Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at more stories like this, check our news page. It really was change and changes like that don’t happen very often.’ ‘GLF signalled a real change in British society. ‘I think the 50th anniversary of Pride is good both intrinsically in itself but also just because it represents the sense that there is historical memory. ‘Neither of those things were available before gay liberation and they both come out of gay liberation and I think one can identify them both as being gay Pride,’ he added. Simon said to him Pride was about ‘having a sense of your own personal dignity, to make love with who you like and a sense of belonging to a social constituency’. ‘We had chants, “two, four, six, eight, gay is just as good as straight”, all sorts of typical march slogans. ‘I can remember thinking at the time, this is remarkable, it was like a GLF meeting but a GLF meeting on the march,’ he said.
Simon Watney said the London’s first Pride march in 1972 felt ‘astonishing’ (Picture: Simon Watney)
