Photos of a coin and booklet commemorating 50 years of Pride since the 1st protest in London, 1972
Various articles etc
One:
This is an interview with a journalist for the Observer in 2022, re the 50th anniversary of the first Pride march in London 1972. In the event, the article wasn’t published, as the Guardian did a similar article which would have involved duplication [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/25/danced-naked-then-changed-the-world-uk-pride-50-years-on] so I decided to post it here anyway, together with a picture taken and kindly shared by photographer Dean Chalkley, who worked on the article.
Why did you go to that GLF march in 1972? I was only in the Gay Liberation Front for a short while, and can’t claim any credit for doing much, but it was an intense and life-changing time. We were angry, we were rising up in protest, there was huge joyfulness and creativity in taking collective action. By the time of that first Pride march, most of the women had left the mixed organisation to campaign autonomously and work within the Women’s Liberation Movement. Many of us saw that the oppression of lesbians was part of women’s oppression generally: denial of our right to bodily autonomy, control our own lives, bodies, sexuality and reproductive rights, freedom from patriarchal control. So some women felt the march wasn’t for them; others of us thought that lesbian visibility was important at the event, so chose to go.
Do you have any stories that stand out from that first march? I recall that first march as an amazing experience, though blurred with memories of so many actions we took. Quite daunting as there was public hostility, people throwing stuff at us, a large, intimidating police presence. Very different from subsequent London events. It was exhilarating and exciting too, to be taking over the streets, insisting on our visibility and validity, protesting the ways we had been treated
What did you think of LGBTQ+ rights in 1972? What was it like? To understand the importance of GLF and Pride then, you probably need to know what it was like prior to that, what we emerged from. Lesbian women were stigmatised, pathologised, regarded as mentally ill, perverts, liable to be sectioned and given ECT, seen as unfit mothers so losing custody of their children; we could lose jobs, housing, families. Well-and-truly Othered. Subjected to misogynist violence. Having to hide. This affects mental health, and the legacy of that is felt by many of my generation still.
Of course, this situation and worse exists now in many places in the world today where same-sex relationships are criminalised, people are dehumanised and harassed, violence and murder are legitimised. Joelle Taylor writes that ‘it is illegal to be a lesbian in almost a quarter of the world’s countries.’ [C+nto and Othered Poems, Westbourne Press 2021]
Some ground-breaking campaigning had been done [Sappho, the Campaign for Homosexual Equality, e.g.] but it had not irrupted into the mainstream like GLF. Which was defiant and revolutionary, making radical demands, wanting a transformation of heterosexist society, analysing patriarchy and gender.
Do you have any personal stories you are comfortable sharing regarding your experiences, being open about your sexuality/gender identity and discrimination? I think discrimination is too a mild word, really; lesbians, gay men, LGBT+ people – whatever terminology you prefer – were persecuted, harassed and ridiculed. My experiences were common to many women, of being shunned, being gaybashed outside a club, micro-aggressions at work, that sort of thing. Subjected to hate-crimes, abuse and threats by neighbours, discriminated against by landlords and having to move.
What was it like being part of the LGBTQ+ rights movement back then? Do you have any particular fond memory/memories you could describe? When I look back at that period I picture it as being like moving into the light, emerging from a grey monotone: a process of coming alive. A time of buzzy energy, sharing ideas, living our politics, demonstrating, meeting, arguing, debating, celebrating, constantly – it heralded a new phase of life for many of us.
The context was a time of great hopefulness in many parts of the globe, with movements for justice happening – the Women’s Liberation Movement, the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, anti-colonialism struggles in Ireland, Africa e.g., the anti-apartheid movement etc.
The best part of GLF for me was that which made connections between movements, took an internationalist approach. The same approach that appealed to me within feminism – not a seeking of equality within an unjust society but a radical, transformational politics. We didn’t ask for our rights, we demanded and took them.
It was good to feel less isolated, and coming out and asserting our validity, not just to claim equality but develop a political understanding, saying yes actually we are a threat to patriarchy – we reject male control, we refuse heterosexist family structures and stereotyped roles.
On reflection, I’ll always be grateful for that moment in time, I learned a lot, I met some wonderful openhearted inspirational people. Some of whom have not survived and whose memory should be honoured.
Not to say it was easy. Most movements can be fraught, full of contradictions, in need of finding expansive ways of managing complexity.
