Campaign for Homosexual Equality secretary Griffith Vaughan Williams dies

The secretary of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality, Griffith Vaughan Williams, has died at the age of 70.

Mr Williams, known as Griff, became involved in gay rights work in 1964 and was a leading member of CHE from its earliest days.

He was born in Bangor, North Wales, and was educated at a local grammar school and then at a college of journalism in Cardiff.

He worked for a number of magazines and provincial newspapers around the country, and later in the press office at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, before becoming a freelance journalist.

Ross Burgess, of CHE, told PinkNews.co.uk: “Griff was never going to retire from campaigning – despite increasing disability he continued to amaze us by his energy in travelling by train and bus, to promote his favourite causes at conferences and meetings all round the country.

“He was one of the small and dwindling band who had been campaigning for gay rights since the 1960s. He didn’t look like anyone’s idea of a gay man, which probably helped him get his message over in the early days.

“And he could still take people by surprise, for instance when a local meeting about services for older people heard this apparently conventional elderly man calling for condoms to be available in prisons.”

Funeral arrangements will be announced later. CHE will pay tribute to him at a reunion at Friends House on November 27th.

For more details, see www.slago.org.uk/ootsreunion.html