Squatting in History: Queer Pasts and the Cultural Turn

Abstract

For the third annual LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) history month in 2009 I gave a talk for the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association on Brixton’s gay squatting community in the 1970s and early 1980s. I drew on a new archive at the British Library of Political and Economic Science of leaflets, fliers, photographs, letters, diaries and over 90 hours of oral history testimony – material amassed by former squatters seeking to capture what for many of them had been a pivotal and life changing period in their lives. The sheer volume of material was overwhelming and I struggled to navigate a path through it for this 30-minute talk. I was anxious too about speaking to an audience that I knew would include former squatters I’d interviewed, others I hadn’t and also a new generation of queer activists. Before getting to my account of the community itself, I thus spoke first about the shadow histories that always accompany those that get told; about my wider project on queer domesticities in the twentieth century that partially explained my interest in the squats; and about my worries in addressing an audience that was also my subject: I was straying outside my Victorian and early-twentieth century comfort zone. After the talk the audience offered up more memories and stories, signposting areas I had missed or skated over – the drugs and the laughter especially, said one. Whilst I had carefully tried to identify continuities with earlier periods in the men’s lives and with family and community histories, some felt I had underemphasised their sense of rupture. Someone also challenged the formal set-up of the room: why was I speaking from a raised platform with chairs arranged in rows? (‘not my decision’, I defensively replied). It was a great discussion: warm, funny, generous and engaging; this was a history that mattered to the audience directly. And it was in this context that I began thinking about this chapter on the cultural turn – and so too about the role and efficacy of history in identity and community formation, about the ‘evidence of experience’ (Scott, 1991), and about my partiality, perspective and ability to ‘do justice’ to the squatters’ pasts. After all, I hadn’t even started school when they were addressing practically and politically many of the issues I was thinking about in the library now.