Flashback memories of GLF activism include: aggression against our street theatre at the ghastly Mary Whitehouse’s Festival of Light; being crushed against a wall by police horses in Whitehall demonstrating about Bloody Sunday; dancing in huge circles in Hyde Park; surrounding the Albert Hall demonstrating against Miss World.
What did you do after that march – for example, did you stay in activism? Please describe a bit about your work/life since then. There followed a great flowering of women’s activism that I was lucky to be involved in – in lesbian squatting communities taking control of our own housing, working against male violence against women, setting up refuges, publishing and bookshop collectives, women’s centres, helplines, conferences, art, myriad forms of feminist resistance.
On a personal level, it gave me some confidence, to do more, to take part in forming rock bands and creating feminist music, to go to university, to undertake more satisfying work, paid and voluntary.
What do you think of the progress of LGBTQ+ rights? I don’t think progress is a linear path or a uniform one, it depends so much on many factors – location, class, racialisation, disability.
The backlash to any progress we had made came in the 1980s, Thatcher’s vile Clause 28, part of a draconian rightwing and fundamentalist attack on local government policies that supported inclusive educational practices and ridiculing our relationships as not valid – the infamous denial of ‘the acceptability of homosexuality’ and the insult to our relationships as ‘a pretended family relationship.’ Too many women were disobeying heteronormative structures, imagining new ways of being, independently of men! Had to put a stop to that.
These surges of repression continue to surface. We have again, still, constantly to guard against repressive right-wing and fundamentalist legislation, violence and ideology, threats to human rights.
What do you think of LGBTQ+ rights in the UK today? I think it’s a clumsy acronym that not everyone feels we fit into; we have some overlapping interests and also major differences. Lesbians can be subsumed within the term ‘queer’ as under ‘gay’, nevertheless at times coalitions are vital, creating a unity which doesn’t mean uniformity, as we do tend to be beaten up by the same people. [See e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/26/the-network-of-organisations-seeking-to-influence-abortion-policy-across-europe]
For me the best aspects of politics going on now are those that embody the same sort of values I was drawn to in the 70s: transcending national boundaries, showing solidarity with oppressed or dispossessed people, e.g. women are doing fantastic work challenging the racist cruelty of British policies by supporting lesbian asylum-seekers escaping horrific abuse. And campaigning against pinkwashing, when corporate powers, or oppressive regimes such as Israel, pretend to be progressive.
Pride in London became co-opted, depoliticised, commercialised. I wasn’t generally interested in participating. As an anti-militarist, against war and state violence, against the arms trade, I obviously don’t want to march with the army, and certainly don’t want anything to do with Tories or other right-wingers. But the celebratory, carnivalesque part of Pride is always great, especially at smaller Pride events at local levels, and where the rainbow is not a corporate logo but an image of light refracted through prisms, symbolising our common humanity, in all its variety.
I can however relate to the term ‘queer’ in the sense that bell hooks refers to as ‘being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.’
That is what we started to do in the early 70s, to create a new reality; when we were/are alienated and horrified by the unjust way the world is organised economically, politically, socially.
So my hope is that people who are now the age I was then, and indeed people of all ages, will be supported and thrive, and that with solidarity and activism we will change social conditions so that they are safe to do so.
Any thoughts on the trans issue?
I think it should be recognised that transgender people were part of the movement back then, from the start.
I find the current level of debate dispiriting. What could and should have been a reasonable one has involved vitriol and ignorance from many of those involved. Having been pathologised and othered myself, I am very disheartened to witness anyone else being treated that way.
Two Pride in History – a film by Zach Cole https://youtu.be/4-muuse85A0
“1972 saw the Gay Liberation Front march from Trafalgar Square to Hyde Park in what was to be the very first Gay Pride march in the UK. We hear the memories of those involved in that iconic protest as they fought for the right to Live and Love the way they wanted. The success of Shrewsbury and how it not only makes history, but it hosts the National Festival of LGBT History each year. We talk to those involved in making LGBT History month a success and why they love being part of it.” Zach Cole, filmmaker, 2016
Three: A letter published in Pink News in June, 2015 http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2015/06/15/comment-letting-ukip-march-at-pride-would-be-an-affront-to-our-history/
An open letter to Flo Lewis, ‘LGBT in UKIP’:
Dear Flo,
I was very lucky to be able to take part in the first Pride march in London during time within the Gay Liberation Front. In your article in Pink News asserting that your group had a right to march in this year’s Pride, you cite that original march as an historical precedent that your group is heir to. It seems to me that you have somewhat misunderstood the facts regarding that event, and I am therefore writing to provide some information that may be useful. In light of the welcome news of the decision that your group will be disallowed, I would like to add my comments to the debate.
