Earlier this month ‘Liberating Love’ took place in Central Croydon, to celebrate LGBT+ History Month. The exhibition and associated workshop programme juxtaposed the history and impact of Croydon-based queer activists Clare Truscott and Ray Harvey-Amer, alongside a new commission of contemporary portraits of some of Croydon’s LGBTQ+ community.
We had the pleasure of creating the Liberating Love visual identity, and were very much inspired by banners and graphics from Pride marches and protests against Section 28* in the eighties and nineties – many of which were depicted in the exhibition’s archive photography.
What I didn’t know when I started working on ‘Liberating Love’ was that Clare Truscott was actually a graphic designer herself, and designed the Pride programme three years in a row, between 1989 and 1991, when she was part of the Pride Organising Committee.
I simply couldn’t pass up the opportunity of a chat with Clare about that period of her life as a designer.
Julia: Firstly, tell us a bit about your career as a graphic designer – day job versus voluntary projects.
Clare: I have a Graphic Design degree from Preston Polytechnic (now University of Central Lancashire). I came out while I was a student there and would have liked to have stayed living up North. It was a very small friendly scene where everyone went to the same club.
However Thatcher was busy closing the North and there were no jobs. Norman Tebbit said if you can't find a job 'get on your bike'. So in 1984 I headed to London to find a job in publishing. My first job was at Octopus Books, which had a decent salary. I worked there for a couple of years, then went freelance, mostly working on children's books. I was working from home when I was active with Pride from 1988 to 1991.
Julia: To give some context to the era you were the Pride designer, how would you describe the political climate for the queer community at that time?
Clare: For me it was an exciting time, discovering all the Lesbian nightlife in London. I was living in a lesbian flat share. I used to go to the Gay’s the Word lesbian discussions where I made many friends. I wasn't a member of any organisation or union then, but I went on lots of marches – for the miners, against nuclear weapons, for the disappeared, against racism, against apartheid, free Nelson Mandela. Lots of protests. I had supported the 'COAL NOT DOLE' campaign and often used to see LGSM collecting outside bars.
I hardly ever met or mixed with gay men. That was until 1987, when the Tory Government used blatant homophobia in their election campaign and then snuck a clause into an otherwise dull Local Government Act, banning the promotion of homosexuality. That really brought all the community and others together. I went on all the ‘Stop the Clause’ marches. We felt united, we felt confident. However, we lost. It became law in May 1988, naming our households as 'pretended family relationships'. The defeat felt devastating. I thought this was only the beginning and next the Tory Government would want to round us up into camps and eradicate us. It was the height of the Cold War and the AIDS crisis. Bleak times.
Julia: How did you become part of the Pride Committee?
Clare: At Pride in 1988 they appealed for more people to join LAGPOC (the Lesbian and Gay Pride Organising Committee as it was then called). My girlfriend and I joined. For the next three years Pride took over my life. It was hard work with meetings every week, all year round. Pride started each year in debt and we slogged hard to fundraise any way we could think of – benefits, events, bucket rattles, selling badges and 'Winterpride'. It was before the internet. We had no office, no phones, no staff, no grants. Only a hateful climate. Plus local councils could no longer give us the use of rooms or parks for free because of Clause 28*.
Julia: When creating the Pride Programmes, what was the process?
Clare: There was a small team from the committee putting the magazines of '90 and '91 together over a few days. This was in my living room on my new Macintosh 2CX and memory limited what you could do. You still needed a repro house to scan and drop in the images. The design was whatever I could pull together at short notice with no money. We begged people to write articles, donate photos and cartoons, all without pay, for the cause. I worked with whatever we had to hand. It raised thousands of pounds for Pride. It was our biggest national publicity for the Pride event too. In 1990 my then girlfriend, me and our dog, drove around the country in a hired transit van delivering the magazines to the Pink Paper's local distributors in different towns and cities to take to their local pubs and clubs.
Julia: Who decided on the Pride motifs each year?
Clare: The Pride logos were the result of an annual public competition that the Committee voted on. The logos were used on badges and merchandise to raise cash to help put on the annual event for free. They usually all featured the year and pink and black triangles. The triangle is what the Nazis had made gay people and others wear in the concentration camps, and we reclaimed it with Pride. The logos would be printed on T-shirts, bags, etc, without any words as they sold better that way and the point was to raise funds to put on the events. T-shirts wouldn't sell very well if they said 'lesbian and gay' on them. David Shenton drew a cartoon poking fun at that – it was exhibited in ‘Liberating Love’.
Julia: There feels like quite a significant shift in style between the three years’ programmes. The triangle took the lead as a motif in 1989 and 1990, but by 1991 it was less prominent. Was there a particular reason for that?
Clare: When I joined the committee the annual 'souvenir programme' was a tabloid-style paper with a 2-colour cover and black and white inside pages printed on newsprint. It was made on a tiny Macintosh Plus on 3.5" floppy discs and was my first experience of using a computer. After that we thought we might raise more money by selling adverts if it was a magazine format with some full colour adverts. This was before the concept of the 'pink pound'. There were no adverts for consumer products, no big companies wanted to even sell us vodka or cars. All the adverts were from gay businesses.
I used rainbow colours for the magazine front cover in 1991. The Gilbert Baker rainbow flag symbol was popular in the US at that time, but most gay publications here had been in black and white up until that point, because colour printing was of course more expensive. Really though, the rainbow didn't gain popularity here in the UK until a bit later on. I think it was in the late nineties when an enormous 6-colour rainbow flag was used on the Pride parade for the first time.
Julia: Do you have a favourite from the issues you designed?
Clare: It was all so long ago! I don’t think any of them are my best design work. So much of them was bodged together in all-night sessions, but they achieved what I set out to do. They raised money and awareness. They spread the word of Pride.
I enjoyed learning about the history of Pride by designing the '89 paper. That's when I learned about our queer history from those who had created it. Much of what we did in the eighties and nineties hasn’t even been archived online yet. That's why I am so keen to pass on that knowledge.
Thank you to Clare for chatting with me.
Clare Truscott is an out and proud old dyke. A survivor of Thatcher’s dystopia, she protested, and marched a lot in the eighties and nineties. She is now enjoying her free bus pass with plenty of time for volunteering. She is an organiser with the Brixton Umbrella Circle and the ‘Not Going in the Care Closet!’ campaign to raise awareness about the abuse of LGBT+ people in the care system.
*Note on language – Section 28 and Clause 28 are both used in this feature, but they refer to the same local government act in 1988. ’Clause’ was used before it was passed, and ‘Section’ was used afterwards.
Liberating Love was curated by Norman Mine and supported by Croydon Council.
Archive photography courtesy of Clare Truscott. Close-up of exhibition wall with Section 28 badge and Clare at the exhibition by Ali Zaidi. Pride programmes and badges, courtesy of Bishopsgate Institute archives. View the full Pride programmes: 1989 here; 1990 and 1991 here.