History of London Friend

LONDON FRIEND 1972 – 2009

Friend was founded in London and Manchester in 1971 as a befriending offshoot of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE). CHE was campaigning for equality but members soon recognised that there was a need for a telephone helpline and social support groups to help those who were isolated and coming out. They took referrals from the CHE headquarters in Manchester and the Manchester University Homophile Society. A national network of volunteers soon evolved and at its peak Friend had 21 groups around the UK and Ireland. National Friend set out guidelines for the operation of the local groups and monitored standards. Each group was an independent body with its own patrons and support groups and offered a range of services appropriate to the needs of its local community.

Mike Launder, a social worker activist within CHE, led the formation of London Friend, which at first operated from the Earls Court flat of one of the founders. But it was soon receiving so many letters and phone calls that it moved to a community centre in Church Street, Westminster. The Chair of London Friend, Jack Babuscio, a New Yorker who had witnessed the Stonewall Riots, published a book in 1976, "We Speak for Ourselves", which stressed the need for social services and counselling organisations to be more aware of the presence – then often hidden – of gay people and our needs.

London Friend was separated from CHE in 1975: it became a company limited by guarantee but did not have charitable status. In 1975 London Friend secured an Urban Aid Grant from the Home Office, supported by Islington Council. It was the first ever government grant to a gay-led organisation, which was then considered so controversial that the Home Secretary Roy Jenkins personally steered the grant through. Friend in London and elsewhere then attracted national press comment and with as many as fifty phone callers an evening and social groups on most nights. London Friend moved to privately rented shop-front premises at 274 Upper Street, with rooms above for phone lines and meetings, and for the first time took on a full-time paid staff member, Roland Jeffery.

The Islington premises were opened by Graham Chapman, from the Monty Python team, called in at the last moment when special guest Maureen Colquhoun MP, who lived locally and who had intended to make her coming-out speech at the event, bowed to party pressure and cancelled. London Friend is now the oldest established LGBT charity in London. London Friend had no political affiliation and consciously recruited both male and female volunteers, though there was always a criterion that volunteers were themselves openly gay, lesbian or bisexual and positive in their attitudes to their sexuality.

London Friend’s phone helplines provided help with coming-out and other gay issues to callers from across London, and were backed up with free face-to-face counselling, support groups for young and for older people, and a library of gay and lesbian books. Calls also came from across the UK, especially when London Friend used some of its grant to advertise its service in the national press, including the Daily Mirror and the Sun. It must have seemed safer to call about gay issues from Scotland than to phone a local helpline where you might be recognised. We even had calls from Australia! All callers could remain anonymous if they wished.

There was more national coverage when London Friend provided a poster to advertise its services in the Borough’s public lavatories – in those days numbering 32 – alongside posters for STD clinics. Some gay people thought this presented a poor stereotype of gay people as lonely and desperate, but the response showed the advertising reached many who were married or who did not identify themselves as gay.

London Friend also started taking trainee social workers who earned their professional qualification, in part, by counselling those who contacted us. This was at a time when gay men and lesbian social workers could – and did – lose their jobs for being open about their sexuality, and was the cutting edge of changes in that profession. But in spite of having paid staff and professional trainees, London Friend was – then as now – an organisation largely run by devoted unpaid volunteers. Formal qualifications were not required and though some gay people came to us with complex problems that in some cases required legal or medical referral, many were merely isolated or damaged by social attitudes to their sexuality. What they needed most was the re-assurance they could get from meeting their peers: self-confident lesbians and gay men.

After the Urban Aid grant ran out London Friend survived on volunteer labour only, before being funded by the London Boroughs Grants Unit for many years. By the mid 1980s it was clear that London Friend’s constitution linking it with CHE was no longer appropriate, so a lengthy process updating it began, ultimately qualifying us for charitable status.

There were many social groups and non-commercial activities in the 1970s and early 1980s. Gay News was full of listings for special interest and social groups. While many gay men who contacted us were happy to enjoy the growing commercial gay scene in London, some might find going to a gay pub or disco frightening. So London Friend started social support groups, one for young men, Junction. Turning Point was established as a coming-out group for men who were gay, or thought they might be, and this broke new ground by meeting initially in other premises, and by having a rolling programme of topics on gay life. You could start anywhere on the cycle and stay through to the end. Some even went round twice! While Turning Point still meets, the group for young gays became redundant as more of them found it easier to come out as gay. The group for gay men continued for a long time, then went into hibernation, and has recently been resurrected as Matrix.

For many years, London Friend has had a banner and we have marched behind it at Pride. There were even specially printed T-shirts and badges for participants in the early days. We were very proud one year to be encouraged by our Chair, Ian Ferguson, who was on duty in his police uniform.

Despite the shoddy state of our Upper Street premises, we were a sought-after venue for other groups to meet. The London Bisexual Group met in our building on Friday evenings and the London TV/TS group was successfully established during our time in Upper Street, meeting every Saturday and Sunday night. They were glad to be able to bring their frocks in a suitcase and to change at London Friend before their meetings. Our phone-workers were glad too, as TV/TS organisers always brought cups of tea or coffee up to the phone room for those doing a shift on those weekend nights. The Beaumont Society, successor to the London TV/TS Group, still meets at London Friend.

