TAKING PRIDE

How Pride has changed over the years

Awarded an OBE in the 2014 New Year’s Honours List for services including voluntary work for Aids charities, Philip Rescorla has attended every single Pride in London except for 1996 when he attended the event in Tampa, Florida.

He was one of the original London members of the Gay Liberation Front and their street theatre group, and has been a member of London’s LGBT community choir The Pink Singers ever since they formed in 1983 with the specific mission of singing on the Pride march. The group have performed onstage at many Pride locations in London including Jubilee Gardens, Kennington Park, Clapham Common, Brockwell Park, Trafalgar Square and Finsbury Park – where in 2001 they sang Take on Me with headline act A1.

Back in 1970 when he was studying for a post- graduate diploma at the LSE, Philip saw a notice pinned up by gay rights activists Bob Mellors advertising a Gay Liberation Front (GLF) meeting taking place that Wednesday.

Bob had been over to New York and had gotten involved with the GLF there and decided to set up a London version.

“Gay was still not a word in common parlance so I thought, ‘Is this what I think it is?’ and then I looked at the picture and thought, ‘Yes it is!’” says Philip. “There were 15 people at the first meeting and we decided to go leafleting around Earl’s Court and got quite an icy response.” The leaflet comprised a list of “demands” calling for an end to discrimination. They obviously had an effect, however, as the next meeting drew a crowd of 200. Also in attendance at these early meetings were Peter Tatchell and Bette Bourne, the latter once confessing to being lured there by the promise of “lots of gorgeous men”.

The GLF youth group organised a march from Hyde Park in 1971 to protest against the inequality of the age of consent for gay men (not long after decriminalisation in 1967). Ending up at Trafalgar Square, they did a street theatre performance at the bottom of the plinth at Nelson’s Column with men and women crossdressing. “The point was to ask: ‘Can you tell who’s a man and who’s a woman and who’s over 21 and who’s under?’” Philip says.

“Then on Saturday 1 July 1972, the first ever Gay Pride march was organised under the slogan ‘Gay is Good’ to combat the prevailing view of the time that it was anything but. Other banners said ‘Closets are for Brushes’ and ‘We are the People our Parents warned us about’.

“The march was a carnival-style parade led by a steel band but there were no floats. The weather was good but there was a heavy police presence who we teased with chants like ‘2-4- 6- 8! Is that Copper really Straight?’ There was a fun atmosphere with many people in costume,