This post discusses Kris Kirk, radical drag, and the Gay Liberation Front.
I have written in previous posts about Kris Kirk. Kris Kirk was born in 1950 in Carlisle, was christened as Christopher Pious Mary Kirk, and grew up and went to school in Carlisle. He attended the University of Nottingham, and after working in a variety of jobs, including theatrical dresser, he became a journalist. He wrote, amongst other subjects, about pop music, and wrote openly too as a gay man. His best music journalism has been collected in the book, A Boy Called Mary: Kris Kirk’s greatest hits. Kris Kirk was also profiled in the television series, “Six of Hearts”, in 1986.
With his partner, the photographer, Ed Heath, he brought out a book on drag and gender, called Men In Frocks, in 1984. Later he and his partner moved to Wales, but in 1991, Kris Kirk became ill with AIDS, and he died in 1993.
When Kris Kirk was a student at the University of Nottingham, he founded the Nottingham Gay Liberation Front, and took part in radical street theatre. I recently came across an informative LGBT history blog by Tony Scupham-Bilton, which discusses Kris Kirk and drag in Nottingham. You can read Tony’s posts which mention Kris Kirk here.
I won’t recount all the details from Tony’s blog, as his own posts speak for themselves. But suffice to say, that it involves the Nottingham Gay Liberation Front and a gay street performance of Robin Hood, with Kris Kirk in drag as Maid Marian! Delegates from the Soviet Union also make an appearance in the story. This was in 1975, and The Campaign for Homosexual Equality was also involved, with perhaps other groups. You can read here a reminiscence by Heather Cook, who also took part in the street play, dressing up as the Major Oak.
Gay street theatre, which produced Nottingham’s Robina Hood and her Gay Folk, was part of a wider vigorous culture of “zaps”, often by the Gay Liberation Front. Zaps were public pro LGBTQ demonstrations. Nowadays, we would call it direct action, although zap is a memorable term. Kris Kirk describes zaps of the early 1970s in Men in Frocks. These involved wearing outrageous costumes and interrupting a Festival of Light Rally in 1971, and street theatre in London, as GLF theatre goers went through Kings Cross tube station to the Duchess theatre in astonishing costumes, and also handed out leaflets.
Clearly these actions, whether protests, demonstrations, or street theatre challenged the public and made people think. They also used dressing up and cross dressing as confrontation radical tools.
The Gay Liberation Front was founded in 1970 at the London School of Economics, and people held its first meeting there. The LSE has a good collection of material relating to this and to LGBTQ issues in its Hall-Carpenter archives, and has also put up relevant photos, such as the one at the head of this post, in its collection on Flickr. I recommend look at these interesting photos. Maybe somebody will recognise themselves or others!
Kris Kirk’s activism in Nottingham in his student days in the 1970s shows that GLF or CHE type activism percolated around the country, and gives a flavour of the LGBTQ culture of the time.
Acknowledgements:
https://queerstoryfiles.blogspot.com/
https://queerstoryfiles.blogspot.com/search?q=kris+kirk
Tony Scupham-Bilton’s blog on LGBT history and Nottingham.
http://www.nottsrh.webeden.co.uk/che1/4541266245
Mentions Kris Kirk and zaps, and the CHE (Campaign for Homosexual Equality)
http://www.nottsrh.webeden.co.uk/map-gay-street-theatre/4591137851
Heather Cook’s reminiscences of the alternative Robin Hood play.
https://www.leftlion.co.uk/read/2017/july/notts-lgbtplus-network/
David Edgley mentions the CHE and Robina Hood and her Gay Folk in Nottingham.
https://www.lse.ac.uk/library/collection-highlights/lgbt-collections
Discussion of LGBT material in the LSE archives, with a photo of of a Gay Liberation Front badge.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/lselibrary/albums/72157677631429890/page1
Photos in the LSE Hall-Carpenter Archives and in the Women’s Library.
LGBT+ Language and Archives 