 Good evening everyone, welcome to this event organized by the British Library in association with the staff, BAME and LGBTQ plus networks. My name is Stephen Dryden my pronouns are he him and I'm a sound archive and humanities reference specialist at the library, and it's a great pleasure to welcome you tonight. My, my first pride was at the Students Union of Northumbria University in my hometown of Newcastle upon time. I was 17, and the year was 1998. I was nervous and scared as the age of consent for men at that time to have sex with other men was 18, which had been dropped in 1994 from 21. But still, there was always that lingering sense that I was not equal to my heterosexual classmates who were able to live their lives freely at the age of 16. There was no march in Newcastle, no publicly visible display of LGBTQ people on the city streets. But what I encountered on that day were families, friends, solidarity and strength, real strength. And although I was ostracized and felt completely alone at home and at school. There I was in a packed room with community and all its wonder. I gave more pride in myself that day for who I was and who that I might who I might one day be. That's partly due to the fact that Gay Liberation Front formed in London at the London School of Economics in October 1970. There was two students named Bob Mellers and Aubrey Walter, who had met in September of 1970, while attending the Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, which had been organized by the Black Panther Party. In revolutionary solidarity, the organizers had extended a welcome to the women's liberation movement and Gay Liberation movements. At the time, the leader of the Black Panther Party, a short time after Stonewall, the Stonewall uprising wrote this to the revolutionary brothers and sisters about Gay Liberation and women's liberation. Whatever your personal opinions and your insecurities about homosexuality and the various liberation movements amongst women, and I speak of homosexuals and women as oppressed groups. I speak with them in a revolutionary fashion, end quotes. Aubrey and Bob led thinkings at LSE, which quickly grew from 20 attendees to hundreds every week. Subgroups such as the Street Theatre Group, the Transvestite Transsexual and Drag Queen group, and the Manifesto group would meet and work. And with Wilson, the writer and GLF activist in 2010 wrote, Gay Liberation Front is best understood as a fabulous political firework display. Demonstrations, sit-ins, consciousness-raising, night graffiti raids, dances and thinkings were all included in the stellar spectacular of Gay Liberation Front, end quotes. In August 1971, Gay Liberation Front Media Group published issue eight of Come Together, the newsletter and printed account of Gay Liberation Front thinkings. The front page included the Gay Liberation Front, GLF, Youth Group Declaration of Rights, and they wrote. There's some bad language in this, by the way, as well. Every day it is becoming clearer that the system we live in with its repression of gays, women, blacks and workers is desperately fighting to keep itself going. Every day it becomes more apparent that people are not taking the shit that is coming. People are organising everywhere. The shipbuilders are running Clydeside. The people of Ireland are fighting for self-determination. Women are fighting back a male ego chauvinistic world, and our black brothers and sisters are fighting the racism of a white-dominated world. And now, also, homosexuals are standing up and saying no more shit. Our oppression ends here. They are standing up and demanding an end to oppression through the law, the psychiatrists, a total end to all forms of oppression that keep us a down minority, end quote. So that was 1971, the Gay Liberation Front Youth Group. The paper announced a march on the 26th of August, which was to start with a kiss in at Hyde Park, and then through central London to a rally at Trafalgar Square, becoming the first LGBTQ plus march in the UK where people were able to demonstrate with pride and righteous anger through the streets, demanding change. Pride, before what had become the first UK Pride march in London, which would happen one year later on the 1st of July, 1972. So tonight, we are joined by a distinguished and revolutionary panel of speakers who are here to share their thoughts about pride and its relationship to community and identity. What goes to them is that we think about tonight as a consciousness raising session in the old school GLF fashion, where each of us will have a little chat or a conversation for 10 minutes. And then we'll all come back together, hopefully with lots of questions from you in the audience, and we can try to come to some answers, or at least know that we're all together in the conversation. So I was keeping for tonight's event, there is a chat box underneath me, which you can use to send us questions or thoughts during the course of this evening. And you will also find a link to our bookshop sponsor, which is Gaze the Word. And lots and lots and lots of amazing books that Gaze the Word there are neighbors who are just down the street from us at London St Pancras, and please do support them through the bookshop. Moving on to our first speaker, I'd like to introduce you to Ted Brown, if you are not familiar with Ted. Ted first encountered GLF when he was handed a leaflet by the collective distributing them outside of the screening of Boys in the Band. Ted was active in the GLF youth group and is the founder of black lesbians and gays against media homophobia, leading a campaign against the Voice magazine following its reports on the first openly gay professional footballer Justin fashion during 1990. And their 1992 campaign to stop the broadcast on commercial radio of Barjou Banton's homophobic reggae pop song boom bye bye resulted in it being banned and a televised apology. You can hear Ted speak more broadly about his time with GLF in our reflections GLF 50 event which is available via the British Library player. So tonight Ted, we're here to chat about the 1971 GLF youth group march. I wonder if you could maybe tell us a little bit about what was happening in the GLF youth group in the lead up to the march and how you were organizing it. Well, what was happening in the the youth group was a double frustration, because we knew that the 1967 law restricted access for sexuality, sexual behavior to 21 for gay males. It didn't apply to women because lesbianism has never been illegal in Britain. So that was one issue. The second was the fact that even the first film that you mentioned Boys in the Band, first