The Hall–Carpenter Archives (HCA), founded in 1982, are the largest source for the study of

gay activism Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movements are social movements that advocate for LGBT people in society. Some focus on equal rights, such as the ongoing movement for same-sex marriage, while others focus on liberation, as in the ...

in Britain, following the publication of the

Wolfenden Report The Report of the Departmental Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution (better known as the Wolfenden report, after Sir John Wolfenden, the chairman of the committee) was published in the United Kingdom on 4 September 1957 after a suc ...

in 1957. The archives are named after the authors Marguerite Radclyffe Hall (1880–1943) and

Edward Carpenter Edward Carpenter (29 August 1844 – 28 June 1929) was an English utopian socialist, poet, philosopher, anthologist, an early activist for gay rights Warren Allen Smith: ''Who's Who in Hell, A Handbook and International Directory for ...

(1844–1929). They are housed at the

London School of Economics , mottoeng = To understand the causes of things , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £240.8 million (2021) , budget = £391.1 mill ...

, at

Bishopsgate Library Bishopsgate Library is an independent, charity-funded library located within the Bishopsgate Institute in the City of London. Description The library's particular strengths include printed and archive material on London, freethought and the labo ...

– (press cuttings), and in the British Library (Sound Archive) (oral history tapes).

Projects

These projects in partnership with the Lesbian and Gay Newsmedia Archive.
1967 and All That
The

Sexual Offences Act Sexual Offences Act (with its variations) is a stock short title used for legislation in the United Kingdom and former British colonies and territories such as Antigua and Barbuda, Crown dependencies, Kenya, Lesotho, Republic of Ireland, Sierra L ...

and the Gay Community :* To produce a touring exhibition throughout 2007 to raise awareness of gay history and the significance of the 1967 Act. :* Provide access to previously inaccessible historical material by cataloguing archives of the

Homosexual Law Reform Society The Homosexual Law Reform Society was an organisation that campaigned in the United Kingdom for changes to the set of laws which criminalised homosexuality at the time. History In 1954 the Conservative government set up a Departmental Committee ...

, the

Albany Trust The Albany Trust was founded in the United Kingdom as a registered charity in May 1958 to complement the Homosexual Law Reform Society (HLRS). It takes its name from The Albany, in Piccadilly, London, where J.B. Priestley and his wife Jacquetta ...

, the

Campaign for Homosexual Equality The Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE) is a membership organisation in the United Kingdom with a stated aim from 1969 to promote legal and social equality for lesbians, gay men and bisexuals in England and Wales. Active throughout the 1970s ...

, plus the papers of

Peter Tatchell Peter Gary Tatchell (born 25 January 1952) is a British human rights campaigner, originally from Australia, best known for his work with LGBT social movements. Tatchell was selected as the Labour Party's parliamentary candidate for Bermon ...

and

Bob Mellors Bob Mellors (1950 – 24 March 1996) was a British gay rights activist. Biography In 1970 Mellors went to New York and became involved with the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) becoming friends with Aubrey Walter during demos outside the Women's Hou ...

. :* Research at the

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the Briti ...

Newspaper Collection to identify newspaper articles in the British press in the period leading up to the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, and beyond. :* Run a programme of outreach work to include illustrated talks on the 1967 and All That project across the

London boroughs The London boroughs are the 32 local authority districts that together with the City of London make up the administrative area of Greater London; each is governed by a London borough council. The present London boroughs were all created at t ...

and to interested community groups.
Queer Britain 1953–1988
The Gay Community and the Straight Press :* Outreach and cataloguing project completed 2005

History of the archives

Hall–Carpenter Archives at the Bishopsgate Institute

1980

The Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE) established the ''Gay Monitoring & Archive Project'' (GMAP) to collect evidence of discrimination and police arrests from all parts of the United Kingdom. It received agency press cuttings and collected other newspaper clippings sent in by its members. GMAP later became separate from CHE and one its founders, Julian Meldrum, moved all the papers into his London flat. Its first funding was a grant made to the ''

National Council for Civil Liberties Liberty, formerly, and still formally, called the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL), is an advocacy group and membership organisation based in the United Kingdom, which challenges unjust laws, protects civil liberties and promotes hu ...

'' (NCCL) from the ''Manpower Services Commission''.

1982

Julian, with others, set up a limited company called the ''Hall–Carpenter Memorial Archives Ltd'' and in 1983 registered as a charity. Trustees included Oliver Merrington (Chair of the archive) and Michael Mason, publisher of Capital Gay. The Albany Trust, donated its archives and press cuttings, and the NCCL provided essential meeting and working space in

Southwark Southwark ( ) is a district of Central London situated on the south bank of the River Thames, forming the north-western part of the wider modern London Borough of Southwark. The district, which is the oldest part of South London, developed ...

, with financial assistance from the ''Lyndhurst Settlement''. It also received personal donations from members of the lesbian and gay community.

1984

The archives moved to its first rented office accommodation in Mount Pleasant, London. A major funding bid resulted in a grant of £32,000 from the

Greater London Council The Greater London Council (GLC) was the top-tier local government administrative body for Greater London from 1965 to 1986. It replaced the earlier London County Council (LCC) which had covered a much smaller area. The GLC was dissolved in 198 ...

(GLC). Part of this was to set up a Media Project to monitor television and radio broadcasts, and Lorraine Trenchard and Mark Finch were employed to run this. The archives moved to the new London Lesbian & Gay Centre (LLGC) in

Cowcross Street Cowcross Street is a street in London. It runs east–west, from St John Street in the east, to Farringdon Road in the west. Farringdon Station is on the corner of Cowcross Street and Turnmill Street. The Castle is a public house opposi ...