Firstly, despite your thinking that the first march almost completely consisted of gay men, I assure you that many women were amongst those ‘few hundred men who marched, years before my birth,’ who faced ‘serious abuse and threats when they set off from Hyde Park. They were pioneers and must be celebrated for their courage.’
Those women, of whom I was one, went on to work in hundreds of organisations working for the rights of lesbians because of what we had experienced including losing custody of our children, our jobs and housing, being stigmatised and ostracised or incarcerated as mentally ill. Some of us have worked in coalitions with gay men and others and in Trades Unions against class exploitation, racism, ableism and sexism. We have also worked in the overlapping causes of justice for those, including LGBT people, seeking refuge after fleeing persecution elsewhere in the world (often as a result of British military intervention in their countries of origin) and combating racism in its myriad forms (also a direct legacy of British imperialism and colonialism) and the principles of human rights, feminist and anti-racist causes – and continue to do so.
I’d like also to let you know those women and men in GLF came from and celebrated a variety of European and world-wide backgrounds. We were well-aware of the traditional practice of scapegoating immigrants, and anyone regarded as ‘other’ by racist mindsets (as if Britain was not a nation formed by migrants), by the political establishment, as a means of turning people against one another and diverting attention from real common enemies, such as unjust systems of power, economic greed and mean-minded notions of nationalism. In the current rightwing climate, we see the same old same old dynamic in the hate-mongering attempt to stir up resentment against involvement in Europe, immigrants and people in need of safety. Ironically, all the while – if preserving national sovereignty were something you cared about – it should be obvious that the real threats to democracy actually come from the machinations of global corporate capitalism such as TTIP, e.g.
I remember clearly how our intentions back then were based on progressive principles of sharing, open-heartedness, internationalism and human solidarity. We were not simply about ‘equality’ – a much-misused term. Most of us were not seeking equality within an unjust system, but radical social transformation. The clue to what was going on is in the names! Gay Liberation Front, Women’s Liberation Movement. If you are interested in history then you will see that at the time of our movements’ flowering, the world was undergoing huge changes brought about movements in countries throwing off colonialism, the Black Power movement, the civil rights movement … in that context we analysed the political situations of patriarchy, capitalism, white and male supremacy, and developed an understanding of the links between oppressions. We felt ourselves part of a time in which the struggle for universal liberation from oppression was in ascendency. We were joyful and celebratory as part of that zeitgeist, not only because of developing a pride in being lesbian or gay. Our activism was carnivalesque in the sense of turning the world upside down, inverting and mocking the traditional power structures. I cannot speak for other women and men who formed that original contingent, or subsequent generations of activists (though if any of them read this they are welcome to add their names to mine), but I can say for myself that I believe most of us in that optimistic era never dreamt of a time when a group such as UKIP would co-opt our activism, our language and our cause in a specious attempt to give itself legitimacy. You misrepresent the notion of inclusivity and render it superficial at best if you think we could be connected in any way to the kind of narrow, xenophobic views espoused by UKIP.
In 2012 I was again fortunate, being able to be amongst people at the front of the London march with the banner “Veterans of 1972,’ marking the fortieth anniversary of that first march. Simultaneously I was proud to be part of the anti-pinkwashing campaign, marching against the attempts by Israel’s government to hijack hard-won rights as a propaganda smokescreen for its oppression of the Palestinian people under the slogan: No Pride in Israeli Apartheid. (This follows a slogan adopted by an Israeli LGBT group opposing the ongoing theft of Palestinian land, ’No Pride in Occupation.’)
I saw this as a continuation of GLF’s radical tradition of solidarity; standing opposite the South African embassy I recalled countless demonstrations in Trafalgar Square calling for an end to that previous vile apartheid system. With thousands of other people I’ve marched for that cause and many others, including subsequent Pride marches and anti-Clause 28 with my family and friends comprising a hugely diverse mixture of humanity.
with sisters in solidarity Diane and Sarah
I didn’t march for this: a noxious political party representing an appeal to the basest elements: fear of others, ignorance, bigotry and repression. The presence of UKIP on a Pride march is an affront to those who took part in long struggles for justice. The racist and anti-democratic nature of UKIP cannot be disguised by its adopting a tactical veneer of respectability, and it is a travesty to present yourselves as victims bravely facing intolerance.
