 Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Inside Leather History of Fireside Chat. I'm Doug O'Keefe, the host and co-producer of the Fireside Chats with Mr. Joe Angatti. Today, I'm at the home of Mr. Roland Jaggard, near London, England. And this is a very special interview for me. I am honored and humbled to be here. So, without further ado, may I introduce Mr. Roland Jaggard. So, Mr. Jaggard, or shall I call you Roland? I, from my heart, would like to thank you for welcoming me and the filming people here to your home. You're very kind, and I'm very humbled and very honored to be speaking with you today. Please know that. I do know. Thank you very much. Slightly nerve-racking that I'll fulfill your expectations, but I'll do my best. And I appreciate it. You haven't done very many interviews about Operation Spanner, at least not that I'm truly aware. And I'm not aware that you've done an on-camera interview about this before. So, why have you agreed to do this with me today? Well, we did do one interview at an award ceremony with a German television company, but it didn't last very long. We never actually saw the result. However, there were one or two radio interviews, but they were more salacious in approach. Whereas your one from what I've seen of other interviews is more to get to the heart of the matter and understand how people function and how it feels within the gay SM world and what have you to tell your story and get it across to people. So that's really what I've agreed. And it'll also, I hope for me anyway, draw a line under everything once it's done. I don't intend to give any more interviews. Then I feel especially honored to be able to speak with you. You're welcome. Thank you. So, take us back. Tell us a little bit about your early life. You're from a small village. Yeah, I was brought up in a village about 20 miles or so from where I live now. We lived in the middle of the countryside. I was adopted. I was the only child of the doctors. Although I did have another one originally, but I never kept him for long. So I was brought up as an only child. There were no other children my age, within half a mile at least. So a lot of time was spent playing by yourself and things. Obviously it was better when we went to school. But even at school, we didn't go to a local village school because it had a headmistress and one of the light headmasters. So we went to the next village, which was about another six miles or more away. Took the bus every day and made friends there. But of course, people generally didn't have cars in those days. So you didn't get to see your friends out of school as very often it was like a special event. So that was the early childhood stuff. Once we got to the secondary school, which for then was around 11 or 12, that was a cycle ride away. So that was much easier. We used to cycle into school and back every day and have friends around quite often for that from that period. So that was alright. The secondary school was fine for friends and companions and what have you. What was your mother's reasoning for a schoolmaster versus a schoolmistress? I think she just wasn't very keen on women. Basically, she always got on better chatting with blokes. That said, because we were a poor family, which she used to do for people as they said those days, which was basically cleaning and housework and stuff and she'd go and earn some extra money doing that. But from my point of view, actually it turned out rather well because it gave me a sort of feeling for some of the better things in life. Because all these houses that she worked in, they were all the posh ones around the area. So I got to see nice furniture, nice, everything's virtually, you know, and I enjoyed all that. So that was quite good. But even then, ironically, none of them had any children. So again, there was nobody to play with particularly. You said that that did change though, the older you got and you were able to make more friends. Did that make you more comfortable at that time? Oh yes, I was quite happy. The secondary school I was really pretty happy in. I mean, I did like it. It was a lovely school. I enjoyed it, did well in it, started sort of midstream. And as time went on, it sounds boastful this, but I got better and better and ended up near the top of the pile and getting me qualifications, A-levels and things at the end of it all. So yeah, I liked the secondary school. And I did keep in touch with a few friends for a few years after we left. But of course, once you get to 18, people spit all over the place. And then it became harder again because I knew I was gay and I didn't know how to contact anybody, really. We were still illegal at that time. You told me then, from an early age, you had a dread of authority figures. Please tell us about that. Well, first of all, we used to have some of the... I used to go to Chapel, which was a sort of C of E, Church of England type thing. It was very low-key that I have to say that, but nevertheless, you could tell that, if you like, homosexuals weren't their cup of tea from quite an early age. They didn't actually use the phrase per se, but you certainly got the impression that it was all about family and procreation and all this. And then the other problem was being... At that time I was fostered, which is a sort of precursor to being adopted. Adopted as a legal position where you actually become part of family, where it's fostered means we've put you in here for now. It works out, you stay, if it doesn't, we move you on. And that used to terrify my mother. So she inadvertently, I feel, passed on a fear of these authority figures from the council children's department who would come along