Joanne Lockwood: Welcome to Inclusion Bites, your
Joanne Lockwood: sanctuary for bold conversations that spark change. I'm
Joanne Lockwood: Joanne Lockwood, your guide on this journey of exploration into the
Joanne Lockwood: heart of inclusion, belonging, and societal
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Joanne Lockwood: So adjust your earbuds and settle in. It's time to
Joanne Lockwood: ignite the spark of inclusion with Inclusion Bites.
Joanne Lockwood: And today is episode 122
Joanne Lockwood: with the title From Silence to Advocacy.
Joanne Lockwood: And I have the absolute honor and privilege to welcome Emma Riley.
Joanne Lockwood: Emma is the program governance and operation manager for the Global
Joanne Lockwood: Privacy Office of RX. And when I asked Emma to
Joanne Lockwood: describe her superpowers, she says she is articulate enough to
Joanne Lockwood: speak in high stress situations. Well, let's hope today isn't
Joanne Lockwood: that stressful. Hello, Emma. Welcome to the show. Hi, Joanne.
Emma Riley: Thank you. Thank you for speaking with me. Absolute pleasure. We
Joanne Lockwood: met recently, I think, at, an event in London, and,
Joanne Lockwood: you told me some of your story, which we'll get on to in a minute.
Joanne Lockwood: I'm really fascinated to find out more. So I called this episode from
Joanne Lockwood: silence to advocacy. Do you wanna give me a bit of history of what
Joanne Lockwood: where where you've been over the last few years, I guess.
Emma Riley: A few years, more like few decades. Short version.
Emma Riley: Yeah. So I I'm I'm gay, but I didn't really know that
Emma Riley: until sort of mid I
Emma Riley: don't know. And end of my teens, really, beginning in my twenties.
Emma Riley: But I I had a history of being bullied a lot at school,
Emma Riley: so quite quite silent in that sense and that, I didn't get a lot
Emma Riley: of chance to sort of speak at that point. I then joined the military, the
Emma Riley: Royal Navy. And again, silence was very much part
Emma Riley: of my identity there because at the time that I joined, it
Emma Riley: was illegal to be gay in the military. So we can talk
Emma Riley: about what happened to me then, but basically what's happened since then is
Emma Riley: that I I've, tried to use
Emma Riley: my voice where I can to do a little bit of
Emma Riley: good, to try and change what happened to me into something that
Emma Riley: actually does does something better for the world
Emma Riley: than actually what happened to me. I hate bullying in all forms, and so I
Emma Riley: try and challenge that when I can now. I I'm also ex forces. I I
Joanne Lockwood: was in the I joined the RAF from school in 1981.
Joanne Lockwood: That time when Charles Diana got married. It was that July.
Joanne Lockwood: I joined in October. So and I I remember it was very it
Joanne Lockwood: was drummed into you right from the very beginning around drugs are bad,
Joanne Lockwood: being gay is bad. There's a lot of things are bad. Yeah. Or we won't
Joanne Lockwood: it's going to kill people, by the way, as well. So Yes. Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: There's the bad things you could do, but, actually, this is something you should you
Joanne Lockwood: should be thinking about. And I always remember that that that there's sort
Joanne Lockwood: of there's always this kind of humor about if you were gonna sit on someone
Joanne Lockwood: else's bed, you had to make sure you have both feet on the floor, then
Joanne Lockwood: it was okay. If you lift if you both have if if you well, you
Joanne Lockwood: had to leave one foot on there. Otherwise, it's good to see. It was one
Emma Riley: it was one foot on the ground. You had to keep one foot on the
Emma Riley: ground, which is fine, I suppose, if you're in the the bottom bunk. But
Emma Riley: in in in a ship, you've got 3 bunks, 1 on top of the other.
Emma Riley: So if you're on the top bunk, you've got no hope. But it is definitely
Joanne Lockwood: drilled into you in those days that, it was up it was
Joanne Lockwood: there was no tolerance. And Oh, absolutely. When when I
Emma Riley: joined, literally, the first thing you do when you walk through the gates of Raleigh
Emma Riley: is you go in, you get, sat down in this big sort of group
Emma Riley: room, and you get handed your contract to sign. And in the contract, it
Emma Riley: says that, homosexuality is illegal. So when I'm
Emma Riley: there, 18 years old, I only turned 18 about
Emma Riley: 3 weeks previous to joining. And I was I
Emma Riley: thought maybe I might be gay, but I wasn't sure. I'd never had any
Emma Riley: experience to actually confirm that. And and having spent
Emma Riley: all my school years being bullied quite a lot, what I wanted was
Emma Riley: that sort of belonging that you can get as part of the
Emma Riley: military. I wanted to belong to that tribe. I wanted to serve my country. And
Emma Riley: so any thought of being gay was then straight
Emma Riley: off the table. That was not gonna be happening to me. So I,
Emma Riley: I, it is right in front of you the moment you walk through the door
Emma Riley: that that is not something you can be. But how did you
Joanne Lockwood: cope? Yeah. I mean, you've got some more depth to the story, which you can
Joanne Lockwood: tell me in a minute. But, so how how did you manage to
Joanne Lockwood: suppress, repress? Because you you you you mentioned just now that you you you
Joanne Lockwood: just, well, realize that sense of self later in life. So
Joanne Lockwood: around the age of 18 is probably just where you start to figure stuff out.
Emma Riley: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, well, as I said, it it just I just wanted to
Emma Riley: serve my country. I wanted to belong. I wanted to be in that
Emma Riley: camaraderie that you can get in nursery because I'd
Emma Riley: just experienced that as part of my school life at all.
Emma Riley: So I just threw myself into the
Emma Riley: training and I threw myself into the work and I was,
Emma Riley: I did really well at it. I was part of the last class of women
Emma Riley: to be trained separately from men in the Rennes. And so I had the
Emma Riley: choice whether to volunteer for C or not, and I absolutely I was
Emma Riley: yes. That was an absolute yes for me straight away. So I then
Emma Riley: did my secondary training as a radio operator, HMS Mercury, and I was
Emma Riley: picked to be class leader of that class. And that was the first ever
Emma Riley: mixed sex class that went through HMS Mercury.
Emma Riley: So going through that as the class leader was a huge step up for an
Emma Riley: 18 year old who was, you know, very unsure of herself at that point
Emma Riley: in time. But I mean, what an opportunity. And again, I did,
Emma Riley: I did well in my schooling as far as that was concerned, and then came
Emma Riley: back to the IC training and went off to join HMS
Emma Riley: Cornwall, a Type 22 Batch 3 frigate, as the first group
Emma Riley: of women to go on board that ship, which was a hugely
Emma Riley: lucky draft actually. The other people in my class from Mercury
Emma Riley: went to, I think it was ARC Royal and then Vistimel, so our
Emma Riley: aircraft carriers, And they didn't go, huge
Emma Riley: distance, but with the Cornwall, we did our basic operational
Emma Riley: sea training. And then we were lucky enough to do things like West Indies guard
Emma Riley: ships, so I got to see the Caribbean and
Emma Riley: America and so forth. So I was at risk extremely lucky with my draft.
