Wilde remembered at Clapham Junction

By Carole Barclay

 

Clapham Junction is the final destination for comrades coming by rail to the Party Centre. A train departs every 30 seconds and about 110 trains per hour pass through the station throughout the day. Said to be the busiest station in the world, it heaves with commuters during the rush-hour. And some will stop and stare at the dedication to Oscar Wilde on Platform 10 that recalls the humiliation suffered by the famous Victorian playwright on that very spot in November 1895.

Nowadays Oscar Wilde is remembered as the poet and playwright whose career was destroyed when he was jailed for two years for “gross indecency” under the repressive homophobic laws of the time. His plays, his wit and his outrageous vanity made him the talk of the town. But his relationship with Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas sparked off the lasting animosity of Bosie’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, that led to Wilde’s downfall.

These days Wilde is a gay icon – partly because his plays, which have stood the test of time, can still draw in the crowds, but largely because he was a victim of unjust laws that sent him to jail, ruined his health and forced him out of the country after his release from prison.

Wilde’s failed libel suit against Queensberry that led to the criminal prosecution has been the subject of many books and screen adaptations. The trial was just the beginning of his final humiliation. Part of it was when he had to endure the jeers of the mob for 30 minutes whilst waiting as a prisoner on Platform 10 for a train to Reading jail.

He told Bosie: “On the November 20, 1895 I was brought down here from London. From two o’clock till half-two on that day I had to stand on the centre platform of Clapham Junction in convict dress, and handcuffed, for the world to look at.

“I had been taken out of the hospital ward without a moment’s notice being given me. Of all possible objects I was the most grotesque.

“When people saw me they laughed. Each train as it came swelled the audience. Nothing could exceed their amusement. That was, of course, before they knew who I was.

“As soon as they had been informed they laughed still more. For half an hour I stood there in the grey November rain surrounded by a jeering mob. For a year after that was done to me I wept every day at the same hour and for the same space of time.”

Laws have changed but homophobic attitudes linger on. This is why the local LGBTQ+ forum took up the campaign to put the Wilde plaque on Platform 10. David Robson, the chair, said that at a time when people are still under threat because of their sexuality, the plaque would act as a reminder that hate crime is not tolerated in the rail industry.

“As a community forum we felt we had to respond to this historical wrong," he said.

"The Rainbow Plaque is a wonderful scheme through which we can use culture to make our hidden histories (good and bad) visible.”

The Oscar Wilde plaque was unveiled in July 2019 by the Mayor of Wandsworth, Cllr Jane Cooper. The Wandsworth LGBTQ+ forum conceived of the idea of the plaque during a screening of Rupert Everett’s Wilde biopic, {The Happy Prince}, at the Out at Clapham monthly Queer film club. The campaign was also supported by Studio Voltaire, a non-profit gallery and artist studios based in Clapham.

Dorchester Pride

By Carole Barclay

During the Hanoverian era the landed gentry spent some of their vast wealth on a ‘Grand Tour’ of Europe to gape at the ruins of ancient Rome and Greece, and started a craze for antiques that continues to this day. Their souvenirs ranged from the priceless Elgin Marbles that were more or less looted from the Parthenon in Athens, to the more modest statues, busts and coins that they gathered to adorn their stately homes and gardens. Some of these collections eventually ended up in public galleries such as London’s British Museum, which was established in 1753 to house the 71,000 antiques, books and other items that Sir Hans Sloane had amassed during his life-time.

But not all was deemed fit for public gaze. Items considered obscene, such as those of a homoerotic nature, were kept in closed rooms, like the British Museum’s ‘Secretum’, hidden to all but the chosen few until well into in the 1960s.

Now some of these ‘forbidden’ works are on display in the new British Museum touring exhibition Desire, Love, Identity: exploring LGBTQ histories, which opened at the Shire Hall Historic Courthouse Museum in Dorchester last week.

The life of Dorset’s famous lesbian poet, Valentine Ackland, is the theme of the guide to the display that contains ancient erotica from Palestine, Greece and Rome as well as more contemporary works from Japan. along with phallic pendants from the 19th and 20th centuries.

Mementos of the Emperor Hadrian and his doomed favourite, Antinous, are there along with a colourful deck of drag queen cards by Japan's Onskar Takashi from 1997, some line drawings by David Hockney and a display of campaign badges that show how the drive for equality has changed over time.

Containing around 130 items, the exhibition has been travelling around the country following its first display at the British Museum in 2017. It looks at how same-sex love, desire and gender diversity are an integral part of the human experience, and how this has been depicted differently through society throughout various times.

