3/7/07
Despite lashing rain and terror threats, London Pride blazed ahead, attracting tens of thousands revellers for the annual festivities...
Despite lashing rain and last week’s attempted terrorist attacks, London Pride blazed ahead, attracting tens of thousands revellers for the annual festivities.
The march began at Baker Street and made its way, as planned through Oxford Street and Regent Street, confronting a hostile, yet small group of conservative Christians and National Front protesters at the bottom of Haymarket, before spilling into Trafalgar Square for a rally and pop performances.
Pride organisers met with Police on Friday and determined there was no need to cancel the festivities. Police deployed over 350 officers to secure the event, supporting their LGBT Met comrades who marched in the parade in uniform.
On Friday London Mayor Ken Livingstone insisted he would be attending the Gay Pride march, saying: "I think people are completely safe to walk about the streets of London today and tomorrow. "I have promised my family all week that we are all going on the Gay Pride march. We will all be there," he told BBC radio. "I suspect virtually everybody who intended to go on that march will be there."
Livingstone joined actor John Barrowman and comedian Amy Lamé on Pride’s lead float before speaking in Trafalgar Square with his two young children. He was joined by Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs.
Commenting on the gay community’s defiant response to the terror threats, a proud Livingstone recalled the London’s similar response to the events of 7/7.
''They planned to cause destruction and fear, and they failed,'' Livingstone said. ''No one stayed home in fear.''
Ben Summerskill, Stonewall chief executive, noted the parade's spirit of joyful defiance as his personal highlight.
"My highlight was the wonderful moment when the parade passed two dozen of the extreme Christian protestors shouting and barracking at revellers passing them by in the Mall," he told Gay.com.
"They were heavily protected by the Metropolitan Police but the noise of their hateful sloganeering was drowned out by singing and cheering and whistles. It was a reminder of that age old truth; that goodness always triumphs over hate."
"My low-point (of course) was the incredibly heavy rain. But if the Bishops of Carlisle and Liverpool believe, as they claimed rather bizarrely at the weekend, that all this rain is Britain’s punishment for introducing civil partnership then God is obviously going to have to try a little harder if he wants to stop Pride next year. Perhaps a plague of locusts?"
Pride performer Darren Hayes, whose forthcoming album 'This Delicate Thing We've Made' comes out in August, told Gay.com:
"I have to say that Pride London was my first one as an openly gay and happily married gay man and it was fab."
"The crowd were incredibly warm and I had rocketed on in from New York esepcially to be there. For me the highlight was being able to kiss my sexy husband Richard the minute I left the stage."
"I feel lucky to live in a country where same sex marriage is not just a technicality but a civil right."
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