Uncovering the Story of My Great-Uncle: “Their Story Is Both Visible and Invisible”

By Christopher Bryant, Production Editor at LexisNexis Risk Solutions 

Pride is important to me because it is about maintaining visibility, celebrating the advances we have made, and becoming aware of what is left to achieve.

I am really interested in visibility this year because I recently found some old photographs belonging to my late great uncle. He died in 2005, and my grandmother had kept these, and when she died last year, they passed to me. I always had questions about my great-uncle as he lived with his mother until she died and spent his last years alone. I was told that he was disappointed in love. The photos told a different story.

"There is no one left now to tell me who this man was and what happened between him and my great-uncle. Their story is both visible and invisible."

Christopher Bryant's great-uncle and an unknown man, found in Christopher's grandmother's belongings. Estimated to be taken early 1950's

At first, I thought they were my grandmother’s pictures, and I wondered who all these men in their swimming trunks were. Then I found 4 photo booth pictures of my great uncle and another man. I realised they were all his photos. The photo booth strip pictures were so intimate – and after all, when he was in his 20s (in the early 1950s), the photo booth was the only place you could have a private picture taken. They looked like two men in love.

There is no one left now to tell me who this man was and what happened between him and my great-uncle. Their story is both visible and invisible.

It is interesting that the pictures were taken when LGBTQ+ rights started to change. In 1953 England, there were a series of high-profile cases about homosexual men –  from MPs caught in the act to the world of spies – and in 1954, a commission was set up to look into the legal status of homosexuality (and prostitution). 1957 the Wolfenden report was issued, and it concluded: “We accordingly recommend that homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private no longer be a criminal offence.” It took another ten years and a Labour government to decriminalise homosexual acts, and then only for men over the age of 21.

This is two years before the Stonewall riots, which is where so many people are taught that liberation started. The US narrative has hijacked the story, and that has meant that some of our history in the UK has been lost because it is effectively invisible. Pride is a great time to tell these other stories, diversify the narrative, and reclaim lost history. I recently told our ERG my great uncle’s story, or what little I have been able to work out, and I set it against this historical background. I hope that opened people’s minds to the importance of hearing stories and challenging the orthodoxy of the LGBTQ+ story.