What excites you about the direction the LGBTQ+ community is taking and its future? Pride is an eminently peaceful demonstration, the nearest it gets to violence is someone blowing a whistle. Violence has been inflicted on to gay people institutionally and by crazy individuals, but we turned the other cheek and I think we can be really proud of that. One thing we can say about Pride and the LGBTQ+ rights movement in the country, and it was true of others, we achieved political and legal changes pretty rapidly over about 20 years without a brick being thrown, a bomb set off, no violence.
What else makes Pride different to other marches? That differentiates our march with other marches. I think my general impression of Pride is that people behave differently in the streets – they just hug each other and kiss each other and wear some extraordinary clothes. I went to nuclear marches, but I wasn’t involved with Pride. It’s bewildering to me why I wasn’t on those early marches. I lived openly with my partners I wasn’t anywhere near as repressed as others, but I think I would have liked to have been told that it was important to me and important to others that I should care more about being gay. I wasn’t unhappy as a young gay man, even though I was as closeted as all my friends, but I did have friends, gay friends. What would you tell your younger self as a gay man with the wisdom you have today? I think one year perhaps I’ll just stand on the side and just watch it because it must be wonderful to see, but I’m abroad this year, sadly.
So it isn’t like pride has been commercialised, it’s just that commerce is a big part of our society and is waking up to its responsibilities. It was probably their initiative that got their bosses to cough up the money to pay for the bus and their place in the march. It was a bit of a shock when suddenly there was buses going by from commercial firms, which seemed to be advertising themselves, perhaps wanting to make a people feel better about their particular product. That’s one way of looking at it, but another way of looking at it is that those are the people on that bus are employees of that firm, and they’re probably gay employees. The failure to stop section 28 meant that we were still fighting against it when it became law, then there were things like the ban on gay men in the military, legal discrimination, you could be sacked from a job for being gay. The first Pride I went on it was very much about what was in the news and there were laws that simply had to be changed. How do you feel about the commercialisation of Pride? Politics is about making connections and friends and Pride is the gay day and if that leads to a party, terrific. It doesn’t get you very far but it makes you feel a little better.
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If there’s a current issue, a piece of legislation about to happen – pro or con – for Pride to have a concerted attitude to that is helpful.Īt its crudest, Pride is walking past Downing Street and blowing whistles at Mrs. I thought, “Well, I don’t think you’ve really earned the right to have a party.”īut each to his, her or their own. It’s all three! We were rather snooty in my early days of the people who didn’t take it seriously, that just came for a good time when actually maybe they came from all over the country and outside of the country. Pride can be political, a celebration and a party (Picture: Getty)
How have you seen Pride evolve since then? I think for most people, it was confirmation that what seemed like a personal problem you’ve been landed with by fate, was actually something that you could share with people who you would otherwise not meet. Immediately you will be making friends and feeling better about yourself. On the Saturday, the Protestants used to walk with banners – girls and boys in their best outfits, smiling, happy, probably singing a few hymns, saying, “We are here we are Protestant, we’re here.”Īnd on Monday, three days later, the Catholics walked doing exactly the same, “We’re here.” People like me used to watch them go by and say, “Well, good on you, you exist and must be nice to feel you belong.”Īnd that’s what it was like for me with Pride, I was just looking around and everyone was different – different ages, different colours, people belonging to these different organisations.Įven if you joined the march, it was very easy to do it by yourself, you would probably find the group that you’re in – the teachers, the Labour Party, whatever it was. When I was a kid in Lancashire there were two marches every year.