Joanne Lockwood: What what year is it when, Wim were finally
Joanne Lockwood: allowed to to leave the show and get on a on a
Joanne Lockwood: ship? There? What what year was that? It was basically 1990, which was when I
Emma Riley: joined. So I 1990? It it's 1919, 91 they were
Emma Riley: starting to put 1 on board ship. So Cornwall was were going through a
Emma Riley: refit as I came to the end of my secondary training. And so
Emma Riley: beginning of 91, I think it was, that I joined,
Emma Riley: and, yeah, we were the first ones to to join. It was quite quite a
Emma Riley: thing with a lot of resistance to having women on board. So
Emma Riley: there's a lot of kind of overcome. I remember the,
Joanne Lockwood: stuff in the press, the, the first sea lord will say this will
Joanne Lockwood: never work and all this kind of stuff. It was kind of this is and
Joanne Lockwood: then the ships weren't geared up for
Joanne Lockwood: different people, were they? They were kind of, you're a float. You just get you
Joanne Lockwood: just pile on top of each other. Suddenly, uh-oh, women, how to be
Joanne Lockwood: they don't know how to communicate adequately with the languages.
Emma Riley: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you end up either being bullied. You
Emma Riley: get caught split, turtle, bike,
Emma Riley: whatever, or you you you kind of become one of the lads. It's sort of
Emma Riley: a little bit of both of those two things. So you end up having to
Emma Riley: try and hold your own space if you can. And there's somebody who'd
Emma Riley: been bullied and and was not particularly confident in their own
Emma Riley: self. So that was quite a difficult situation to go through. But I absolutely
Emma Riley: loved being on board ship. It was brilliant. And again, I
Emma Riley: was good at what I was doing. So I really enjoyed it a lot. Did
Joanne Lockwood: you find over time, you were able to get respect?
Emma Riley: I'd like to say yes. I unfortunately didn't quite find
Emma Riley: the sort of camaraderie that I was hoping for when I joined.
Emma Riley: I I loved what I was doing, but I I
Emma Riley: did end up in pretty much every place. I would get some
Emma Riley: kind of bullying. Like, for example, on board the ship,
Emma Riley: they in West Indies guardship, they put together, like, a a
Emma Riley: local radio station. So, you know, somebody playing records
Emma Riley: or or whatever and doing a bit of DJing in between. And they
Emma Riley: did a pretend, what's it called, request for me,
Emma Riley: and they said, and here's one for Emma Riley, and it was, Tammy
Emma Riley: Wynette's Stand by Your Man. Of course, the first line is
Emma Riley: sometimes it's hard to be a woman and you just think, oh,
Emma Riley: goodness sake. And then later on when I was at, I think it was H.
Emma Riley: W. Cochrane. So I was doing guard at a communications center and just
Emma Riley: outside HMS Cochrane. And and in in the women's
Emma Riley: block, there's a kinda in outboard. So everybody's,
Emma Riley: you know, you've got a little peg and you put it in out, whatever, and
Emma Riley: you have your name next to it. And every day I would come back to
Emma Riley: find the w from my WRO, as we were called then. So Wren
Emma Riley: Radio operator, the w would be wiped out every day, every day. Just
Emma Riley: little microaggressions that you'd call them that. I didn't know what it was at that
Emma Riley: point. It just made me feel outsider,
Emma Riley: basically. So there were some good people, but there was
Emma Riley: also that kind of stuff going on as well. Now all radio operators
Joanne Lockwood: are just radio operators. There's there's no distinction now, is there? And Yeah.
Emma Riley: Exactly. I mean, in fact, the w officially got
Emma Riley: dropped not long after I left, I think. I'm not quite
Emma Riley: sure of the date. Yeah. Well, yeah, I I remember the similar sort of thing
Joanne Lockwood: when I was in the air force around, the rafts WAFs,
Joanne Lockwood: and and it was almost like
Joanne Lockwood: we have to allow women in, but they don't do anything serious. You know, it
Joanne Lockwood: was they were great in the war, code breaking, doing all the things that we've
Joanne Lockwood: ever celebrated for, but actually, oh, actually firing
Joanne Lockwood: a gun. Not sure about that. Oh, no. Rifle. Yeah. Well, that's this is why
Emma Riley: they were calling us, turtles. Because if
Emma Riley: you're a turtle, because if you're on your back, you fucked. Excuse me.
Emma Riley: That's the sort of level that they were at at that point in time. I'm
Emma Riley: sure it's a lot better now, but I'm sure also there are plenty
Emma Riley: that are just as like that nowadays. Never heard that slang before.
Joanne Lockwood: That's that's awful, isn't it? Yeah. It's not nice. So
Joanne Lockwood: you you you obviously had your your naval career, and you were enjoying it.
Joanne Lockwood: You were good at what you did. You were presumably getting
Joanne Lockwood: promoted, seen as excellent in what you were doing. I was doing
Emma Riley: doing quite well. But, yeah, fast forward. So that was 1990 I
Emma Riley: joined. So fast forward to 1993, I I
Emma Riley: was more sure of my sexuality. Basically, I sort
Emma Riley: of needed to confirm in my own head what I thought I might be.
Emma Riley: And so one evening I went out in London on my
Emma Riley: own with nobody else. Nobody knew I was going to do. And I basically
Emma Riley: went to a gay bar and got picked up
Emma Riley: sort of, I kissed a girl and I liked it. So it was like,
Emma Riley: okay, alright, so let's file that away. I'm still not intending to
Emma Riley: do anything about it. I'm still, you know, completely
Emma Riley: no no relationships, nothing like that. I'm still absolutely focused on
Emma Riley: wanting to serve and stay in the Royal Navy. But
Emma Riley: later on in 93, my father got
Emma Riley: really, really ill. So then my father's having
Emma Riley: quadruple bypass operation. He's having blackouts. I'm trying to support my mum
Emma Riley: going down to see him going in and out of hospital as that's all
Emma Riley: happening. And I'd found it
Emma Riley: harder and harder to deal with the sort of small bullying, but
Emma Riley: also to just hide who I was in my own self.
Emma Riley: It becomes incredibly stressful.
Emma Riley: I is huge. So so by the time I got to the
Emma Riley: sort of it must have been September 1993, I was
Emma Riley: in a not a great mental state. So
Emma Riley: I was working in the communication center in HMS Faz Lane up in Scotland,
Emma Riley: the submarine base. And one day, myself
Emma Riley: and the person I was sharing a room with in the block, we just went
Emma Riley: out for a drink in Helensborough and I
Emma Riley: we'd we'd had a few drinks. I thought she was my friend. And so I
Emma Riley: said, I think I might be gay somewhere in the conversation.
Emma Riley: And she was pretty, supportive at that point. So I had
Emma Riley: this really kind of euphoric moment where I thought, okay, I've said it out loud
Emma Riley: and it's going to be okay. I don't have to do anything about it. I've
Emma Riley: said, I'm not going to do anything. I still want to serve. I understand the
Emma Riley: rules kind of thing. And so I kind of came out of that evening
Emma Riley: a little bit on a high, if that makes sense. And then it was,
Emma Riley: yeah. Next morning, get up, get dressed, get downstairs. You're under arrest.
Emma Riley: And what she'd done of course is phone up the military police and dubbed me
Joanne Lockwood: in for being gay to them. So I had the SOB. I had Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: Especially when you're asleep and they wake you up like that. Yeah. I was Yeah.
