23 Jun 2022 | News and features, United Kingdom, Volume 51.02 Summer 2022, Volume 51.02 Summer 2022 Extras
Britain’s first LGBT+ Pride march took place 50 years ago, on 1 July 1972. What began as one event in London has since grown into more than 160 Pride events across the UK – from big cities to small towns. Pride has also spread to more than 100 countries, making it one of the most ubiquitous and successful global movements of all time.
How did it all begin?
After the Stonewall uprising in New York in 1969 – when the patrons of gay bars fought back against police harassment – the newly-formed gay liberation movement in the USA decided to organise protests to coincide with the anniversary. The idea spread to the UK, and a group of us in the Gay Liberation Front in London came up with the idea of holding a celebratory and defiant “Gay Pride” march, to challenge queer invisibility and the prevailing view that we should be ashamed of our homosexuality. The ethos of Pride was born.
This was an era of de facto censorship of LGBT+ issues. There was no media coverage of homophobic persecution, no public figures were openly LGBT+ and there were no positive representations of queer people. The only time we appeared in the press was when a gay person was arrested by the police, murdered by queer-bashers, outed by the tabloids, or exposed as a spy, child molester or serial killer.
This is why a Pride march was necessary: to show that we were proud of who we were. But a march was a gamble. Would anyone join us?
Back then, most LGBTs were closeted and dared not reveal themselves publicly, fearing police victimisation. Many aspects of same-sex behaviour were still a crime, given that homosexuality had been only partially decriminalised in 1967. Some were afraid that coming out publicly would result in them being queer-bashed, rejected by family and friends or sacked by homophobic employers.
But, much to our surprise and delight, about 700 people turned out for the first UK Pride in 1972. It was a joyful, carnival-style parade through the streets of London, from Trafalgar Square via Oxford Street to Hyde Park.
We had a political message: LGBT+ liberation. Our banners proclaimed: “Gay is good” and “Gay is angry”. Despite heavy policing and abuse from some members of the public, we made our point.
Buoyed by this first modest success, we had the confidence to organise further Pride marches in the years that followed. They had explicit political demands such as an equal age of consent, an end to police harassment and opposition to lesbian mothers losing custody of their children on the grounds that they were deemed to be unfit parents.
Peter Tatchell in 1974
For most of the 1970s, Pride remained feisty but tiny, with fewer than 3,000 people. However, by the mid-1980s the numbers marching rose to 12,000.
Then we were hit with a triple whammy. First came the moral panic of the Aids pandemic. Dubbed the “gay plague”, it demonised gay and bisexual men as the harbingers of death and destruction. Next the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, attacked the right to be gay at the 1987 Conservative Party conference. And then, in 1988, Section 28 became law, prohibiting the so-called “promotion” of homosexuality by local authorities – the first new homophobic law in Britain for a century.
The LGBT+ community felt under attack – and we were. It brought us together and mobilised a fightback which was reflected in the turnout for Pride in 1988, with 30,000 marchers compared with 15,000 the year before. The march was angry and political, with some people attempting to storm Downing Street.
The first ever Pride in London, 1972. Photo: Jamie Gardiner
From 1988, Pride grew exponentially year on year. By 1997, there were 100,000 people on the march and the post-march festival on Clapham Common was attended by 300,000 revellers. This was the high point of Pride, run by – and for – the community, with strong LGBT+ human rights demands.
Since then, it has been downhill. A takeover by gay businesspeople at the turn of the century rebranded Pride as a “Mardi Gras” party and started charging for the post-march festival. Many people felt that Pride had been hijacked by commercial interests. Numbers plummeted, income crashed and the business consortium walked away.
For the past decade, the event has been run by a private community interest company, Pride in London, under contract and with funding from the mayor of London. It has been accused of being not representative of, or accountable to, the LGBT+ community, and of turning Pride into a depoliticised, overly commercial jamboree.
While some business sponsorship may be necessary to finance Pride, there is unease at the pre-eminence of commercial branding and advertising and the way huge extravagant corporate floats dominate the parade, overshadowing LGBT+ community groups.
Critics also question the participation of the police, arms manufacturers, fossil fuel companies, the Home Office and airlines involved in the deportation of LGBT+ refugees. Is this compatible with the liberation goals that inspired the first Pride?
And there is huge resentment that only 30,000 people are allowed to march in the parade, making Pride in London one of the smallest Prides of any Western capital city. Every year, thousands of people who want to march are turned away. This is against the original premise of Pride: that it should be open to everyone who wants to participate.