Hollywood film talking about so called gay life featured men who were all above the age of 21. And we also knew that part of the revolutionary actions by the civil rights movement in America had been initiated by young people. You can still see online videos of teenagers being faced by dogs and police with battens and water cannon. And they actually argued specifically that they should do this despite being warned not to by Martin Luther King, because he was concerned about their safety. But they argued that if the public could see how brutally people were going to treat even young black people, it would initiate a move towards greater equality in America. Now the young people in Britain, the gay liberation front felt that we also had something to contribute. We met separately, in many cases, people under 21, and we debated how we were going to deal with challenging this discriminatory age of consent law. We had in our meeting, sorry. This vase, which I had designed is the pink triangle as people probably know the pink triangle was worn by gay men in the Nazi concentration camps. But gay liberation decided to appropriate it as a symbol of pride. The large triangle represents the gay liberation front, and the small triangle represents the youth group. We try to make sure that people, whatever their age and whatever their background or education or confidence should have an opportunity to express themselves. And so even for those who couldn't speak, we encourage people to drop little notes of suggestions of points of discussion of ideas in this little vase. And it was in this vase, I can't remember whether it was the large one or the small one, that somebody dropped a note saying, one of our aims is to make sure that lesbians and gay men become visible, because once we become visible, we will break through all the stereotypes. Why don't we go out public and demonstrate and protest for our rights. So it was generally agreed that we would do this. Putting this back. And yeah, and we had long debates because it was also suggested by the same person that we should have a kiss in. And this was going to be a direct challenge to the law. We decided that we would put up our hands and decide who would be prepared to openly kiss in St. High Park, sorry, and also at Trafalgar Square. This was an extra issue for me by the time we actually came to 1971, because at that stage I was 21, because I was born in 1950. When I joined GLF, I was 20 and underage. When the March came up, I was 21. And for those of us, I wasn't the only one who was 21 years old, we had the extra issue of having to deal with the fact that if we were kissing somebody under 21, legally we were pedophiles. We were pedophiles with seven really heavy penalties. And we decided that we would go ahead, we take the risk, because we said, this is about confrontation, this is about overcoming centuries of oppression. Let's go for it. Yeah, I don't know how long. You're all right, Ted, can I ask a little question then, just based on what you've just told us. So on the actual day when you met at High Park, can you describe what the atmosphere was like when everybody was coming together? The atmosphere was really excited. I mean, we decided that we would meet from, I think it was four locations in London. One was Brixton. One was Maze Hill in Greenwich. And one was Queens Road in Bounds Green, which was the site of one of the original Gay Liberation Fund communes that I later joined, and also Notting Hill, where we were being supported by the... Oh, what's the cafe? It features in those films of the television series about not mangrove, yeah, the mangrove, yeah, who were giving us support. And some of the people who turned up from mangrove were a little bit slow because they'd been served a wonderful Jamaican meal before they set out. Yeah, so we were saying we were young people, we were starting our lives, we're starting our sex lives, and we wanted to be present, we wanted to be heard, and we wanted our rights. And we were really fired up and excited. And actually, it was a double whammy for some of us, because for some of the people there, it was not just the first time they were kissing in public, it was the first time they were kissing. Oh, wow. So you can imagine how fee-brawled the atmosphere was. It was absolutely fantastic. And what about on the actual march itself? What was the reaction of people on the streets when you were trumping down, shouting from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square? Well, we had a couple of slogans. I can't remember one of them, but one of them was two, four, six, eight, gay is just as good as straight, which we chanted down the roads. And some people, I think, were quite puzzled because we broke with the stereotypes. I'm sure some of them thought this was some kind of student rag, and that they couldn't believe that people would be openly homosexual and out and public in the street. But one of the inspiring aspects of the march from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square was the number of people who actually joined the march as we went along. And they actually asked us because they could see the signs that we were carrying, saying this is a youth group. Some of them were adults, clearly well over 21. And they wanted to support us and they marched along with us. And so this was really buoyant, especially as we knew that this was the very, very first public march and demonstration by LGBT people in British history, aside from the Harry Yislington demonstration, which is the year before, absolutely. And Ted, before I move on to one of our next panellists, can I just ask you about the rally which happened at Trafalgar Square? Could you maybe talk about some of the things that were discussed from the platform on the day? Well, one of the people, one thing that was discussed was our support, the support that we had from women. Because as I think I've mentioned before, the law didn't actually apply against women. It didn't apply either in terms of age or in terms of gender. And lesbianism has not been illegal in Britain. And yet a significant number of women came along to support us. And that was actually mentioned from the stage. There was a young woman, Carla, and her girlfriend Rosie. And Carla, I think she came from Canada. She turned up at Trafalgar Square, having traveled on the underground with a t-shirt in large letters saying lesbian on a train in the underground, knowing that none of the people on the train had ever seen an openly homosexual person. And that was one of the courageous things that she did. She spoke on the stage about being a woman, about