Emma Riley: Especially when you're asleep and they wake you up like that. Yeah. I was
Emma Riley: terrified. I mean, because you know the rules. So you know if they're
Emma Riley: going to be able to prove that you are going or that even that they
Emma Riley: prove enough to themselves that they think you are going. That's
Emma Riley: it. It's all over. And this is all I've ever wanted to do since the
Emma Riley: age of about 13, 14. That's what I decided I was going to do with
Emma Riley: my life. So, yeah, they, they, I got
Emma Riley: up, I got downstairs and I got dressed. And then I was interviewed for, I
Emma Riley: don't know how many hours, 3, 4 hours or something. You know, the old tape
Emma Riley: recorder interviewed 2 SOB officers and a chief friend
Emma Riley: who was supposedly my support during this interview.
Emma Riley: And, I mean, I can't remember the questions they
Emma Riley: asked, but it was just continuous pressure to admit that you were
Emma Riley: gay. And at one point I just got so upset that they
Emma Riley: stopped the tape and said, okay, let's have a 15 minute break and you can
Emma Riley: calm down. And I must have said something to that chief friend
Emma Riley: in the break that was incriminating in some way because
Emma Riley: the moment I remember the moment the SIB came back in the
Emma Riley: room, and they turned on the tape, and the g friend was like,
Emma Riley: right. During the break, Emmer Riley said this, that, and the other. And you just
Emma Riley: think that's it. She's not my support. I am completely
Emma Riley: alone in this. It's just a joke that they have
Emma Riley: somebody there to supposedly support you. Then none of nobody's
Emma Riley: interested in that. They just wanna get that conviction. So after
Emma Riley: that, they take you up to your room to go and search through all your
Emma Riley: belongings. And Looking for what? What are they looking for?
Emma Riley: Well, this is the thing. Being gay. Oh, oh,
Emma Riley: well. You see, you say that in a joking way, but literally,
Emma Riley: we're standing outside the door, these 2 SAB officers and this
Emma Riley: gnarkey chief friend. And one of the officers says, so do
Emma Riley: you have any, electrical equipment? I'm
Emma Riley: thinking, what? So I to my credit, I said something
Emma Riley: along the lines of, well, if you mean dildos or vibrators, no, but please do
Emma Riley: search the rest of the block. I'm sure you'll find some. And thanks for how
Emma Riley: how on earth is that in any way proof of lesbianism
Emma Riley: that you might have some electrical equipment, especially in a women's block.
Emma Riley: I mean, really. But yeah, they, they went
Emma Riley: through everything and actually evidence wise about the
Emma Riley: only things they got were, I had a few letters to a pen pal
Emma Riley: who was outside the Royal Navy, where I had spoken about the fact that I
Emma Riley: thought I might be gay. So, okay, there's a piece of real evidence. Right?
Emma Riley: The other two pieces of evidence that I remember are,
Emma Riley: the suede album cover. And I don't know if you
Emma Riley: remember the first suede album cover, but it was basically 2 people kissing, a
Emma Riley: sort of a CPF photo of 2 people kissing. And there was this
Emma Riley: big debate on at the time about, is it a man and woman, 2 women,
Emma Riley: 2 men, who, who is this? And so they took that as evidence
Emma Riley: Now, as it happens, it is actually 2 women, one of whom is in a
Emma Riley: wheelchair, but nobody really knew that at that point in time. So a
Emma Riley: Suede album cover was, was evidence. The best
Emma Riley: one was that they confiscated my Julian Clary
Emma Riley: mincing to her video. Because again, anybody who
Emma Riley: watches Julien Clary obviously must be gay.
Emma Riley: Right? I laugh about this now. At the time, it
Emma Riley: was so humiliating and so terrifying. And, and
Emma Riley: actually what they were looking for is not only proof that I was gay, but
Emma Riley: they were looking for names. Yeah. They wanted other people, didn't they? They they
Emma Riley: wanted other people. Witch hunt it was such a witch hunt era. And
Emma Riley: having spoken to other veterans now in the last couple
Emma Riley: of years, who've gone through similar similar
Emma Riley: experiences, I mean, I can tell you stories like, there was one poor
Emma Riley: gentleman I I spoke to who he'd been thrown out because of
Emma Riley: his sexuality, and they'd found another military person's
Emma Riley: name and his belongings, gone after this chap and this poor
Emma Riley: chap that they'd gone after committed suicide. So this man has been
Emma Riley: thrown out. He's lost his livelihood, his life, his identity,
Emma Riley: etcetera, etcetera. And now has to not only deal with the shame of
Emma Riley: that, but also carry the guilt of that other
Emma Riley: man's death on his conscience for the rest of his life. It's the mental
Emma Riley: cruelty is astounding.
Emma Riley: So you'd find out what the motivation was for your
Joanne Lockwood: friend to, was there a motivation? Was there a
Joanne Lockwood: kind of a I I never spoke to her again.
Emma Riley: They moved me out of the the room with it, of
Emma Riley: course, but still in the same block. Of course, I'm still in the same base.
Emma Riley: I'm still eating in the same mess, though I'm not working in the same place
Emma Riley: as I'd say. Everybody knows what's going on, and pretty
Emma Riley: much everybody keeps their distance from you. There were a couple of
Emma Riley: people who were who were really kind to me that I
Emma Riley: remember. But most people don't want to be tied with the same brush. They
Emma Riley: wanna, you know, keep that distance. But no, I never spoke to
Emma Riley: that person to find out why they did what they did. In fact,
Emma Riley: as I've done a few bits of speaking, particularly in
Emma Riley: schools actually, they ask so what would you do if you ever met that
Emma Riley: person again? How do you feel about them? And I I kind of vacillate
Emma Riley: between, on the one hand, you know, being generous,
Emma Riley: they were following the rules. They did what they were supposed to
Emma Riley: do, which is tell the military police that there was a
Emma Riley: gay in their midst, terrifying as that may be.
Emma Riley: And on the other hand, you just wonder what threat was I
Emma Riley: seriously? Supposedly a national security threat because if
Emma Riley: if I'm gay, then I can be blackmailed. Well, the only reason you can be
Emma Riley: blackmailed was because you've got a ruling place. You're not supposed to be gay.
Emma Riley: And all this nonsense about gay people being able to, in
Emma Riley: positions of power what's the word?
Emma Riley: Make a junior do their will, you know,
Emma Riley: bring them into gay. Well, coerced them. Thank you. That's word I was looking for.
Emma Riley: Convert. The worst that means they convert. Yeah. Correct. Gay gay world.
Emma Riley: Right? It's an utter nonsense because when you're looking at the
Emma Riley: differences between males and females, you know, there's just as much
Emma Riley: chance a male officer or a female officer will do the same to a junior
Emma Riley: of whatever sex as there is if they're gay. It it the whole thing is
Emma Riley: an absolute nonsense. Yeah. I I was, I've also
Joanne Lockwood: experienced the SIB for for different reasons at the time.
Joanne Lockwood: And as a result of someone reporting me
Joanne Lockwood: for something, when and I won't go into that in on this podcast. I've probably
Joanne Lockwood: done it on a previous one, but, yeah, I I also was interviewed,
Joanne Lockwood: with 2 scary men, basically, pointing,
Joanne Lockwood: shouting, stomping their fists on the table Yeah. Telling me,
Joanne Lockwood: confess now. It'd be much easier. We're gonna have you in the end if you
Joanne Lockwood: don't get it over and done with. You know, if you just if you just
Joanne Lockwood: come out with it now, this will all be over, and we can move on.
Joanne Lockwood: It's like Yeah. There's a bunch of amount of pressure and bullying to make
Joanne Lockwood: you conformally. And I was only I was 18 at the
Joanne Lockwood: time. I was kinda scared. You know, I'd done something wrong. Yeah. I had.