Pride in London claims that 1.5 million people attend. But there is no evidence to back this claim and it looks like hype to lure advertisers and sponsors. Even if we generously assume that 100,000 spectators line the route and there are 30,000 people in Trafalgar Square and 50,000 in Soho, plus 30,000 marchers, that’s still only 210,000.
Discontent led to last year’s Reclaim Pride march. It reverted to the roots of Pride, with a grassroots community focus, no corporate sponsors, and demands to ban LGBT+ conversion therapy, reform the Gender Recognition Act and provide a safe haven for LGBT+ refugees fleeing persecution abroad – political issues that have been absent from the official Pride for two decades.
It cost only £1,800 to organise, refuting Pride in London’s claims that Pride cannot exist without corporate funding to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds.
This year’s Pride in London parade is on 2 July. The day before, on the 50th anniversary of the UK’s first Pride, a handful of surviving Gay Liberation Front and 1972 Pride veterans will retrace the original route from Trafalgar Square to Hyde Park. Among other things, we’ll be urging the decriminalisation of LGBT+ people worldwide – including in the Commonwealth, where 35 out of the 54 member states still criminalise same-sex relations.
As radical and committed as ever, we pioneers of Pride continue the liberation struggle we began half a century ago. There will be no stopping until homophobia, biphobia and transphobia are history.
This article appears in the forthcoming summer 2022 edition of Index on Censorship. Get ahead of the game and take out a subscription with a 30% discount from Exact Editions using the promo code Battle4Ukraine.
22 Jun 2022 | News and features, Statements, United Kingdom
Today, the UK Government presented its new Bill of Rights before Parliament, claiming that it will “restore a proper balance between the rights of individuals, personal responsibility and the wider public interest”. In reality, the new Bill will undermine the universality of all human rights and weaken the ability of courts to give effect to protection of fundamental human rights, including freedom of expression. It will expand state power and hamper efforts to hold the Government to account, joining other legislative measures – such as the Judicial Review and Courts Act 2022 – that have reduced the ability to challenge government overreach.
The Bill is set to replace the Human Rights Act, which has protected human rights and the freedom of expression of people living in the UK for over twenty years.
The Government claims that replacing the Human Rights Act with a new Bill of Rights will strengthen freedom of expression. As human rights organisations that promote and defend the right to freedom of expression worldwide, we unequivocally reject this false narrative. Freedom of expression is too important to be used as cover for weakening the protection of human rights. On the contrary, as detailed in our joint consultation response, the Human Rights Act has bolstered free expression in the UK in a number of areas: strengthened defamation law; enhanced protection of journalistic sources and material; strengthened protection of the right to protest; and restricted perception-based recording of non-crime incidents, among other things.
ARTICLE 19, Index on Censorship and English PEN believe that if the Government is serious about its purported goal to strengthen freedom of expression in the UK, it should instead focus its attention on reforming a number of problematic laws and legislative proposals it has brought forward, including the National Security Bill, the Online Safety Bill, the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill, the Public Order Bill, and the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act.
Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary Dominic Raab. Photo: Joe Giddens/PA Wire/PA Images
We urge the Government to abandon any proposal that would replace or weaken the Human Rights Act in any way. Moreover, it must follow the normal procedures for introducing new law – particularly a bill that could have such sweeping repercussions – and allow for proper, thorough democratic scrutiny of the bill. Rushing through such legislation could put the protection of human rights of the people in the UK at risk and fail to offer the levels of protection to which they are entitled, and which the Human Rights Act has already enshrined in law. One of the justifications for the Bill of Rights is to give greater weight to the views of elected lawmakers. By reducing the opportunity for these same lawmakers to scrutinise the Bill, it demonstrates the hollow commitment to democracy and the rule of law that underpins this Bill.
In the letter to Justice Secretary, Dominic Raab, this month, our organisations were among a coalition of 150 organisations from across civil society that called on the Government to provide pre-legislative scrutiny of the proposed Bill of Rights. We warned that the proposal to repeal and replace the Human Rights Act would be a significant constitutional reform, which requires careful and robust consideration. The rights of individuals could be compromised if such a process was hurried.
