As a teacher, a councillor and even a local mayor, Robin Ford was a public figure on an island where ‘everyone knows everyone’. What everyone did not know was his crucial role as the gatekeeper for an ‘underground’ community and his ‘great unmentionable’ secret that he was gay.
![[Robin Ford looking at the camera at the age of 78]](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/robin-3-of-1-5ca6.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=646)
Robin’s story is one among dozens of ‘hidden LGBT past lives’ on the Isle of Wight that were uncovered after decades of ‘omission and misrepresentation.’. Robin, now 82, remembers the sense of realisation and shame when he first came across the word ‘homosexual’ in 1955 on the island.
![[Robin Ford sitting on a bench writing on a laptop]](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/robin-2-of-1-a370.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=646)
‘I had not heard of it before. I felt very pleased, but I found it all very difficult to live with after that first exhilaration,’ Robin said. ‘Being gay was the great unmentionable.’. The social stigma against homosexuality across the 147 square mile island led Robin to years of repression, ‘denial and reversal’, including seven years married to women in the late 1960s and ’70s.
![[Joanne Broady sitting on a motorbike]](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Joanne-1of-1-502a.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=646)
‘Throughout my early life, I made horrible attempts to pretend I was straight. There was this terrible sense of shame.’. With thousands of members from all over the world, our vibrant LGBTQ+ WhatsApp channel is a hub for all the latest news and important issues that face the LGBTQ+ community.
Simply click on this link, select ‘Join Chat’ and you’re in! Don't forget to turn on notifications!. He added: ‘The liberal position was that you were ill. You were a sick man’. When his sexual orientation was known, the ‘overt homophobia’ taught him that he could not be gay in public life.
