Many of you will know that a US man – Cleve Jones – founded the Names Project, which is basically a creative project memorialising our loved ones who have died from AIDS, many of whom were IV drug dependents.

It consists of thousands of banner-sized quilts dedicated to our loved ones. Many of these quilts have been sewn together by Volunteers, to create huge displays of colour, art and critically, grief about what happened decades ago. Quilts are still being added to the quilt, though the UK Guardians of the quilt are not interested in ours yet!

John Mordaunt (a “sterling” HIV/Addiction activist) was my life-partner, and also the most vulnerable, politically-savvy and adorable little Irishman ever, not that i am biased!

As soon as he knew he was sick with HIV, he called the RTE radio station ranting about lack of AIDS Prevention tools and medicines attributing this dangerous situation to the Catholic Church’s moralistic stance on condoms. Needle Exchange was not even thought about at this stage either. John ranted about his friends who were dying from AIDS at FRONTLINERS, that criminalised drug injectors were also dying and he was not far from death himself. He needed someone on the radio to report this, expose the judgemental, careless and dangerous road we were all on.

Fortunately, the journalist, John Masterson, at the other end of the phone was able to calm John down enough to get a mutual connection, they co-wrote a book, which came out a year later – “Facing Up To AIDS.”

I loved him in many ways. We were not just lovers, but also “comrades-in-arms,” desperate to reduce the numbers dying from AIDS. Before we made that quilt, he had already been in a London Intensive Care Unit for days, nearly-dead from HIV-related pneumonia and septicaemia. Thus it felt like a mini-miracle to find ourselves, in a sewing class of an AIDS Hospice in West London, creating this panel, which we hoped would be woven into the national Names Project one day.

We took gentle instruction from an elderly woman, in the Quilt-making class who showed us how to sew the outer hems of the quilt that declared “

FOR ALL THE ADDICTs UNKNOWN AND UNNAMED, words whispered to me by my friend at St Martins in the Fields, one WORLD AIDS DAY. That was Allan who came to head up the National Harm Reduction Coalition of the USA, for decades.

At that same Names Project class, we also received colourful & artistic direction from a gorgeous hippy queer dude, who lived in the Bell Tower of Lambeth Palace!

John was so frail by then. I was reprimanded a few times by physicians and friends alike for refusing to have low expectations of John. Dying or not he remained an amazing orator and advocate for PLWAIDS internationally, but that afternoon, when I wondered how many weeks he had left, I sewed frantically.

I had 17 months of Heroin-free again, by then, so feeling everything. He died 1995, leaving me his name and a legacy of Non Violent Direct Action HIV Activism, which I took forward to this day

It was ready 32 years ago but because it was our Collaboration, I couldn’t let it go but now I really need to, or at least show it off!! SO HERE IT IS

Andria E-M, London May 2026