being a lesbian, and about being a lesbian in a mixed race relationship with her girlfriend Rosie. And very sadly, although there were recording machines available, generally, none of the speeches were recorded. And that was lost to the ether. But there are some amazing photographs, which I believe are with Bishop's Gate at the moment. And there are a few school of economics in the whole carpenter program as well. I have a photograph of Carla with the lesbian t-shirt and her fist raised. That's right. I remember from the exhibition that you were in last year, Ted, the images that you had were really striking. But speaking of visibility, I suppose that's a good way into our next panelist, our next speaker, who we're going to chat to this evening, who is Peter Tatchel. Peter has campaigned for LGBTQ plus liberation for 52 years since 1969. An activist in the Gay Liberation Front from 1971 to 74 and a founding member of Outrage, which was around between 1990 and 2011. He helped organize the UK's first Pride March in 1972 as part of GLF, and has marked every Pride in London parade since. His international solidarity activism has resulted in him being very badly beaten by President Mugabe's bodyguards in Brussels in 2001, and I believe you were trying to do a citizen's arrest or an arrest of Mugabe and by Russian neo-Nazis in Moscow in 2007. Peter is the director of the Peter Tatchel Foundation. Peter, I wonder if you would share with us some of your experience of experiences of pride as both an organizer and as an activist. Thank you very, very much. Like Ted, I joined the Gay Liberation Front as a teenager. I joined age 19 in 1971, and I was primarily active in the Action Group, which organized many of GLF's spectacular protests. But I was also allied to the Youth Group as well. Sadly, I missed that first-ever march. It happened on the day after I arrived from Australia. And the very day and moment it was taking place, I saw a sticker on a lamppost advertising the 1971 march, but it didn't say where it was going to. And so I missed the boat, but only by literally probably half a mile, because I actually saw this in Regent Street when probably the protests were still going on in Trafalgar Square. But anyway, I was one of about 30 or 40 people who helped organize, publicize and campaigned for the first-ever Pride Parade, which took place in London on the 1st of July, 1972. I can remember in the organizing meetings, I was sitting down and thinking, you know, what can we do? We had this march in 71, primarily around the age of consent. And then people count with the idea of everybody saying we should be ashamed of being gay. So let's have the idea of being proud to be gay. Let's have a march and call it gay pride to counter the predominant view that we should be ashamed. Now, when we plotted and planned that first march, we had no idea if anybody would turn up. But of course, the previous year, we'd had that march, the youth march, and you know, hundreds of people did turn up. So we thought there's a fair chance. But what was really holding us back and caused considerable anxiety was, back in those days, the vast majority of LGBT plus people were in the closet. They were too afraid to come out. They feared rejection by their family, being sacked from their job, being evicted by landlords from rented accommodation, being beaten up in the streets. So a lot of people just may have sympathized, but we knew would not dare show their faces. But as Ted has said, one of the great mantras of the Gay Debration Front was come out, come out wherever you are. We knew and understood the importance of people coming out to make themselves visible, to break down stereotypes, and to show that we were not afraid, that we were not victims, that we were not going to be kicked around anymore. So I've got to say that when that first march assembled, we were gratified. There were about 700 to 1,000 people. That was a big relief. And as we marched, what was very interesting, perhaps even shocking, was there was a pretty heavy police presence. Because of course, although there'd been a partial decriminalization of male homosexuality in 1967, still many aspects of gay male life were criminal offenses, including the expression of affection like holding hands, kissing or cuddling. And indeed, lesbians could and were arrested for those kinds of public displays. So the march was fairly heavily policed. I would say that there was certainly a minority of officers who had scowls on their face, often folded arms. They did not look friendly or supportive. Some were, but many were not. And there were at least a dozen incidents where officers were openly abusive and homophobic. And of course in those days, there was no police complaints procedure, no independent watchdog, there was nothing you could do. We just had to put up with it. And we did. We were not going to allow ourselves to be intimidated. As the march proceeded along the streets to Hyde Park, where we were going to have a big queer picnic. The response of members of the public was very mixed. There was some overt hostility. You know, we did get abuse and jeers, a few instances, people through cans and coins and I think we're even one bottle that I saw. But predominantly I'd say the public reaction was one of gawping disbelief, disbelief that we would dare show our faces. And then there was perhaps another third of the public who were overtly supportive. They cheered and clapped. They said good on you. And that really buoyed our spirits because we didn't expect that roughly a third of the public, you know, passes by on the pavement would actually be supportive. And that gave us hope and confidence that we were onto something that there was a segment of the British population who was on our side. And anyway, we got to Hyde Park, and we held what we called a gay day, a picnic in the park where everybody bought food and drink and music, and we played party games, queer versions of party games. And this great phalanx of police lined on the side of the park, just staring and glouring at us. But there were so many of us, they didn't dare arrest us. So we had that gay day. It was, it was fabulous. I mean the whole day was glorious. It was a carnival atmosphere. I mean, people think it was just a protest. It was a protest, yes. Very much about LGBT plus rights. But it was also a celebration, a joyful occasion. We were glad to be gay, as Tom Robinson later put into song lyrics. And we shouted slogans like gay is good. That three word slogan was revolutionary in the early 1970s, because society predominantly said that gay was bad, mad and sad. And we took that slogan to