by Jay Coward, South East London
The usual crowds took the streets in colourful celebration of how far the fight for LGBTQ+ liberation has come throughout history. However, a lot hung in the air.
There are attacks on LGBTQ+ people worldwide. In the US, with Donald Trump’s flurry of executive orders dismantling healthcare, legal recognition, and protection from discrimination.
Photo: James Ivens
And attacks in the UK too. April’s Supreme Court ruling against trans people’s rights, put through by five Oxbridge educated judges.
Over a quarter of LGBTQ+ people in the UK are disabled, affected by Keir Starmer’s assault on disability benefits.
All of this adds to an ever-growing anger at the establishment, and a ravenous hunger for an alternative. So there was a more than understandable air of enthusiasm about Zarah Sultana’s announcement of a new party with Jeremy Corbyn coming soon (see pages 2-3).
A group of Socialist Party members headed to Pride together to do what we do best – help people draw conclusions, link struggles, and raise consciousness of the need for mass working-class mobilisation and organisation.
This was taken well by young LGBTQ+ people we spoke to, on board that Labour no longer holds the working class in its interests, and enthusiastic about a new party. But they also had reservations, hoping that a party like that would actually serves their needs.
What entity can assure that the working class won’t be cheated out of benefits? Out of our jobs? Services? Housing? To not be discriminated against, and be protected when they are? That entity has to come from the working class itself.
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