Everyone looked butch at the Old Mo
1984
The second person Inge told was a friend she shared a house with, who knew a woman who knew some lesbians in a group ‘Women Oppose the Nuclear Threat’. This friend invited her to the meetings, then she was invited to a pub, and generally built up knowledge and a small social network. She lived in Selly Oak and spent a lot of time walking home from the Moseley area. She got invited to the ‘Old Mo’ (Old Moseley Arms), where lesbians used the back pool room. The next time she decided to go alone, but in the meantime, the lesbians had had a row with the landlady and no-one was there that night so she went home!
Later Inge socialised at the ‘Old Mo’ in the pool room. “The women there were mostly radical feminist intellectual types. Dress code (in the mid-late 80s) was Doc Marten (boots), jeans, plain shirts with waistcoats, checked shirts and spiky hair. Some of the more radical had hair shaved up the sides or Mohicans. It had definitely moved away from butch/femme roles of 1960s, “We all looked butch; I’d occasionally wear a tie”.
Contributed by: Inge Thornton, 46