every month or so to assess how we were doing. And there was one phase when my father went off the rails a bit and she really said, don't say anything to these people. We don't want them to know. So that's where that started. And then not too bad. During the school period it wasn't so bad. It sort of post-school, I think. Once I got to uni and beyond and started getting a bit more into the gay world, I realised that we weren't flavouring a month for quite a lot of authority, the system, police, the media, things like that. Well, the media I got wind of early when I was younger, reading some of the press like the News of the World and things when my mother used to have the people in the News of the World. And even though it was never discussed in the family, you could tell that they weren't keeping on as... That's where it started, I think. And to be fair, I do think that my case has escalated. Well... But you mentioned being fostered. What was going on there? I was born in... And then put in a children's home. I was taken away from my birth mother at four days. She was described as having melancholia, which in these days would be called depression. So they deemed that after four days, I shouldn't be with her, which is odd. And then... I can't remember any of the rest. Well, that was when I was about two years old. My mother took me in along with father to bring me up with, as I said, another boy, but that other boy, one, didn't work out for reasons I don't really know, because I was too young. So that's what the fostering is, and that's why she was so nervous, because it is a position they had to pay her any time to take you away again. She was overprotective, to be fair. Lovely lady, but a bit overprotective. I can see that in retrospect. And then adoption is when you decide, like I decide and they decide that I want to be legally take the family name and have all the rights of relatives and things, and then you go to court for that. You get signed in, you get a new birth certificate with fair names on it. So that's really what that's about. Okay. From an early age, you said that you knew you preferred men. Now, coming from the demographic you've depicted, how did you know this? I think when you're very young, you don't have any names for anything. You just know what you like, and I knew what I liked. I'm in a primary school. It's like a lot of these things. The people who are sort of anti-gay always say, oh, well, it's phases and this sort of thing. But I knew at a very early age that I'd much preferred being around the boys than the girls. The girls were all right. But at school, you know, you do the sort of show me or show your mind type of stuff that people do when you grow up. And I loved all that. Whereas when it was show me or show your mind or show you, you know, it was a bit disappointed. So I always just preferred male company. And I liked older male company. And my father was fairly much like so often, a pretty absolute figure a lot of the time. He wasn't demonstrative at all. I mean, it's a generational thing, holding against him. Again, my parents were not what you'd call social beings. So it was a relatively isolated life socially. So all my social life really revolved more around school friends and things, rather than adults, where I might have got a sort of different view on things. But I just always knew I preferred mucking about with me mates. Having got told off in school in a couple of lessons, you know, I think that might be standard for how you grow up. What do you mean what happened? Well, the bad lads always sit in the back of the class. In those days, classes used to be all desks in a row facing the teacher, you know, the blackboard and the desk and he sort of talked at you or she talked at you. You wrote down what they said if you could keep up and then he kept disciplined and so on. And the general rule was that you'd sit at the back of the class if you wanted to muck about a bit. But I thought, well, I'll reverse psychology this, so I'll sit right at the front by his desk on the grounds that he'll be paying attention to the people at the back. And then about halfway through the lesson, he said, Jago, well, you and this other boy keep your hands above the desk for the rest of the lesson. So we did. But it was a bit of shuffling because, believe me, fly buttons are just not as easy as it looks. That's the sort of thing, you know. So it was a little bit of fun. I'm giving my life away here. Eventually you studied engineering in college and that led to a career in engineering. Please tell us about the work that you were doing. Well, I'll backtrack fractionally. When I was a lad, only two things I ever wanted to be were as a doctor or an engineer. I've actually got a book from way back where it says I want to be and it's got engineer because I couldn't spell it or doctor. But at the secondary school where DMA levels, I couldn't get on with a chemistry master. Well, if you can't do chemistry, you can forget being a doctor because you need a chemistry A level team to get into the uni. But as for the engineering, I've always been investigating the devices and taking things to bits since it's been a very small boy. Sometimes I learn to put them together again, but essentially you could take it all to bits. So that's why I went into engineering. When I'd qualified, I worked at what was then Hawker-Sydley Dynamics in Hatfield. It had just been renamed fairly recently from D'Havilland Aircraft Company. They were well known for quite a lot of pre-war claims, the Comet, Racer, the D'Havilland, Rapide, and most famously, of course, the Comet, which was doing wonderfully until the window corners cracked when they were fed