In 1980 the UK’s Campaign for Homosexual Equality established a media monitoring service – the Gay Monitoring and Archive Project (GMAP) – to collect evidence of discrimination and police arrests.

GMAP’s collection grew quickly. In the first instance it received a regular supply of clippings from a press cuttings agency, as well as other material sent in by its members. Then it also received various documents and files from a range of earlier gay rights organisations such as the Gay Liberation Front. Within a matter of months it became completely separate organisation to CHE.

By 1982, GMAP had received funding through the National Council of Civil Liberties (NCCL) to employ a worker for 12 months to develop the Archives. Julian Meldrum, one of the founding members of GMAP, took on the role and not only organised the material but also set up a limited company in order that charitable status could be sought from the Charity Commission.

The company was called The Hall-Carpenter Memorial Archives Limited in recognition of early gay and lesbian pioneers Marguerite Radclyffe Hall and Edward Carpenter.

And it continued to grow.

Further archival material was received from an early gay rights group, the Albany Trust. Financial donations were received from the Lynhurst Settlement and gay and lesbian community members. And the NCCL provided workspace within its premises.

Following a grant from the now defunct Greater London Council (GLC) in 1984, the Archive moved into its own premises within the London Lesbian and Gay Community Centre and took on additional staff for a media monitoring project. This marked a further  significant milestone in its growth: along with full-time staff, having its own premises meant that regular volunteer work sessions could be arranged to better organise the Archive’s work.

In it’s early years the Archive produced a number of reports including The Gay News Index, Declaring and Interest (a catalogue of gay images on television) and AIDS through the British Media. The latter was of particular value to me as it – along with pages and pages of Press cuttings held by the Archive – helped me with my study of AIDS and the British Press, summarised here.

The demise of the Greater London Council in 1986 brought new funding and accommodation pressures but the Archive continued to move forward. Further material was received from gay organisations and activists as well as copies of most gay publications from Ireland and the UK. New reports were produced including Are We Being Served: Lesbians, Gays and Broadcasting, Inventing Ourselves: Lesbian Life Stories and Walking After Midnight: Gay Men’s Life Stories.

In 1988 the Archive’s core collections were moved the the Archives Division of the London School of Economics (LSE) Library, where the remain today (having expanded even more in the meantime).  The significance of their placement at the LSE was not lost on the Archive organisers, since the LSE was the site of the first ever Gay Liberation Front meeting.

The other part of the Archive – the Press Cuttings Service – was less easy to house, since LSE archivists had a policy of not taking press cuttings because newspaper deteriorates rapidly.  After a search lasting some years the Service finally found a permanent home at the Collections Room of Middlesex University.

And so, as our history continues to grow, so too do the collections of the Hall-Carpenter Archive. The Archive no longer has permanent employees but the collections are safely in the hands of trained and experienced archivists committed to their preservation.