try and again challenge the consensus to show that we were setting our agenda, that we were positive and affirmative about who we are. And of course, the success of that first ever gay pride parade gave us the confidence to do it again the next year, and the year after. And each successive year, it grew in strength. But it didn't really get that big until about 1988. In 1987, there were 15,000 people on the annual London Gay Pride Parade. But in 1988, with the advent of section 28, suddenly it doubled in size to 30,000 people on the march. And then every year afterwards increased more and more and more to the high point, which was 1997, when over 100,000 people marched. It took five and a half hours to pass a single point. And at the post march party on Clapham Common, there were in excess of 300,000 people. Sadly, pride in London has gone completely backwards. They only let 30,000 people march. You're not allowed to have any more people on the march, which is completely against the ideals of pride and gay liberation. It's supposed to be open for everyone, for LGBTs and allies, everybody to join together. So to have a pathetic feeble 30,000 people only being permitted by the authorities to march, that's disgraceful. And that is why myself and others are working to set up a liberation march or a reclaimed pride march on the 24th of July to get pride back to its roots. No commercialization, no corporates, no wristbands, no fees, no limits on numbers. Everyone is welcome. And this is going to be a community led and run event, profiling LGBT plus human rights demand. To tell Boris Johnson, we've had enough. His government is stalling on LGBT plus rights, stalling on a ban on conversion therapy, stalling on reform of the Gender Recognition Act, stalling on a fair deal for LGBT refugees and asylum seekers, and so on and so on. So we're going to put the politics back in pride. And in the next few days, we hope to announce the assembly point, the route and everything, but you know, please spread the word, save the date, the 24th of July. This is going to be pride like it was originally. Amazing. Yeah, little round of applause there from people. And that's wonderful, Peter. Thank you so much. Really articulate and to time, which is even better, which enables me to introduce our next speaker speaking of politics and pride. Phil Opokujima is the nucleus of the award winning celebration and protest that is UK Black Pride, widely known as Lady Phil, and I have to confess to only knowing her as Lady Phil. And due to her decision to reject an MBA in the New Year's Honours List in protest, Britain's role in formulating anti LGBTQI penal codes across its empire. I'm the executive director of the Clydescope Trust, an organisation working to uphold the human rights of LGBTQI people around the world. Lady Phil, it's wonderful to have you here. I'd like to ask you to speak maybe a bit to your experience of pride and your relation to it. In relation to your work and activism. Well, look, thank you so much for having me. And, you know, it's wonderful to be on this panel and in conversation with transformational people, Ted, Peter, Hannah, this is great. So, you know, when we talk about pride and what they mean, people often ask me, Oh, what was your first pride? Did you enjoy it? Of course I did, but I always like to talk about UK Black Pride, because for me, that was a pride that felt like it's encompassed who I was, how I navigate society, how I could be unapologetically myself, how I connected with so many that had similar shared commonalities, and how we could occupy space, keep the politics at the heart of why we were having a black pride. And importantly, really look at those intersections of how we as black people are trans black people are non binary black people are bisexual black people are working class black people are disabled and differently abled black people are so many different things that make up the facets of who we are. So, when black pride started, it was really about where we had not seen ourselves. The earlier prides that you've heard Ted and Peter speak about, I think that for us, UK Black Pride was built on that sort of foundation, not the prides that we have seen or we have been part of, which felt very exclusive, which was not liberating, but also didn't speak to the aspects of how we challenged homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, and the systemic and structural racism that exists, not just in society but inside our own LGBT plus communities. That sort of challenge, and that sort of voice that we had was not often heard. And if you don't hear yourself if you don't see yourself, what do you do, you create what you want to see. And UK Black Pride really came to its own in making sure that we were able to amplify so many different voices from so many different backgrounds, different identities, and to bring that activism to light, whether the activism was somebody that wanted to sign a petition, whether the activism was shown through art and through music, through dance, through so many different things, or whether it was shouting from the rooftops and turning up the volume on society, making it impossible to absolutely ignore us. So for us, UK Black Pride, or for me I will say, I can't speak for everybody else, but UK Black Pride has been life changing for me. It has meant that our communities have a voice. It has meant that we are able to be seen, and being seen is not always about safety, but being seen in the sense that we can occupy our brave and safe spaces. So UK Black Pride has been a connection to my trade union roots, because before I was a kaleidoscope trust executive director, I worked in the trade unions for many years. So I have an understanding, or I would say I still do, of how we organize, how we mobilize, how we educate, agitate, and bring together so many different people that allow us to change the trajectory of where we're going. So UK Black Pride, and not just this celebration, it is so much more than that, it's about the solidarity, it's about the connection, it's about the communities, it's about taking pride of place, it's about the challenge, you know, and the challenge is something very real. I love listening to Ted and Peter about, you know, what was legal, what was illegal, how one went about formulating these groups, because we do stand on the shoulders of giants as UK Black Pride. And we recognize that, and it's important that we continue to have these intergenerational conversations, because no idea is a new idea, it just might be a little bit revamped about how we do things. For us, this challenge was about really