out of the sky. This was a great show because nobody knew about metal for tea in those days. So the apprenticeship was done there and you go around various departments but I knew where I wanted to be. I wanted to be in design because one of the things I took was technical drawing at A level because I wanted to design stuff that's more technical side of the thing, hand-nice and clean. Didn't want to get mucky in workshops and things. So that's where I ended up was in the flying controls department, which for me is the only decent department in the whole factory because it's the most interesting equipment there. So we was involved in the design of that. Initially, obviously, as an ex-apprentice, you end up in the department you've chosen, if they'll have you, that's where we ended up. You get simple jobs but quite quickly you get quite important jobs. So, for instance, on Trident aircraft, there were various models of Trident 1A, 1B further, 2B, 3B and something. Sorry about that. Memories are rather poor after all these years. But essentially one of the mods I quite enjoyed was I had to modify the connection points for like a 2B undercarriage to fit into a 3B aircraft. And I was quite enjoying it and then I said, by the way, you said, just remember these legs cost 20 grand each if you make a mess. But I didn't and that was all right. Other times there were quite important. There was a Trident crash at Stains in Middlesex where it crashed soon after the take-off. I can't remember the year, but it's on point. Really sudden days. And that was because the droop slacks had been put back in too soon and it stalled and pancaked essentially. At the time that happened, the controls that they were concerned with, I was doing mods on them. It was on my drawing board and that was over the weekend the crash, Monday morning when I went in. They whisked all my pictures off my board with the drawings and things and you had a terrible sinking feeling. God, I hope I didn't kill a hundred and something of people with my mods. But in retrospect, obviously, I didn't. I did see the output, the accelerometry outputs from the black box later and that is quite traumatic because it just goes along. These are G-forces, if you like, that way and time in that direction and the G-forces were like this and then suddenly it goes right up and then plummets and stops so that will be hitting the ground as the right up and then the stop a second later is, of course, when it's crashed and then it finished crashing, if you like. So that was salutary. That was a rough time at the factory for everybody concerned, I think. And then after a while it was one of those companies where you didn't really progress much until people died. A bit like the railways used to be where, you know, firemen couldn't really become drivers in this vacancy of death that occurred in some manner. So I thought there's no prospect here of the future of getting anywhere because I wanted to do more. So I left and went contract. Contract, I'm sure people know what that is, you don't get employed by the company you work for. You're just, if you like, a sort of freelance company and you get farmed out of different companies. So I went around a few other companies and eventually I ended up at British Aerospace in Stephen Beach and that was on test systems which essentially was test equipment, build, design and manufacture of test equipment for missile systems. And that was much more interesting. And I remember one day they said, anybody interested in optics? Well, I've done photography since I was about eight and I like everything scientific. So I said, yes, I've done it. Right, they sent me on a couple of courses so they sent me on a couple of courses and I ended up involved in infrared photography and infrared lenses and stuff like the equipment used infrared, especially the stuff attached to helicopters and some of the missile systems. So that was interesting. The whole job was really very good. I loved it all. The upshot over a period of years is I got promoted up and up and was a group head by the end with a fair number of people working under me. But while they were busy doing, if you like, the routine work that I'd been doing previously, I got the more choice future work type of things where you've been given a very rough brief and you'd have to go and possibly start from first principles and go and work out new methods of doing new, it's new work basically, so you're at the forefront of what was coming along rather than picking up from what had already been done. That was jolly good. We were tripped and trips abroad and trips around the country to various army bases and stuff. I enjoyed all of that. It was all wonderful. It all carried on all being pretty wonderful right up until the day we all fell apart, which we'll get on to later I suspect. Yes. That's quite an honour that they would have entrusted you with this new technology and the progress that was going on. Well, because it was the position you were in. As a group head, you had to be kept up with what was going on and because it involved other departments, more so than the average guys would. But I don't know how to stress it, it was within the factory, it was a fairly regular set up. There were quite a few group heads in various departments, but I must have done all right because two or three times I was the only one in the department to get pay rise. So it was doing all right. Was that work what brought you to Metropolitan London? Well, by that time I'd left home and moved to the area. That wasn't so much work. Oh yes, I suppose it was really, because I had work, that was a hat field that I moved to this area and while I was at Hatfield