I joined the Navy almost straight from school, arriving in the bitter winter of 1986 to start months of training, and loads of new adventures.
I knew very quickly that I’d made the right decision for my career, and passed out in the summer of 1987. That’s where it all started to go wrong, when I headed to a civilian university and found out very quickly that I was gay.
Friends old enough to remember the Cold War will know how hard that was, because I was very young, and I knew nobody else in the forces who was gay, and I was leading a full-on double life. None of my student friends knew I was in the Navy, and none of my service friends knew I was gay.
It didn’t take long for that to have a serious impact on my life with the stress and dishonesty and bizarre situation making my life more and more complicated.
It didn’t last that long, and in 1988, after outing myself, much to my surprise I was arrested, transported to HMS Nelson and interrogated in the most graphic and horrific way for two full days. I had no support, no care was offered, and the consequence was a ghastly forced outing to my family, and broken relationships that took years to mend.
Navy friends were interviewed and asked if they were gay, and warned that staying in touch with me would damage their careers.
It took me many years to feel the confidence and strength to talk about what had happened.
Like many of us, there are still episodes from that time that I find hard to revisit for my own sanity. When you’ve slept inside a roll of discarded office carpet in central London to avoid going home, you become sensitive to the damage the ban did. I was finally sacked because my “intended lifestyle was incompatible with that of a serving naval officer”.
It took a while, but in the end, I became political. I join the wonderful Rank Outsiders and made new friends who understood. I founded the Armed Forces Legal Challenge Group in 1994, and wrote We Can’t Even March Straight (Vintage 1995) which became the catalyst for 6 years of tough campaigning to see the ban on lesbian and gay service people lifted.
Now I am thrilled to be back supporting LGBT+ veterans as Chair of Trustees.
I am looking forward to building on Craig’s campaigning work, and helping the team at Fighting With Pride grow into an organisation that will be here to support veterans for the long term.
There are LGBT+ veterans retiring now who joined after the ban was lifted, and for me, that means the role that Rank Outsiders once filled of fellowship as well as support is hugely important, expect to hear from me about that on a regular basis.