stepping up and being transformational in our approach, feeling empowered, feeling that we can be liberated through coming together and talking about our blackness, our queerness, our differences that either set us apart, that bring us together, and being, again, I will use the word unapologetic. Often we have seen as black people or as people of color, we've seen the abuse in power with various authorities. We've seen the lack of housing or safe housing or shelters for black and POC people. We've seen the lack of access to good health for whether it's men and women or trans or non-binary siblings. We have seen the lack of so many things for our communities as black people, but also as LGBT plus people as well. When you pull those things together and they compound one another, you're not just fighting for one thing. There are so many multiple forms of oppressions that exist and that hurt and harm our communities. So UK Black Pride speaks to that and actions. And taking that action is about having a black pride that stands true to what it's about, that puts people over profits and does not lose itself in its essence of that solidarity, that love, that hope and those aspirations of seeing real change. So beautiful, Lady Phil, thank you so much. Just as a follow-up to what you've just said, what have you found that the response has been to UK Black Pride? I don't think you mentioned when it started as well, so do you maybe want to say the year that it started and how you feel that it might have changed during that time? Sure. So first of all, I didn't know that holding a black pride would cause so much contention in the UK. I didn't know that there would be death threats that come to myself and my daughter and to other members that have worked on and continue to work on UK Black Pride. I didn't know that there was so much hate even within our own LGBT plus community. I had, at the beginning, when we, in 2004, I was running an organisation called Block with other organisers, Maud Bow and Kai. Block stands for black lesbians in the UK. We took them out on a trip to South End and it was just beautiful. Most of the women who had arrived at South End had never seen anywhere outside of London, maybe because there were refugees or asylum seekers. And for us, it was like, oh my gosh, this is a moment, a real moment. So in 2005, I said, this feels like and seems that we are going to have a black pride. So I went to, I would call them leaders in our community who were round a table and I asked them for some advice, some guidance, direction, how do we get sponsorship and money. And I kid you not, and I apologise for this word, but I'm sure you can edit it out. I was laughed at, I was jeered at, they sniggered and one person who has remained nameless for 16 years, probably because they're not here anymore. They told me to fuck off and go back to where I came from. So can you imagine 16 years ago, wanting to make sure that black people in their queerness and their fullness of life were seen through pride movements and seen the same way we look at, you know, mainstream LGBT plus activities. I was told to go back to where I came from. I was born in Islington, by the way. So, you know, really you could have topped up my oyster and I would have gone. But I knew what they meant in that sense. So we made sure that when we're told no, we take our hands and make fashion. We approach things in a way that, you know, is just reimagining what's different for us. So 2005 we had the very first black pride, which cost us 477 pounds, 27 pence, and we had two bus loads of people that descended on south ends. So that's what you call communities coming together. We had a gay man who had just come out from Birmingham, who gave us money to purchase a marquee. So like Peter said, it was a celebration. We were playing volleyball, we were playing dominoes. We had a woman called Angie Legs cooking jerk chicken. We had a rum out of a barrel. You know, it was so beautiful. We were dancing and we felt liberated. And we kept on growing from there on, but we kept on making sure that we maintained our roots where corporates and commercial organizations would not touch us. So that was the trade unions. And I must mention Peter Purton, who put themselves forward to ensure that we were funded. And that's where we understand how we organize how we mobilize and how we come together. So for us, you know, UK black pride is home for many, and many of us see ourselves with chosen family. The resistance to UK black pride has just driven us even more so to really want to see this grow. So from 200 plus people in 2005 to in 2019 when we had the last in person event. Tremendously, this was about 10,000 plus people that descended over Haggerston Park in Hackney. So that shows us that when communities come together, we grow together, we eat together, we action and organized together. We can do a lot, but we must always remember where we've come from and UK black pride always recognizes those that came before us in order to know what we want now, and we speak to the next generation about what does hope look like for the future. That's so beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing that with us, Lady Phil. Thank you. And speaking about the future again a perfect lead on to where we're going next. And I'd like to welcome our last panelist in the conversation Hannah Rose. Hannah joins us from Trans Pride London and Hannah is an interdisciplinary trans woman of color, coming from an intersectional background as a migrant, a Muslim working class queer person who works in as an event producer, public speaker and an activist. Hannah has worked and organized with groups such as London trans pride LGBT with the tea sisters uncut and many, many more. Hannah welcome thank you so much for joining us this evening. And I wonder whether you might be able to share some of your thoughts or feelings about pride and how it maybe reflects on you, your feelings of identity and community. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. First of all, I want to say, this is such an honor to be around Peter Thatchel, Ted Brown, and also Lady Phil. And I want to mirror what Phil said about standing on the shoulders of giants. I feel like I am, I'm the youngest generation of pride organizers here now. And it really is us standing on the foundations that these activists that gave a liberation fund that Peter Thatchel and Ted Brown laid back in the 70s. It's what we're basing our work on. And it's what we are. It's why we are even here it's why we're even allowed to exist. So I definitely agree with Phil on that. And I also want to mirror some of Thatchel statements regarding Pride in London. Pride in London in the recent years has become very, very commercialized. It's become more, it's gotten its roots of protest and become more of a celebration. And that kind of leads into why we started founding Trans Pride. So as some of you may remember back in 2018, trans exclusionary radical feminists took over the Pride march in London, and started taking over the front of the march. And we're handing out transphobic leaflets. We're carrying transphobic science and counting the transphobic slogans. In response, Pride didn't really do anything. They weren't removed from the march. They weren't stopped from leading it. And we're given an apology afterwards. But that was pretty much all that was done. There weren't any safeguards set in place to make sure it wouldn't happen again. And following that event, and a general feeling that we had at the time that events in London weren't the most trans-inclusive, we decided to found London Trans Pride in 2019. We marched from Wellington Arch, Soho Square, back to about 1,000, 2,000 people. And it was exactly like Phil and Tashel already stated it was, it was a protest. Yes, it was first and foremost a protest. But it was also celebration. For me, Pride is something much more than a protest. It's being allowed to be ourselves, being allowed to feel joy to exist as ourselves. And I have always paraded the opinion that queer existence, trans existence and trans joy is activism in and of itself. Trans person existing, feeling joy, a trans person living their best life. That is activism. That is fighting against the system that is pushing so hard to have us not exist. The system that makes us wait five to seven years to access the most basic healthcare, a system that makes us jump through groups and bureaucracy to simply change the gender on our passport. Us existing and us gathering together as a community and saying, no, we do not accept you pushing us down, we will stand here together and we will march here together. That is joy that is activism and that is a protest in and of itself. And we had joy, we were chanting, we were singing, we were playing music on our speakers, we had different people coming up the mic and start chanting whatever slogans they wanted to chant. And it was one of the most joyous days that I have felt as a trans person. So now what Trans Pride is now is trans led liberation and activism collective. We're fighting for the human rights and visibility of all trans, non binary, inter sex and gender for people in the UK. Well, the reason that we still have to exist and that we're still having to fight for rights is that we keep trying to, they keep trying to take them away from us. So recently, of course, we've had the gender reform consultation, the government consulted with the public on whether or not we should reform how trans people can change their gender. But recently, they've reduced the price recently so currently it's, I think a five pound fee, and then a lot of bureaucracy that we have to go through to change the gender on our passport. The consultation would have allowed us to have a self ID system similar to how it works in Ireland, but we can simply say, this is what we are. This is how we identify this I would like to identify on the power on my passport. The consultation was a favor of that. But the current qualities minister list trust basically decided to ignore it. I think the reasoning given was that it was bombarded by responses from trans activists which I think like the correct response to take. The reason why we marched last year in 2020 where we attracted about 5000 people, but we are now one year later, we've seen no new updates and regards to gender recognition reform. On the contrary, we've actually seen the government telling us they don't care about us basically with the government saying that non binary inclusion non binary legal recognition rather would be too much effort for them to implement. Not, which how must that feel being a citizen of your country and hearing your government say no you're too much effort we're not going to bother with you. And just leaving you to decide that is not what a government in the 21st century should be doing to their citizens. That is not something that we should just be accepting lying face down. That is a big reason why we're still marching today. Another intersect surgeries have not been touched upon by government at all intersects children are still forcibly. Children are forced surgery as children as infants often without their consent well their babies they can hardly consent and forced to conform into very binary gender roles by doctors at a very very young age. But you know that's not all bad. We've seen a jump in inclusion in media and fashion over the last few years. We've had more visibility in media. And we've seen a spike in cultural acceptance of trans people, while politically, at least in the UK, we might not have been enjoying as great of a time. Culturally, it seems like trans rights and trans acceptance is on the rise. And that sooner or later will translate into acceptance for trans people in government. As the years go by and as the many more conservative politicians get replaced by some more liberal and progressive ones, we will be seeing slow but poor reform of our current systems. And what we're here for is march down Westminster to march down so ho in a massive group of trans people looking at absolute best, yelling down the streets of central London, and letting London know that we're here, we exist. And we will not back down, no matter how much the time push us. So beautiful, really, really beautiful. And Trans Pride London is coming together soon, is that right. Yeah. 26th of June. We'll be gathering at 2pm at Wellington arch. So I invite everyone to come along if they can. The more the better will be marching just a whole square. And there'll be a lot of people. Wonderful. I feel like there's so much to process. It's really interesting that I actually met Ted at some Gay Liberation Front thinkings which happened after the 2018 London Pride March at which trans exclusionary groups were allowed to march at the front of Pride. It makes me wonder sometimes because we've touched on it, Hannah you touched on it certainly and Lady Phil about these intergenerational conversations and how, because of legislation like clause 28 which has stopped histories of queer identified people I'm going to use that term very broadly coming together and fighting for the change. Do any of you have any thoughts about how maybe we do encourage this intergenerational conversation as part of our