‘I saw couples wriggling their posteriors, and where I saw men together, they had their hands on the other’s buttocks and were pressing themselves together.’ 'Police described it as a 'rendezvous for homosexual perverts'' Comptons' history goes back to the mid 1980s, when there was a resurgence in Soho's LGBTQ+ scene. Still, it wasn’t the only queer club in the area. The Shim Sham Club, which opened on Wardour Street in the mid-1930s, was described as ‘London’s miniature Harlem’. Central to the Black jazz scene at the time, and closely linked with African American culture, the spot operated without a licence, hosting what were then known as ‘bottle parties’. While music was central to the club’s DNA, it was also a space for politics and anti-fascist meetings, welcoming people of all races and sexualities. Letters sent to police at the time describe the space as a ‘rendezvous for homosexual perverts’, with interracial mingling and relationships similarly chastised.
