Gay liberationists started it. Now our Lib Dem councillors have completed it.

Thanks to their combined efforts, every street public lavatory in the Royal borough, save one, has been closed, and Kingston town centre is without public loos for the first time in more than 300 years.

The council chose April Fools' Day to bring off this coup, so many people assumed it was a hoax. Now they know different.

These crucial facilities have been taken away indefinitely, with scant prospect that we'll ever get them back.

I can't find words strong enough for my astonishment that such a move should even have been thought of, much less carried out.

For in a world obsessed with "rights", it erodes the most basic human right of all: easily accessible privacy for the intimate bodily evacuations we must all perform, regardless of age, sex, race or status.

I have unusually deep insight into Kingston's public watering holes. For during my quarter-century with the Comet I've been to all of them, gents' as well as ladies', as self-appointed reporter on their pros and cons over the decades.

It was a halcyon scene in the early 70s. Nearly every borough loo was pristine, had its own attendant, and was open from 7am to llpm.

By the 80s, gay liberation was a burgeoning force, and what in my youth was known as "the love that dares not speak its name" was not only speaking it, but shouting it in Kingston's lavs.

Those most favoured as homosexual hangouts included the ones at The Fountain, New Malden and Plough Green, Old Malden, both advertised in gay publications as sexual orgy centres.

The damage, and the grossly obscene graffiti, that followed these "love-ins" had to be seen to be believed.

By the 90s, three conveniences had closed as a direct result of sexual deviancy. One was at Moor Lane, sedately set amid gardens in the heart of Chessington.

But it became a noted centre for homosexuals and later for paedophiles. They bored holes through the lavatory walls to spy on scantily-clad toddlers as they played in the grounds of an adjoining nursery school on warm summer days.

Also closed by sexual vandalism were the lavatories in Richmond Road lorry park, and those in Canbury Gardens. However, the council arranged for alternative public facilities at Boaters, the riverside pub close by.

But still we had 10 street necessariums to turn to, albeit they began closing around 6pm instead of 11pm to avoid nocturnal abuse.

Now we have none, save the one reprieved at Tolworth Close.

It's a disgraceful state of affairs that no previous Kingston council would have dared to create. It explains why I saw a smartly-dressed man furtively urinating in a corner near Kingston bus station last week.

That's a sight we're likely to see often in future -- and all to save the £120,000 a year it costs to maintain the roadside loos we had until this month. If the Royal borough is that strapped for cash, why can't our caring councillors take a cut?

It's popularly believed they serve in an honorary capacity -- as they did until recent times.

Now they don't. They receive a basic annual allowance of £1,060.40p. On top of that they get an attendance fee of £48.35 every time they turn up at their committees.

Did you know this? Most people don't.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.