pride. Unmute yourselves and let's go free form. Anyone can speak. Just one aspect. I mean, I was put off attending some of the recent pride marches by the commercialism, but also by the ageism. I got the impression that if you were over. Let's push it to 40, you weren't particularly welcome. The entertainment, the fashions, the whole manner of the pride marches recently, a pride parade, I should say, had had a tone of not being as inclusive as the ideally they should be. And it's actually spun into the campaign that we're now mounting about the treatment of elderly people in particular in care homes because we recognize ourselves that the Gay Liberation Front when it started wasn't paying attention to older people. And we want to be more inclusive. We want to have a broader range of people from all genders or sexualities or ages or cultures welcomed and celebrated in all our activities. Yeah, can I just add on to what Ted's just said so, you know, in relation to your question about how do we have these intergenerational conversations. It's important that we utilize the conversation about what happened in the past so that we have the least of power sitting down and telling me loads about what happened beforehand. For me that's a rich information. Also, you know, Veronica Mackenzie, Monica beetle, there's so many people that we can go to to find out this information. And that pride does because we don't have a march or a parade but we certainly will be joining in in trans pride and also on the 24th of July, which will be a march and a protest. We make sure that some of these conversations are had in safe spaces so we consult our communities. We work with whether it's opening doors to Colors Youth Festival which is a young group, and we're merging these conversations together. You've also got black and gay back in the day which is led by Jason Acunde and also Mark Thompson, showing images of, you know, our beautiful black queerness back in the day, but we're also bringing the newness of UK black pride now and how our young people are expressing themselves how they like to be addressed and what you want to what you need to say to them making sure that pronouns are used because maybe 20, 30 years ago, we were not talking about pronouns. So by having those intergenerational conversations. It's about saying what happened before what we have now, but what we want as I said for the future. So I think it's utilizing conversations, continuing to have these open dialogues and where you don't know or you think you're creating something that might be a new idea. So just do some of the research, you know, Google is now your friend, and there is a lot of information at the British Library with Bishop's Gate, yeah, with Stephen, but you can find this out. Yeah. I definitely agree. I think the youngest person here I definitely see a lot of ageism in our queer and pride events. And also I think not enough conversations with maybe the older members of our community, because a lot of what we're seeing in Google is just a repeat of the anti gay push in the 80s and 90s. It seems to be kind of a repeat of someone think of the children, what will happen to the bathrooms, what will have godless, those godless trans people. Kind of the same arguments being reused. And I think we can learn a lot from how our elders organized back then against the sort of thing. And we can use that nowadays. Obviously the landscape is very different, but in many ways, it's the exact same. I mean, I certainly started finding out quite a lot once I am. I really started delving into, you know, the collections in the library and the printed output that survived from Gay Liberation Front. We've had, we've actually had a comment, and also a question from a member of our audience, which is about education, and how we can talk about these things I suppose in the same vein as an intergenerational conversation. And I'd like to flag, which you can get from our bookshop sponsors gays the word is, there was a 50th anniversary edition of the Gay Liberation Front manifesto which was produced this year to commemorate 50 years since Gay Liberation Front was founded. And in there, there is actually the eight demands in the front of the book. Where's my camera by Gay Liberation Front. It's interesting if you do get a chance to look at those how many of them still resonate today specifically around sex education in schools around visibility in public and the ability to show affection. And I think if we look at them more broadly in the international sphere around the worldwide LGBTQ plus community, and where their rights are at and where we should be pointing our direction, our arrows are our protest art. It gives us some really interesting insight. We've had loads of really positive comments coming from from our audience, but not an awful lot of questions, which is really fascinating to me. So many people saying that they're fascinated to find out so much about this history, and where pride has come from and also to be introduced to the various pride marches such as UK black pride and trans pride London. I wonder, is there anything that each of you would perhaps like to say to leave us with on the subject of pride before pride, and before we wrap up this evening's events. If I come to you in the order that we spoke this evening so Ted is there anything that you would like to say in closing about pride before pride. So we should remember to value what we're doing now because whatever your age is now the the future generations will appreciate whatever you achieve now. I've only recently realized that many of the experiences that I take for granted are novel to to younger people. They actually give a different perspective on how we've gotten to where we are, and we should really, really treasure that. When we talk, for example, about working on standing on the shoulders of giants. I feel I'm standing on the shoulders of Bayard Rustin of Martin Luther King of Rosa Parks, and, oh, sadly. Considered to be the first modern lesbian who actually married her partner and officially back in 1817. Oh, Ted, don't make me do dates on a hot, warm day like today. Yeah, every every step is to be valued and and we should appreciate each other's achievements, each other's goals and and really keep them deep in our hearts as fuel for the future. I love that. Thank you so much, Ted. Peter, is there anything that you would like to say closing for pride on pride, pride before pride. Sorry. I just like to pick up you mentioned the Gay Liberation Front Manifesto of 1971. The language is a bit out of date and arcane, but the values and ideals are as relevant today as