and I still hadn't really, it was still a relatively lonely life in as much as I hadn't met any gay people, not knowingly anyway, which I really wanted to do. And at that time, there used to be a magazine called Forum. Looked in there there was an article about the CHE in the magazine, so I thought I'll contact them, write to them. And actually at that time I was still living at home, just. And I thought, well, there was one quite near me where I lived at home and like a lot of gay people in their early days, you think, oh God, I can't do anything near home. What if I met someone I knew or, you know, be traumatic. So I actually chose, there was a group in Hatfield and I thought, well, I work in Hatfield at that time, so I'll choose that group instead. So that's what happened, I contacted them and life started then really pretty much. But what was the CHE? The campaign Homosexual Equality, it was set up just after homosexuals was legalised in this country, in England and Wales. And it was a campaigning group and the idea for them was to try and get the gay needs into the public eye more. Because a lot of people in like, if you like, the authority and the law and so on had the attitude, well, you're legal now, so what's your problem? Now you can all shut up and go away. But we didn't all want to shut up and go away. Because of the way the laws were couched in those days, even with being legal made it still very difficult for people to get in touch. So that was really, it was to help gay people become part of proper society, if you like, that was their main names, I think. You mentioned that although it had become legal in England and Wales, wasn't there a rule, a law about two gay people being in a house at the same time? What was that? Well, that was, this is what made everything so difficult. If two gay people were in a house and they had sex, then that was illegal. If for instance they had a lodger say and the gay bloats were in their bedroom and the lodger was in the lounge, it's still illegal because it was considered that it was just not on it. You could be corrupting the other person. Even if the other person was a gay person it was still illegal. It won't allow more than two people to be together in any sexual situation at any time and even the definition of private was quite rigid. I mean, private didn't include hidden away in the back of a woods or something because that was in public grounds and the police used to pursue this sort of thing for years. One of the things that was quite rife in those days was cottaging. I don't know if that's a term familiar to all of your listeners. I believe it's what we call Tee Room. Okay, Tee Room. Sex gown. And that was quite rife but it was very fraught, of course, because quite often the police would use agent provocateurs. And it was risky. Having said that, it was also quite fun. It also meant I kept detouring on the way to and from places all the time. And if I'd had what I'd call a heterosexual evening, you know, lots of mixed couples and straight friends and things, just ordinary social evenings, it was nice just to do a quick detour into a cottage on the way home just to cheer myself up, you know. Because you can get a bit bored listening about family and grandparents and things. It does grind you down after a while, which, of course, is something else that happens as you're growing up. You start with when you're going to get a girlfriend so questions that go on for ages, apparently. Then it's why haven't you got one yet? And then it's when you're going to get married and all this sort of thing, you know. I'm not saying it grinds you down, but it's wearing over a long period of time and all you really want to do is go and find some boyfriend and live the world with a boyfriend who might, if you're lucky, become a partner. It's much the same. It's the same today, because even on lots of television shows like these little video outtakes that they do, they all go, ooh and ah, every time a couple of toddlers kiss each other, assuming it's a boy toddler and a girl toddler. They never actually show you two boys and girls kissing, but you see what I mean? It's the automatic concept that you're going to be a straight person and somewhat disappointment that you're not. So, but it was all right. Did you meet anyone interesting through these organisations? Oh, well, yes. Sorry, I didn't make a smile too much. It was quite good. Now sooner or later I got this contact. I found one miles from home, found two quite a long way. One was Hatfield and the other was over Chelmsford. So I went to the Chelmsford one first, on the grounds that's further away for the same reasons, you know, don't want to meet anyone I know. And that was quite nice. He was a very friendly chap and I get to meet one or two of the people in that group. And then with the courage from that, I went to the Hatfield one, which was closer. Went off after work to see the chap. I knew where I was going to be because I'd already told my parents I might not be home tonight. This was before that. I said there's stuff going on at work I might have to stop over. In the event I stopped over for two nights. So hello in a very friendly way to quite a few people. It was just wonderful. I was really where I finally knew I wanted to be, you know, which was in sexy male company. That's what I really had always wanted from an early age. I just felt so happy then. And it was a... The groups were lovely because they had sounds a bit tweeny. I bought coffee evenings. They did sort of little subgroups like Photographic Club and I belonged to that. I helped start that one. And we used to do our own printing and developing of things in those days. So yeah, it