I sincerely invite you to rethink your positioning of yourself in alliance with this party and to join the worldwide movements for justice and liberation.
Yours sincerely,
Frankie Green
http://mondoweiss.net/2012/07/palestine-takes-center-stage-at-world-pride.html
http://www.nopinkwashing.org.uk
*
Four
From: Frankie Green
Subject: Woman’s Hour and transgender issues
Date: 2 July 2019 at 11:12:42 BST
To: womanshour.yourviews@bbc.co.uk
Dear Woman’s Hour,
It was positive to hear a civil conversation on this, as the debate generally seems to be on the level public discourse has generally sunk to now: mean-minded and dismissive of diverse opinions. I was on the first UK Pride demonstration in 1972 and I believe that to disrupt Pride events is inappropriate, hubristic and contrary to Pride’s celebratory spirit of resistance, and must have been hurtful to many people. Lesbian identity being subsumed within the terms ‘queer’ or ‘lgbt’ as it was with ‘gay’ is an important issue to debate – but Pride marches are the wrong place and time. Holding up the march last year spoiled the event for many who had to wait for ages in exhausting heat, and as numbers were limited it was unfair the disrupters were able to then not only join the march but in effect lead it …
In the thousands of people there must have been many who have fled their home countries to seek asylum, or their communities here, because of persecution, and some of them will be transgender. They should be welcome and safe here. Already dealing with the Tories’ anti-immigrant hostile environment policy, they should be free from insult or harassment at Pride. And Pride is one time when LGBT people are in the majority, taking over the streets in a carnivalesque reversal of normativity. So I believe it is not the place for protest against one of the groups of participants, which led to the absurdity of an LGBT march being led by anti-T protesters! And it was unacceptable to override the planning of the event, which I understand was for it to be led by NHS workers’ unions who are struggling valiantly to save services from privatisation.
Sometimes the most marginalised and rejected in political movements as well as wider society have been trans people – I don’t feel that my respect for their rights, or my concern for impoverished trans people who experience exclusion, and racism if they are people if colour, and violence and murder, in any way compromises my commitment to women’s liberation and women’s rights, or my rage at the oppression of women subjected to male violence. It’s not either/or for me.
Sincerely, Frankie Green
*
NO PRIDE IN SEWAGE POLLUTION!
ENVIRONMENTAL VANDALISM AND PINKWASHING
This article was published in Whitstable Views, July 2013: https://whitstableviews.com/2023/07/04/no-pride-in-sewage-pollution/
‘The total inability of Ofwat to regulate companies properly has destroyed any confidence we can have in our system of private water monopolies.’ – 38 Degrees
‘We are never going to fix water in the current ownership model because our money is simply leaking out of the system to service ever more unmanageable levels of debt. Enough of this corporate robbery. Nationalise now.’ – Katy Weitz, Hastings activist.
When a few hundred demonstrators from the Gay Liberation Front took to the streets of central London in the 1972 protest which has become known as the UK’s first Pride march, we couldn’t have foreseen what Pride would become half a century later. GLF activism in England was inspired by the 1969 riot at New York’s gay bar, the Stonewall Inn (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/stonewall/), an uprising against constant violent police raids, fighting back against arrest, mafia-control, persecution and criminalisation – the whole damn shebang of oppression. The gay men, lesbians, drag queens, trans people had had enough. (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/stonewall-participants/ ) Their resistance began the continuing movement for liberation.
The behemoth Pride has become is always fraught with contradictions, in particular the commercialised, corporate and depoliticised nature of it. The inclusion of state military and policing institutions is not welcomed by all. Serried ranks of grey uniforms step-marching amongst drag queens on roller skates and dykes on bikes and other colourful carnivalesque chaos is a surreal sight. For some of us it’s not part of a delightful spectacle of variety but represents state co-option of a revolutionary movement, indicating a lack – or suppression – of awareness of the role of that military in unjust invasions and wars, racist and sexist violence and murders of BIPOC by those institutions. This year’s sponsorship of Pride in London, by United Airlines, has been rightfully opposed by groups like Just Stop Oil and Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants.
