The Pride in London
Written by Juan Andres Cuervo, Communications & Campaigns Assistant at Birkbeck Students' Union
The dawn of 2 July 2022 was cloudy, but it was a warm day. It was neither too hot to feel tired for the next hours walking, neither too cold to diminish the energy that London was releasing to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first Pride parade in the United Kingdom. Since 1972, many rights have been obtained for the LGBTQ+ community, and this is because they have struggled so much for freedom and equality. And there is a certainty: in spite of the feats accomplished, there is still much to fight for.
While thousands of people were taking the streets of the capital, Birkbeck students gathered in front of the College to prepare for the march. They held banners, painted themselves, engaged with each other and took pictures. You can see the images in our website.
And that was only the beginning. From Birkbeck College to Russell Square we walked, and then we went through the underground to rise in Green Park, a group of over 20 people split in the chaos of the metro. After a while, we were reunited, just in time to start the parade in Marble Arch.
As it was predicted, it became the largest parade in London's history of the Pride. The Pride of 1972 was attended by about 2,000 people. 50 years later, over 1,5 million people participated in the event. The landmark was important and symbolic. Furthermore, it was the first march since the pandemic of Covid-19 which changed our world forever. Obviously 3 years was a long time for a movement who has progressed spectacularly in the last decades.
Colours at the Pride's core
As part of the Birkbeck Students' Union, we received the permission to march in the parade. People were looking from both sides of the street, singing and dancing while we went through the huge avenue from Marble Arch, walking with Hyde Park at our right. Then, with a beautiful gaze of Green Park was at our side, we turned towards Picadilly Circus. The students carried the slogans, raised their fists to the sky, revendicating the rights of the LGBTQ+ community while the diverse groups were clapping and chanting. A woman danced inside a ring, a man and a woman put their banner as a bar and, dancing in a limbo style, we were under it. We felt a kind of pain in the back after that. But the pain in our mouths after laughing so loud was more intense and surely more worthy.
As I was carrying a banner which said "trans women are women", I heard a person call me from behind and said, "thank you". I went around and saw a transgender woman, who smiled at me, and I did not remember what I replied, I think something like "of course", and smiled back to her. The sounds were so loud that we could not talk that much, also because the parade was moving. But her sincere kindness is something that I brought home, same as the banner, which is still safely placed in my room.
The march lasted for around 5 hours, we had some drinks to hydrate ourselves and the conversations helped to keep our strength along the way. The students found many topics to talk about, and we engaged also with people outside the group. All seemed perfectly aligned to create an environment of intersectional solidarity and goodwill. Even the weather supported us: the day was not that hot as has been since. The heatwave was still away.
At Picadilly Circus, something incredible happened: a person with a speaker was naming all the groups that participated in the parade. So, when she screamed "Birkbeck Students' Union!", we went mad. There is a video of that moment in the Students' Union Twitter. You can imagine how it feels being in front of the statue of Anteros, in the always busy square, in front of the huge screen, and hear thousands of people clapping and singing. The next time my friends or relatives visit London I will tell that story, and obviously I will inflate some of the details, as it happens in every story that has ever been told.
The end at the beginning
The banners of the people was outstanding, same as some customs. A Spider-man suit with the colours of the LGBTQ+ flag, the NHS members, and its huge globe, people with their faces painted, the LGBTQ+ banner drawn across legs, arms and backs, legs, the hair of thousands of people with the colours of the flag... It is impossible to just highlight just one single thing during a day that showed a deep commitment of people from diverse backgrounds. Among the most notable slogans there was one with the sentence "Queer Liberation, NOT Rainbow Capitalism". This denunciation has been conveyed in many significant books supporting the LGBTQ+ movement.
At the end, we stopped in Trafalgar Square, and walked a bit through Embankment. The day was over, but new relations had been created during the Pride. The students engaged with each other, interchanged their contact details, promised to meet soon, and the farewell was illuminated between hugs. As we headed towards Birkbeck College, the starting point and the end, being the end the beginning, there was a certainty: the memories of that day will stay with us. The 2nd of July will never be forgotten. One of the students mentioned that one relative had participated in the Pride of 1972. And he also came to the one in 2022. That is the spirit of the struggle, to carry on obtaining more rights, more equality, and more freedom to everybody.
