APRIL Ashley, the former Vogue model and one of the first people in Britain to undergo "sex-change" surgery, is to be given one of Liverpool’s top accolades - the Citizen of Honour award.
It comes in the month that the Liverpool-born equality champion celebrates her 80th birthday, and just weeks after an extended exhibition closed at the Museum of Liverpool.
The show, April Ashley Portrait of a Lady, attracted a staggering 930,000 visitors and ran for 17 months. It is now going on tour, a collaborative project between the Museum of Liverpool and Homotopia - the city based international festival of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender arts and culture.
As one of the most famous transgender individuals and a tireless campaigner for equality, she remains a heroine and inspiration to many.
Although Ashley lives in London, she was born and brought up in Chinatown’s Pitt Street, one of six children born to Frederick and Ada Jamieson.
Ashley, then known as George, always felt and looked like a girl. At St Teresa's primary school George was bullied for being different. She did not grow facial hair, her voice refused to break and instead she began to develop breasts.
A ceremony will be organised later this month to hand over the citizenship scroll, with pomp and ceremony.
Liverpool Councillor Gary Millar was one of the people pushing for Ashley to be honoured during his year as Lord Mayor. But it was his colleague, Cllr Barry Kushner, who put forward Ashley for the accolade.
Cllr Kushner told Liverpool Confidential: “I was delighted to put forward her name and I am told she is delighted to be getting this honour from her home city. Homotopia will be bringing April to Liverpool on her birthday (April 29) and we will organise a number of events. We plan to take her to her old school, St Teresa’s, and also hold a civic event for her.”
Ashley was “outed” as transsexual in 1961 by the Sunday People, a year after saving up £3,000 and travelling to Morocco to undergo pioneering and highly dangerous surgery.
Along the way she became a friend of former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott. Both had worked in Liverpool in the Merchant Navy.
Gary Millar recalls: “When the exhibition opened I hosted a small reception for April and John Prescott at the Town Hall. It was the first time they had met for many, many years. Before they were introduced John asked me how he should greet April, who of course was George when he knew her. I suggested a polite peck on the cheek which of course he did.
“This is a great honour for a great lady who has championed the cause for all of her life. It is a perfect 80th birthday present from her home city."
'I knew I was a woman and I could not live in a male body'
On her website April Ashley tells her story to raise awareness for social equality. She describes how her story begins in 1935 in a tough, working class area of Liverpool where she was born as a boy into a sea-going family. Her childhood in Liverpool was tough, with systematic bullying and taunting about her feminine good looks. It brought the realisation that if a person were not what people considered normal then that person was considered a freak.
“Intense confusion about by gender set in. Sex change was then a taboo subject,” she recalls. “Boys were boys and girls were girls. Tolerant and liberal people were unwilling to deal with, or even discuss, the issue."
At 14, George joined the merchant navy and went to sea, but this isolated life added to the confusion and a desperate suicide attempt followed. At the age of 16, George was in a high security mental hospital in Ormskirk and the future looked bleak.
In the early 1950s George escaped to London and then to Paris to join the cast of the cabaret at the world famous Carousel and success as an artist followed.
"In Paris I debated with myself the decision to have a sex change. It was a hard decision. I knew I would be pioneering a dangerous operation.
The doctor told me there was a 50/50 chance I would not come through. However, I knew I was a woman and that I could not live in a male body. I had no choice. I flew to Casablanca and the rest, as they say, is history.”
She adds: "Public attitudes in the Western world have become non-judgmental and tolerant of sexual differences. Most important, the legal systems of many countries have recognised the rights of transsexuals to appropriate social documentation and to marry and lead socially conventional lives.”
After the passing of the Gender Recognition Act in 2004, Ashley, now 70, was finally legally recognised as a female and issued with a new birth certificate. Her old friend John Prescott is said to have helped her with the red tape.
She was awarded an MBE three years ago.
