Thousands gather at Leeds Pride

Thousands gathered in Leeds on 2nd August for Leeds’ annual LGBT Pride march celebrating the LGBT community’s progress towards equality.

However, echoing the increasing commercialisation we’ve seen at other Prides up and down the country, this year Leeds Pride organisers promoted big businesses like Sainsbury’s bank (which just last year faced protests for homophobic treatment of customers) over their actual politics affecting the LGBT community.

In light of this, Socialist Party members from across Yorkshire gathered to campaign for the de-commercialisation of Pride and the building of a mass movement of LGBT people and the working class against austerity. This received a fantastic response from the attendees with a significant number of people asking us for more information about getting involved in further campaigning.

We also joined with groups like Lesbians & Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) and Keep Our NHS Public in the Pride march, leading chants against homophobia and austerity and making sure anti-austerity politics are on the agenda at Pride.

Michael Johnson, Leeds Socialist Party

This version of this article was first posted on the Socialist Party website on 3 August 2015 and may vary slightly from the version subsequently printed in The Socialist.