When people begin to look at their lives in a political context, official history is one of the first things to be challenged. The history that we are taught, of benevolent rulers and noble conquests, does not reflect the reality experienced by most working people. This is particularly true for lesbians and gay men. In most historical accounts, our lives are either utterly distorted or simply rendered invisible.
 
Working-class people and oppressed communities are using oral history as an important tool in reclaiming our past. Developed by radical researchers and community activists, oral history has been criticized by many academics as being too subjective. While deconstructing the ivory tower of official history, this grassroots approach allows people to describe their experiences on their own terms. It also provides opportunities for working-class people to see ourselves as part of a relevant and genuine historical continuum.
 
Walking after Midnight: Gay Men’s Life Stories is an important addition to the growing oral history movement. Along with a companion volume, Inventing Ourselves: Lesbian Life Stories, it is a project of the Hall Carpenter Archives, a London, England–based community archive of materials on lesbian and gay organizing. In Walking after Midnight, thirteen men of different ages and cultures discuss their lives as gay men from the 1920s to the 1980s. A testament to the pleasures, strength and resistance of gay men in the face of consistent bigotry, the book is particularly notable for its emphasis on accounts by working-class gay men.
 
Lesbians and gay men face discrimination in our working-class neighbourhoods, in our workplaces and in the labour movement. Violence directed at us is common. Many open or perceived lesbians and gay men have faced discrimination at work, from both management and co-workers. At a series of labour demonstrations against Brian Mulroney in Toronto this year, union leaders’ speeches invoked virtually every oppressed group, but lesbians and gay men were conspicuously absent of mention—despite large numbers of us participating in the rally. In the face of this invisibility, a book like Walking after Midnight offers a rewarding affirmation of gay men’s identities.
 
John Alcock, born in 1927 in industrial Birmingham, grew up in an alcoholic family in tight economic times. His experiences of harassment by co-workers in the factory where he worked as a teenager are not unlike some situations still faced by queers on the job today. Alcock recounts his time in the army during World War II, noting the loosening of societal restrictions that allowed for more opportunities for gay men to meet each other. His story is earthy and informative, telling of the meeting places, language and culture of the formative gay male communities of his time. Also detailed are the frequent threats of violence and police harassment. It is a chronicle of the pleasures and dangers experienced by gay men in an intensely homophobic time.
 
In 1968, Alcock became involved in the Homosexual Law Reform Society. This activism affected a shift in his political understanding toward socialism:
 
“Until then… it just seemed the natural thing to vote Conservative. I realize now that that came about because I was a waiter and I depended on the money that I picked up off the table. The more wealthy that people were… the more money that I made. I now realize how dreadfully wrong I was.”
 
Aged fifty-eight at the time of the interview, Alcock expresses frustration over the difficulty of getting by on his Social Security disability pension. As for many pensioners, after over forty years as a worker, his life options have been dramatically cut short.

The other life stories in this volume are equally rich. Dudley Cave was an anti-fascist in London in the 1930s. After surviving several years as a prisoner of war in Singapore during WWII, he returned to England and became involved in lesbian and gay politics, including the seminal Gay Liberation Front (GLF).
 
Kursad Kahramanoglu moved from his home in Turkey, where he fought for the recognition of gay rights in socialist organizations, to England, where he was one of the founding members of the Manchester Black Lesbian and Gay Group.
 
Glenn McKee, a gay man from Northern Ireland, discusses his experiences in the community as a disabled person. He also recounts police behaviour during their provocative raid of the Gays The Word bookshop, where he served on the board of directors.
 
In a moving section of the book five men remember the life of their friend Mark Ashton, who died of AIDS in 1987. Ashton was a member of the Young Communist League, and a tireless social activist. He founded Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, a group that provided direct support to the Welsh mining community of Dulais during the infamous miner’s strike that begin in early 1984. The miners returned the support the following year by traveling to London to march in solidarity at the front of the Lesbian and Gay Pride march.
 
Through humorous and touching recollections, the men bring to life both the political and personal sides of Ashton. His passionate commitment to working for social change, his playful and exuberant participation in London’s gender-bending underground club culture, and his friends’ love and grief are captured in this chapter.
 
The difficult task of transcribing and editing in-depth interviews has been handled well by the Gay Men’s Oral History Group. The book reads smoothly and the nuances and cadences of each man’s voice are preserved. Portraits by photographer Sunil Gupta complement the many home photographs that fill the collection. To the dismay of some lesbian and gay academics, the book does not contain a weighty introduction with definitive theoretical interpretations. Walking after Midnight presents gay men’s lives as valuable in and of themselves, rather than as fodder for someone’s PhD thesis. The book effectively allows gay men to speak for themselves, and this is its greatest strength.
 
—published by Our Times in 1991

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