London LGBT+ Community Pride (a community interest company) won the responsibility to deliver London’s Pride celebrations for five years from 2013, through an open tender process by the mayor following the failure in 2012 of the previous organisers. Our voluntary board is drawn from all parts of the community, across the political spectrum. Pride in London is run by a hugely diverse group of unpaid volunteers, in spite of being one of the biggest one-day events in the capital. We reject the charge that we are politically biased (Letters, 13 July.
Since 2013 it has been our central aim to deliver successful, safe Pride celebrations in London. We are proud to work with UK Black Pride, supporting its work with a new Sunday event. We take the message of Pride across the capital through our campaigns to drive attitudinal change. We hold open meetings for the community. It is also our goal to put Pride in London on a stable, sustainable financial footing so that it is not placed in jeopardy again as it was in 2012. We recruit and train hundreds of volunteer stewards for the route of the parade. We also provide entertainment and activities in Trafalgar Square, Soho and Vauxhall for the hundreds of thousands who take part. Their safety must be our primary concern and duty as directors of Pride in London.
To achieve all this for the community, we need to raise £600,000 each year to supplement our annual grant from the mayor of London of £100,000. Corporate sponsors make Pride possible and enable their LGBT+ colleagues to express solidarity with the rest of the community in ways that are making a real and lasting difference to attitudes in the workplace and in wider society.
We offered Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners the lead place in the parade this year. This invitation did not extend to the TUC’s contingent of several floats and more than 1,000 marchers, not least because of the need for a safe access space for disabled Pride marchers close to the beginning of the parade. Nonetheless, the TUC was insistent that its group should be with LGSM. So we were grateful when Mike Jackson of LGSM offered the practical compromise of moving his contingent to be with the TUC group and we accepted his suggestion.
The board will continue to make careful and balanced decisions that reflect our remit as custodians of a very precious privilege: the right to celebrate our freedoms in the heart of our great capital.
Rob Anderson
David Bloomfield
Alison Camps
Patrick Lyster-Todd
Huma Qazi
Michael Salter
Polly Shute
Stephen Ward
Mohsin Zaidi
(The board of London LGBT+ Community Pride)
