The rukus! cultural archive: ‘Black history and black LGBTQ history are one and the same’

Thousands of items including newspaper clippings, flyers and diaries – all pulled up from the extensive vaults under the London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) – are helping to tell of a history that has remained very much in the dark until now.

The relatively untold story of being black and LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) in Britain is being brought to life through pamphlets, posters, books, photographs and prints, audio-visual material and memorabilia as part of the archives of rukus! Federation Limited.

There are black lesbian fanzines from the 1980s created by poet Dorothea Smartt, works by club promoter, writer and activist Valerie Mason-John – also known as Queenie – from the 90s and Black Steam T-shirts – an adults-only men’s event held at a sauna in the 2000s.

The LMA spent two years categorising all the items – which date from 1976 to 2010 – to create the rukus! cultural archive, with the help of 30 volunteers. It’s the first of its kind to be held there and the first of its kind in Europe.

For artist and award-winning filmmaker Topher Campbell, who co-founded the archive, it’s an attempt to record stories that have often been historically erased.

Campbell tells Sky News: “The idea of being black was not associated with being LGBTQ. So, in this sense, the twin pillars of homophobia and racism conspire to invisibilise the community.

“But my experience as a young man was that it was a big community and it was really happening – club wise, community events, magazines, parties. I mean, there was a lot happening that wasn’t being seen.”

Adding that up until the early 2000s: “We were basically being barred from venues, barred from magazines our events were not being listed.”

Campbell, along with photographer Ajamu X deposited the rukus! Archive at the LMA in 2010 – and with items dating back to 1978, it speaks to a different culture than the one we live in today.

In a time when athletes like Dame Kelly Holmes and Colin Jackson have recently come out as gay, it’s cases like Justin Fashanu that motivated telling a different story – one that wasn’t about being a victim or problematic.

When Fashanu came out in 1990 he became the first professional footballer to ever do so. His revelation was met with homophobia from some camps, and he received little public support.

The late sportsman remained the UK’s only male professional footballer to come out publicly as gay until Blackpool forward Jake Daniels opened up about his sexuality in May this year.

Campbell says the archive is a way to document the largely forgotten positive activism taking place at the time: “What we’ve been saying from our own point of view is that there’s a space of joy, celebration, community and activism… We were there all the way through the HIV and AIDS crisis, organizing for ourselves, because the crisis was very much targeting white gay men and their activism. And we were forgotten, but we made sure that we had a stake in the pie.”

He flags that black gay activists like Mark Thompson and Dennis Carney were spearheading that movement within the community with HIV/AIDS organisations like Big Up who created events at Notting Hill Carnival, offering merchandise and access to healthcare for gay black men.

Campbell says: “We wanted to reflect the scope of community events that we’ve done for ourselves in terms of building that community.”

For the London Metropolitan Archives, collections like rukus! show how it has evolved post war – moving from focusing on institutions to including the individual experience.

And with 1,000 years of history in its collection, records from organisations like The Public Morality Council reflect just how broad the archive is and how attitudes have changed.

The Public Morality Council was an organisation that would patrol places like London’s West End independently auditing prostitution, cinema and what they saw was the evil of hypersexuality and homosexuality on wider society.

For Laurence Ward, head of digital services at the LMA, the juxtaposition demonstrates how collecting history has changed over time.

He tells Sky News: “You can see today that we were able to record people’s personal experiences in a very different way.”

He also says the LMA acts as the history of a city: “It’s the one place where lots of experience people have in different aspects of their life is pulled together and recorded.”

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For Campbell it acts as an intervention, making the black LGBTQ community’s part in recent history undeniable.

He concludes: “Black history and black LGBTQ history are the one and the same. We’re right in the middle of that history. And we need to acknowledge that in order to have a real understanding of what we are as black culture.”

Now a permanent part of LMA collection, the rukus! archive tells a unique story by recording how a how a community partied, how it found love and how it refused to be marginalised.

The London Metropolitan Archives are open at various times throughout the week, with numerous exhibitions also available to view online.