London Friend’s time in Upper Street was brought to an end by the galloping inflation of house prices in London in 1986. Our building was sold twice in six weeks, each buyer putting up our rent until we could no longer afford to stay. We moved temporarily to offices above the Cheltenham & Gloucester Building Society in Seven Sisters Road. While there, we had an ambitious project to start a group for gays and lesbians with mental health problems. We appointed a qualified nurse as our co-ordinator but, despite his considerable efforts, we discovered that mental health patients did not want to attend a group exclusively for them. Then we discovered that Circle 33 Housing Trust had gone beyond the terms of their lease in subletting these rooms to us and we had to find new premises urgently.

In 1987, with the help of Islington Council, we found our present premises in Caledonian Road, which we rent from them. There was a bureaucratic hiatus in preparing the lease, resolved only when we wrote directly to Bob Crossman, who was the first ‘out’ gay mayor. Our Treasurer had wisely managed to salt away any surpluses over the years, so we had enough money to cover the cost of installing central heating and building the coffee bar.

We appointed two part-time co-ordinators to develop our services. We set up a support group for women coming out, and Changes is still meeting this need. Evergreens was started as a social group for older men, and Lesbians at Friend on Sundays (LAFS) for older women. Fusion was a successful social support group for gay men of different ethnic origins. These groups ran for many years. We also started Older Lesbians Network for older lesbians and, after it had been running for a long time, it seemed right to encourage it to an independent life. In the same way, a small group for gay prisoners provided support within prisons by sending gay newspapers and writing letters, until it too achieved its independence. We were asked to help train police cadets at a time when most gays did not trust the police to be impartial. Matthew Windebank, one of our volunteers, was booed by the cadets when he gave his first session, but he persevered, and awareness of the rights of gays and lesbians became an integral part of Metropolitan Police training.

Our face-to-face counselling service was reorganised to include an initial exploratory assessment followed, if appropriate, by 12 weeks of counselling. Realising that clients valued the professionalism of our counsellors, we started charging for their service. This seems to have reduced the number on missed sessions too. We also used to answer letters from people looking for support in coming out – a medium now entirely replaced by e-mail and the internet.

Our financial security was threatened some years ago when the London Boroughs Grants Unit decided to concentrate its funding for gay and lesbian work on one organisation, and it wasn’t us! Fortunately we received substantial bequests in the wills of three generous people, which helped greatly for some years, although by 2010 the legacy money will be exhausted and London Friend will need to secure funding from new sources in order to be able to continue its work.

We have tried to support our volunteers over the years with training and social occasions. Our first party, held at 274 Upper Street, was decorated with daffodils in cut-down plastic bottles and was a surprising success. We filled the Conway Hall and recruited some expert speakers for a training day on AIDS in its early days. More recently we had good attendance at a training event we organised on Transsexuals. MIND came to speak to us about mental illness, LGCM talked about gays and Christianity, and The Beaumont Society told us about its activities for TV/TS people.

Recent ventures are setting up Artworks for and taking over the Lesbian & Gay Bereavement Line, which runs on Tuesday evenings. In partnership with the Metropolitan Police we trained to encourage reporting of homophobic and transphobic crimes. With NHS Islington Primary Care Trust we set up a Stop Smoking Group and with MacMillan nursing we ran GMAC, a Cancer support group for gay men. Fusion, a new group for black and ethnic minority lesbian and bisexual women has started.

We provide a venue for Lesbian AA meetings and for Stonewall Housing interviews.

Dugan Cummings and Roland Jeffery, 25 August 2009

WOMEN AT LONDON FRIEND

While the majority (approximately two thirds) of volunteers, staff and service users at London Friend have been men, women have contributed very significantly to the organisation. There have been at least one woman Chair of the Management Committee and two Company Secretaries. Some of the paid staff have also been women.

There was a women’s helpline which ran alongside the main helpline. The women’s coming out group, “Changes” has been meeting at London Friend since the 1980s or earlier. Many women will remember LAFS – Lesbians at London Friend, a social group which large numbers of women attended, which eventually ceased meeting and was followed by another group, NextStep. Janet Chambers, who was a paid member of staff, together with women from the Greater London Council, set up the Older Lesbian Network, which originally met at London Friend. The network is still going, although it now meets in Camden. In the 1980s there was a black women’s group called Onyx at London Friend which was very popular. And the Lesbian AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) group, the only one of its kind in Europe, has been meeting at London Friend for the past twenty years or so, and still meets here every Saturday.

CAN YOU ADD TO THIS HISTORY?

If you have a story to tell or information to add, please get in touch with us. We would like to preserve our history, and hope to add to this short account. Please contact the London Friend office on 020 7833 1674 or email rita@londonfriend.org.uk.