Donations to gay causes
2007
“Although my club (Subway City) is no longer a gay club, it’s frequented by straight people, I still use all the money we raise for charity, about £60K a year, to gay charities (except Children in Need) and the money I make is donated to the political scene, there’s gay somewhere involved. If there’s not gay in it I’m not involved. I’m not so involved in the local gay things so I’m able to spread it wider, particularly down at Westminster. I was involved in the first few fund-raisers for Stonewall at the Royal Albert Hall. I’ve acquired a substantial amount of race horses, now based in France, though then here, but I would donate my race horse to someone for the day and we could raise substantial funds that way, and they could keep the prize money, so we managed to raise lots of money, and Stonewall has been the backbone of our national things. It needs people and there are quite a number of people like me, up and down the country, not so many from the commercial sector because quite a lot of people would be frightened to put their political views out there, commerce and politics don’t mix. I have stood on the stage with a microphone and said, ‘If you are gay you cannot vote conservative, not at the moment, we’ve got to get Labour in, get all our rights, get Clause 28 repealed’ etc. I’ve done it in written articles, in magazines, on Channel Four, Radio 5, all the local TV and radio over the years and thoroughly enjoyed the politics.
Contributed by: Bill Gavan, 56