A history of Pride in the UK

June is Pride Month and whether you’re planning to head to London for the UK’s largest celebration of LGBTQA+ people or you’re heading to a smaller, local event, here’s everything you need to know about the history of Pride and the UK’s longest running Pride festival.

1970 – 1980

Pride marches have been around for over half a century, but the first ever open, public gay rights demonstration in the UK took place through Highbury Fields, North London in 1970. The event saw 150 men of the Gay Liberation Front marching against police harassment.

A year later in 1971, the youth arm of the Gay Liberation Front led a demonstration opposing the age of consent – at the time, it was 16 for straight people and 21, specifically for gay men.

London’s first ever official Pride march took place on 1^st July 1972. The date was chosen to be as close as possible to the anniversary of New York’s Stonewall Riots which kickstarted gay rights across the world. The riots, which started out as a protest against police raids on gay friendly clubs in the city founded an entire movement that still exists to this day. That first London Pride was highly political and heavily policed and was one of the first such events to take place outside of the USA.

By 1976, Pride was a regular event and focused on a different issue each year. In this particular year, they focused on the discrimination of LGBTQA+ people in employment and the law.

1980-1990

In 1981, the focus of Pride became police discrimination. During this year there had been a number of raids on gay night clubs and bars, especially in northern England. The UK’s main Pride event took place in Huddersfield, the home of one of the most popular bars which had been raided.

Pride was renamed from Gay Pride to Lesbian and Gay Pride in 1983 and subsequent events from then onwards focused on the AIDS crisis, which hit the LGBTQA+ community, especially gay and bisexual men, the hardest.

Later in the decade, Section 28 was brought into law. Margaret Thatcher’s controversial law, which was introduced in 1988, banned the “promotion of homosexuality” making it illegal to discuss gay issues in school or public. On the day it was introduced, over 20,000 people came together in Manchester to protest. On the day, a group of lesbians protested at the House of Lords and there were a record number of attendees for Pride events throughout the UK, all protesting Section 28.

1990s – 2000s

Northern Ireland held its first ever Pride event in 1991 and Pride became an established event across the UK.

A few years later, in 1996, the event had another name change, this time being renamed Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride, with the event evolving to become a carnival, music festival and fair, as well as a political march.

Between 2004 and 2012, the annual London Pride events became managed by a charity, Pride London, who organised each of the events that took place across the capital.

The first ever Black Pride, which promoted LGBTQA+ rights and provided a safe space for people of colour began in 2005 and has since become the biggest Pride in Europe for non white people.

In 2012, World Pride was held in London and the following year, the annual event in London was taken over by a different company, the London LGBT+ Community Pride who operates as Pride in London.

Also in 2013, the first Trans Pride march took place in Brighton, it was repeated in London in 2019.

Today, Pride in London is believed to attract around 1.5 million visitors and it remains the only event to close Oxford Street.