‘Recently I forgot I was gay because I was too busy doing something else.’ The words of Colm Toibin, the Irish novelist resonated for me because reading them 35 years after I had first come out I realised that I was lucky enough to forget that I was gay most days. Something which had been […]
Author: chriscreegan
A cautionary tale for progessives
In May 1998 at the age of 37, I was elected to Tower Hamlets Council. Although I’d been involved in the Labour Party since I’d joined as a 19-year-old student I had lived in the borough for just two and half years, having moved into my small terraced house in Bethnal Green at the end […]
Finding hope and fighting back
Twenty-seven years ago today the Berlin Wall fell. It was the defining political moment of my lifetime. Until today. Unlike today it was a moment, to coin a phrase Barak Obama would use later, of audacious hope. The other 9/11 in 2001 came pretty close as a defining moment but it was surely the worst […]
The truth about gross indecency
In 1978 I had sex with a man for the first time. I was 17 and the encounter took place in a public toilet. Not something to shout about perhaps. But it’s a moment I was reminded of by John Nicolson’s Bill to pardon gay and bisexual men historically convicted of sexual offences that are […]
PrEP Not a whiff of homophobia but a stench
The row over PrEP is a chilling reminder to many of us of a time we thought had passed. In the early 1980s news began to emerge of a ‘gay plague’ sweeping America. In 1982 AIDS claimed its first life in the UK when Terence Higgins died. My late partner Lawrence who died in 1995, […]
After the Named Person judgment
The debate about the Named Person scheme hasn’t been pretty for a while. But it took a new ugly turn this week. And it’s one that should concern us all. The debate has long been a noisy one, not just loud, but shrill. You could be forgiven for not knowing that the scheme was actually […]
How Long Lost Family reeled me in
I was sceptical about Long Lost Family. The programme began in 2011 and I missed most of the first two series. I dipped in and out a little because I thought I ought to. I was chair of an adoption agency and I knew that each time the programme went out there was a spike […]
We have changed normal
We haven’t changed the world but we have changed normal. And Justine Greening’s appointment as Education Secretary today is a remarkable indicator of that progress. Achieved in just one generation.
On writing and endeavour
‘We could stretch our legs if we’d half a mind But don’t disturb us if you hear us trying To instigate the structure of another line or two Cause writing’s lighting up And I like life enough to see it through’ From Writing by Bernie Taupin on Elton John, Captain Fantastic and the Dirt Brown […]
Pink embers in the ashes
Not everyone feels hopeless about today’s European referendum result. Those on the winning side feel hopeful that they have ‘their country back.’ We have been told repeatedly that theirs is an outward, globally focused hope. But it feels to me like a brittle, hard hope. A cold, contorted hope which far from looking out at […]