Human rights activists have protested the grotesque aspects that have become – or tried to become – incorporated in the event, the inclusion of right-wing groups such as UKIP or zionist groups e.g. The spirit of Pride, its celebratory and defiant essence , is more likely to be found in smaller or specific events, where local communities dispense with corporate sponsorship. It is still an important fixture in the political calendar, meaning a lot to many people. And when opportunities arise to uphold its founding principles we can seek to assert the radical roots. For example, at WorldPride in London in 2012 (https://mondoweiss.net/2012/07/palestine-takes-center-stage-at-world-pride/) where supporters of the Palestinian quest for justice forefronted the Israeli regime’s use of pinkwashing. The Israeli state has invested huge sums of money in tourism propaganda to try to beat the growing boycott movement. The slogan No Pride in Occupation was coined by campaigners against the Israeli military occupation of Palestine, and has variously been adapted e.g. as No Pride in Israeli Apartheid.
Pinkwashing – sometimes called rainbow-washing – refers to the co-option and takeover of radical activism by corporate institutions and oppressive regimes to present themselves as promoting social justice, to camouflage their crimes. Cynical hijacking of the hard-won rights of LGBT+ people was used to attempt to portray Israel as modern, liberal society, welcoming gay tourists to Tel Aviv beaches and clubs. It’s a familiar backlash strategy, used by systems recognising a threat to their stability and vested interests.
A rainbow flag, with its bright prismatic symbolism of humanity’s diversity, can raise the spirits, but may dampen them when splashed across the face of Coutts Bank.
(Photo below taken by Angie Smith on the abortion rights demonstration, while marching along the Strand, protesting pinkwashing by Coutts Bank, London, June 2023 https://www.bigissue.com/news/activism/thousands-march-abortion-reform-in-london-on-saturday/)
RED FLAGS
So, you may be asking, what has all this got to do with the sewage crisis overwhelming our coastal and river ecosystems?
Outrage has grown at the horrendous discharging of sewage by companies who have grabbed the golden egg-laying goose of privatisation to rake in huge profits. Since Thatcher privatised the water industry in 1989 they have laughed all the way to the bank. Which they own. Macquarie Group’s Nicholas O’Kane stands to be the country’s top executive earner after he banked $57.6 million last year, unseating every Australian chief executive in the pay ranks including his own boss, Shemara Wikramanayake. (https://theconversation.com/the-millionaires-factory-lays-bare-the-good-and-bad-about-australias-millionaire-manufacturer-macquarie-bank-202101#:~:text=The%20Macquarie%20Group%20overall%20has,used%20in%20the%20book%27s%20title)
As the full extent of this devastating destruction of beaches, wildlife, tourism and fishing industries, coastal sports and amenities, and myriad threats to public health, becomes more and more obvious, withholding payment of wastewater bills (https://www.boycottwaterbills.com) gains in popularity. Water companies being monopolies who appear to think the earth’s resources are theirs for the spoiling, we consumers have few other ways to express our outrage and refusal to collude. The current scandal regarding Thames Water, asset-striped by Macquarie, is building to a tipping point at time of writing.
‘Red flags are going up on beaches from Scarborough to Whitstable as pollution levels soar and businesses are forced to close due to sewage discharges … Between 15 May and 30 September last year, sewage was dumped into designated bathing waters more than 5,000 times. There were an average of 825 sewage spills every single day into England’s waterways in 2022. In the north west, United Utilities discharged untreated sewage almost 70,000 times last year, while Severn Trent Water discharged sewage through storm overflows 44,765 times in the same period. In just a single eight-day stretch, Southern Water dumped more than 3,700 hours’ worth of sewage at 83 bathing water beaches.’ (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/18/no-swimming-no-surfing-how-a-summer-of-sewage-is-ruining-the-british-seaside-day-out)
According to We Own It, English water companies are more than 90% owned by shareholders abroad, for example: Wessex Water is 100% owned by a Malaysian company, YTL, Northumbrian Water is owned by Hong Kong businessman Li Ka Shin, Thames Water is partly owned by investors from the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, China and Australia. Over 90% of the English water companies are owned by international investors, private equity funds, and banks. (https://weownit.org.uk/public-ownership/water)
Southern Water is responsible for water services here in Kent and Hampshire, Sussex and the Isle of Wight. It is owned by infrastructure investment funds that are 62% managed by Australian firm Macquarie. ‘Macquarie faced political scrutiny during its ownership of Thames Water between 2006 and 2017 as it extracted billions in dividends while Thames’s debt soared. It controversially returned to the industry when taking control of Southern Water in 2021.’ (https://weownit.org.uk/public-ownership/water)
At time of writing, South East Water (via whom we pay our bills to Southern Water) has announced a hosepipe ban, while reportedly leaking 92 million litres of water per day. (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12230789/Water-company-enforcing-hosepipe-ban-midnight-leaks-92m-litres-water-day.html)
Ingeniously, the opaque corporate structures of water and sewage companies are layered with numerous subsidaries, only one of which – the operating company – is regulated by Ofwat. And the crap dumped in the sea and rivers that is preventing swimmers from enjoying a dip probably doesn’t worry you if you have a large private swimming pool like that of Martin Stanley, ‘the former head of Macquarie Asset Management, who directed several transactions for the business, including the acquisition of Thames Water. Stanley, 60, lives in a £2.5 million house in Woodbridge, Suffolk, complete with a swimming pool. In 2021, the year he stepped down from Macquarie, he was paid £10 million.’ (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/water-firm-chiefs-lived-in-luxury-as-debts-piled-up-f0wmdn2nd)
JOINING THE DOTS: THE BRITISH LGBT AWARDS
An annual feature of Pride month, this year’s ceremony saw severalnominees for the awards withdraw. Activists from Fossil Free Pride had called for an end to corporate sponsorship of the event by Shell and BP.
