Thread by @BLUFclub

People have been talking a lot about Pride, especially the Manchester one, and the big stars, social exclusion etc.

For what it's worth, I think it all started to go wrong in 1992. /1

Prior to that, the Pride marches I went on in London were pretty loose affairs - you turned up at the Embankment, found a place with your mates, marched to Westminster and ended up in Kennington, where Tom Robinson would play a set. Approk 45k in all. /2

Then, in 1992, London hosted the first Euro-Pride. It was amazing. Banarama! Other famous people! A fair ground, and all sorts of new stuff, with attendance reckoned to be 100k. Biggest ever. Glad I was there. But ... /3

Next year, a decision was made to have the same sort of thing. And I think, in retrospect, that did two things:
1. It overshadowed Berlin's EuroPride, which was a massive shame
2. It encouraged a "bigger is better" mantra, and forced rather than organic growth. /4

And from there we've had familiar stories - Pride being promoted on Clapham Common as a "free music festival", in Finsbury Park with aggressive ticketing policies and sponsors drinks the only ones for sale.
Lots of fuss about sponsors, and headliners, and less politics /5

Less opportunity for anyone to just come along and turn up on the day with their mates. And yes, there were failures and collapses along the way.
I'm very glad that @PrideInLondon doesn't have a ticketed area in town; that would be awful, in my view. /6

Anyone can still go to soho and celebrate with their friends. And I don't really begrudge the £1/head cost of marching (though wish it were easier for non-groups, ie mates, to do it, like in the old days). /7

The Pride I enjoyed most recently was probably 2013, when Italian Pride was held in Palermo, with a "pride village" that felt like a special space just for us.
I'd love to get some of that feel back - but perhaps that's partly nostalgia, and the novelty of being somewhere new. /8

But I do very much believe it has to be accessible to all - the gay scene as a whole is not always great at that - expensive drinks, and so on - and for our one special day, surely we should make it easy for the less well off to take part, not price them out with access fees /9

And the big acts? Again, fun, but not so much fun when they start to become the whole point of the things, and when plenty of fans (not all of whom our allies) buy up tickets. An LGBT+ space becomes less of one when that happens. /10

At a time when the far right is on the rise, and elements of that are all too keen to take away our rights, when people are attacked on buses and in the streets, we need to keep the politics in Pride. /11

And if we are talking the politics of inclusion, sticking up for trans people - both at home and abroad - and for the victimised, then absolutely we should also be talking about inclusion of the less well off amongst us. /END