Thirty years ago, a group of Londoners had to battle to get LGBTQ+ people of colour their own place to party at Pride. What started on a ghetto blaster paved the way for today’s UK Black Pride
In the early 1990s, Pride marches in London looked dramatically different from the Pride we know now. Rather than spilling into every crevice of the city, with corporate floats and sponsored stages, the event was a protest march through the capital, ending in a festival-like party in a park, its location moving each year from Kennington to Brockwell to Victoria Park to Clapham Common. The events were also significantly more politicised, with notable demonstrations against Section 28, government negligence in addressing the HIV/Aids crisis, and discrimination against LGBT+ parents.
But what is often overlooked in the history of Pride in the UK is the significant Black presence, and the spaces Black LGBT+ people sought to carve out for themselves among the “mainstream” gay and lesbian community.