(https://www.bigissue.com/news/environment/heres-why-british-lgbt-awards-has-dropped-ties-with-fossil-fuel-giants-shell-and-bp) Pink News reported that while the fossil fuel giants had been dropped, the award is now ‘sponsored by Macquarie and Tesco.’ (https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/06/24/british-lgbt-awards-2023-winners/)
This is hardly an improvement, unfortunately. So far, there has been less focus on the sponsorship by Macquarie than on Shell and BP, because campaigners’ efforts have highlighted the culpability of the latter in the planet-threatening extractive capitalist industries. Public awareness of the damage caused by the fossil fuel industry has grown despite all corporate and governmental efforts to prevent it. An article in openDemocracy describes how ‘LGBTIQ groups are among those urging the LGBT Awards to drop the Macquarie Group over the company’s funding of fossil-fuel projects, which they claim are contributing to climate catastrophe and harming Indigenous communities worldwide … Macquarie is part of the Riverlinx Consortium that is building a new “highly pollutant” four-lane road tunnel under the River Thames.’ ( https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/uk-lgbt-awards-macquarie-group-climate-change-pinkwashing/) Fewer people know of the iniquitous involvement of Macquarie in the sewage pollution scandal now making headlines and why its duplicity should be opposed.
WHO IS MACQUARIE?
A global financial services group, nicknamed ‘the Vampire Kangaroo’ by the financial press, Macquarie has a reputation for ‘asset stripping’ the companies it acquires. (https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2017/01/10/macquarie-asset-strip-uk-green-investment-bank/. It owns vast chunks of infrastructure worldwide, including gas networks, airports and telecoms service companies across the UK. More than 100 million people rely on it for necessary infrastructure; asset managers globally own housing and infrastructure worth over 4 trillion dollars. Macquarie owns Roadchef, a leading UK motorway service area operator, providing access to fast-charging electric vehicle infrastructure. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were behind the EV charging station about to devastate Ambridge’s local economy (apologies to non-Archers fans.)
Incredibly, the inspiration behind this global giant’s name was their admiration for Lachlan Macquarie. (https://www.euromoney.com/article/2bbccxgjgjxbkrf6vw9og/opinion/how-macquarie-took-on-the-world.) A governor of New South Wales, Macquarie was ‘the Australian leader who used terrorism and slaughter to quell hostile Indigenous resistance to invasion and dispossession.’
Widely lauded by white Australians, Macquarie was responsible for giving the orders for the infamous 1816 Appin Massacre of Aboriginal men, women and children.
(https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/appin_massacre)
So, settler colonialism is not only alive and kicking in e.g. Israel today, its legacy haunts Australia and other lands where indigenous peoples continue to resist theft of their land, culture and life. It seems the racist mentality of resource looting, cruelty and indifference to suffering that marks the British empire has morphed into indifference toward human and all other forms of life disastrously affected by the hubristic financial institutions that rule our world.
NO PRIDE IN PROFITEERING
Macquarie Group vaunts its LGBT-friendly credentials widely
(https://www.macquarie.com/uk/en/about/diversity-equity-and-inclusion.html )and boasts of its commitment to ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ for its employees, offering parental leave, support for International Women’s Day and Black Lives Matter and indigenous rights. ‘In seeking meaningful and enduring reconciliation, Macquarie supports constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as the First Peoples of Australia.’ Which is the least it can do I suppose, given its siting on stolen land of the Wallumattagal clan of the Dharug Nation.
