• Send us Mail
  • Follow us on Twitter
  • Join our Facebook Group
  • Subscribe to our RSS Feed
  • Search Site

Polari Magazine

  • Home
  • Up Front
    • Editorial
    • Clementine: The Living Fashion Doll
    • Polari Safari
    • WTF? Friday
    • Bulletin Board
    • Polari Facts
  • Features
    • Interviews
    • Features
    • Gallery
    • Opinion
    • Heroes & Villains
  • Community
    • Oral Histories
    • Coming Out Stories
    • Relationships
    • IDAHO
    • LGBT History Month
    • Blogs
  • Reviews
    • Books
    • Film and Television
    • Music
    • Stage
    • Visual Arts
    • Classics: Books
    • Classics: Film and Television
    • Classics: Music
  • About
    • About Polari Magazine
    • Contributors
    • Contact

You are here: Polari Magazine / LGBT History Month / LGBT History Month Heroes – Day 14

LGBT History Month Heroes – Day 14

14 Feb 2013 / Comments Off / in LGBT History Month/by Wendyl Harris

To celebrate LGBT History Month, 2013, Polari is publishing a daily series of LGBT Heroes, selected by the magazine’s team of writers and special contributors.

LGBT History Month Hero Dudley Cave

Dudley Cave – Activist
by Wendyl Harris
………………………………………………………………………………………….

One of Dudley Cave’s many claims to fame was that he was in Bridge Over the River Kwai. No, not the film, the actual World War II Japanese POW camp.

A pacifist at heart, Dudley was torn between registering as a conscientious objector and joining up to fight the atrocities of Nazism. He found himself posted to the Far East instead. Dudley told the story that in those days the establishment didn’t care who you were and what you did with whom, they needed bodies to fight; a not uncommon story as we’ve seen from the tragic fate of Alan Turing, trusted with the nation’s security in wartime, reviled and persecuted in peacetime.

Dudley was one of an estimated 250,000 LGBT people who served during the war. He said they didn’t really have any homophobia then, everyone knew he was ‘queer’ so what was the point.

But Dudley’s exploits didn’t end there. Once home he continued to live openly as a gay man despite the risk of blackmail or arrest in an era when homosexuality was a criminal offence and persecution was rife. In 1954 he was sacked from his job for being gay, though in the same year met his life long partner Bernard Williams, an RAF veteran. They were lovers and activists for forty years until Bernard’s death in 1994.

I was lucky enough to meet and get to know Dudley back in his days at London Lesbian and Gay Switchboard, where he was one of the founder members in 1974.

His awareness of the struggles facing bereaved LGBT partners in a society that gave them no legal recognition – exclusion from a lover’s funeral, eviction from a joint home, denial of inheritance – led Dudley and Bernard to found the Lesbian and Gay Bereavement Project in 1980, winning the battle for charitable status when the Charity Commission had initially wanted the word ‘gay’ removed as offensive. The Bereavement Project was to become a vital community resource during the AIDS pandemic.

Dudley was also a member of the Unitarian Church and played a key role in the early ’70s in the Church’s advocacy of gay rights, securing ordination for LGBT people, and blessings of same-sex relationships. I was in the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and we had wanted to ‘saint’ Dudley, a celebratory ceremony held to honour the great and good in our community, but his role as a Unitarian made him uncomfortable agreeing to this.

Despite his own wartime experiences, Dudley’s pacifist and religious beliefs made him a leading figure in the peace and forgiveness initiative with Japan. He lectured extensively and was involved with establishing the Peace Temple near the River Kwai.

By the 1980s he had ‘unfinished business’ – the ban on Lesbians and Gays in the military. He also took on the Royal British Legion who condemned the idea of gay remembrance as ‘disgusting’ and ‘offensive’, and refused to acknowledge that LGBT people had fought and died for their country too. Dudley participated in Outrage! Queer Remembrance Day laying a pink triangle wreath.