Joanne Lockwood: Like, you I knew it was wrong. It's part of those 10
Joanne Lockwood: rules you shan't do when you're in the forces. And Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: And, again, the blackmail and the all these sort of things and people feeling like
Joanne Lockwood: that. And, yeah, it's it's a scary time, isn't it? And
Joanne Lockwood: I I ended up I ended up exiting the forces
Joanne Lockwood: via a little town in in Essex called Cofdister. So I
Joanne Lockwood: spent a few days, which is the, Oh. That that's the that's the
Joanne Lockwood: military prison or the Yes. Place you exit the military if you've been convicted.
Joanne Lockwood: So, yeah, I I got, charged
Joanne Lockwood: and taken in front of the station commander, hat off, march in, get, told
Joanne Lockwood: you of punishment, walk out. I didn't elect the court martial. I was,
Joanne Lockwood: I thought it's not gonna get any better than this, so just get get rid
Joanne Lockwood: of me. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's a tough time when you're that young when
Joanne Lockwood: you're, yeah. Okay. I'm I'm not trying to sit here and say I've I was
Joanne Lockwood: innocent. I on the scale of things, what I did was not
Joanne Lockwood: huge. I mean, what you did was with you you kissed 1 girl and said
Emma Riley: Well, yeah. And that's and that's that's that's the extent. Literally nothing else.
Emma Riley: Yeah. I I think it that that's the thing that seems to
Emma Riley: mark particularly the the cases about against
Emma Riley: gays in military is the the mental cruelty and so
Emma Riley: forth that goes with it. I mean, for me, there was all of that that
Emma Riley: had happened, but then then they sent me home to tell my parents. That
Emma Riley: was that was pretty horrific. A forced coming out.
Emma Riley: So they sent me home, And, you know, I have to tell
Emma Riley: my parents that not only am I going to likely
Emma Riley: exit the Royal Navy, and they are so proud of me serving,
Emma Riley: you know. But also that I'm gay, and I'm absolutely terrified.
Emma Riley: Absolutely terrified. I I remember,
Emma Riley: viscerally the the room where I was sitting when I was trying to tell my
Emma Riley: parents all about this. And and I spoke to my mom, you know, in the
Emma Riley: last, again, in the last couple of years and say, how how was
Emma Riley: I? Because there's only so much you can hold on to from these
Emma Riley: days. And she said, it took me about 5 or 6 hours
Emma Riley: to stop crying long enough to actually tell them what was going on,
Emma Riley: which yeah. Horrific. So
Emma Riley: I I go back up to the base and survived the last couple of
Emma Riley: weeks or however long it was. And then you go up to captain's table, and
Emma Riley: it's your judgment is given, and it's discharged. Sure.
Emma Riley: Your services are no longer required. And they,
Joanne Lockwood: I've got one of those. Yeah. They're redundant. May may redundant, basically.
Emma Riley: Basically, yes. So, I mean, in many ways, I my my
Emma Riley: exit was a lucky one because it was an honorable discharge, quote unquote.
Emma Riley: I didn't get the red writing at the top for dishonorable discharge. So that didn't
Emma Riley: affect my future employment or anything like that. As far as that
Emma Riley: part of it is concerned. I mean, they made me sign a piece
Emma Riley: of paper to say that I wasn't going to challenge the decision.
Emma Riley: And so I did sign it, but I said the only reason I'm not
Emma Riley: challenging the decision now is because my father is so ill. Because, again,
Emma Riley: you gotta remember, my father's just had a quadruple bypass, so
Emma Riley: he's not in the best of health as all of this stuff is going on.
Emma Riley: And then that was it, 26th November 1993, handy
Emma Riley: kit bag, which I basically unceremoniously dumped it
Emma Riley: all on the on the quartermaster's floor as I left. And
Emma Riley: I kept everything that wasn't on my kit list. So I have a really random
Emma Riley: assortment of bits and pieces. Like, I think I've got a tie, a
Emma Riley: shirt, a cap, and a greatcoat. The greatcoat, I
Emma Riley: only wore for the first time last year to march with fighting
Emma Riley: with pride to the cenotaph as part of the remembrance day parade.
Emma Riley: That's that's how long it's taken me to even put that on.
Emma Riley: So, yeah, it was it was pretty horrific. And then I go
Emma Riley: home. My parents collected me. My parents hated what was going
Emma Riley: on to me, and they absolutely hated how they were treated at the
Emma Riley: gates because they were totally given the silent treatment,
Emma Riley: like personal non grata. They didn't want anything to do with my parents. And there
Emma Riley: was just me coming out of this gate on my own. It was pretty
Emma Riley: horrific. And then, yeah, I have to go home and
Emma Riley: redraw my entire map of the world, basically.
Emma Riley: Find out who am I now I'm not in the military. Am
Emma Riley: I am I really gay? Am I not? Find some kind of
Emma Riley: identity because, of course, in the military, your identity is all wrapped up
Emma Riley: in what you do. That is who you are. You are the job. And
Emma Riley: actually work out what in the heck I was gonna do
Emma Riley: for work cause I had no clue. So I spent maybe 5, 6
Emma Riley: weeks at home licking my wounds and trying to
Emma Riley: start living again, I guess. Just I don't know. And
Emma Riley: then you kind of have to put one foot in front of the other.
Emma Riley: So I ended up looking at my skills from the military and going, okay, so
Emma Riley: what can I do? Well, I can, I can shoot an SAAT, but that's not
Emma Riley: that useful in civilian life?
Emma Riley: But as a radio operator, they teach you how to type. So and I
Emma Riley: typed at, like, 65 words per minute or something like that with
Emma Riley: very few mistakes. So I thought, okay. Well, I'll just go to a temp agency
Emma Riley: and say I can type. And I ended up doing it's
Emma Riley: like filing Clark and, you know, all that kind of low low level
Emma Riley: stuff. A bit of temp work here, there, everywhere, and did did that for
Emma Riley: a while. And then ended up doing a filing job for 1
Emma Riley: company that turned into a permanent job for a bit. And that was that was
Emma Riley: quite useful because it gives me my first taste of the corporate world.
Emma Riley: And I found out that I was quite good with, like, fax machines,
Emma Riley: if you remember those, and printers, you know, stuff like that. So it
Emma Riley: was a bit, like, technical. Because I'd we'd done stuff like that in the military,
Emma Riley: and you just learn to give it a go and try and work out what's
Emma Riley: going on. So when I decided I wasn't gonna
Emma Riley: do that anymore, I thought I'd find another position. And I ended up
Emma Riley: finding a position as a help desk call taker. So I wasn't fixing
Emma Riley: anything, but I was taking the calls to log them. But as part of that,
Emma Riley: I started learning and starting fixing things. And then the
Emma Riley: from there, joining who was then Butlers Tully,
Emma Riley: part of LexisNexis Group now, as an IT analyst,
Emma Riley: like a base level IT desktop
Emma Riley: support person, and ended up, you know, opportunity
Emma Riley: as I either got bored or as opportunities came, I would
Emma Riley: go, oh, look. There's an opportunity of debt. Okay. Let's give that a go. And
Emma Riley: and then, you know, end up I ended up running the desktop support for LexisNexis
Emma Riley: in the UK, which was, you know, it was a great job, quite
Emma Riley: stressful at times, you know, as desktop support normally is. And then various
Emma Riley: things happened, and I ended up working in project engagement
Emma Riley: for the IT thing. And then that sort of changed into
Emma Riley: project governance for a while, and I ended up doing project
Emma Riley: governance at another group company. And I've now
Emma Riley: ended up through being a program manager for the privacy office. I'm
Emma Riley: now doing program governance and operations. So I'm managing a team in
Emma Riley: Manila who do stuff for our privacy office for our
Emma Riley: company. I've run projects, so we're literally in the middle of kicking
Emma Riley: off 7 Asia Pacific projects at the moment for privacy
Emma Riley: programs. And I I absolutely could not have told you
Emma Riley: in a 1000000 years that that is what I would have ended up doing.
