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WORKING CLASS SOLIDARITY ON FULL DISPLAY AT LIVERPOOL PRIDE
LGBT+ Socialists leading the 'Socialist and Trade Unionist Bloc at Liverpool Pride 2023 (Image: Paul McGowan)
Published 30 July 2022
Yesterday’s ‘Socialist and Trade Unionist bloc’ initiative at Liverpool Pride, organised by LGBT+ Socialists was a huge success, bringing together and uniting hundreds of people together from all backgrounds and corners of the workers’ movement.
On top of organising the bloc at the march, In the days leading up to the march, LGBT+ Socialists encouraged all who were planning joining the bloc to also arrive early, and together attend the RMT picket line at Liverpool Lime Street Station. This call to action seen a great turnout all around, with the picket itself also attended by the always popular RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch. There where also a couple of speaches by RMT reps in which LGBT+ Solcialists were thanked for our unwavering solidarity with the RMT. After the picket, the RMT members then marched to join LGBT+ Socialists at the march assembly point, with the rail workers getting an applause from those already gathered to march as they arrived with their banners, and then were also applauded by the crowd on every street as they marched with the bloc through the city centre.
LGBT+ Socialists on the RMT picket line supporting striking rail workers (Image: Paul McGowan)
The march was led by LGBT+ Socialists (joined by RMT members and Mick Lynch) and the Liverpool Trades Council. During the march, the bloc was filled with banners being carried from trade unions such as RMT, UCU, Unison, NEU, and the Liverpool Trades Council, to socialist parties including Socialist Alternative, the Socialist Party, the Socialist Workers Party, and also campaign groups such as the Merseyside Pensioners Association, Fossil Free Pride, and more. People carried placards declaring: ‘LGBT+ solidarity with striking workers’, ‘LGBT+ Liberation, not Rainbow Capitalism’, ‘No Pride in Institutionally Racist Police, Stop the Police Pinkwashing’, and more. There were also chants heared at times with messages of resistance including: ‘Blame The System, Not The Victims’, ‘Stonewall Was a Riot, we’re Defiant, Non-Compliant’, among others.
The ‘Socialist and Trade Unionist Bloc’, is an initiative that was launched as part of our Reclaim Pride campaign, bringing together socialists and trade unioninists to not only march together at pride events, but to stand with one another’s struggles all year around, and to give a message to "official" Pride organisations, that if your idea of Pride doesn't also include actively standing up for the working class as a whole, and the most marginalised people within it - including our sex worker, POC, disabled, asylum seeking, and homeless siblings etc. then you're doing it wrong.
The trade union solidarity work which LGBT+ Socialists has become most known for, often includes visiting picket lines with our banner, raising money for strike funds, and working collaboratively on tackling homophobia and transphobia in the workplace, and more. This work has seen many of our members building very good relationships with trade union members, reps and entire branches, and has also earned praise from UCU General Secretary Dr. Jo Grady for our support to the union in multiple disputes including the ongoing Four Fights campaign. Appreciation has also come from the national RMT twitter account for our support during the DOO, cleaners pay, and P&O mass sacking disputes, and also for our fundraising work for their strike fund during the ongoing Pay, Pensions and Conditions strike action, which seen us raise over £1000 last summer with a LGBT+ Socialists ‘Victory To The Rail Workers’ T-shirt fundraiser.
Click here to read more about LGBT+ Socialists work with trade unions and reclaiming pride
LGBT+ Socialists and Mick Lynch marcing together, leading the 'Socialist and Trade Unionist Bloc' at Liverpool Pride 2023
(Image: Paul McGowan)
LGBT+ Socialists leading the 'Socialist and Trade Unionist Bloc' (Image: Paul McGowan)
The RMT, Socialist Party, and Socialist Alternative marching with their banners (Image: Paul McGowan)
The FBU marching with rainbow flags (Image: Paul McGowan)
A number of the unions and socialist groups involved in the bloc pose for a group photograph at the finish (Image: Paul McGowan)
For anybody looking for further context as to why these initiatives are so important to us. The last 12 months has seen the largest strike movement in Britain for decades, fully reigniting the idea that an organised working class is a force capable of taking on the employers and government. The huge outpouring of public support for the strikes has proved that this mood is not just restricted to workers taking action. It has also taken root among the wider working class, and particularly young workers, and that sense of just how powerfully we can be when we fight back is not going away.
The power of the strike is clear to see, high-profile pickets and large demonstrations have been shown to put both political and economic pressure on the employers and the government. In the public sector, health and education strikes have raised wider issues about safe staffing numbers, funding of services, changing the curriculum in education and rebuilding the health service. In the private sector, Tory threats to use agency workers to smash disputes quietly died as employment agency bosses backed away from being involved — no doubt motivated by the fear of the consequences of sending in agency workers against extremely determined picket lines!