Members of Dorchester’s LGBTQ community are urging everyone to come and see the exhibition, which challenges visitors to question their assumptions about the past.

Entrance to the exhibition is via the museum, which charges a standard entrance fee of £9.50 for an annual pass with discounts for students and children.

The hall, which goes back to the 18^th century, was once the county town’s courthouse and it continued to serve as Dorset’s county hall until 1955. Visitors can see the old court and the holding cells, including the room in which the Tolpuddle Martyrs were held before their trial for attempting to form a farm workers’ union in 1834.

The Shire Hall Historic Courthouse Museum is open daily from 10:00 to 17:00, and the LGBTQ exhibition runs until 17^th November.

• Shire Hall Historic Courthouse Museum

Sex workers -- a queer perspective

By Thierry Schaffauser
GMB Sex Work and Entertainment Branch

WHEN THE sex workers’ movement was born in the 1970s it was women only and most of them were identified as straight. It is only in the last few years that more and more trans and male sex workers have been involved in the movement and that activists have brought new ideas influenced by “queer” theories.

Identity

Queer workers can very easily compare the similarities between LGBT phobias and the “whore” stigma. In both cases, we have to hide our identity or even to lie sometimes to avoid violence and repression. We are told that we need to be cured or rehabilitated.
The only way to be recognised is to accept the dominants’ rules, and sometimes some of us indeed accept and act as the victim the system expects us to be. The alternative is to take a big risk and claim your pride or at least refuse to accept the imposed shame. But those who refuse to be “rescued” will then expose themselves to repression. Being LGBT could send you to prison. Being a sex worker can also jeopardise your citizen’s rights such as parenthood, housing and protection from the police – and according to the way you work you risk getting jailed.
As homophobia serves as a gender police for men, whorephobia does the same for women. We are what we must not become when we are taught what a man or a woman is. We are those who betray their sex. The insult “queer” is the only limit to men’s sexuality and actions. The insult “whore” is also an instrument to control women’s freedom. Each time a woman transgresses the gender rules, she knows she will face the whore stigma. That’s why so many people will distance themselves from these identities even if it means fighting against us as persons.

Solidarity of minorities

Being a queer sex worker helps you to understand the intersection between different discriminations. We are working class women, queers, drugs users, HIV positives, transgenders and migrants. Our enemies often say that we do sex work because of a lack of choice. And indeed, as minorities we often don’t have the same choices and sex work appears as one of our only options. But when sex work is so repressed and criminalised, what is described as a lack of choice can also been seen as an economic strategy to get the resources we would never have in a system which excludes us.
As a migrant, I know I can work in any country and will always find clients. As a young queer I know I could leave my family and escape from a father’s authority. Without sex work I would never have been able to pay my tuition fees and have the same access to education. So instead of criminalising further the sex industry in thinking it will force us to do something else, why is the problem never looked at from the opposite side?
There are people who indeed have a lack of choices, but rather than taking away the sex work option in criminalising always more our clients or ourselves, we could once think about giving more options and more choices in fighting for minorities’ rights. But it is probably easier for the Government to claim being feminist in targeting prostitution while at the same time cutting single mothers’ benefits, deporting migrant workers and doing nothing against women’s economic apartheid.
Sex workers have a lot to bring to the labour movement. We have to build tools to avoid exploitation. Many of us used to work in hard low-paid jobs before choosing sex work and thus avoid now exploitation from a boss. We can choose when we want to work and not to wake up early in the mornings. We always ask to be paid first and we can have better incomes. But other sex workers work for escort agency managers or brothel keepers and can’t benefit from the same social protection as other workers gained thanks to our ancestors. This is the result of our division. Many workers keep thinking that we are not proper workers. The system divides us between the public and the private sector, the intellectual workers and the manual workers, and those who like sex workers are not even considered as workers. The system pushes you to think that at least you are not selling your body and that you are better than these prostitutes. But what are you selling?
The idea of separating our mind and our body doesn’t come from nowhere but from religion. Women used to be burnt as witches for selling their soul to the devil. Now they say sex workers sell their body. The consequence is always to reduce us to non-political objects who can’t make decisions for ourselves. The abolitionist ideology was born in the 19th century by the meeting of social Christian philanthropists and upper class feminists. Their will to reform us was for our own good for sure, but like when they wanted to educate the working classes or when they thought they brought civilisation to the colonies, they maintain a hierarchy between those who are the helpers and those who need the help.
What sex workers want is that you treat us as equals because we share the same struggle for our liberation, not as an under proletarian class who need to be saved. The emancipation of the workers must be the act of the workers themselves.