 1 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Michael's Interview Clip 2 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Michael's Interview Clip 3 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Millie's Interview Clip 1 of 6
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Before Stonewall: Millie's Interview Clip 2 of 6
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Before Stonewall: Millie's Interview Clip 3 of 6
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Before Stonewall: Millie's Interview Clip 4 of 6
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Before Stonewall: Millie's Interview Clip 5 of 6
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Before Stonewall: Millie's Interview Clip 6 of 6
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Before Stonewall: Donald's Interview Clip 1 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Donald's Interview Clip 2 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Donald's Interview Clip 3 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Donald's Interview Clip 4 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Sapphire's Interview Clip 1 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Sapphire's Interview Clip 2 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Sapphire's Interview Clip 3 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Sapphire's Interview Clip 4 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Peggy's Interview Clip 1 of 1
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Before Stonewall: Patricia's Interview Clip 1 of 1
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Before Stonewall: Dave's Interview Clip 1 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Dave's Interview Clip 2 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Dave's Interview Clip 3 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Charlie's Interview Clip 1 of 1
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