While some disputes have settled, others continue, such as in the schools. Round two is likely to involve numerous private sector strikes over the summer. How could it be otherwise, when food prices continue to soar and the real value of workers’ wages continues to collapse? Previously unorganised workers continue to organise, for example in the spreading dispute at the Amazon warehouses. Beyond the summer, round three in the autumn is set to involve education workers again, joined by local government and others as the pay claims for 2024–25 inevitably mean a clash between what workers need and what the employers are willing to give at this stage.
LGBT+ Socialists on the RMT picket line supporting striking rail workers (Image: Paul McGowan)
LGBT+ Socialists on the UCU picket line supporting striking higher education workers (Image: Paul McGowan)
LGBT+ Socialists and on the GMB picket line supporting striking NHS ambulance workers (Image: Paul McGowan)
As working people across Britain fight back over poverty wages, for jobs and better rights at work; it’s no accident that the establishment wants to use its divide and rule tactics against already marginalised minority groups such as the GRT community, migrants, refugees, and the LGBT+ (especially the trans) community. In the lace of the latter, what was once mainly a talking point of the right wing gutter press, we are now seeing trans people being discussed on a daily basis, with sensationalised stories about access to toilets, trans athletes gaining “unfair advantages”, and hypothetical sexual predators self identifying as women or dressing a certain way to gain access to our schools, hospitals, refuges, and prisons. The BBC and (allegedly) liberal newspapers like the Guardian have now become keen to make money out of jumping on the latest manufactured moral panic around trans people.
It is not just the government who are using the culture wars against minorities to their advantage though, the Labour Party under the leadership of Sir Keir Starmer has instead of challenging the Tories, have themselves made a large leap to the right of politics and have also played into the rhetoric of division. This is not the only issue of course, Starmer has overseen a purge of the left, but he has whipped his MPs to abstain on multiple authoritarian attacks on democracy such as the “Spy Cops” Bill, the Police, Crime, Court, and Sentencing Bill. In the past year Starmer has also outright supported the government’s attack on democracy when they used Section 35 to veto the Scottish Parliament’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill which after a 5+ year consultation was voted through with the support of Scottish Labour. In recent weeks the Labour Party has also caused outrage among it’s members and the trade unions by dropping party commitments to self ID, sure start, free school meals, lifting thousands of children out of poverty with lifting the two-child benefit cap, watering down language on zero-hour contracts and more.
Meanwhile, as anti-LGBT+ conspiracy theories and reporting have become more mainstream, reports of homophobic hate crimes have alarmingly also more than doubled in the past five years, shooting from 10,003 in 2016-17 to 26,824 in 2021-22. In the past year alone, the figure soared by 32% – the biggest yearly rise since record-keeping began. Transphobic hate crimes have similarly swelled by 240% (more than tripling), from 1,292 reports in 2016-17 to 4,399 five years later, in what is also believed to be the largest increase ever seen by the authorities.
Across the UK’s 45 territorial police forces, only five reported a decrease in reports of homophobic hate crimes compared to the previous reporting year. All others recorded dizzying increases, with Merseyside Police reporting the highest rise from 64 in 2014-15 to 1,618 between 2021 and 2022, an increase of 2428.13% in reported homophobic hate crimes.
London has emerged as the epicentre of hate crimes based on sexual orientation, with the Metropolitan Police Service recording 3,794 homophobic hate crimes in 2021-22, an increase of 28 per cent from the previous year. England’s capital also saw 434 transphobic hate crimes in the past year – once again the highest number recorded by any police force.
Derbyshire, Humberside, Northamptonshire, South Yorkshire and Suffolk were the only regions that saw hate crimes dip compared to the previous year. But the stats are still higher than five years ago.
While some government officials and prosecutors have blamed the increase partly on greater confidence among victims in reporting incidents, activists point elsewhere. LGBTQ charities have said that these figures are “only the tip of the iceberg”, because “so many LGBTQ people would never willingly speak to the police about what happens to them.” The Baroness Casey review, which was commissioned in the wake of the murder of Sarah Everard in 2021 by serving firearms officer Wayne Couzens, examined the culture and standards in London’s police force. It found the Metropolitan Police to be institutionally racist, sexist and homophobic.
LGBT+ Socialists and Reclaim Pride Liverpool marcing together with 'Queer Liberation, Not Rainbow Capitalism' banners at Liverpool Pride 2022 as a joint protest against the rampant commercialisation and corporatisation of pride events (Image: Paul McGowan)
LGBT+ Socialists member Nadia Whittome MP speaking at protest against transphobia in Liverpool (Image: Paul McGowan)
LGBT+ Socialists marching in solidarity with the trans community at a conversion therapy protest (Image: Paul McGowan)
This context matters a great deal, because the working class is not only gay, straight, bi, cis and trans, It is also international. Around the world, our queer siblings are still criminalised, imprisoned and even executed for being who they are. The debate surrounding the World Cup in Qatar served as a reminder that same-sex relationships are still illegal in more than 60 countries, and state-sanctioned homophobia continues to thrive in many more.
