How the late John Prescott and trans pioneer April Ashley forged an unlikely bond

While my co-author Jacqueline Kent and I were researching our new biography of April Ashley, one of the most surprising people in her remarkable life was not Salvador Dali, Peter Sellers and even Michael Hutchence. It was John Prescott.

The tributes to Prescott after his death last week have focussed on his support for the trade union movement and the Labour cause. But he should also be praised for his steadfast support of civil and specifically trans rights, inspired by his personal connection with Ashley.

Both were proud northerners: Prescott born in Prestatyn, April in Liverpool. Both spectacularly transcended their origins: Prescott as Labour’s deputy prime minister, April – assigned male at birth, becoming a glamorous model and trans icon. Both came from poor working-class families without much education, both had grit and determination – and bags of charisma too that would help them through their long lives.

They met when Prescott was 15, while April – then pre-transition – was three years older. They were working in a small hotel in North Wales.

We were all young once. #ThrowbackThursday pic.twitter.com/Qy3M04vht9

— John Prescott (@johnprescott) February 25, 2016

Ashley’s childhood had been gruelling and difficult. She had left home to become a deckhand in the merchant navy. Her burgeoning female identity had led to sexual assaults, suicide attempts and a spell in a psychiatric hospital, which included brutal electric-shock conversion therapy. In forging a path to independence, April started working in pubs and hotels. One was the Talardy Hotel in St Asaph.

Prescott later recalled: “I was a commis chef and he was a cocktail barman. You could see [she] was gay and different. [She] waltzed into the dining room wearing an eiderdown as a long ballgown.” Prescott said he found young April to be ‘impressively exotic’ — and April liked him too. She commented that “He was incredibly nice and very, very handsome, like a young Marlon Brando. I can see why his wife Pauline fell for him. He was more than dapper – he was strapping. He was just a lovely young man.”

Ashley and Prescott shared digs with another young hotel employee.

Their lives diverged: Ashley moved to London with a friend, Prescott went to sea as a steward on Cunard liners and became involved in union activism, the beginning of his rise through Labour politics. Ashley headed to the glamour of Paris in the late 1950s. Her work in Le Carrousel nightclub enabled her to save the money to pay for
her groundbreaking, and indeed life-threatening, gender reassignment surgery in Casablanca in 1960.

Ashley and Prescott lost contact for many years. Prescott recalled: “Then a few years ago I saw a video with April saying to PM Tony Blair ‘Why don’t you do something about gender recognition!’. So I found out her address and emailed her. I wrote: “You might remember a young commis chef in the Talardy in St Asaph? Well, I’m now the deputy prime minister and your wish has come true.”

On 27 November 2003, the Gender Recognition Bill was introduced into the House of Lords passed in the House of Commons on 25 May the following year and became law on 1 July 2004. The Act granted transgender people legal recognition, allowing them to change the sex recorded on their birth certificate. Transgender adults were able to apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC), provided they could present medical evidence of gender dysphoria and give details of their treatment. They also had to live in their ‘acquired gender’ for a minimum of two years; and they were required to sign a statutory declaration that they would continue to do so.

April was among the first to apply for a GRC. “He was so helpful to me,” she said “With Tony Blair I got nowhere. But when I got in touch with my old friend John, things happened very fast. He pointed me in exactly the right direction, made sure I got all the forms to the right people. He was ever so supportive.”

With her entirely new birth certificate: ‘Name: April. Sex: Girl.’ The very last trace of Ashley’s pre-transition life had disappeared.

Over the years April and John kept in touch, exchanging Christmas cards. A year after Prescott had tweeted his congratulations for Ashley’s MBE they met again at the opening of Liverpool Museum’s groundbreaking 2013 exhibition charting Ashley’s extraordinary life story.

Ashley was deeply touched by the gesture, and the pair renewed the jovial banter of their youth. Recalling the notorious occasion when Prescott as Deputy Prime Minister had punched an egg-throwing protestor, Ashley said she couldn’t wait to tell him that “if someone threw an egg at me I would have decked them too. But I’d have done it with my handbag!”

Tom Roberts is the co-author of Bonjour, Mademoiselle! April Ashley and the pursuit of a lovely life, also by Jacqueline Kent and published by Scribe (£22)