they were back then. This was a revolutionary program. And you mentioned the eight demands in that manifesto. Those were only interim demands. They were not the ultimate goal that the Gay Liberation Front was striving for. We had an agenda for social transformation. And equality never passed our lips. We did not want to be equal within a fundamentally flawed unjust society. Our goal was to transform society to liberate us and everyone else. So that's why the Gay Liberation Front was allied to the women's liberation movement, the black liberation movement, the Irish liberation movement, the liberation movement of working class people and trade unions. We saw that we had a common goal in fundamentally changing society to liberate ourselves and all of humanity. And I just wish that in the 21st century, we could or more of us could revisit those revolutionary ideals because equality is important. And we've made some fantastic gains and I'm going to pay tribute to the many unsung, unknown LGBT people and straight friends and allies who've made that possible. It isn't down to me or Stonewall or outrage. It's down to the tens of thousands of you who've said enough is enough and done something. But now we have to move things forward. And I think we need to acknowledge that although equality is a gain, it's not the end result. Ted has rightly mentioned the black civil rights movement in America, which for me personally and some of us in the Gay Liberation Front was the template for activism and inspiration for our work. You know, they won formal legal equality in the 1960s. But here we are more than half a century later, and still African Americans are second class citizens. We've built so many of black Americans are shut out of economic success. A disproportionate number in prison. We've seen the scale of police murders of black citizens quite clearly equal rights is not enough. And the same with the women's liberation movement. They want equal rights and protection against discrimination. But even today, the average woman's earnings is still only about four fifths of men. Women suffer sexual harassment, rape, you know, all kinds of terrible things like domestic abuse. So formal legal equality is not sufficient and we can see in our own community, you know, we have more or less formal legal equality, although there is still a way to go. But half of all young LGBT plus kids in our schools are victims of bullying and a third of all LGBT plus people have been victims of homophobic, biphobic or transphobic hate crime. So I simply leave you with this message. Equality is important, but it's not enough. Let's revive the old ideals of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans liberation. As Oscar Wilde said, we're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. Thank you very much, Peter. That's beautiful. Lady Phelps, your closing thoughts on Pride Before Pride. Yeah, Pride Before Pride. You know, I think I'm going to be very quick in saying that if your prides are not intersectional, if your prides do not speak to the issues of racism. If it doesn't speak to the issues of trans exclusion, if it doesn't speak to us being asylum seekers, migrants, refugees, if it doesn't speak to the issues of sexism, misogyny, misogynoir, if it doesn't speak to the issues of classism, then it's not a pride, and it's not a pride that I nor encourage in my communities to push them forward to. I think it's really important that we recognize, and Peter said it, equality is not enough. Equality is important, but this is about equity. This is about the freedoms and the justices that we wish to see for our communities, and also not just here but abroad. There are many, many people, human rights defenders, individuals, civil society organizations who are fighting for their lives. And we've got to take into account and understand the colonial era laws that exist there and why people may need to come to the UK, the Americas or wherever it may be for safety. So let's think broad and let's think big and let's make sure that our prides speak to these issues. You know, as I'm sure it's Audrey Lord that said, none of us are free until all of us are free. And that is something which is really important near and dear to my heart. So do join UK Black Pride on the 2nd to the 4th of July, which takes place virtually. And you can just go to our website and find out more about here. But thank you so much for having me and for allowing me to be on this panel with wonderful, amazing people. Lady Phil, thank you for your words and for coming to join us. Extremely grateful. Hannah, your closing thoughts on Pride Before Pride and what we've discussed this evening. First of all, I am incredibly honoured and humbled to be on a panel of what builds to me giants that are nowhere near my level. You all are way higher than me. But some closing thoughts regarding Trans Pride, particularly is we have not even come close to reaching equality. Trans people are up to four times as likely to face violent crime. Trans people suffer poverty at an extortionate rate. The life expectancy for trans women of colour is incredibly low. 34 years old, last eye tracked. And that has nothing to do with difficulty getting jobs. Employer discrimination in the UK is rampant. One in three employers serve it in the UK so that they wouldn't hire a trans person. And even more harassment at work, school and families do just lack of education on the subject. So I want to leave everyone thinking of what they can do to support trans rights, to keep thinking about where your roots come from as Pride. Pride came from a sex working class, trans women of colour, throwing a brick at a cop in New York. That is where Pride originated, that is where our rights originated. I don't think many of us would even be able to organise on such a public level without the work of trans women of colour, without the work that they put in to ensure that we have our rights. So always, always be an ally and always practise empathy and understanding. And keep your Pride intersectional and keep your Pride a protest. No one in the history of the human race has ever received rights just by simply waiting for them and asking for them. We've got so much to do and so much to think about and I'm so grateful to all of you for joining us this evening and for our digital audience out there in the world who have been able to hear your words. Please do let your friends know about this panel happening this evening. It will be landing on a British Library platform sometime soon for everybody to access around the world. I'd like to thank our panellists again and thank you for joining us.