Making History

On the tube to Golders Green,

an Anti-Nazi League badge

on my baggy jumper,

you sat reading Gay News.

The Telegraph reader muttered

‘queer’ and you just looked up

and said ‘Yid’ and stared, no one

dared say another word.

1979, Jeff ‘Bunny’ Dudgeon came

to stay. Lawyers crammed round

the kitchen table while Greta, 92,

our Jewish landlady, stood

on her doorstep shouting at Zionists,

her accent thick with German.

“Get off my doorstep you filthy Fascists!”

and I made endless cups of tea.

Meanwhile on TV Paisley ranted

and raved, “Save Ulster from sodomy!

We’ll have no poofters here!” Too

late, the tide had turned. Another year,

and in a court at Strasbourg

the British government lost, we won.

Rayya Ghul lives and works in East Kent.  She performs poetry in Folkestone with a group of poets called the Fabulous Females