was nice, C.H.E. Of course that sort of group was going these days pretty much died out because of the internet. Everyone goes via internet and as far as I can tell hardly ever get to see real people. They'd rather be on their computer and doing it like that but it was nice. And yes, I met a lot of interesting people. Not just sexually interesting but actually, you know, other reasons interesting as well. A diverse group of people with different interests and hobbies and so on. So that was good. In addition to the law about two gay people in the same house you alluded that there were other reasons that made meeting other gay people difficult. What other issues were there? Well the other issues really were being able to identify people in any way. The only real way was to get to know where where they hang out which eventually having joined the C.H.E. and talked to people there, I realised I didn't know about cottaging so I joined C.H.E. or T.Rums which is just as well as my degree if I had. Because it turns out there were two cottages in my hometown, you know. I knew they were there but I never thought of hanging around in them for anybody and it does sound so easy but it was great fun. So they told me that there were outdoor cruising areas and things and again there were one or two not that too far away. They're still going as far as I know but much cut back now a lot of the cut backs of the vegetation of course so you've got nothing to hide behind anymore but there was one that was notorious at the time it was called Scratchwood which is just down the 8-1 off the 8-1 in and that was a lovely place so every time I went into London for any reason by car or back then I'd often call on the way home you know that's sort of turned not so good over recent years but all the characters there's been the anti-gay types I've never understood it I've never wanted to be anybody in terms of what they are you know because I'm not a violent person I was into SM heavy SM but that's not the same as violence I mean I've never been in a fight for instance in my life with anybody I can't understand the sort of I don't know if it is hatred I think it's just feel like peer pressure look at us what we can do sort of rubbish and they're just misinformed and misguided but yes that's the other thing I found out about open spaces and laybys and it was all very exciting I thought well lorry dryness that's another thing I always rather fancy lorry cab sex I managed to find someone for that venture it was rather good I like the fact that if people knew it would annoy them you know and of course from the heterosexual point of view I understand it was actually a lot harder for them to do all these sorts of things I've met my partner through one of the interest groups which was a transport group I also met a person I ended up buying this house with because we shared interests in classical music prior to meeting him I'd already run classical music evenings when I was in student digs there was four of us four students shared a house and I started classical music evenings there and it was friends from work mainly and that transferred to this next year and that was going for well over 20 years the only thing that really saw the ground was age they started dying off a bit and then things like my troubles didn't help matters at all so it really sort of just ended naturally I think in the end but that was a very good period as well most enjoyable when we were preparing for this interview you said that religion dislikes us what do you mean by that apart from mentioning the earlier bit about it was very if you like family orientating the way it was presented I don't mean just Church of England because that actually wasn't too bad but as you grow up and listen to the media and so when you hear about Catholic Church and so on there's something that's not like done with a wedded wife in the dark for procreation only it's considered bad and so therefore we were automatically bad because we weren't married we weren't Catholic just like doing things and that still goes on the media and the church as far as I see have always been pretty much anti-gay the media and church still are in a lot of cases I mean today on one of the news items I saw that some Archbishop in Greece or Cyprus or somewhere said that he found that homosexuality was caused by women having anal sex when they were pregnant what better conclusion can you draw apparently the urge for anus was built into the fetus and therefore turned gay and that was on that was on today it's in there somewhere and another one, another theory because this is the other thing that annoys me a lot I must admit this is not just religion but religion holds a key part of it I mean the Muslim world in general there was another survey the other day that I saw where the Muslim men by night rated on a killing you know where they kill their wives or girlfriends or whatever they stray they rated that as a lower sin than homosexuality so they considered us more dangerous and worse than them killing their relatives that attitude is still there and even now these sort of world and thoughts is growing how long this sort of fairly safe world for us that we live in these days really will last there's nowhere knowing so that's why I don't like religion I mean there are other causes they've never actually put forward a cause for being gay they just don't like it essentially I know there are gay people within the church that was the other big hypocrisy of course there were so many gay priests and clergy and so on but they kept it all because they had to because they declared and teachers and things and that was that was why I'm not very keen on religion