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