EuroPride or EuroShame?
WHAT DO the Mayor of London, British Airways, Virgin
Mobile, Ford, gaydarradio.com, the Trades Union Congress (TUC), the
Metropolitan Police, Gay.com, Gay Times and Diva magazines all have in
common? They are sponsors of EuroPride 2006 which this year takes place
in July in London.
Gay Pride, an event which takes place in one form or
another each summer, is meant to remember and celebrate the birth of the
modern gay rights movement that exploded out of the Stonewall riots in
New York City on a hot summer night in 1969.
The sad fact is that many gay pride events have
moved towards business sponsorship and commercialism and away from
fighting homophobia and fighting for lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender (LGBT) liberation. The move towards street parties and
festivals has given the green light for capitalists straight and gay to
cash in and cream off profit from LGBT people.
London Pride last year had politics of a sort, with
Bob Geldof speaking at the start of the parade at Hyde Park where Live 8
was being held later that day. He asked people to "think about the
plight of Africa", and the Trafalgar Square rally at the end had a much
more political edge to it than in past years with speaker after speaker
talking about how homophobia is still with us, and a very moving account
of homophobic attacks on LGBT people from around the world and in
Britain.
The number of trade union stalls in Trafalgar Square
– including the FBU, RMT, GMB, Amicus, NUT, NAFTHE, Unison and the PCS –
pointed a way forward for the event, linking it back to its roots as a
political event, a march and rally for LGBT rights. With the likes of
British Airways sponsoring this year’s EuroPride at the same time as
attacking the rights of its workers, you have to ask how this sits with
the members of trade union LGBT groups who are also supporting EuroPride.
To understand how we have got to this state of
affairs you have to look at the history of the LGBT rights movement.
During the 1970s and 1980s, gay pride marches were small events
amounting to a few thousand. The political demands of the lesbian and
gay community were to the fore and, in the 1980s, the Thatcher
government’s hostility towards gay rights also galvanised the movement.
Gay Pride in London in 1984 supported the miners in their historic
strike against Thatcher as working-class and many middle-class lesbians
and gay men recognised at that time that their interests were with the
organised workers.
In the late 1980s, the campaign against Section 28
of the Local Government Act further politicised and organised the
lesbian and gay community. The mass demonstrations against Section 28
gave our community a new confidence and contributed towards the
increased confidence of LGBT people within society generally.
This new mood showed that we would not put up with
the repression experienced by previous generations and this gave an
enormous boost to the annual Pride events in size and turnout.
At the same time, it not only opened up commercial
opportunities to lesbian and gay businesses but also for big business to
target us as a new market. The birth of the ‘pink pound’ and the
business side of the LGBT community was further boosted by the
ideological offensive in favour of capitalism and against collective
organisation during the 1990s. This business side of the community and
big business in general gained an increasing stranglehold and came to
see Pride as an event that could be used to market their products and
services to a perceived ‘affluent’ audience.
The last free Pride festival, in 1997, was marked by
the organisers promoting it as Britain’s biggest free event rather than
a LGBT event. It was advertised without any reference to its LGBT nature
and was marred by a number of homophobic incidents. The line-up on the
main stage was a collection of acts which could be best described (with
one or two exceptions) as of the lowest common dominator. The festival
was sponsored by United Airlines, which had a homophobic policy towards
partnership rights. The organising trust went bust at the beginning of
1998, leaving significant debts to community organisations.
The subsequent year, two rival gay organisations
competed to run the festival. Both proposed that entry should be paid
for. The decision as to which should stage the event was not made by our
community, but by Lambeth Council as the owner of Clapham Common, the
proposed site. In the event, the winning consortium went bust just
before the event and no festival occurred.
At the same time, many LGBT people have seen through
Pride and this has been shown with the number of events setting
themselves up as alternatives, with nightclubs like Duckies in south
London putting on ‘Gay Shame and Lesbian Weakness’ events on the night
of Pride which pulls in big numbers. Even though club promoters are
behind the event, it is a move away from the mainstream Pride events on
offer to most.
Most of all, many who might previously have gone on
the Gay Pride protests do not do so anymore. Instead, they mark what
they see as what should be ‘their day’ by going to central London,
especially Soho Square and Old Compton Street, to congregate and be in
the majority for one day of the year.
Every year since 1999, Pride has been voted the
biggest disappointment of the year in the gay press. For many young LGBT
people from outside the gay centres of London, Brighton and Manchester,
Pride is a big event which can take your breath away. They may go and
marvel at the numbers of people like them, on a scale they have never
imagined before. That this happens cannot be doubted.
For the commercial gay scene this is indeed part of
the purpose of Pride, to draw these young people into the glittery but
false world of the commercial gay scene. The message to them is not,
‘organise collectively and you can be strong’, but rather: ‘Pleasure can
be provided – if you buy into this lifestyle – buy our products to be
truly gay – consume to conform’.
Prejudice against LGBT people has not gone away,
even though in parts of the world many legal rights have been won and
anti-discrimination laws enacted. Similar laws have not ended racism or
sex discrimination. ‘Queer bashing’ still takes place on the allegedly
tolerant streets of London. The fear of losing your job for ‘coming out’
at work is part of life for many.
Socialists should be determined to put some politics
back into Gay Pride. Many LGBT people will respond to the call to
protest against the commercialisation of the event and call for
community and trade union campaigns for LGBT rights. Gains have been won
by years of struggle, and they have to be protected by campaigning.
Prejudice is an intrinsic part of the capitalist
system and that capitalism’s ideology is advanced to justify the
privileged existence of an elite at the expense of the majority, and
thrives on the inequalities in society which it creates.
At times of economic and social crisis, sections of
the capitalist establishment try to divert attention away from the way
their system operates. By claiming society’s ‘moral disintegration’, or
that ‘people from outside are eroding our traditional way of life’, they
seek to create a reactionary climate of opinion out of which to gain
support.
Taking the arguments for LGBT liberation and the
fight against capitalism into the trade unions, workplaces, schools,
colleges and youth clubs, communities and voluntary organisations, we
could rally support behind the call for genuine equality that could stop
homophobia.
A strategy to achieve lasting lesbian, gay, bisexual
and transgender liberation depends on linking the day-to-day battles
against anti-gay and anti-transgender discrimination to the struggle to
rebuild a mass movement for socialism and achieve a socialist society.
Marc Vallée
Socialist Party LGBT Group convenor
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