Emma Riley: I'm basically a jack of all trades and master master of none. And
Emma Riley: at 50 almost 52, I've started to work out
Emma Riley: actually what I'm quite good at. But I also
Emma Riley: think, just imagine if I'd exited the the military
Emma Riley: on my own terms, I probably would have been in this
Emma Riley: position 5, 10, maybe even 15 years ago.
Emma Riley: So the the effect of my career has been
Emma Riley: quite devastating. And that doesn't even touch
Emma Riley: how what the effect has been on my mental health or or have
Emma Riley: interacted with people or or my relationships or or
Emma Riley: trust and so on and so forth. So there's a huge other piece to it
Emma Riley: that gets impact. Do you think the what you went through at that
Joanne Lockwood: young formative age helped you build some resilience? I mean, I look
Joanne Lockwood: back at my life and I think, actually, when you have
Joanne Lockwood: all that worry, all that stress, all of that stuff going on your head, the
Joanne Lockwood: fact that you're now thrown out into the street, no
Joanne Lockwood: career, all the shame, all the all the pressure around you, you can sit there
Joanne Lockwood: and and cry and hug a lot in a ball, or you can say, okay.
Joanne Lockwood: Dust yourself down as you say it. I think it's gonna do Yeah. I I
Joanne Lockwood: did I did I was filing, and I I did this, and I got a
Joanne Lockwood: job through what I was doing as a temp and doing all this. And
Joanne Lockwood: suddenly, I built a new career, and I look back at some of the people
Joanne Lockwood: who who stayed in the apprenticeship course that I was on. And
Joanne Lockwood: they said, to be honest, after we left training, it was never as
Joanne Lockwood: good as we thought it was gonna be. It was a bit of fun. We
Joanne Lockwood: had a laugh, but, actually, the best years were the 3 years at the beginning,
Joanne Lockwood: which I did. So I I look back and think, okay. I got into Sylvia
Joanne Lockwood: Street and and built a life rather than maybe exiting in
Joanne Lockwood: my late thirties, early forties maybe. Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. And having to start again, having been, if you're not, indoctrinated into the
Joanne Lockwood: military lifestyle and and way of thinking. So, yeah, I look
Joanne Lockwood: back and think, yeah, I I don't I don't I'm not gonna I'm
Joanne Lockwood: not gonna put it on my CV as a a learning opportunity, but, you know,
Joanne Lockwood: with with hindsight, it it did actually give me
Joanne Lockwood: something. It matured me up really. And I look back now, I think it
Joanne Lockwood: could never get this worse. It was bad again. Yeah. If I can I can
Joanne Lockwood: add anything? Yeah. And I I so one of my favorite phrases is worst things
Emma Riley: happen at sea, which I can completely attest to. You know, if you've had a
Emma Riley: fire at sea or any of the other things that have happened to me, you
Emma Riley: can yeah. It's nothing worse than that. And and I I do agree,
Emma Riley: having gone through that, it definitely built resilience. In
Emma Riley: fact, I I was talking for my company on a
Emma Riley: they did a a pride pod not podcast. Well, I
Emma Riley: suppose you call it a podcast, basically. Just a broadcast, you know, for the company
Emma Riley: than where they interviewed me for what I've what I've done and what I've gone
Emma Riley: through. And unbeknownst to me, our CEO was listening.
Emma Riley: And at the end, they bring him on to say a few words. And what
Emma Riley: was interesting to me and quite amazing to me is that
Emma Riley: he said, people like me make
Emma Riley: great executives, because they've gone through so much,
Emma Riley: they've overcome so much, they don't get
Emma Riley: phased by the small stuff. So your your ability
Emma Riley: to hold and manage stress and stressful
Emma Riley: situations or complex situations is a lot higher than
Emma Riley: somebody who's not gone through that kind of experience. Now, like
Emma Riley: you, I would certainly never advocate going through that kind of experience as a
Emma Riley: learning tool, because frankly, I really wish I hadn't. And it's
Emma Riley: it's damaged me in many different ways. But from
Emma Riley: a from that perspective, yes, there is
Emma Riley: an advantage, if you like, in that I've been able to do
Emma Riley: that. I would add though that there has to be a
Emma Riley: kernel of resilience in you to begin with to be able to build
Emma Riley: on, because, again, hearing some of the stories
Emma Riley: from veterans, you can see who's had
Emma Riley: that and who hasn't had that. It
Emma Riley: it it a lot of the time, I think, it depends on what support you
Emma Riley: have when you come out. I was lucky that my parents were completely supportive of
Emma Riley: me, so I had a home to go through go to. And I know
Emma Riley: many had not only just had their careers
Emma Riley: destroyed and their identity ripped away, but they also then had their family's
Emma Riley: doors slammed in their faces. So there's there's there's
Emma Riley: many layers to that. You didn't take this lying down though, did you? I wanna
Joanne Lockwood: I wanna hear what happens next. So what happened next? You
Joanne Lockwood: in the middle of getting thrown out and starting your new life, you
Joanne Lockwood: you did something quite extraordinary, and I'd love to hear more about what you
Joanne Lockwood: did to change change the UK. Well Change the
Joanne Lockwood: world. So I had, as I said, written on the written on
Emma Riley: the paper, you know, I'm only not challenging this because my father is so
Emma Riley: well. Well, I kind of that was always in the back of my mind. So
Emma Riley: I got thrown out. I sort of started my career build,
Emma Riley: and I got to about 5 years into it.
Emma Riley: And I had a permanent job that I was enjoying. So this is when I
Emma Riley: was working as help desk. At that point, I had a
Emma Riley: girlfriend for the first time, a proper for the second time, in fact. So it's
Emma Riley: a much more serious relationship. And I felt comfortable enough
Emma Riley: in my own self and sexuality and my
Emma Riley: career and who who I was at that point where I thought, okay. This is
Emma Riley: the moment where I can start to look at doing something about it. Because I'd
Emma Riley: it it comes back to that thing. I hate bullying because I've been bullied all
Emma Riley: the way through school. I've been bullied in small ways when even
Emma Riley: when in the military. And then at the end of it, bullied
Emma Riley: institutionally by being harassed and
Emma Riley: humiliated and thrown out of it. So I wanted to try and change the narrative.
Emma Riley: So I basically phoned up Stonewall, And I have to thank
Emma Riley: whoever I spoke to on that particular call because they gave me the number
Emma Riley: of a solicitor who was taking another case, a similar one to
Emma Riley: mine, about being thrown out of the military. And I
Emma Riley: phoned up that person who was Stephen Gross of bin
Emma Riley: Bindman and Partners and spoke to him. And he's
Emma Riley: he took my case, basically. So I self funded myself. This is all
Emma Riley: alone. And I know at the time, they were rank outsiders doing lots of things,
Emma Riley: sort of politically and pressure wise and also building cases
Emma Riley: for what would become the the 4 headline cases at the time.
