Our Local LGBT+ History

News clippings from 1972 tell us that Keele University students had a Gay Liberation Front Group and there was also what appears to be a separate group listed as “Potteries” in Gay News. This post features various clippings from the Evening Sentinel and Gay News.

In 1972 police targeted the Keele Gay Lib Soc as part of a wider campaign against local gay men. Over over the last eight months police had been compiling a dossier of all known gays in the Potteries.

A Lesbian Support Group was founded by women through the North Staffs Gay Switchboard in 1981 and operated for nine years until 1990. A few years later three women formed a gay women’s group which held meetings for more than a decade. In 2006 women volunteers established “The Pink Link” with regular events and social meetings.

The PGCA formed in 1979 to provide support and social opportunities for local LGBT+ people, while also working to challenge the stigma they faced. Members raised funds to establish our first local “Gay Centre” in 3 Hillcrest Street, Hanley.

The North Staffs Gay Switchboard was founded in 1977 at Keele University, the name was later updated to The North Staffordshire Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Switchboard.  The tremendous contribution made by the volunteers of our local Switchboard over a period of thirty years deserves to be remembered.

In 1998, the New Vic Theatre commissioned Michael Cashman to direct Kiss of the Spider Woman to mark the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The play explored gay themes and political dissent in the year that The House of Lords had voted against an equal age of consent.