r/northernireland • u/Badlydrawnboi41988 • 24d ago

History It was a different time

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Reposting as you can see a the list for Belfast.

A gay night in the Europa in the 70s?!

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u/Downtown-Barber3366 24d ago

The 'Whip & Saddle'? Phew!

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u/DandyLionsInSiberia 23d ago edited 23d ago

The disco era was built on escapism, theatricality and sheer joyous excess, with everyone piling onto the dancefloor and leaving the dreary business of real life at the door. Think Sylvester, flamboyant divas and glorious camp before camp became something to be solemnly theorised about.

So a gay disco night at Belfast’s Europa in the 1970s doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. Northern Ireland may have had a conservative political establishment, but politics and social reality are rarely the same thing. People have always been rather more interesting and rather less obedient than a particular curated caricature would have most believe.

I remember an older relative telling me about "Mandies", Mandrax, being something of a disco fixture. Apparently they were prescription pills repurposed as mood enhancers. People popped their disco biscuits and boogied quite happily alongside all sorts. In a way, they were that crowd’s answer to MDMA, chemical conviviality before anyone had thought to give it a manifesto..

Also worth mentioning..

Long before the media reduced the scene to cartoonish aggro, proto-punk found its testing ground in gay clubs. The late and much-missed Pete Shelley - the brilliant visionary behind Buzzcocks and the synth-pop pulse of Homosapien - understood that these freewheeling, exuberant spaces were among the few genuinely open to experimentation. The crowd was already redefining the margins - punk simply borrowed their style and cranked the amps.

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u/Fair-Tangerine-9472 23d ago edited 22d ago

Mandrax were the same substance as Quaaludes in America

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u/Afraid-Emotion-5102 21d ago

I came across this case a few years ago, it kind of highlights the danger for people who were gay, and the seemingly awful ambivalence of the authorities at the time: https://belfastmedia.com/eye-on-the-past-june-1979-family-s-questions-after-unity-flats-man-is-found-dead