Adam Harmsworth, Napo National Vice-Chair (personal capacity) and Coventry Socialist Party
Pride began as a protest, a rebellion by LGBTQ+ people and their supporters against oppression. In recent years, bigger Prides have become increasingly corporate and depoliticised, focused more on music, celebs, booze, with more and more expensive tickets. As well as to celebrate and party, many LGBTQ+ people also attend Pride marches to demand their rights and discuss how to fight for them.
Socialist Party members have had welcome responses to our ideas at Pride marches for decades. Socialist Party members have fought for LGBTQ+ rights and the programme necessary to win resources in our local communities, and in the trade unions.
This year, five Pride organisations in the UK have announced bans of all political parties from participating in their events. Birmingham, Brighton, London, Manchester, and Edinburgh Prides all made the decision in response to establishment parties cheering for the harmful and flawed supreme court ruling.
The supreme court ruling proves yet again that minority rights are not secure in a society in which a capitalist elite relies on scapegoating to preserve their rule. Neither will it do anything to improve women’s safety or access to services (see ‘Supreme court ruling a blow to trans rights’ at socialistparty.org.uk).
Labour, Tories, and Reform all celebrated the ruling and are rushing to act on it to roll back equality gains where they can. With such abysmal records on trans rights from the establishment parties, there is a lot of understandable anger at them.
However, these Prides’ decisions to ban all parties from their events is a damaging mistake and weakens the fight for LGBTQ+ rights.
End pinkwashing
Pride’s corporate sponsors are not in the firing line for bans. Many big businesses and banks are utterly two-faced in their supposed support for LGBTQ+ rights. Barclays has already confirmed it will ban trans women from women’s toilets and has been a sponsor of London Pride for years. HSBC is Birmingham Pride’s main sponsor despite huge investments in Saudi Arabia where LGBTQ+ people face severe repression and violence.
Pride attendees also come face to face with corporate giants that perpetuate human misery. From Amazon, who threw ‘Glamazon’ t-shirts around Prides at the same time as attacking their unionised workers. Birmingham Pride’s sponsor E.On have ramped up energy bills, which many Pride attendees will have struggled to pay.
What major bank or business hasn’t got major investments in arms, in despotic regimes, and in climate destruction? Corporate ‘pinkwashing’ lets capitalist giants buy some credibility and appear friendly to LGBTQ+ people while maintaining a system which exploits and oppresses us all.
Banning political parties will not help LGBTQ+ people have the necessary debate on how to fight for real liberation. See page 11 for the report from Birmingham Pride, where many people wanted to discuss socialist ideas to fight for LGBTQ+ liberation, despite it being one of the events that has banned political parties.
Key to challenging the Labour Party on trans rights, LGBTQ+ liberation, ending women’s oppression and austerity is to discuss how to build a new mass workers’ party that will represent all our interests against the bosses, the billionaires and the bankers.
Socialist Party members fight for this – and for the trade unions to be central to the fight for LGBTQ+ liberation. We stand for trades councils to be part of the democratic organising of Prides – campaigning for them to be inclusive events that focus on bringing together those who want to fight for all our rights.
The Socialist Party has a long and proud record of fighting for LGBTQ+ rights. At Pride events we put forward what is necessary to end all oppression against LGBTQ+ people and build a society where they and all the working class can live safe and happy lives as themselves. That is building united mass working-class struggle for a socialist society, free from want and capitalist division which would enable us all to live freely.
