I remember my first Pride March. It was the last weekend in June, 1990. I was 20 and I had only come out a few months before. We were all there, my troupe of queer university friends, and me. We met at Mile End tube station at 11AM and I was bouncing around on the balls of my feet and shrieking. Happy Pride! It felt like Christmas. We hadn’t intentionally coordinated our outfits, but we looked pretty much the same. Regardless of gender, we wore Doc Martens and rolled up our jeans. And we pinned enamel triangles – pink and black – to our rucksacks: a reference to the Nazi persecution of homosexuals and a popular choice of badge at the time. I was wearing my ‘love is not a crime’ t-shirt and I’d gelled my hair accordingly.
Central London was an explosion of colour and sound that day. It was raining men. Really. Drag queens, seven feet tall in towering heels and lacquered wigs strode confidently forward. Leather men in peaky caps with fat moustaches marched unabashedly, bare bums on display. Lesbian marching bands banged out rhythms on drums and tambourines. Others waved placards and sang. Sisters were doing it for themselves. And trade unionists carried banners high, their voices rising in unison. Sing if you’re glad to be gay. Every beat, every shout, every flash of colour was a declaration of identity – a promise that our existence, in all its boldness, would not be silenced.
Each step that day was a celebration and a confrontation. And it changed me forever. I realised that being visible was not merely an act of pride and resistance, it was an act of self-care. Being on that march took me to a place where I realised that activism was as much about embracing who I wanted to be as it was about fighting for justice for us all.
Talking about revolution
Our little troupe found strength in each other that year. We founded the Lesbian and Gay Soc – a space created out of need and hope. It was more than a weekly meeting; it was a sanctuary where we could make friends, celebrate who we were, confront the weight of societal disdain, and – unbeknownst to us at the time – forge lifelong bonds. It wasn’t always easy. We were oftentimes chided by religious fundamentalists and boozed-up boys on army scholarships. It was sometimes scary and taxing, but the solidarity we found got us through. And yet, amid the anger and the fear, there was dancing, so much dancing, and lots of laughter.
Later that year we proposed the inclusion of bisexuals in the NUS London campaign. Up until then it was just lesbians and gay men – almost unthinkable nowadays. This act of advocacy was an effort to widen our community. Standing up for the different facets of our collective identity revealed the dual nature of our struggle; we stand up for ourselves and we amplify the voices of others. Like today, the actions of powerful and noisy nay-sayers took their toll, and our intermittent victories were overshadowed by the exhaustion of continuous opposition. But all that on one side, the clarity of who we were, and what we believed, got ever stronger.
The scariest context – worse even than Section 28, media hate and campus heckling – was that created by AIDS. My journey led me to ActUp – the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power – where raw grief met fierce determination. In those gatherings, the fear of the unknown and the pain of loss were paralleled only by the urgency for change. Every tear and emotional plea underscored the heavy cost of our fight, reminding us that the struggle is nourishing but can also leave us physically and emotionally spent, as well as mentally scarred.
Grey Pride
Today, during Pride Month 2025, feels like a good time to reflect on how our struggles nowadays are so very different from what they were 40 years ago, and yet they are remarkably similar. We have come a long way, for sure. But with suicide rates high amongst queer people, hate crime against us rising, the legal system turning its back on trans people in the UK, and the creeping criminalisation of queer lives across the globe, the need to fight is still with us.
For my friends and me in the troupe, the struggle for social and health justice has been personally transformative but exhausting, fraught with setbacks that could have worn us out if we allowed them to. It has also given us valuable insights and enduring friendships. My activism since my days at university has shown me many things, not least that our shared humanity is our great hope. We must huddle together, resist the anti-queer onslaught and care for ourselves and one another, seeking the threads of connection that unite us rather than allowing ourselves to be weakened by forces that wish to polarise us.
By nurturing our bonds and the love we have for one another, by tending to our own mental wellbeing, as well as that of our queer communities, and by leaning hard into old fashioned notions of solidarity, we can transform the heavy costs of activism into a shared strength. After all, the truth remains: caring for one another is as urgent, and as important, as the fight itself.