The cognitive dissonance this global gaslighting creates emanates from a massive PR effort on the part of international financial interests. Yet no amount of greenwashing or pinkwashing can cover up their crimes.
CITIZEN ACTIVISM
The original Gay Liberationists did not ask for rights and equality, they demanded radical change and would have rejected corporate and state pinkwashing. GLF made common cause and overlapped with the Women’s Liberation Movement, the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, Trade Unions fighting repressive legislation, British military brutality in Northern Ireland, countries throwing off colonialism, the Black Power movement, the civil rights movement, as part of a tradition of internationalist solidarity subsequently upheld by groups such as Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners with its continuation today in Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants.
If there are two main strands of much political activism – on the one hand liberal and assimilationist, and on the other a radical seeking of social transformation (for ‘the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house’) – then the former has come to predominate in mainstream society, at least in its manifestation in LGBT+ Pride in some countries. This is not to deny important benefits, legal protections and workplace rights accruing from reforms – which can of course be taken away by the same state powers that grant them in the first place, as is happening now in Europe, Britain, USA, as with Italian fascists removing women’s parental status (https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/italian-prosecutor-demands-cancellation-birth-certificates-lesbian-cou-rcna90151?utm_source=Xtra+Weekly&utm_campaign=325affec25-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_06_23_06_57&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-325affec25-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D)
However acceptable Pride months or LGBT+ rights have become in some places, they are not safe from attack and backlash, as can be seen now as they are targeted and ridiculed in the ludicrous ‘war on woke’, along with anti-racist school and library books, drag queens, transgender people … ‘With the US besieged by a rightwing culture war campaign that aims to strip away rights from LGBTQ+ people … blame tends to be focused on Republican politicians and conservative media figures. But lurking behind efforts to roll back abortion rights, to demonize trans people, and to peel back the protections afforded to gay and queer Americans is a shadowy, well-funded rightwing legal organization, experts say. Since it was formed in 1994, Alliance Defending Freedom has been at the center of a nationwide effort to limit the rights of women and LGBTQ+ people, all in the name of Christianity.’ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/19/alliance-defending-freedom-lgbtq-rights-america. The Conservative Political Action Coalition seeks to remove legal rights and reject progress. (https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/cpac-2023-anti-transgender-hate-took-center-stage)
These forces have close links with their UK counterparts, as can be seen by current anti-LGBT+ and anti-reproductive rights lobbying and the speakers at May’s NatCon gathering (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/17/10-things-we-learned-from-the-uk-natcon-conference) (who included rightwing Miriam Cates with whom the MP for Canterbury and Whitstable, Rosie Duffield, has recently formed an alliance.) Not coincidentally, the UK dropped down this year from 14th to 17th place in the annual ILGA-Europe Rainbow Map, which ranks nations on their legal and policy situation regarding LGBTQ+ rights. While the situation is not as dire here as in Kenya, Uganda, Turkey or the USA (unless you’re an asylum-seeker), clearly pinkwashing is not going to protect queer people any more than corporate powers hand in glove with politicians are going to protect all citizens and our environment.
With Macquarie warranting a prime place amongst other corporate criminals responsible for the despoliation of our planet, Big Oil, e.g., it’s time to reject their nice shiny greenwashing/pinkwashing rainbow veneer, and hold such financial institutions to account. Refusal of sponsorship by events and organisations needs to join the boycotting of wastewater bills (by those that can safely do so.) As disgust grows, more people recognise that, as the Financial Times says, ‘running a water utility – a natural monopoly selling a basic necessity to a captive market – ought not to be difficult. … The problem is that what are in in essence simple businesses become playgrounds for financial engineering.’ (FT, 1 July 2023) Why water should be commodified as a business at all is the larger question being increasingly asked.
There is a shocking disconnect between the glossy high-powered PR machinations of the likes of Macquarie and our day-to-day neighbourhood life, where we watch in horror the confluence of rising tides of filth in our seas and waves of the monumental greed of those responsible. As the crisis worsen civil disobedience, boycotts, lobbying and protests grow. These time-honoured and creative tactics are called for when mendacious corporations, governments and politicians cannot be trusted to protect the water on which all life depends.
Frankie Green 