Queer Men and Networks of Communication in Northern Ireland Before the 1970s

Abstract: Northern Ireland is commonly known today as the most homophobic part of the United Kingdom, where the strength of conservative religious beliefs and moral purity politics has held back both the legal and social acceptance of LGBTQ+ people. What little queer history that has been written for this jurisdiction focuses on the recent past: the era that saw the coexistence of the Troubles, an ethnonationalist conflict that raged between 1968 and 1995, and the birth of a gay rights movement. The nuances of the period that preceded the outbreak of both violence and activism have so far been obscured. Both popular and academic conceptions of Northern Ireland’s queer trajectory have anticipated the intense homophobia of the later twentieth century, and so failed to appreciate the diversity of experiences that could exist. In this article we build on transnational and translation studies of the history of sexuality to explore the ways in which the lives of queer men were shaped by knowledge created or obtained beyond the borders of the country. If intense local sectarianism between Catholic and Protestant communities is the most notable feature of Northern Ireland’s history, that does not mean it was shut off from other cultures or experiences. Queer Northern Irish men moved to and from cities abroad that had larger queer scenes, particularly London, and brought home new conceptions of sexual identity and intimacy. They also obtained queer novels and sexological treatises, published as far afield as New York, and used such books to inform how they understood their own desires. Using a wide range of sources, both from the criminal archive and ego documents such as letters, memoirs and diaries, we show how the relative public ignorance about same-sex desire in Northern Ireland—often willful—meant a variety of queer friendships and romances could flourish.