THE GATEWAYS also known, affectionately, as 'the Gates' - was said to be the longest-running gay women's club in British history. Originally opened in Chelsea in the 1930s, it had, by the time it closed in 1985, outlived every lesbian club in Europe. For many women the Gateways was the only place they felt they could be themselves. As Maureen Duffy showed in New London Spy in 1967 (and in her best-selling novel, The Microcosm) the Gateways Club was Lesbian London. It also gave millions of cinema-goers their first glimpse of a lesbian venue, when the Gateways and its members appeared with Beryl Reid, Susannah York and Coral Browne in The Killing of Sister George in 1968. *
YET THE FULL STORY of the club has never been told. Situated just off the Kings Road, the Gateways was one place the hip and trendy had to be seen in Swinging London in the 1960s: frequented by Chelsea fashion designers, and by celebrities, straight and gay, from Diana Dors to Dusty Springfield. But even in the fifties, long before freedom was in fashion, the Gateways welcomed everyone who was rejected by mainstream society. Long-haired Chelsea artists painted frescos on its walls, black pianists played jazz there. Women on the game, men on the make: no-one was turned away by Ted Ware, the owner, and his wife Gina. Even men were welcome then, and from Quentin Crisp to Dylan Thomas, they relished its Bohemian atmosphere. By the 1960s, the club was increasingly run by the glamorous and feminine Gina with Smithy, a butch American woman who was usually assumed to be her partner.
MUCH OF WHAT IS known already about lesbian history focuses on political activism: but Jill Gardiner, in her book about women in the Gateways era, records many stories from ordinary women who saw campaigns for women's liberation and gay liberation as having little to offer them. In 80 previously unpublished interviews these gay women - as they often called themselves - and their male friends, recount how traditional butch-femme couples fought the challenge posed in the sixties by younger women in unisex dress; and why feminists sometimes got short shrift at the Gateways. They recall the outrage provoked by the Gay Liberation Front zap at the club when lesbian demonstrators pulled the plug on the jukebox and urged the exasperated Gateways members to come out of the closet. But feminists too recall happy times on the dance floor at the Gates. 'I left my feminism at the door when I came in,' recalled one, 'and just enjoyed that whole extraordinary buzz of being with hundreds of women like me.'
[WHAT WAS IT LIKE ? There are few photos ! What most women remember is the stairs; after you got in - either by already being a member or by waiting until someone else came along who would sign you in - the first hurdle was the staircase. It went down and down, emptying into a windowless cellar, thick with fumes and smoke, a room where all the faces already there would turn and look at you as you nervously paid your money to the dragon with dark hair seated at the desk. Many nervous hearts quailed - but you got used to it, eventually even looking out for familiar faces in the crowd, and exchanging a merry word with Gina once she had got to know you. A square room with a one-armed bandit in front of a pillar; a bar at one end and a juke box at the other. Ten paces would get you from one end to the other, past a few banquettes and faintly padded pews; the heat from the coal burning fire at the far end becoming stifling in winter. But, mercifully near the door to the toilets - which, could be relied upon to let in blasts of welcome fresh air from the back yard each time it was opened. There was a fan in the ceiling but it rarely worked, and through the brown gloom of the dark and nicotine laden air you could make out the pieces of mirror decorating the walls amidst oily daubs picturing well known club members, past and present. Everyone picked out the likenesses of Gina and Smithy on the wall near the bar....... val]
FROM THE 1960s TO THE 1980s, Kenric members regularly had the Gateways to themselves for a Monday night gathering, when the club was closed to other members. Usually held once a month (or, at their most popular, once a fortnight), the Kenric Nights were enormously popular with members. There was smoochy dancing on Valentine's Day and meetings with invited speakers - like agony aunt Claire Rayner who was invited twice - providing both a social evening for members as well as an introduction to the Club for women who would otherwise never have known that The Gateways existed , or who could still feel isolated even in a place where the strict door policy kept lesbians safe from abusive intruders and sight-seeing voyeurs.
GAY WOMEN disagree on the extent to which their lives have been transformed in the post-war years. A few are nostalgic for the secrecy and outlaw status of the past, and some contribute to the book only under pseudonyms, to conceal their identities from their employers, their families - or their husbands. One describes how she encounters much more hostility now than in the 1950s, because the increasing visibility of lesbians in the media has made her neighbours see her as rather more than an eccentric lady in trousers. Other women recall feeling liberated by the move to greater openness in the 1960s and 1970s, though some think that they benefited less from the pressure to come out, than from the widening economic opportunities and relaxation of social codes for women since the 1960s. Many are particularly struck by the availability of gay publications and media coverage since then, and by the more diverse images now shown on film and television screens.
Copyright Jill Gardiner MM
*UK release 1969 USA December 1968
Top picture - the door to "The Gates" looking north into the Kings Road.
Read more:
"From The Closet to the Screen: Women of the Gateways Club 1945 - 85" by Jill Gardiner was published in London by Pandora Press in May 2003. You can get in all good bookshops in the UK and also on amazon.com or amazon.co.uk
The Gateways 1983
Photo thanks to RE and Kenric This photo is copyrighted to Kenric and must not be reproduced without permission.
From Old Dyke 7, December MM
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