Gay Liberation Front
From survival to the first UK Pride march
The Gay Liberation Front arrived in London in 1970 with a new and unapologetic energy, borrowed in part from New York's Stonewall uprising the year before. Its meetings, leaflets and 'zaps' rejected the quiet discretion of earlier decades – the demand was no longer tolerance but liberation.
Soho’s pubs and back rooms became organising grounds. In 1972 the GLF helped stage the first UK Pride march through central London, turning private survival into public celebration and laying the ground for every Pride that followed.