Interview: activist, Jonathan Blake (Pt. 1)

Jonathan Blake is a British gay rights activist, perhaps best known for his role in the group Lesbians and Gays support the Miners which was fictionalised in the hit film Pride. Jonathan’s roots, however, began in Birmingham.

“I was born in Edgbaston, on the wrong side of Hagley Road, so to speak,” Jonathan Blake tells Midlands Rainbow, “because there was the smart part which was the Calthorpe Estate and then there was where we were which was Moorland Road, near St Augustine’s Church in a cul-de-sac."

Jonathan Blake (left to right: December 1949, aged 11, aged 14 with his Uncle Marcus’ two Maccaws on his shoulders Manchester ( Altringham)

Jonathan’s parent later moved to Lapworth, “but by that time I had gone to drama school, at a place called Rose Bruford, which was in Sidcup. I basically had never heard of Sidcup apart from it appears in a Harold Pinter play. I did three years there, and what was amazing was that I went there in September 1967, and on the 27th July 1967, homosexuality was partially decriminalised but it was between two consenting adult males over the age of 21, and I was 18. So, everything I did was illegal but I think that added to a certain kind of frisson, crazily enough.

“Birmingham back then was very grey, there used to be lots of smog and what have you. It is a completely different city today. Essentially, I fled from it.

“I never really talked about my roots being in Birmingham because, to me, Birmingham was this sort of nightmare city that I wanted to get away from and yet now… to me it’s really interesting how suddenly Birmingham has just become this kind of lively place for LGBT+ people, and that there’s this thriving community, full of creatives. It’s really wonderful…. It’s completely changed my view of the city that I was born in which is nice. It’s not often you can turn around and go, ‘Yeah I’m a Brummy’.”

Jonathan and his two brothers, an elder brother of 3 years and a younger brother of about 18 months were sent away to boarding school in Birmingham. Jonathan explains: “We lived in Birmingham, we were sent away to boarding school in Birmingham but actually, I liked it because I was with boys because I already knew that I was other, so to speak.”

He and his elder brother “fought like cat and dog”, and after Jonathan came out to him, they didn’t speak for about 30 years. Jonathan’s parents, on the other hand, said: “’Ooh, but we knew!’ To which I said, ‘Why couldn’t you have told me, we could have done away with all the subterfuge.”

Jonathan explains: “My mother used to come and collect me [from boarding school], and there was this wonder art teacher who said to my mother – my younger brother was always academically bright, he was in the same year as I was even though he was younger than me – anyway so the art teacher said to my mother 'Andrew might be academic but Jonathan is creative and you need to feed his creativity'.

Jonathan Blake as a freelance Tailor before working at English National Opera in the Making Wardrobe 1988-1996

“My mother loved the theatre so she would come and pick me up on a Saturday and we would go Stratford to the Memorial Theatre. I remember the very first play I saw was A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and I remember that there was this solid wall of the city of Athens and from nowhere, just like magic, this wood appeared, it was just phenomenal. And then two weeks later, we went back and we saw Charles Lawton who had played Bottom in Midsummer Night’s Dream play King Lear. And I was absolutely enrapt. I turned to my mother and said ‘I’m going to be an actor’, and my mother turned to me and said ‘That’s wonderful dear, I hope not like John Gielgud; didn’t mean anything to me, it was some years later that I discovered exactly what it meant, and then you think was she trying to tell me something even at that age?”

Jonathan Blake as Dumaine in “Loves Labours Lost“, Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre 1976

After leaving his home city, Jonathan rarely returned, however, he added: “I do remember going back at one point, and there being one gay bar which was Yate’s Wine Lodge, and I think the reason that it had been chosen was because there were two entrances or two exits. So, you could enter on, I think it was Colmore Row, but you came out by the Cathedral. I think that people obviously felt that that was safer because if there was a raid, the likelihood is that they hadn’t blocked the back. That would have been in the early to mid-60s.”

In the 90s, Jonathan Blake returned to Birmingham to see the Staffordshire Hoard at the museum and “was absolutely amazed at the difference between the Birmingham that I had remembered to the Birmingham that it had become, and it really felt much more welcoming.”

Then, later on, he was invited to Birmingham to open an exhibition of HIV memorial quilts as part of ‘Pride House’ during the Commonwealth Games, and during a talk about Birmingham's own memorial (which was in the works), he met Garry Jones; artist and one of the people behind the AIDS Memorial. 

Exhibited in the Memorial Quilts was quilt 49, featuring a patch created by Jonathan himself for his late-partner Nigel Young.

Final Photo of Nigel Young & Jonathan - Portrait by Ajamu Ikwe-Tyehimba October 2021

Part of The 49th UK AIDS Memorial Quilt, patch for Nigel Young - now housed at The Bishopsgate Institute as part of their LGBTQ Archive 

“What was amazing was that Grayson Perry for his art club actually decided to feature a.) the AIDS memorial quilts because they’re folk art but also the fact that there was one being made. So, they had been in touch with me to say we heard that you went to the memorial quilt exhibition [at The Food Chain] and you took away some bits to make a patch. They said 'have you made it', and I said well I actually haven’t but I’m going to make it. I was going to make it for a friend of mine who died many years before and then, of course, Nigel got ill and Nigel died so Dudley got kind of put to one side, and I made the quilt for Nigel.

I hadn’t seen it actually finished until the exhibition, so that was amazing. And at that particular exhibition, he [Garry Jones] had the maquette of the Birmingham AIDS memorial which looked so beautiful, and what is amazing – this man is just extraordinary – because within twelve months there it is physically in Hurst Street. It’s really amazing. Sadly, I was away when it was unveiled on World AIDS Day 2022 but very soon, I got to see it because Garry invited me for the Cover-up quilt exhibitions, which were just fantastic.

Birmingham HIV Memorial unveiling December 2022 © Catherine Muxworthy 

(Left to right) Jonathan Blake, Dr. Steve Taylor, and Garry Jones at the Birmingham HIV cover-up quilts exhibition opening © Catherine Muxworthy

“So suddenly, you know, Birmingham to me is now a favourite place and I kind of feel very proud to say I’m a Brummy, even though I don’t have the accent,” Jonathan laughs.

“It just feels like there is a vibrancy in Birmingham and a vibrancy around gay and lesbian issues, and around HIV. It is just extraordinary.

In part two, Jonathan discusses his HIV diagnosis, stigma, and the advances of medicine, and part three of the interview Jonathan talks about Lesbian and Gays support the Miners (LGSM), and the film inspired by those events; Pride.

Unless stated otherwise, all images courtesy of Jonathan Blake.

Lead image: Jonathan Blake For “ Positive “ - Sky Documentary & NOW TV