, Farringdon (at that time the largest lesbian & gay centre in Europe). Early publications included The Gay News Index (1982); ‘Declaring an Interest’ – a projected catalogue of gay images on television in Britain, (1982–83); and A.I.D.S. through the Media (1984). Work started on indexing the "News Library" of press cuttings, the records of gay organisations and a "Pink Thesaurus" was created by volunteers.

1985

The archives employed Margot Farnham (until 1988) to coordinate a volunteer group for an Oral History project. Thirty-five interviews were carried out using new sound recording/transcribing equipment. The tapes and transcriptions are now in the

British Library Sound Archive The British Library Sound Archive, formerly the British Institute of Recorded Sound; also known as the National Sound Archive (NSA), in London, England is among the largest collections of recorded sound in the world, including music, spoken word a ...

, part of the British Library. The Oral History project culminated in two books "Inventing Ourselves" and "Walking After Midnight" (see References). Around this time Kenneth Barrow had established the "National Lesbian & Gay Survey" within HCA. This was a

Mass-Observation Mass-Observation is a United Kingdom social research project; originally the name of an organisation which ran from 1937 to the mid-1960s, and was revived in 1981 at the University of Sussex. Mass-Observation originally aimed to record everyday ...

style survey engaging the opinions of "ordinary" lesbians and gay men on various vital or controversial contemporary issues, anthologies from which were later published by Routledge.

1986

The archives’ GLC funding terminated and the Lyndhurst Settlement helped with funding. ;1987 A fundraiser was employed who wrote to around thirty charitable trusts – but none replied favourably. It looked unlikely that the London Lesbian & Gay Centre would receive funding and its closure was imminent, the Directors made a deliberate choice to try to house the Archives in a university, preferably in London.

1988

Core collections, were moved to the Archives at the London School of Economics (LSE) with the active support of the Archivist, Angela Raspin. A number of gay activists, such as

and John Chesterman, donated personal collections. The HCA at LSE have continued to grow with new accessions, and have been extensively sorted and indexed by Sue Donnelly and other professional archivists in her team.

1989

The Hall–Carpenter Archives Management Committee was in abeyance. ;1991 Oliver Merrington, one of the original Directors, took over as the Honorary Secretary/Treasurer, arranging meetings, dissolving the Limited Company, issuing occasional newsletters and drawing up formal agreements with the repositories. He arranged a regular donation of press cuttings from the monthly ''

Gay Times ''Gay Times'' (stylized in all caps), also known as ''Gay Times Magazine'' and as ''GT'', is a UK-based LGBTQ+ media brand established in 1975. Originally a magazine for gay and bisexual men, the company now includes content for the LGBTQ+ comm ...

''. The Press Cuttings Collection proved much more difficult to house, as the LSE archive had a policy of not taking newspaper cuttings, the collection remained in the LLGC building in Cowcross Street, although the early cuttings relating to the start of the AIDS epidemic were moved to the Terence Higgins Trust. The cuttings then moved to SIGMA (an organisation conducting sexual research in relation to HIV) in

Brixton Brixton is a district in south London, part of the London Borough of Lambeth, England. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London. Brixton experienced a rapid rise in population during the 19th centu ...

. A professional archivist, Mark Collins, joined the volunteer team and started a re-sort of the cuttings collection which had not been touched for a decade. With his then partner Micheal Anthony Chan arranged their transfer in 1995 to the Greenwich Lesbian and Gay Centre, in South East London.

1997

Simon Bradford, the librarian of the Cat Hill campus of Middlesex University was at this time creating a new Collections Room for a number of historical archives, and offered space to HCA. In February the transfer was arranged and a formal ten-year loan agreement signed with Middlesex University. Oliver Merrington was appointed Honorary Research Archivist by the university, and held weekly volunteer sessions there to organise the cuttings.

1998

On 2 June the collection was opened by a Member of Parliament,

Evan Harris Evan Leslie Harris (born 21 October 1965) is a British Liberal Democrat politician. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Oxford West and Abingdon from 1997 to 2010, losing his seat in the 2010 general election by 176 votes to Conservative ...

(standing in for

Stephen Twigg Stephen Twigg (born 25 December 1966) is a British Labour Co-op politician who was Member of Parliament for Enfield Southgate from 1997 to 2005, and for Liverpool West Derby from 2010 to 2019. He came to national prominence in 1997 by winn ...

MP). The photograph collection from ''

Gay News ''Gay News'' was a fortnightly newspaper in the United Kingdom founded in June 1972 in a collaboration between former members of the Gay Liberation Front and members of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE). At the newspaper's height, circula ...

'' is also at Cat Hill, as well as a growing collection of lapel badges, T-shirts, printed carrier bags and banners from marches and demonstrations.

2001

The collection at Cat Hill was renamed The Lesbian and Gay Newsmedia Archive (LAGNA).

2011

LAGNA (press cuttings and book collection) moves to the

.LAGNA website
/ref>

Footnotes and references

Key sources

Books

* * * *

Articles

* * Note: South East Film and Video Archive is now calle
Screen Archive South East
Viewing copies of the tapes are available at th

* *

External links

LSE Hall–Carpenter Archives

Catalogue of the Hall-Carpenter Archives at LSE

Lesbian and Gay Newsmedia Archive (LAGNA)
at Bishopsgate Library {{DEFAULTSORT:Hall-Carpenter Archives Archives in the City of London Archives in the London Borough of Camden LGBT history in the United Kingdom 1982 establishments in the United Kingdom LGBT museums and archives London School of Economics LGBT culture in London Oral history