STEPHEN CLISSOLD & ANDREW LUMSDEN
Solicitor’s agent Stephen Clissold, 69, and partner Andrew Lumsden, 77, an artist, take a trip down memory lane, to the beginning of their 13- year romance and the LGBTQ movement
What do you love most about each other, and what are you particularly proud of the other for?
S: Like me, Andrew adores books, and I am proud that he [ cofounded] Gay News. I used to buy it from a news stand outside Victoria Station before I even knew who Andrew was. We met in 2006, but we don’t live together, which is probably the success of us — I am impossible and so is he [ laughs].
A: His voice. I’ve always fallen in love by sight, but this is the first time I fell in love by voice. The gay men’s reading group was meeting in my house, and I got a phone call, from Stephen, who’d I never met, saying, “I’m at Stockwell Tube, I’m completely lost, can you help?” I told him I’d pick him up. What does Pride mean to you? S: When I started going on the marches in the late Seventies it was much more politicised. That part of it has gone, sadly. It’s OK for us [ at the moment], but the pendulum could swing the other way and there are plenty of countries where we’re still being persecuted, publicly or otherwise.
A: In this country, [ London] Pride came in 1972 and it was the under- 21s in the Gay Liberation Front who organised it. Those young men were [ technically] criminals. So, the UK’s first Pride was organised in the summer of 1972 by criminals.
S: For criminals.
Andrew, were you one of the organisers of GLF? A: I wasn’t, but I was on the first of our marches in London. I was 28. The thing that most amuses me is that there was no need for barriers. It was just a startled crowd not quite knowing [ what was going on] – for most people in 1972, gay meant jolly, so this was the jolly liberation going by. But the cops knew and they turned up. One of them gave us a huge win — my first LGBTQ Met Police officer! Do you think the younger generation of LGBTQ people are missing something because they haven’t necessarily had to fight for their rights?
A: They’re missing an education. Nobody is taught what our past is, what our international status is.
S: The other funny thing is how the words have changed, they’re coming full circle, like queer.
A: It’s wonderful. At one of the first meetings at Gay Liberation Front, an elderly gay guy said: “Until we can all be happy to call ourselves queer, we won’t even be beginning to win.” Well, nobody wanted to be called queer for a good 35 to 40 years after that. The predictive power of just one person.