For some, the mainstreaming and commercialisation of Pride in the UK is a sign of something positive: of the progress we made as a society in accepting queer identities and meeting the headline demands of the gay rights movement. But as the examples above show, it’s far too early for us to pat ourselves on the back and put down our placards. Whether a homeless gay teen, a trans person denied the healthcare they need, queer people persecuted abroad, or refugees criminalised on arrival - for many, LGBTQ+ liberation is still a matter of life or death. It’s great that we have spaces of pure queer joy - after all, we all need a break from activism and a good party from time to time. But we can’t afford to lose sight of the origins of Pride, and its importance as a protest.
Last year, Pride in the UK celebrated its 50th anniversary. Today, Pride parades in major cities have become well-funded, professionally organised events, which attract support from big brands and politicians of all rosette colours. But, of course, it wasn’t always this way.
The history of LGBTQ+ activism is the history of dissent. Our hard-won rights, and even the very existence of our movement, we owe to people who had the courage to stand up against oppressive laws and social norms. It’s a history of radical direct action and mutual aid; of communities taking matters into their own hands and stepping in where the state had failed.
The Gay Liberation Front UK (GLF), which would go on to organise Britain’s first Pride, was formed in 1970 at LSE. While its demands included the end of discrimination against gay people in the law (such as the unequal age of consent), its ambitions didn’t end there. Rather than seeking to integrate gay people and same-sex couples into a straight society, it wanted to transform it - taking aim at the patriarchal family model, gender stereotypes and even the organisation of work under capitalism.
The UK’s first official Gay Pride rally took place in London on 1 July 1972. It was a grassroots event, organised with no corporate sponsors or big media endorsement. There was no doubt whatsoever about whether or not it was a protest.
While starting relatively small, the demonstrations grew over the years, finding new locations and attracting supporters from around the country - some of them less obvious allies than others.
During the 1984-85 miners strike, during an era of raging homophobia and strident union-bashing, the LGBT+ community through the work of LGSM (Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners) and Lesbians Against Pit Closures (LAPC), forged a strong and lasting bond with a Welsh mining community and the National Union of Mineworkers.
The London LGSM group was formed in July 1984, four months into the year-long miners’ strike. Founding members Mike Jackson and Mark Ashton had organised a bucket collection to support the striking miners at the June 1984 London Pride march and decided that more needed to be done to raise awareness of the miners’ cause in the London lesbian and gay community. Eleven people attended that first meeting and over sixty people were involved in LGSM by the end of the strike in March 1985. LGSM groups were also formed in ten other towns and cities across the UK, among them Manchester, Brighton, Southampton and Lothian. A Dublin LGSM group was also formed.
London LGSM built solidarity links with the South Wales mining communities of Dulais and also donated funds to the Nottinghamshire Women’s Support Group. The money raised was used to sustain striking miners and their families throughout the duration of the strike. Money was raised primarily from collections at gay pubs and clubs and on the pavement outside Gay’s The Word bookshop.
LAPC was formed in November 1984 by some of the women members in LGSM and more than 20 women were involved in the group. They focused on raising money at women’s venues in London and donated the money raised to the Rhodisia Women’s Action Group in Worksop, Nottinghamshire. LGSM gave practical support to LAPC.
The single biggest fundraising event organised by London LGSM was the ‘Pits and Perverts’ benefit at London’s Electric Ballroom, on 10 December 1984, which raised £5,650. Bronski Beat (featuring Jimmy Somerville) were the headline act at the benefit.
The alliance between LGSM and the South Wales striking miners and their families was an important factor in turning the tide in the trade union movement in favour of equality measures for lesbians and gay men. At the October 1984 Labour Party Conference, the National Union of Mineworkers sent the following message of solidarity to the Labour Campaign for Lesbian and Gay Rights:
“Support civil liberties and the struggle of lesbians and gay people. We welcome the links forged with South Wales and other areas. Our struggle is yours. Victory to the miners.”
The NUM and the mining communities of South Wales joined LGSM at the head of the June 1985 London Pride march and the NUM went on to support the call for lesbian and gay equality at the 1985 Labour Party Conference and Trades Union Congress.
LGSM folded in June 1985, shortly after the end of the strike in March 1985, but reformed as Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners Again (LGSMA) when a huge round of pit closures were announced in 1992.
The LGSM story is told in the 2014 film Pride, and the group reformed in October 2014 to respond to the new wave of interest in the story. Since 2015, LGSM members have participated in, and in some have led with their banner, over twelve Pride parades/marches across the UK – including London, Cardiff, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle and Norwich. At the Pride in London Parade, LGSM led a contingent of over 4,000 people, carrying the NUM, trade union and students’ banners.
Our movement owes so much to those most marginalised, and to the workers' movement, and we will only fully win the fight for LGBTQ+ liberation by fighting for a socialist society, free from capitalism’s endless inequalities and crises. To quote the words of artist Micah Bazant: there is "no Pride for some of us, without liberation for all of us".
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