A Brief History of the Pride
Since 1972, the LGBTQ+ community has struggled and obtained rights, and even though there is still a high oppression towards them, the advances that they have earned in half a century is impressive. In London, the first Gay Pride march took place in London on 1 July 1972, and it was inspired by the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York. This famous event was triggered by police harassment at the Stonewall Inn, a bar catering to New York's gay, lesbian, transgender, and crossdressing community. After many years suffering homophobia and being beaten relentlessly, the bar's patrons fought back. This was a rupture, a threat to the established patriarchal system, a symbolic blow blow for gay liberation.
This current of activism was part of the social movements of the 1960s, when the number of demonstrations were huge and intersectional, as many groups demand equality and justice after being rejected for many centuries. Although the national context of each country was different, the international framework shaped their actions. Those were the years of the students' movements, Civil Rights Movement in the USA, and there was a widespread demand for equality for black people, women, and the gay community. Those fights for freedom were reinforced by international events such as the Vietnam War, and the spread of the ideas of thinkers such as Herbert Marcuse and Frantz Fanon helped to configurate a highly politcised world.
The members of the LGBTQ+ community have systematically been oppressed. In a world traditionally dominated by the figure of the white heterosexual male, different collectives including women, black communities, gay people, or immigrants have been forced to struggle extensively to seek equality in the society. For that reason, the history of the gay rights coalesced with the Civil Rights movements in the USA during the 1960s, meaning that these protests influenced each other. Whereas figures like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. became the symbols of the struggle for black liberation, the 1969 Stonewall uprising is considered as one of the moments that sparked the LGBTQ+ movement.
The struggle must go on: a long road to equality
Although the contemporary societies seem overall more inclusive than in past decades, the numbers are far from showing an ideal landscape for the spread of Human Rights. According to the report of the International Lesbian and Gay Association published in December 2021, arrests, and prosecutions for consensual same-sex sexual acts or for diverse gender expressions continued to take place during that year. In other words, the LGBTQ+ community was forced to fines, arbitrary arrests, prosecutions, corporal punishments, imprisonments and even to the death penalty.
The same organisation had denounced in 2014 that almost 2.8 billion people were living in countries where identifying as gay could lead to imprisonment, corporal punishment or even death. By contrast, only 780 million people were based in countries where same-sex marriage or civil unions were established as a legal right. In addition to those reports, the Franklin & Marshall Global Barometer of Gay Rights (GBGR), started in 2011, ranks countries based on 29 factors that quantify how much a country protects Human Rights. In 2015, it showed that only 1 country in 10 actively protects the rights of sexual minorities.
And despite that the acceptance of homosexuality has increased in many countries during the last two decades, the reactionary backlash against the increase of rights is threatening to diminish fundamental victories attained after so much struggle and suffering. Judith Butler perfectly relates the current juncture: "The attacks on so-called 'gender ideology' have grown in recent years throughout the world, dominating public debate stoked by electronic networks and backed by extensive rightwing Catholic and evangelical organizations. Although not always in accord, these groups concur that the traditional family is under attack, that children in the classroom are being indoctrinated to become homosexuals, and that 'gender' is a dangerous, if not diabolical, ideology threatening to destroy families, local cultures, civilization, and even 'man' himself."
The aim of these far-right movements is to reverse the progressive legislation won by subaltern movements. In other words, the advances made by feminism, LGBTQ+ movements or Black Lives Matter are being threatened by this wave of neofascism. However, after many decades of international solidarity movements, it seems extremely hard to wither away the huge levels of social consciousness that have taken root in many societies. That does not mean that we must ignore the real threat of the xenophobic groups that jeopardise our world. On the contrary, we as people must keep organising in the public sphere to preserve and increase the rights for everybody.
It is a grim depiction of the slow process of inclusion that it was not until 2011 that the UN Human Rights Council passed the 'Human rights, sexual orientation and gender identity' resolution, the first to call for an end to sexuality discrimination worldwide. In 2022, the 50th anniversary of the very first Pride March in the UK, the rise of far-right parties across the world, with their patriarchal, homophobic, anti-immigrant rhetoric should be a warning that our democracies are facing a dangerous test. It is up to us to earn a distinction in solidarity, love, and inclusion.
You can read the entire article about the LGBTQ+ History Month
