Labour celebrates Pride Month
A brief history of Starmer’s Labour Party’s awful track record on LGBTQ+ issues
Happy Pride Month! A fundamental time to remember the lives and sacrifices of those who came before and of those are still fighting for equality around the world. As well as the ongoing struggle for progress, people around the world are fighting back against the rollback of rights, including right here in the UK against our very own Labour Party.
The UK Labour Party was founded over a century ago by trade unionists and left-wing groups to bolster their power and influence in the political realm. Over the decades, various leaders took the party in different directions, with Tony Blair apparently being the North Star for it’s current iteration under Keir Starmer.
The New ‘New Labour’ was positioned as one that would return Labour to its roots and away from the scary offerings of Jeremy Corbyn (like taxing wealth, nationalising water, and free childcare). Starmer began with his pledges and plans and missions that change every year depending on which way the wind is blowing. Taking notes from New Labour might not be all that bad, it was after all that government who repealled Section 28 which prevented the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality in schools and by local government — i.e. it was illegal to speak about being gay or share materials about it which in turn forced thousands to suppress who they were and alienated them from their peers. One might also think that Starmer having a gay man as his health secretary might bring policy rooted in lived experience, yet they are going in the opposite direction. Instead of taking LGTBQ+ rights forward, the Labour government has followed the line of right wing populists and given in to external pressure from anti-trans advocates. As The National says: “Starmer has turned the UK into a bastion of anti-LGBT+ bigotry”.
The UK was once a beacon in the entire world for its pro-LGBTQ+ policies. We were literally the best country in Europe in 2015, for example, based on numerous criteria from ILGA’s Rainbow Map. This year, we ranked number 22, achieving on 43.9% compared to 86% just 11 years ago and marking a low point for the country. What’s changed in that time? We have regressed on equality and non-discrimination, regressed on hate crime and hate speech, enormously regressed on asylum rights, and even more so on legal gender recognition. The far right and anti-trans populists have poisoned our media and public thought and have played a large part in getting us to this point.
The UK, much like many countries around the world, still allows conversion practices which can include “medical, psychiatric, psychological, religious, cultural or any other interventions that seek to ‘change’, cure’, or suppress the sexual orientation and/or gender identity of a person.” Recently, the EU too bowed to right wing pressure against a citizens petition with over 1 million signatures urging them to ban the practice. Instead they said it was up to individual countries to act — pathetic if we’re being honest.
Under Starmer, we have seen an unprecendented attack on trans rights. From blocking their right to healthcare to their ability to change legal documents, or recognition of trans parenthood, the depths they will go to know no bounds. The UK Supreme Court has similarly enacted harsh rulings against the trans community whilst the UK government blocked the Scottish Gender Recognition Reform Bill that passed in 2022 with votes from every single party in the Scottish parliament.
What the government pushes, reaches the population. The Tories may have begun the downslide but Labour are adding fuel to the fire. A recent study by the Trades Union Congress found that over half of LGBT+ people have experienced bullying or harassment at work from 2019–2024. This was specifically higher for younger workers.
Bullying, harassment, discrimination, and government intervention to actively make life more difficult — including restricting healthcare and administration — has an impact. Mental health issues are more prevalent amongst LGBTQ+ people including depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts. Over 10% of young LGBTQ+ people have thought about ending their life, that number jumps to almost 50% for trans people. Pause for a second, can you imagine how difficult things must get to put you in that position?
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Supporting others and providing a welcoming environment for them to be themselves — as you likely are able to be your self — is a small but significant step you can take. The fear and anxiety that is created by society plays no small role in coming out and I can only imagine it’s gotten harder in the years since I did it. But having support from people around you can make it so much easier and help you realise you’re not alone and that its perfectly normal. Everyone deserves this, maybe it won’t be a family member or a friend, but maybe it’s a colleague or a teammate or even someone working in a cafe they see regularly. Maybe it could be you who offers that space or a supportive environment for people to feel safe.
Pride is a protest not a parade, and as others seek to ban them, we must come together to preserve them and their original meaning. In Durham, the Reform-led council pulled funding from their annual Pride event. Who then stepped up but the trade unions and miners’ associations in the area who helped fundraise ten times as much as was cut, leading to the biggest pride Durham has ever seen. This is not the first time that solidarity of such levels has been seen, with the ‘Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners’ alliance supporting National Union of Mineworkers during the Thatcher era crackdown on the working class and trade union movement with both money, advocacy, and physical presence on the pickets. These examples show how fundamental it is that our struggles are intertwined against suppression — ‘Pride is Political’, the TUC website reads.
The postwar poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller ‘First They Came’ could not be more apt:
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a CommunistThen they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a SocialistThen they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionistThen they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a JewThen they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
If you do not speak out for trans people, for Palestinians, for disabled people, or any other group who are being targeted, then you will soon find they come for you too. If we look to the US, you can see this already with gay marriage in the sights of the right wingers. Trans rights, gay rights, womens rights, immigrant rights, the rights of people of colour, disabled rights, your rights.
So speak up against this Labour government, speak up against your local council, speak up for the LGBTQ+ people in your life (and those who aren’t), and speak up for the people who can’t yet. They will not stop. We need to force them to and protect each other.
