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Alternative Pride movement opposing corporate ‘sanitisation’ and ‘pinkwashing’ grows in Huddersfield

On 28 June, Huddersfield held its second Alternative Pride event. Dozens of mostly young people attended, and a particular focus was anger over the recent Supreme Court ruling about trans people.

Alternative Pride

Organisers of the event said:

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 significant given the continuous attacks on LGBTQ+ people by the government, such as Starmer’s recent claim that trans women are not women.

They have garnered support by speaking at meetings of the Huddersfield Trades Union Council and PACE Kirklees, which has backed Alternative Pride. And they clarified that:

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.

Next year, they stressed:

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.

Everyone needs to unite against the billionaires

The Huddersfield group backs the building of “a new left party for working-class people, not the billionaires”, and has insisted:

You don’t need or want capitalist money, or a corporate-sponsored pink-washing gala! You can build a real, organising, radical Pride movement of our own — one that recognises Pride’s roots as a radical protest and fights for real liberation!

It has also emphasised:

No to pinkwashing! Kick ALL corporations out of Pride. End all arms sales to Israel NOW.

As Socialist Alternative said about last year’s first event:

Having seen many radical and alternative prides organised throughout the country, and after being somewhat underwhelmed by the council-run Pride, which lacked any political messaging and transgressive energy, West Yorkshire Socialist Alternative took it upon themselves to organise our own.

An organising committee was formed to help plan for the day with local LGBTQ+ youth, meeting regularly to decide exactly what they wanted their Pride to be. On Saturday, 10 August, we [took] to the streets of Huddersfield to lead a Pride march.

Elsewhere last year, Manchester insisted that:

While Pride may have been founded on a guiding principle of “equality for all”, many people in the queer community objected to this year’s list of corporate sponsors with ties to Israel’s occupation in Palestine and arms companies supporting the genocide. Manchester’s Alt-Pride festival was borne from this spirit of resistance.

Featured image and additional images supplied

By Ed Sykes

This post was originally published on Canary.