I had some of my best days listening to his stories and learning of our heritage while on the phone lines with Dudley. He taught me so much about love and forgiveness. Sometimes, when I am tempted to despair over our petty internal squabbles and fragmentation, I always think of Dudley. Back then they didn’t have computers or as good an understanding of community diversity – the word ‘gay’ was a generic term for everybody, or as Dudley would say, “My dear, we didn’t know any better then”; but they knew what it felt like to be different, to be ostracised. There weren’t hundreds of pubs and clubs and groups but there was a sense that family, our Queer family needed to care for each other, build and value a world together. It’s a life none of us might be enjoying today but for Dudley Cave.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Tumblr
  • Pinterest
Tags: bernard williams, dudley cave, lesbian and gay bereavement project, lgbt history month 2013, london lesbian and gay switchboard, outrage queer remembrance day

Related Posts

Did you like this entry?
Here are a few more posts that might be interesting for you.
Related Posts
LGBT History Month Heroes – Day 7
Our LGBT Histories: Music – Day 13
LGBT History Month Heroes – Day 1
LGBT History Month Heroes – Day 16
LGBT History Month Heroes – Day 6
Our LGBT Histories: Music – Day 18
Our LGBT Histories: Music – Day 4
LGBT History Month Heroes – Day 19
LGBT History Month Heroes – Day 20
LGBT History Month Heroes – Day 10

Search Polari

Latest Posts

  • Polari Magazine 2008-2014December 3, 2014 - 6:16 pm
  • Tearing Up Their Map: An Interview with LambDecember 2, 2014 - 2:45 pm
  • Future Islands • GigDecember 2, 2014 - 1:41 pm
  • Puppets with Attitude (at Christmas)December 1, 2014 - 6:30 pm
  • The Aesthetic of Voyeurism: Interview with Antonio Da SilvaDecember 1, 2014 - 1:25 pm
  • Broke With Expensive Taste • Azealia BanksNovember 28, 2014 - 3:59 pm
  • Royalty Strutting on an American College Stage: Miss and Mr. Gay ISU 2014November 27, 2014 - 2:59 pm
  • Bright Light Bright Light: Everything I Ever WantedNovember 26, 2014 - 11:15 am
  • Jaime Nanci And The Blueboys: ‘Toy’ TalkNovember 25, 2014 - 4:09 pm

About Polari Magazine

Polari Magazine is an LGBT arts and culture magazine that explores the subculture by looking at what is important to the people who are in it. It’s about the lives we lead, not the lifestyles we’re supposed to lead.

Its content is informed & insightful, and features a diverse range of writers from every section of the community. Its intent is to help LGBT readers learn about their own heritage and to sustain a link between the present and the past.

Polari is designed to nurture the idea of community, whether that be social and political, or artistic and creative. It is your magazine, whether you want to read it, or whether you want to get involved in it, if you're gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, or queer.

Polari Magazine is all these: it's a gay online magazine; it's a gay and lesbian online magazine; it's an LGBT arts and culture magazine. Ultimately, it is a queer magazine.

Latest Posts

  • Polari Magazine 2008-2014December 3, 2014 - 6:16 pm
  • Tearing Up Their Map: An Interview with LambDecember 2, 2014 - 2:45 pm
  • Future Islands • GigDecember 2, 2014 - 1:41 pm
  • Puppets with Attitude (at Christmas)December 1, 2014 - 6:30 pm
  • The Aesthetic of Voyeurism: Interview with Antonio Da SilvaDecember 1, 2014 - 1:25 pm
  • Broke With Expensive Taste • Azealia BanksNovember 28, 2014 - 3:59 pm
  • Royalty Strutting on an American College Stage: Miss and Mr. Gay ISU 2014November 27, 2014 - 2:59 pm
  • Bright Light Bright Light: Everything I Ever WantedNovember 26, 2014 - 11:15 am
  • Jaime Nanci And The Blueboys: ‘Toy’ TalkNovember 25, 2014 - 4:09 pm

Twitter

Tweets by @PolariMagazine

Archive

  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • July 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • May 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
© Copyright - Polari Magazine - Wordpress Theme by Kriesi.at
  • scroll to top
  • Send us Mail
  • Follow us on Twitter
  • Join our Facebook Group
  • Subscribe to our RSS Feed
Website Privacy & Cookies