In 1986, two ambulance workers in Oldham were embroiled in a so-called ‘Aids scare’ after treating a man involved in a car crash.
Emergency measures were put into place for the paramedics after the man was confirmed to be living with HIV – with the vehicle locked away and withdrawn from duty, equipment quarantined and the two men undergoing ‘safety checks’.
It was later reported in the Manchester Evening News that the scare was ‘over’, with the staff members’ chances of catching the disease described as ‘remote’. But that coverage lingered on in the minds of many Mancunians. And it lingered alongside more-extreme examples like the John Hurt-narrated advert featuring toppling oversized tombstones warning people not to die of ignorance.
Some eight years earlier, Paul Fairweather, a prominent LGBTQ+ and HIV activist, had just moved to Manchester to work for the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE), which was the main gay rights organisation in the city at the time.
Paul in the 80s
(Image: Paul Fairweather)
Paul, who awarded an MBE in the King’s New Year Honours List in 2023, was also at the forefront of the local response to the growing HIV pandemic in Manchester and across the North West helping to organise meetings, writing articles in the gay press, like Mancunian Gay magazine, and lobbying for much-needed support services for those diagnosed.
LGBT activist Paul Fairweather was awarded an MBE in the King’s New Year Honours List in 2023
(Image: Paul Fairweather)
Paul was one of the six people who founded the Manchester AIDSLine in 1985 – one of only a handful of services across the entire country at the time that provided peer support, advice and mentorship.
“In those early days, it was very unclear how HIV was transmitted,” Paul, now 68, explains to the M.E.N. “There was quite a lot of ignorance and fear, and a lot of people wrongly thought in the mid-80s that it only affected gay men.”
Data from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) found that 6,008 people were diagnosed with HIV across England in 2023. Nearly half (49%) of all new diagnoses first made in England were among people exposed through heterosexual contact.
In 1990, five years later after its foundation, the AIDSline was renamed as the George House Trust – a name that remains today. The charity has continued its efforts to help those living with HIV and to help shift narratives ever since. It will celebrate its 40th anniversary in 2025.
The city centre exhibition features posters, adverts and articles from within Paul’s archive
To mark its landmark year, an exhibition is currently being held at the Kimpton Clocktower Hotel’s The Refuge – A Snapshot of HIV Through a ‘Mancunian’ Gay Lens. The exhibition features a number of articles, posters and documents from the mid-80s from within Paul’s personal archive – including that story of the ambulance workers.
The exhibition also features sensationalised mainstream media coverage, community responses from the Mancunian Gay magazine of the mid-1980s, and posters promoting the charity’s vital services and support. There is also the 2009 M.E.N article from when Paul, then a councillor for Harpurhey, revealed his own HIV diagnosis on stage at a vigil.
“I kept all of the stuff going back to the 70s when I moved here,” Paul said. “It’s fascinating looking back at things, it reminds me of the times that were there and that were happening really.
“I’d forgotten how, even with the health service, how people were so ignorant and scared. Even health care professionals didn’t realise the extent of the situation and were part of some of the mass concerns.
“The story about the ambulance workers – they were taking someone living with HIV to hospital and they found out he had AIDS. They quarantined the ambulance because they thought the ambulance would somehow give people AIDS.”
The exhibition, which runs until the end of January, has been in place at the Oxford Road hotel since December and has already received a good response. Paul said: “People have been wandering past to stop and look at it – it’s a chance for us to share the work we do with people who might not be aware.”
Three years ago, the government launched its first ever HIV Action Plan for England which set an ambition between 2019 and 2025 to reduce the number of HIV diagnoses – including an 80% reduction in new HIV infections in England.
Considering that the figure of those first diagnosed in England in 2023 was 2,810, a figure nearly the same as in 2019, we are clearly off-track to achieve the 2025 goal, and therefore the 2030 goal.
Whilst Professor Susan Hopkins, the Chief Medical Advisor at the UK Health Security Agency, said its target is unlikely to be reached next year, the 2030 target of zero new HIV transmissions was still achievable.
Speaking about what still needs to be done, Paul said: “We do a lot of work with young people in school. They’re much more aware of the LGBTQ+ community and HIV to the point that sometimes they know more than their parents or grandparents do.
The ‘A Snapshot of HIV Through a ‘Mancunian’ Gay Lens’ exhibition is at Kimpton Clocktower Hotel until the end of January
“I still think we need to raise more general awareness around the messaging of U=U, which means that anybody on effective HIV treatment with an undetectable viral load cannot pass HIV on. There are also people out there who might be benefitting from getting PrEP, which reduces the risk of getting HIV, who aren’t aware of it.”
And Paul says there are plenty more things in the works to celebrate the 40th anniversary of George House Trust in 2025, as well as campaigns to continue the important work they do. “I still can’t believe it’s 40 years,” he says of its foundations.
“40 years isn’t that long really, it isn’t a massive amount of time and there is still lots of work to be done.”
You can find more information about HIV and the work that George House Trust does here. ‘A Snapshot of HIV Through a ‘Mancunian’ Gay Lens’ is at Kimpton Clocktower Hotel until the end of January.