One of the volunteer Menaces reviews The Log Books: Voices of Queer Britain and the Helpline that Listened by Tash Walker and Adam Zmith, and interviews Adam Zmith. Thanks to Faber & Faber for providing a copy of the book to review! You can read the book by visiting the Lavender Menace Archive, or purchase it from your favourite independent bookshop.
Review
Since 1974, Switchboard has been a well-known name amongst many queer people in the UK, taking a million calls in its first eight years of operation, and continuing its vital work into the 2020s, now taking an average of 16,000 calls per year. While its volunteers have saved countless lives through their ability to listen, comfort, and inform, their contribution to LGBTQIA+ history does not end there. Their grassroots archival work – in the form of meticulously logging every call taken – materially preserves the history that the volunteers and their callers were in the process of creating.
In ‘The Log Books‘, Tash Walker and Adam Zmith convey the profound sense of care; complexities of grief, pain, and survival; warmth and solidarity; and, at times, the problematic inequalities and bigotries within Switchboard and the community it served, with a deep sense of respect for, as they are called throughout the book, “our queer elders,” using a combination of the (anonymised) call logs themselves, interviews with former volunteers and service users, and their own personal experiences.
The authors are aware of the bitter irony of writing a book entwined with so much historical queer oppression in a time of escalating hatred, not to mention the all-out war on trans and non-binary people. Contemporary protests in support of trans rights are woven among accounts of battles fought decades ago (or perhaps less long ago than we are led to believe), defying the still-persistent liberal narrative of perpetual progress and “inclusion.”
There are also some mentions (albeit quite fleeting) of Switchboard’s own – to sugarcoat it – less flattering reflections of the society in which it developed, noting the transphobia and racism that were just as prevalent in Switchboard as they were and are anywhere else.
The complexity of queer existence and resistance, and the isolation so often structurally engendered in the former, but so defied by the impossible intimacies of the latter, are highlighted. The most moving, perhaps, occurs in the impeccably named Club Kali, where the mother of co-founder DJ Ritu, whilst in the bathroom of the club one night, had “about six people call her the respectful term of ‘aunty,’ ” thanking her for being there and asking for her blessing. Meanwhile, Switchboard volunteer Lisa Power, while on holiday, was stopped at the beach by a caller who recognised her voice, and felt compelled to thank her. These encounters could be said to encapsulate what many volunteers at Switchboard strived so hard to to create – a place of inarticulably deep human connection unbound by straight notions of what “family” and “love” should look like, but instead driven by the will to show love and care for a stranger and a neighbour (thus dissolving the notion of the former). This sense of care – both to give and to receive – is fundamentally a human right.
This human right is one the so-called Christian Thatcher had been attempting to dismantle long before Club Kali came along in 1995. This is demonstrated in the book by Walker’s account of, as an isolated, propaganda-fed teenager, accusing two teachers of the sin of being in a lesbian relationship, and outing themself while doing so. This vulnerability is met only with denial – a portrait of how the most insidious arms of the state strangle the most basic human instincts of care and connection, and how, in turning one of every generation’s most valuable resources – the teachers of the next generation – into its enforcers, the cycle of trauma will continue.
At Switchboard, volunteers did everything in their power to break this cycle, and fulfil the role that the state’s “teachers” could not or would not. Perhaps none did this better than Femi Otitoju, who organised an “in-service training session” on lesbianism for the cis male volunteers, buying a roll of wallpaper, upon which she drew a diagram of the vulva “as big as my dining room table,” which fell open on the bus on the way to the training day. Many stories about sex, and the stories around the stories, are told throughout the The Log Books, and, in their diverse nature, humour, and continuing informative potential, are a highlight of the book.
There is an intimacy conveyed by The Log Books – the immediacy of the reproduced call logs, the commentaries and marginalia of the volunteers who, in writing them, imbued them (for better or worse) with their own worlds, the depth of feeling in a time of turmoil contrasted with complaints about the kettle, that makes for compelling reading. Commercialisation, defunding, and censorship may be coming for queer spaces and conversations now, but there is a calm clarity (and sense of validation) gained by learning of how “our queer elders” experienced a version of it now being recycled, and how they fought back. It will make you proud that such spirit flows in your own veins.
Q&A with Adam Zmith
Thanks to Adam for answering our questions!
Can you tell us about what prompted you to include your own personal stories in the book, alongside the stories from the Switchboard log books?
This was an idea from the very inception of the book. Having made the documentary podcast series, which was an exploration of others’ lives, we realised that they had had an impact on us personally, helping us to reflect on our own histories and backgrounds, and the fact that we were so eager to collect stories from what we called our queer elders. So when we started to think about another project, it became clear quickly that a book would be a more personal form and that we had plenty to fill it with – not just the interviews we’d done or the log book entries but also, now, our own stories and feelings.
The call logs quoted throughout the book are given in non-chronological order. What effect do you think it may have to present the logs in a non-linear way?
Too many history books are written in a chronological way, and this shapes how we see history. That might be right for some histories, but not for social ones, and especially not for histories about LGBTQ+ people. The reality is that although forever there has been people who have been what we now might describe as ‘queer’, the story of this people doesn’t unfold in a linear way. Social progress comes in waves and backlashes, just as it is now: we’ve had a good run of LGBTQ+ rights over the decades we cover in the book, but more recently these have been withdrawn, and attitudes have turned against us. And individuals might go in and out of the closet in their own lifetime. So we think the ‘right’ treatment of queer histories is to not think too chronologically to avoid running the risk of the reader thinking there’s a linear path towards de-shame, acceptance and freedom. There isn’t.
What advice would you give to people seeking to investigate queer pasts and contribute to queer futures? For example, what advice would you give to those looking to a) undertake their own grassroots archival work, and b) form networks, services and mutual aid in the spirit of Switchboard?
a) The beauty of a lot of queer archives, by definition, is that they tend to be relatively accessible compared to academic or private archives anyway. From Lavender Menace in Edinburgh to Bishopsgate Institute in London and Kresen Kernow in Cornwall, you can walk in and ask to look at stuff. You have to set aside proper time for this, which is hard given the pressures of paid work and caring duties, but it’ll bear fruit if you keep looking.
b) start with one person, one project, one service, start small. Switchboard started with one phone. Now it’s taken more than 4m calls. Because the internet facilities things to scale massively, I think we might get easily overwhelmed by trying to make a project work for everybody all the time. You might consider not using the internet much, just staying local, personal, in-person, to get things going. And also, often you’re not the first to have had an idea (and why do we want to be the first to do x, y or z?) – so the other approach is to join something that already exists. Take a look for something, and even if it doesn’t match exactly what you think is needed (how do you know, btw?), if it’s running already then it is serving some people. Can you put your shoulder behind that?