Emma Riley: But I just went alone to this solicitor, told my story,
Emma Riley: and said, I don't want to do something about it. And what we did
Emma Riley: first was you have to go into the UK courts first. So I
Emma Riley: took the Ministry of Defense to court. So it's me versus the Ministry
Emma Riley: of Defense. And it it didn't work. It
Emma Riley: was trying to say that sexuality should be
Emma Riley: in the same category as gender, as far
Emma Riley: as discrimination is concerned. And, basically, the UK courts
Emma Riley: didn't allow that. There was a a precedent from Southwest Trains that was used to
Emma Riley: throw the case out. And the case itself was it was the the only
Emma Riley: time I actually went into a court, because it went it was a public hearing.
Emma Riley: So I was there with my barrister, and then there was, I
Emma Riley: think, 3 QCs, who would they be king's council now, but
Emma Riley: then queen's council then for the Ministry of Defense. So it was like it was
Emma Riley: ridiculous. It was David and Goliath. And
Emma Riley: that that that was that was quite a scary
Emma Riley: experience to sit in that courtroom as that whole thing was being talked
Emma Riley: through. But as I said, we we found out that that wasn't going to go
Emma Riley: ahead because of this previous precedent. So then the only other option that we
Emma Riley: have is to take effectively take the UK to court in the European
Emma Riley: Court of Human Rights. So here we have more conversations,
Emma Riley: more evidence gathered that I can talk about, and the whole thing
Emma Riley: gets filed out with the European Court of Human Rights. So that is now the
Emma Riley: beginning sort of April ish, I think in, 1998.
Emma Riley: And so every so often we get letters back and forth. There's another question that
Emma Riley: they ask. We are trying to get transcripts of my interview tapes,
Emma Riley: which, oh, surprisingly, the Royal Navy have lost. Oh, isn't that
Emma Riley: interesting? Yeah. The the the the
Emma Riley: military the Royal Navy and the Ministry of Defense were
Emma Riley: doing anything and everything in their power to squirm out
Emma Riley: of having to change the law. And so
Emma Riley: every every challenge we made would be met with some
Emma Riley: other kind of ridiculous question,
Emma Riley: or or evasion, or no, or whatever.
Emma Riley: So we just kept on back and forth answering these questions until,
Emma Riley: it came to the end of 1999, I think it was September 27th
Emma Riley: 1999, and the European Court of Human Rights ruled on those
Emma Riley: four headline cases with the pressure of the other cases
Emma Riley: like mine behind it, and said, it is a violation of the
Emma Riley: article 8, I think it was, in which
Emma Riley: everybody has a right to a private life. And effectively they
Emma Riley: stated that the ban on homosexuals serving in the military
Emma Riley: was illegal. So the end of 99, the government
Emma Riley: re handed this ruling, and,
Emma Riley: that meant that in January on January 12, 2000,
Emma Riley: the law was changed to allow gay people to serve in the military.
Emma Riley: I would say, Labour likes to say, trumpet, if you
Emma Riley: like, that they were the ones that lifted the ban. And I can absolutely attest
Emma Riley: to the fact that they and the conservatives, and frankly, any other political
Emma Riley: party that was around at the time, none of them wanted to lift it.
Emma Riley: And the only reason that ban was lifted was because I and the other people
Emma Riley: put our heads above the parrot parapet and took them to the European Cruising
Emma Riley: Rights. As you say in the notes, it it it took another 23 years from
Joanne Lockwood: that date Yep. To any semblance of an apology,
Joanne Lockwood: compensation Yes. All the time. So they're kicking that
Emma Riley: one into the long grass as much as they can. Yeah. 23 years.
Emma Riley: And the only reason they even started to do any of this
Emma Riley: stuff is because people got together again. LGBT
Emma Riley: veterans got together again and started pressurizing them to
Emma Riley: actually look into the damage that they created. Because what they did was
Emma Riley: change to Lauren and go, hooray, Marie. Everybody can serve now. And then again,
Emma Riley: promptly forgot us having forgotten us the moment they closed the door on our
Emma Riley: backs. And basically, I mean, I kinda
Emma Riley: from my own personal experience, I spent, you know, decades
Emma Riley: not talking about it. I didn't talk about it to anybody.
Emma Riley: And I didn't interact with other human beings in the
Emma Riley: same way that you would normally do. I I mean, I
Emma Riley: give an example of which is, I joined a
Emma Riley: choir in in 2002. So it's a women's
Emma Riley: choir. And at the moment, at that time, I'm now an openly gay woman.
Emma Riley: That's all fine. But what what I was
Emma Riley: so terrified of was ever being called a a predatory lesbian,
Emma Riley: or I was so worried about me looking at somebody
Emma Riley: the wrong way, quote, unquote, that they would think that I was
Emma Riley: fancying them. Or if I I would be terrified that if somebody was upset
Emma Riley: and I maybe put my hand on their shoulder to try and say it's
Emma Riley: okay, I'd be worried. I wouldn't do that because I'd be terrified that they'd think
Emma Riley: that I was trying come on to them or something. You know, you as a
Emma Riley: choir, you have to change in a training room before you go on stage and
Emma Riley: you put makeup on blah blah blah. And I would always try and find, like,
Emma Riley: the corner and, like, look as much as possible
Emma Riley: at the wall or the corner or away from everybody, because I was
Emma Riley: so worried that somebody would take it the wrong way. So it's just
Emma Riley: really debilitating in in that kind of sense. And
Emma Riley: then you don't feel worthy of the work
Emma Riley: you're doing. You don't feel worthy of being in the relationship. So you don't
Emma Riley: necessarily treat yourself to the relationships that you really deserve. And it
Emma Riley: and it's only since my early forties,
Emma Riley: so my 10 years ago that I've started to really
Emma Riley: work through those trust issues. I had counseling,
Emma Riley: really, for the first time a couple of years back because my
Emma Riley: my current my wife has 2 children, and I went in at teenager, which is
Emma Riley: quite quite a difficult time for them, as well as being difficult
Emma Riley: just generally for anybody. And and so there were times in
Emma Riley: in that journey of of being with them and learning how to be a step
Emma Riley: parent, all of those things, that, you know, teenagers challenge things. And and
Emma Riley: for various circumstances, there was there was some very challenging
Emma Riley: behavior going on a few years back that was in direct
Emma Riley: kind of opposition to my core values of truth
Emma Riley: and not lying and not bullying, and and so all of all
Emma Riley: of that got wrapped up in a very difficult situation. And I found I just
Emma Riley: I had to talk to somebody about it, and I'd never done that
Emma Riley: before. And that really showed me
Emma Riley: how much of my my life had been protecting that inner
Emma Riley: self. And and, honestly, the only reason that I can really
Emma Riley: speak with you now is because I met
Emma Riley: the person who's now my wife, and I was able to start relaxing
Emma Riley: into being vulnerable with somebody for probably the first
Emma Riley: time in my life. I completely credit her with
Emma Riley: with bringing me alive, basically, in in in front
Emma Riley: of in front of everything. And being allowed to
Emma Riley: start speaking of it was was
Emma Riley: a a long journey. I I I only started speaking of it really
Emma Riley: properly as a an actual story, maybe 20,
Emma Riley: 16 or something like that. I got contacted by a
Emma Riley: professor who is writing a book called Goen to Strath's book, who is
Emma Riley: looking at cases taken to the European Court of Human Rights
Emma Riley: by women and men about gender or sexuality.
