Tom Hulme Finds Benevolent Toleration in Northern Ireland

Tom Hulme, a historian at Queen’s University Belfast, says research into northern ireland public records and private papers points to “a sort of benevolent toleration” of gay men in the Victorian era and early 20th century. He says that earlier society could be discreetly accepting even as later decades hardened into public hostility.

Hulme said he expected repression, but found evidence that friends, families and employers often understood why a man might stay unmarried, live alone or have close male friends. His work draws on public records, private letters, diaries and the journals of David Strain, a middle-class Protestant whose 2m words of writing were deposited at Northern Ireland’s public records office before his death in 1969.

David Strain’s journals

Hulme said the records suggest a “careful game” between gay men and the people around them. He said, “Among friends and families and employers it was sort of known and understood that a man may have desires for another man and that might be why they remain unmarried or live alone or have many close male friends.”

He added, “To reveal the open secret would have been problematic.” That discretion, he said, meant men were not openly walking down the streets holding hands. Instead, “A careful game goes on between gay men and their friends and families. Knowing nods and winks, ‘oh, he’s not the marrying type’.”

From discretion to backlash

Hulme said tacit ignorance and public silence allowed male queerness to flourish with only rare exposure, condemnation or regulation. He described Belfast’s intimacy as a provincial capital as part of that shelter, saying a glance on the way to work could lead to a conversation the next week. He also said the gay community in Belfast had to be more circumspect than men in London and socialise in venue.

The later record looks very different. Northern Ireland had a reputation for homophobia for more than half a century, with Ian Paisley leading a “save Ulster from sodomy” crusade in the 1970s against decriminalising homosexuality. The Royal Ulster Constabulary used plainclothes officers to bait and catch gay men in parks and public toilets in the 1980s and 1990s.

Northern Ireland’s later reputation

That shift continued into the 21st century. In 2008, Iris Robinson told an interviewer that homosexuality was an “abomination”. In 2011, more than a quarter of gay people complained about homophobia in the workplace, and Northern Ireland held out against marriage equality until 2019.

Oscar Wilde’s 1895 conviction in London for gross indecency stands as a sharp contrast in Hulme’s account: he said the compassion shown to some men in Northern Ireland, including relatives or employers who testified on their behalf, paid bail money, or welcomed them home or back to work, was denied to Wilde in England. Hulme said many men returned to their former lives after arrest, charge and jail, as long as they kept discretion. The research challenges the public image of Northern Ireland as uniformly hostile and points to a hidden world of acceptance that sat beneath the silence.