16 Jun 2022 | Brazil, Opinion, Ruth's blog, United Kingdom
A vigil held for Dom Phillips and Bruno Araujo Pereira. Photo: Victoria Jones/PA Wire/PA Images
On Friday 16 June 2016, my beautiful and kind former colleague Jo Cox was murdered for no reason other than she was doing her duty, representing the people of Batley and Spen as a Member of the British Parliament to the best of her ability. Jo was a democrat, a wife, a mother, a daughter, and a friend to lots of us.
When we lost her, the foundations of our democracy were shaken but her legacy cannot and must never be defined by the heart-breaking and evil events of 16 June. Her family will not allow it, and neither must we.
Having said that I woke up this morning feeling a little sick and very sad. I’m honestly not sure that this day will ever be easy for those people that knew and loved Jo, but as I had my morning cuppa and listened to the news, every story reminded me not of her murder but of how angry she would have been about each news item and how determined and driven she would have been to make a difference. Because that’s who she actually was.
Jo’s legacy is not her murder but her love. It’s not the hate-filled extremist that stole her from us, it’s her determination to leave the world in a better place than she found it. It’s not the silence she left behind but rather the laughter and words she gave us. Which drive so many of us today.
That’s her legacy, which has been embraced by her family and institutionalised by the Jo Cox Foundation. And today as we remember Jo, we cannot forget the instructions she gave us to make the world better.
Which brings me to two more families who are in mourning today – those of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira.
Once again two people have seemingly been killed for refusing to be silenced. For refusing to take the easy route. For standing up for those people whose voices aren’t as loud.
Dom Phillips was a brave and inspirational journalist, determined to not only tell the stories of indigenous people affected by climate change but to offer solutions for how we could help save the Amazon. His death in the Brazilian rainforest must not be allowed to define his life or his legacy. He is so much more than the people who have silenced him.
But today my thoughts and prayers are with those who are struggling with their grief – as they seek to make sense of these horrors.
The only words I can give are those of Jo. She left us with one core premise – we have more in common with each other than the things that divide us. Whether that’s across the political aisle, or in every one of our communities, this basic fact of our collectively humanity is something that we must hold onto.
8 Jun 2022 | News and features
Over the 50 years of our existence, Index has consistently supported the artistic freedom of those whose work may cause offence. While we recognise people’s religious beliefs are deeply held – and protect their right to practise their faith without fear – we do not have blasphemy laws in this country for good reason.
This is why we backed Salman Rushdie during the Satanic Verses affair, it is why we backed Martin Scorsese when his Last Temptation of Christ caused offence to some Christians; it is why we backed the cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo. And it is also why we back the makers of The Lady of Heaven, a film which has offended some Muslims and provoked demonstrations across the UK.
The Lady of Heaven, which is about the daughter of the Prophet Mohammed and depicts his image, has seen hundreds protest in Bolton, Birmingham and Sheffield. In an email to Cineworld Bolton Council of Mosques chairman, Asif Patel, said the film was “underpinned with a sectarian ideology” and “misrepresents orthodox historical narratives and disrespects the most esteemed individuals of Islamic history”, as reported by Bolton News.
That might be the case but these should not be grounds for pulling a film. No one is, after all, forcing anyone to watch this film. Nor is offence a defence. As the Turkish writer Elif Shafak wrote in Index on Censorship following the Charlie Hebdo attacks:
“It is perfectly human to be offended in the face of mockery, opprobrium or slander. That is understandable. Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Christians or agnostics, we can all feel offended by something someone says, writes or does. But that is where the line must be drawn. What is inhuman and unacceptable is to resort to violence and shed blood in response.”
While no blood has yet to be shed in the case of The Lady of Heaven, Cineworld have cited protecting their staff out of concern for their safety as their motivation.
We fully respect the impulse to want to keep people safe. Indeed Index work with a network of people around the globe who are at grave risk because of their speech. Their safety is always our primary concern, above getting a story out. But what we aim to do is both – protect the person and tell the story. There is usually a way and we try to find it. Because without stories humanity is all the worse, not the better. And not all stories please all people.
Ultimately we don’t want to live in a country where no offence is caused. We want to live in a country of robust debate and artistic freedom, where the offence can be explained and lessons learned. None of that happens when we threaten people into silence.
The activist Aisha Ali-Khan wrote on Twitter:
“I fully intend to watch #LadyofHeaven and make my own mind up, along with many other Muslim friends too. @cineworld better not pull it anywhere else!”
We hope that Cineworld reverse the decision and allow her that right.