Emma Riley: And he'd found my name as part of somebody else's
Emma Riley: materials and desperately wanted me to be part of the book because there were so
Emma Riley: few women who took the cases forward. It was mostly men.
Joanne Lockwood: I Just listen to what you're saying there about, obviously, you internalized
Emma Riley: all of the hate, all of the, you're not good enough, all that kind of
Joanne Lockwood: things. You're thinking to yourself, I'm the predator. Oh, this must be
Joanne Lockwood: hugely difficult. And I was just saying, and it's not trying
Joanne Lockwood: to cost as persons. Men walk into a room and they check women out, but
Joanne Lockwood: you walk into a room as a woman, and you're you're worried about checking women
Joanne Lockwood: out. And that's kind of that you're feeling that kind of a
Joanne Lockwood: sense of oppression about your identity and everything and Completely. People and
Emma Riley: Yeah. So it's it's kind of the reason, as I said, I sort
Emma Riley: of started talking that first conversation I had with Paul Johnson and for the
Emma Riley: book was deeply distressing to talk it
Emma Riley: through. So I'd never told it as a story from start to finish
Emma Riley: with all of the detail that I've now gone into with you. And
Emma Riley: yet, that that was that was really powerful for
Emma Riley: me, because that experience of talking to him, the way that
Emma Riley: he explained how important that had been,
Emma Riley: meant that that allowed me to start talking about it and
Emma Riley: thinking about it a bit more. The next thing that happened is that my stepdaughter
Emma Riley: asked me to give a presentation to her
Emma Riley: school. So I got asked by the school, a
Emma Riley: secondary school, to go in and do an assembly, and it was the whole school.
Emma Riley: And so for the first time in my life, I put a PowerPoint presentation together.
Emma Riley: I got some photographs together. I thought, right, okay, I've got 20 minutes or
Emma Riley: 25 minutes to tell my story and get something positive out of the end of
Emma Riley: it. Because you can't just tell your story and go,
Emma Riley: well, there's it. Well, in my opinion, I wanted to be able
Emma Riley: to try and bring the point that one
Emma Riley: person can actually change things. And yes,
Emma Riley: I was one person going to the European Court of Human Rights. Well, I
Emma Riley: wasn't the only one, but I know that without my case and the
Emma Riley: other people who independently did it, we just simply wouldn't have got that change.
Emma Riley: So you do have to have that inner knowledge that one person
Emma Riley: can change the world. So I did this talk, which was
Emma Riley: terrifying. I've never done speaking before in my life, and I'm standing at
Emma Riley: the front of an assembly hall with 11 no, 15 year
Emma Riley: olds, blind clear looking back in their hormonal fog.
Emma Riley: And you never know how this thing is going to land, but I found out
Emma Riley: a few years later. We we, we met a mom of 1 of
Emma Riley: the kids who'd seen that assembly, and, she said,
Emma Riley: do you know that assembly? My kid came back and said, this was the
Emma Riley: most amazing talk you'd ever seen. You see, you just don't
Emma Riley: know who you're affecting. I I with my
Emma Riley: singing, I now do I've done leadership stuff. So we have a general
Emma Riley: convention once a year. And as part of that, I was
Emma Riley: on stage doing some emcee work, like, you know, organizing some of
Emma Riley: the some of the some of the weekend. And
Emma Riley: at that time, I'd I'd basically said to myself long
Emma Riley: before I'm not going to be in the closet, so I was an out
Emma Riley: gay woman on stage in a position of responsibility.
Emma Riley: And about 10 years later, we met a woman who's an opera
Emma Riley: singer, and her first ever route, if you like,
Emma Riley: into singing was to sing barbershop, which is the style that we sing. And so
Emma Riley: she'd come on to one of the competitions in about 13 or
Emma Riley: 14 years old, questioning her and her sexuality. So she
Emma Riley: wasn't sure if that was who she was, or she thought she was, but she
Emma Riley: was scared of that whole thing in China. So she came along to this convention,
Emma Riley: saw me, I was on stage, openly gay woman in a position of
Emma Riley: responsibility, respected, and talked to
Emma Riley: in a normal way. And that was the moment that crystallized for her.
Emma Riley: Actually, it's going to be okay. I can be gay, and it will be
Emma Riley: okay, because I can be respected. And I literally would never have known that if
Emma Riley: we hadn't met her 10 years later through my wife's work.
Emma Riley: But it it is it is really key to be able to
Emma Riley: be your authentic, open self
Emma Riley: in any speed you possibly can, because you never know who you're going to
Emma Riley: affect just by being yourself. You feel this pressure on you
Joanne Lockwood: to be out and open and openly gay woman. You said that use that
Joanne Lockwood: phrase a couple of times. Mhmm. You feel there's pressure to to be the the
Joanne Lockwood: visible role model or to show that inspiration? I definitely
Emma Riley: don't call it pressure, but I do say that visibility
Emma Riley: is critical. You you can't be what you can't see.
Emma Riley: And actually, one of the things that my company is really good at is having
Emma Riley: people visible of different kinds. My CFO is a
Emma Riley: gay woman. I'm out there as well, you know, being
Emma Riley: openly gay. And and there are various various other people who are doing
Emma Riley: the same kind of work. And even in my, you know,
Emma Riley: singing organization, I I gave you that example, and I'm on the
Emma Riley: diversity, equity, and inclusion council for it to help ensure that we move in the
Emma Riley: right direction as far as gender equality is concerned. And
Emma Riley: it just is so important to be able to see a version of yourself
Emma Riley: up there to say, actually, it is safe to be who you
Emma Riley: are. You can be anything. You can be on stage
Emma Riley: and sing and be gay. You know, you can
Emma Riley: be CFO and be gay.
Emma Riley: You you can do talking on the
Emma Riley: television or the radio and actually be listened to
Emma Riley: and and understood, and be allowed that
Emma Riley: platform to be able to try and reach people so that people can be connected
Emma Riley: and understand that they are good, excellent human beings.
Emma Riley: I I always say so I volunteer for Diversity Role Models, which is
Emma Riley: a charity that goes into schools and does workshops to try and try and end
Emma Riley: LGBT bullying. So building empathy with kids who
Emma Riley: generally don't speak to real gay people until they
Emma Riley: leave school. So I go in there and tell my story and kind of
Emma Riley: shake up shake them up a bit, because it's a bit dramatic. But
Emma Riley: the long and the short of it is I say, you know, we're all skin
Emma Riley: bags of blood and bones. There's no real difference between us.
Emma Riley: You know, how you choose to present your particular skin bag
Emma Riley: is completely fine. And whether that
Emma Riley: person is religious or not, whether that person is gay or not,
Emma Riley: transgender or not, one sex, intersex, etcetera,
Emma Riley: etcetera. It literally doesn't make any difference. You are
Emma Riley: all the same material underneath. Pride's coming up in June. I mean, this
Joanne Lockwood: episode probably going out after June, but we talk about pride being a
Joanne Lockwood: protest as well as a celebration. We're living in a
Joanne Lockwood: world in 2024 here where there's this pushback on
Joanne Lockwood: wokeness. We hear it all the time. It's been weaponized. Mhmm. I I do you
Joanne Lockwood: feel that people are kind of saying to you, come on, Emma. Can you just
Joanne Lockwood: put your gayness away for a bit? Let's talk about.
