IGRM marked its 50th anniversary as Ireland’s oldest LGBTQ+ civil rights organisation.Not unlike many of his peers, Clem’s activism was seeded by membership of the Sexual Liberation Movement, a pansexual advocacy group established in Trinity College in late 1973.1974 is considered a significant foundational year for Irish queers.
Ireland’s first symposium on homosexuality drew hundreds to TCD, followed by the first public protest on ‘Irish Gay Pride Day’, June 27.
A week later, IGRM was established and in quick succession took a lease on a public office and founded the country’s first LGBTQ+ counselling and befriending service, Tel-A-Friend.In his late 20s at this point and with considerable managerial skills from working with Quinnsworth (a network of supermarkets later acquired by Tesco), Clem was a natural fit for the treasurer’s role at IGRM and would oversee the acquisition of 46 Parnell Square in the Winter of 1975.
The four-storey building was Ireland’s first attempt at an LGBTQ+ community space.Forced to leave the space in 1978, Clem and his colleagues at IGRM later acquired a warehouse just off Dublin’s north inner city quays, from where the Phoenix Club operated until the mid-’80s.Throughout his tenure at IGRM, Clem was one of an incredibly small group of out, proud queers prepared to be visible in the print and broadcast media; a group that also travelled the length and breadth of the country advocating for gay rights and encouraging local development in Cork, Limerick and Galway at a time when there was nothing approaching a queer social scene or political infrastructure in any of our large urban centres.Throughout the ’90s and into Noughties, Clem was involved in the leather and fetish scene.