On Saturday 28 June, Huddersfield held its second Alternative Pride. With corporate interests increasingly pinkwashing Pride, many young people are looking for events that celebrate queerness while reclaiming Pride’s political roots. That’s why Alternative Pride was organised – to demand real LGBTQ+ liberation.
The need for political Pride is clearer than ever. The recent Supreme Court ruling attacking trans rights has emboldened Labour to drop any previous words of support for trans people. Starmer is clearly willing to sacrifice trans lives to appease culture war narratives.
But it’s not just Labour. The Tories and Reform are open enemies of trans rights, and even Green Party leadership hopeful Adrian Ramsay refused – five times – on Radio 4 to say whether trans women are women. No mainstream party can be trusted to defend LGBTQ+ people.
That’s why queer activists are reclaiming Pride across the country – from Leeds’ Alternative Pride to Sheffield’s Radical Pride. In Liverpool, the official Pride march was cancelled due to “lack of funding”, prompting Socialist Alternative members to call on grassroots groups to organise their own, one that celebrates queer life while building political struggle.
While grassroots resistance is vital, LGBTQ+ people also need political representation. The developments towards a new left party are welcome, but it must be one built from struggle, rooted in the working class, and committed to fighting all oppression. It must offer a clear, socialist programme for liberation, and challenge not only Reform and the Tories, but also a Labour Party determined to mimic them.
Interview: Organising a fighting Pride
Socialist Alternative spoke with Joseph and Chloe, two organisers of Huddersfield Alternative Pride, to find out more:
Why did you organise Alternative Pride?
The existing Pride event in Huddersfield was taken over by the council from local LGBTQ+ groups a few years ago, and has become significantly more sanitised and corporate. This includes welcoming business sponsorships and banning any type of political engagement.
This is especially important given the attacks on LGBTQ+ people by the government, such as Starmer’s recent claim that trans women are not women.
How were you able to get support from a wide range of groups, including the trade unions?
This was largely done by speaking at meetings of groups such as the Huddersfield Trades Union Council and being involved with the new group PACE Kirklees, which brings together many left groups and causes and has officially endorsed Alternative Pride.
What are your plans for Alternative Pride?
Alternative Pride’s main goal is bringing together queer people for an ongoing struggle against the discrimination, attacks, and oppression we currently face. It aims to highlight how this is caused directly by the capitalist system and how true liberation requires capitalism’s overthrow, and it aims to organise queer people year round to keep fighting against capitalism and for queer liberation.
Will there be an Alternative Pride main event next year?
Next year we want to have another event, along with Out and Loud, another queer group. We aim to recreate the 1981 Huddersfield Pride march, which was the first national Pride event outside of London and was carried out to protest the police attacks on Gemini, Huddersfield’s main gay bar at the time.
45 years later, queer people face more attacks and oppression from the state than we have in over a decade and this protest will help bring people together to oppose that.
