page_title: Pride in London
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Pride in London / History
caption_attribution_description: Marchers, banners and police at the first official gay pride march held in London, 1st July 1972. IMAGELIBRARY/1374 Persistent URL: &lt;a href="http://archives.lse.ac.uk/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&amp;id=IMAGELIBRARY/1374" rel="nofollow"&gt;archives.lse.ac.uk/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&amp;i...&lt;/a&gt;
context_page_description: Pride in London is an annual LGBT pride festival and parade held each summer in London, the Capital of the United Kingdom. Pride in London celebrates the diversity of the LGBT community with the colourful Pride in London Parade, as well as the free festivity events that take place in Trafalgar Square. This event brings together thousands of people of all genders, ethnicities, sexualities, and also many people of different races.
  It is one of the longest running in the country and attracts an estimated one million visitors to the city. The festival's events and location within London vary every year however the Pride parade is the only annual event to close London's iconic Oxford Street. The 2015 Gay Pride Parade through the streets of London attracted 1 million people, making it the 7th largest gay event in the world and the largest Gay Pride Parade and Gay event ever held in the UK, and the 2019 Pride attracted over 1.5 million people, making it the biggest Pride in the UK.
context_section_description: Pride has been organised by several organisations since the first official UK Gay Pride Rally which was held in London on 1 July 1972 (chosen as the nearest Saturday to the anniversary of the Stonewall riots of 1969) with approximately 2,000 participants. The first marches took place in November 1970 with 150 men walking through Highbury Fields in North London. 
  In 1981, the usual Pride march and rally was not held in London, decamping to Huddersfield instead as an act of solidarity with the Yorkshire gay community who claimed that West Yorkshire Police were harassing them by repeatedly raiding the Gemini Club, a leading nighclub in the North of England at the time. 
  In 1985 representatives from mining groups joined the Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners group (LGSM) on the march. This was in recognition of the support given to striking miners by LGSM.
  The controversy of Section 28 from 1988 led to numbers increasing on the march in protest. 
  Since 1983 the march was called "Lesbian and Gay Pride" and by the 1990s it had became more of a carnival event, with large park gatherings and a fair after the marches. For 1996, following a vote by the members of the Pride Trust, the event was renamed "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride" and became the largest free music festival in Europe.
  In 1992, London was selected to hold the first Europride with attendance put at 100,000; London again held Europride in 2006 with an estimated 600,000 participants.
  In 1998, the Pride Trust became insolvent and no event was organised that year, it was believed by some that the decision to make it a ticket only event played a role in the 1998 event not happening.
  For the next few years, another commercial organisation ran what it called 'London Mardi Gras' before it failed to pay its bill for the use of Hyde Park and was unable to run any more events without clearing that debt.
  'Pride London' was formed in 2004, since then a political rally in Trafalgar Square has been held straight after the parade, and more recently Pride London has organised several other events in the centre of London on Pride Day including the Big Gay Out music festival in Finsbury Park in 2004, and in 2006 'Drag Idol' in Leicester Square, a women's stage in Soho and a party in Soho Square. 
  In 2004, it was awarded registered charity status. 
  
  The 2012 event was WorldPride, though this was to be the last event organised by Pride London.
  In late 2012, a group of individuals from within the LGBTQ community formed London LGBT+ Community Pride, a registered community interest company, and the company organised the Pride in London festival and parade in 2013. The organisation has been awarded a contract to organise Pride in London for five years by the Greater London Authority, together with funding of £500,000 over five years.
  The first International Asexual Conference was held at the 2012 World Pride in London.
caption: Second gay pride march, 1973
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