Every year around the country dozens of events are held to celebrate lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual people. From huge parades in Manchester and London to the smaller events in Swindon and Stoke, the Liberal Democrats should be there.
Our commitment to equality goes back decades. The Liberals fought two general elections with gay rights policies in the manifesto before the Sexual Offences Act 1967, and we have continued to make LGBT equality a manifesto commitment. Back in the 80s and 90s the Lib Dems set the progressive agenda on equality, advocating an equal age of consent and opposing Section 28. We fought for equality while the Tories blocked lesbian and gay rights measures, and while Labour avoided rocking their first-term boat by ignoring LGBT issues.
The pink vote is a valuable one, and the Lib Dems poll twice as highly in the LGBT communities than our national average. Unfortunately the other parties have cottoned on to this, and are targeting these groups with the kinds of financial resources that are usually beyond our reach. The Tories are even presenting themselves as the “natural party” for gay voters, despite allying with homophobes in Europe.
The best way to oppose this cynical assault on our natural territory is, as ever, from the grass roots. Pride festivals around the country have spaces for community organisations, and we should be there. Like any community festival, Prides are a great place for Liberal Democrats to show our work all year round for local people, as well as our commitment to equality and fairness at every level of society.
DELGA is the Liberal Democrat organisation for LGBT equality. We represent the needs of LGBT people to the party, propose policy such as our recent conference motion on LGBT asylum seekers, and support our LGBT candidates through the Out To Win network. We also work with local parties to promote the Liberal Democrats at Pride festivals and related events. DELGA makes efforts to contact local parties ahead of their Prides and encourage them to attend. We provide advice and materials for your Pride stall, and can promote it to local DELGA members online and in our newsletters.
There’s a list of 2009 Pride dates on DELGA’s website, along with contact details for most of them. We’ve had a great Lib Dem presence at Birmingham Pride recently, and have Sheffield coming up. We would ideally see the Lib Dems out at every one of these events. We need people at the grass roots prepared to organise Pride stalls, to work with us and their local parties. If you’d like to volunteer to organise or help out at a Pride stall, please get in touch with the relevant address, and make sure you raise it with your local party.
We’ve seen homophobic racists elected to the European Parliament; we need to make sure we can reach out to the country’s LGBT communities and give them a message of hope, fairness and freedom.
* Dave Page is a council candidate in Manchester, and DELGA’s Pride officer. He can be reached on [email protected] and would like you to support DELGA’s work with a membership subscription.
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13 Comments
Yes, this is good stuff. It hadnt occurred to me to try and get stalls at Pride festivals…
Do you have links to information on those two early manifestos with gay rights policies? I don’t doubt for a minute that the Liberals supported this, I just want to know what those policies were.
Oh, and yes, please do make a play for queer votes, preferably by promising full marriage rights to same-sex couples. Labour have a good record on LGBT issues, but they stopped short there, and the Conservatives don’t have anything to offer.
Thanks to Brian Stone and Adrian Trett, we had a great stall at Pride in London last year. Fellow Euro-candidates and I handed out leaflets, and Nick Clegg spoke from the platform in Trafalgar Square. Dave is absolutely right to say that we should make our presence felt at these events (both Labour and the Greens were also represented at London Pride last year).
Not to rain n a parade, but you are of course forgetting the campaign against Peter Tatchell and a number of similar local campaigns since.
The Liberal Democrats have not been the most rainbow friendly of Parties at local level.
Not saying that the other Parties are any better with their history, but there is now no natural home for the “gay vote”, it is far more cosmopolitan than during the 80’s and as a result far less single issued. To the extent that there were sadly a significant number of gays promoting the BNP for the Euros.
TheBigotBasher, could you provide me with details of these “number of similar local campaigns since”?
Certainly the infamous “straight choice” campaign was regrettable, and something for which Simon Hughes has apologised. Despite that, I’m still reasonably convinced that the Liberal Democrats are the most rainbow friendly of parties at local level, and would welcome any evidence to the contrary.
It ONLY took Simon 13 years to apologise for it.
With regard to local Ward campaigns, I seem to remember the Pink Paper covering a good few of them at the time. And ok dismiss them as local issue, but it still does not diminish the main point.
Re-branding a manifesto with a pink flag is about as pasé as putting a pink flag on a pub door and charging more. It used to be done it is crap now.
“The Gays”, if they ever were, are no longer an easily targeted homogenous group. With the exception that by virtue of having no children they are the heaviest taxed demographic, receiving the least back from the State in return.
Blair, with civil unions, (not an acceptable proposal to the gay “movement” in America), killed off the civil rights battles even though by doing so he made gay couples worse off.
@ BigotBasher
Why are you putting “movement” in comma’s?? Don’t you think the No on Prop 8 campaign was a movement? Y’know with all those synchronised marches in several cities protest?
I get it that I don’t think we could ever have any sort of movement here unless it is racist/homophobic because we simply don’t care.
But I agree with the rest about what you are saying, esp in the UK…people need to understand that gays, like blacks or woman, are human first and second gay, black or woman, which means they come in all sorts of stripes…BNP, right, left, centre, socialist regardless of what a party stands for in terms of what they may do for them.
Getting bogged down in this sort of thing will never win LibDems the breakthrough they need. Keep the party’s name out of it.
I see LDV chose one of your cheerier pictures Dave!
Our campaigning with a lot of minorities seems one dimensional. Showing up at pride is not the answer, rather being present on regular occasions and events is.
How often do we discuss education with muslims rather than Iraq. Education will be a bigger issue, I’m sure.
I doubt the other parties are far ahead of us, but I do worry they are getting ahead of us.
Paul, I’d agree that we can’t just turn up at Prides and be absent the rest of the time.
However, a local pride festival is usually the biggest event in an LGBT calendar, and celebrating it is like celebrating Eid or Diwali – something we as a party do to embrace diversity and to be in contact with local communities.
I know from being a Liberal Democrat at Pride that parties’ absence *is* noticed, and that people infer commitment to LGBT equality from this.
Dave, while I obviously agree with pretty much everything here, I should point out that TransLondon are calling for a boycott of the London pride event due to transphobic behaviour by the organisers…
I still think on balance attendance is better than not attending, but that particular event is problematic…
Andrew, just so you know – TransLondon decided to attend Pride under protest.
The Lib Dems listened to their suggestions and ran a petition on our stall calling on London Pride to consult more with community organisations representing trans, bi and lesbian people.
The Bermondsey thing is caught in time, and predates the foundation of the LDs. Labour supporters trot it out along with their other tedious ‘lib crime’ shibboleths from time to time, but forget that Peter Tatchell would have had an uncomfortable reception in most Labour heartlands at that time too. Horrible to think of it now, but that’s how it was.
I think going to events, and sending messages of support (including to religious minorities at key dates in their calendars) does extend a sense of welcome and inclusion, and we fall into belittling these celebrations of diversity as ‘tokenistic’ to our own detriment.