Emma Riley: Yeah. Yeah. My work colleagues say, you got you've gotten another award or something.
Emma Riley: Is that for the gay stuff then? Like, it becomes a thing. Well,
Emma Riley: yes and no. Pride is a protest,
Emma Riley: as well as a celebration. And the fact that there are still people out
Emma Riley: there who are terrified of telling their parents or their colleagues
Emma Riley: or, you know, whatever that they're gay, transgender, etcetera,
Emma Riley: etcetera, is it still needs to be
Emma Riley: highlighted and these safe spaces still need to be
Emma Riley: created. It's why companies in particular, I think, need to make sure
Emma Riley: that they are on top of things like diversity, equity, inclusion, because somebody needs to
Emma Riley: be allowed to be their full authentic self at work
Emma Riley: in order to release that mental brain
Emma Riley: space, even from a simple productivity point of view, to be
Emma Riley: able to put their whole self into their work. And I have
Emma Riley: also said, you know, if you're at work, that may be your
Emma Riley: only safe space for various reasons. Maybe at your home
Emma Riley: space, there is a religious reason or a cultural reason why being
Emma Riley: gay or transgender is not something that you can speak about, but at your workplace,
Emma Riley: you should be able to be fully engaged and fully
Emma Riley: there. There are so many layers to this. There's so many layers. But,
Emma Riley: yeah, it does need to be visible It needs to
Emma Riley: be a protest because you can see how many of
Emma Riley: the laws and gains that we've made are under attack at all times.
Emma Riley: And it needs to be a celebration because there's nothing more powerful
Emma Riley: than people walking in pride together. Oh, you
Joanne Lockwood: feel that event sense of, I know, your chest puffs out.
Joanne Lockwood: You feel proud in pride, don't you? But you know that it's the
Joanne Lockwood: only space well, it's one of the only spaces you can walk and know you'll
Joanne Lockwood: you'll be accepted by everybody around you because we're all there for
Joanne Lockwood: one purpose. It's Yes. Exactly. Immensely powerful immensely powerful. And I
Joanne Lockwood: my wife often tells the story that we went to pride on the Isle of
Joanne Lockwood: Wight when it was world pride. It was probably 5, 6 years ago. Mhmm. And
Joanne Lockwood: it was the first time that she felt comfortable being with
Joanne Lockwood: me and talk about things in that kind of way
Joanne Lockwood: that made her believe that it was normal. We were just a
Joanne Lockwood: normal couple with Yep. A different a different flavor maybe. And
Joanne Lockwood: it was the first time she felt that. And I think you're right. Pride is
Joanne Lockwood: there as a safe space to allow people to believe as well. And I think
Joanne Lockwood: that's incredibly powerful. Yeah. Absolutely. You
Joanne Lockwood: got a a vision? Yeah. What next? Your mission
Joanne Lockwood: isn't complete on, the service band. You know, we we
Joanne Lockwood: want compensation. We want all these other things, but it's Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I
Emma Riley: and as much as anything else, the if I the more I can speak
Emma Riley: publicly about this, the more I can try and reach other
Emma Riley: veterans who maybe haven't heard about the reparations,
Emma Riley: who haven't had the opportunity to connect with other veterans because
Emma Riley: it to be able to tell your story to somebody who really understands is a
Emma Riley: very powerful thing. That happened to me a couple of weeks back. I
Emma Riley: met a person whose wife had been thrown out to the RAF in 1984,
Emma Riley: and she she'd said that go to a couple of friends and so, and they
Emma Riley: are legitimately horrified. But we met, and she told her story to me,
Emma Riley: exactly what she went through, knows
Emma Riley: the the terror and the shame, understands the
Emma Riley: mental cruelty that you go through. I mean, she'd been kept
Emma Riley: hanging around for 6 months given different dates, and the worst part of it
Emma Riley: was they used her as bait to get a corporal.
Emma Riley: How mentally destructive is that? And there are so many stories of that kind of
Emma Riley: thing. But connecting veterans with veterans who have that
Emma Riley: common military service, but also, crucially, that
Emma Riley: common experience of having gone through these
Emma Riley: discharges is very crucial. And, frankly,
Emma Riley: also getting people to apply for compensation, particularly the financial
Emma Riley: compensation because we need to pressure the government to actually
Emma Riley: come through with that money. People have been destroyed, lives
Emma Riley: destroyed, Careers never happened because
Emma Riley: people didn't have the mental capacity to go through. So they've had housing difficulties,
Emma Riley: relationship difficulties, health difficulties. People have
Emma Riley: died for this, and the government
Emma Riley: still The people who've served in in conflicts and wars, who've
Joanne Lockwood: lost their medals and recognition and Yeah. Not just
Joanne Lockwood: finance, but stripping them of every if ever achieved. And it's Yeah. The
Emma Riley: humiliation. Yeah. Really humiliation. And it's
Joanne Lockwood: yeah. It's it's definitely as large as you say. And I think we need
Joanne Lockwood: more than the apology. We need restitution and reformation about what's
Joanne Lockwood: happened. Absolutely. And they are making, finally,
Emma Riley: due to pressure, strides towards that. I think there's a and I'm
Joanne Lockwood: not gonna knock what they're doing, but it's kind of a cop out. When something
Joanne Lockwood: happens 20 or happens 20 or 30 years earlier, it's easy to be sorry.
Joanne Lockwood: It it doesn't cost anything to be sorry today. You can you can say whatever
Joanne Lockwood: you'd use you like, because it's not you, your apologizing
Joanne Lockwood: on the sins of the past or the pea your predecessors. It's
Joanne Lockwood: easy to throw people under a bus 20 years later. Absolutely.
Emma Riley: I I was one of only 2 veterans looking directly down at Rishi
Emma Riley: Sunak when he apologized on behalf of the state to LGBT veterans.
Emma Riley: And it was a very pretty piece of speech, as was Keir Starmer
Emma Riley: afterwards. But, actually, the one that hit home was the
Emma Riley: then defense secretary Ben Wallace had a space in the
Emma Riley: political program of that day a little bit later to talk about it. And
Emma Riley: he gave a proper, nuanced, personal,
Emma Riley: with humility, apology that referenced the fact that
Emma Riley: he was an officer at the time, and he was part of the problem. And
Emma Riley: having met gay people like MP Crispin Blunt later,
Emma Riley: he finally understood the real impact of what he'd been
Emma Riley: party to at the time. And so his
Emma Riley: contrition had far more emotion behind it
Emma Riley: than ever did the 2 heads of parties.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. Emma, wow. Thank you.
Joanne Lockwood: I really value your candor and openness in telling your
Joanne Lockwood: story here today. So, yeah, absolutely absolutely powerful. How
Joanne Lockwood: can we get a hold of you? You can find me on LinkedIn. I have
Emma Riley: a website, emiraldi.uk. Please do contact me through either of
Emma Riley: those things. And, yeah, I do have a full time job,
Emma Riley: but I do work as much as I can to try and help around that,
Emma Riley: to get the message out there and try and help help people
Emma Riley: understand this history a little bit more.
Joanne Lockwood: Thank you. As we bring this conversation
Joanne Lockwood: to a close, I want to express my deepest gratitude
Joanne Lockwood: to you, our listener, for lending your ear and
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