Befriending Service to Helpline: an almost 50 year journey

by Keith Paterson

Before there was LGBT Health and Wellbeing’s Helpline, there was Switchboard (which had several name changes over the years) and before Switchboard, there was the Edinburgh Befriending Service. In a series of articles, I will explore the beginnings of the service and follow the near 50-year journey of what has been a constant presence for the LGBT+ community in Edinburgh and Scotland as a whole.

Cecil Sinclair, founding volunteer with the Edinburgh Befriending Service

In 2022 the LGBT+ community has access to a range of services, delivered by many and varied organisations across Scotland including LGBT Health and Wellbeing. There is, certainly in the cities, a commercial scene of venues and spaces. This summer there are Pride marches taking place across the country, including for the first time in Shetland, there is much more positive representation in the mainstream media with series like It’s A Sin, Love,Victor and Channel 4’s Big Boys. There is a devolved Parliament and a Scottish Government that is broadly supportive of the community and our rights. The situation, particularly for trans people, is nowhere near ideal, but 50 odd years ago Scotland offered a very different picture.

Homosexuality was still illegal. There were no services available, no switchboards or helplines or charities reaching out to LGBT+ people. In Edinburgh, in the late 60’s and early 70’s, there were, for some gay men, house parties, which people got to know about by word of mouth. One former Switchboard volunteer remembers “that board games were set up all around the house when a party was happening so that if raided by the police, we could claim it was a games night”. Or in some cases a pile of bibles was formed so that the participants could claim that they were taking part in a religious gathering. Another community member recalls gatherings in Crawford’s Lite Bite café off Princes Street. There were bars that people met in but generally furtively and with none of the visibility that commercial premises have these days.

Iona McGregor, campaigner, author and a founding volunteer with the Edinburgh Befriending Service

Nicholas Atkinson, whose flat was the base for the Edinburgh Befriending Service in 1974

Against that background, particularly the fact that in terms of the legal situation, Scotland had been left behind, activist Ian Dunn convened a meeting in January 1969 with half a dozen others in the sitting room of his parents’ home in Glasgow. A few months later the Scottish Minorities Group (SMG) was formed to campaign for decriminalisation.

The group held meetings in The Chaplaincy Centre at Edinburgh University, where an enlightened priest, Father Anthony Ross, offered his support. SMG continued to meet to pursue it’s political aims however there was a feeling from some members of the group that they needed to provide more support for people, who were at the start of their coming out journey.

In Edinburgh, in January, 1974 a group of 7 men and women formed the Edinburgh Befriending Service. Founding member Cecil Sinclair recalled some years later that the aim of the service was “so that anyone who wanted to discuss or ask about any matter relating to homosexuality could ring in complete confidence”. The initial group also included Nicholas Atkinson, Jim Halcrow and Iona McGregor, the eminent author.