A Brief British History - Pride in London
I was missing Toronto’s annual Pride weekend by taking a well-deserved holiday to England—I missed last year as well, because I went on a Canada Day long-weekend beach trip with my now ex-boyfriend (who was too straight for me, I don’t know what I was thinking). Yet I found a new opportunity when my travel dates aligned with Pride in London’s Parade on July 5. That morning, I packed my camera bag and sported my signature black tank top, khaki cargos, and converse, adding handcrafted sunflower earrings that let me run around Pride with little flowers in my hair.
When I picked up my press pass before the parade at Trafalgar Square, the stage was not yet open for public access. Thinking about all the tourist attractions I may never visit due to the sheer volume of people pushing through for their next Instagram reel, I thought, I will likely never see this space as empty as it is now, and snapped a photo. When I returned from photographing the parade in the early afternoon, the square was flooded with crowds watching the stage, dancing with their friends, and singing along with the performers.
I found my way into a VIP tent, was given a Beefeater canned cocktail, kissed a stubbly cheek for a seat to watch the stage, and picked up “The Pride Issue” of Pride Life. I had seen the issue’s release online and was ecstatic to have a physical copy of my own. I walked among the vendors and displays, ate a deliciously overpriced vegan burger, and returned to photograph more of the parade before heading back to my temporary flat.
The day had been filled with colourful, wonderful chaos, including a red-paint protest for Palestine, and it would be continuing on well into the night. Floating on the Uber Boat along the Thames to Chelsea, I started into Pride Life with a better focus—across six stages and lining the one-and-a-half mile parade route, from Hyde Park Corner through Piccadilly Circus to Trafalgar Square and ending at Whitehall, 1.5 million queers, gays, allies, and the like, came to be part of this year’s Pride celebrations in London.
It’s an astounding number in comparison to the UK’s first Pride parade on July 1, 1972—the date chosen as being the closest Saturday to the anniversary of New York’s Stonewall Riots—when 2000 people marched the same route (from the opposite direction) carrying banners and balloons, blowing whistles, making music, and chanting for gay liberation. “GAY IS GOOD. GAY IS PROUD. GAY LIBERATION FRONT,” reads one sign. “HOMOSEXUALS ALSO HAVE THE RIGHT TO WORK,” demands another. And my personal favourite: “HOMOSEXUALS ARE REVOLTING!”
In those early days, Pride was only protest—people of the same sex couldn’t even kiss their partner in public without being arrested for “gross indecency” or “breaching the peace”—and it was done as a collective. Groups like the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (founded 1969) and the Gay Liberation Front (founded 1970) were the leaders of marches, rallies, “gay days,” kiss-ins and demonstrations that inspired other queer diasporas, like the Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, to unite for better rights.
The United Kingdom’s laws against gay people were decriminalized after decades of coming together, risking abuse and arrest, to speak out and demand the same basic human rights as straight people. That doesn’t mean hate has been eradicated, rather when the victim has become as big and loud as the bully, the target shifts to the next vulnerable group.
This past April, the UK Supreme Court ruled that the terms “man,” “woman,” and “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 refer to sex at birth. It was in response to the activist group, For Women Scotland taking issue with the Scottish government misrepresenting the number of women on public sector boards by including trans women to meet the female quota. Trans people remain protected under the Gender Recognition Act 2004 but their gender recognition certificates that legally recognize their reassignment will constantly be scrutinized as these individuals go to access gender-specific services.
It’s a touchy subject and one I was not happy to see the legendary transphobic witch J.K. Rowling celebrating on Twitter in a photo of her sipping scotch and smoking a cigar on her yacht with a quote from A-Team’s Hannibal: “I love it when a plan comes together.” But I pity the fool who doesn’t rally for trans liberation. Trans people around the world increasingly don’t know where they stand with their countries’ laws on sexuality and hold their breath to see where the next court will rule against them.
In Canada, trans youth are the trending subject, most recently, as an Alberta court ordered a temporary ban on doctors providing gender-affirming care to minors. This comes after years of the province’s Premier Danielle Smith pushing to prohibit hormonal treatment for those under the age of 15, require parents’ consent for a student to change their name or pronouns used at school, and ban transgender women from competing in women’s sports.
While you can decide your own opinion on these matters, they are ultimately intersectional issues that need to be broached beyond the courtroom and with respect to individual lived experiences, also recognizing that there can be no “one-size-fits-all” solution to human identity. When you realize reality is fluid and constantly changing, whether it's from biological aging or developing your sense of self, you go from Kansas to Oz, seeing the world in black-and-white to a rainbow of infinite colours.
A larger gallery of Pride in London 2025 can be viewed at www.marinablackmedia.ca/event-editorial/pride-in-london-2025. Please contact for photo permissions and usage.