Thousands Of People Gather For Pride In London

As we mentioned, the first UK Pride march took place in London on 1 July 1972 – a date chosen as it was the closest Saturday to the anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall riots. Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, who helped organize the first march with the Gay Liberation Front, says the parade was the first in the world to use the term ‘Pride’. “In the United States they called it Gay Liberation Day or Christopher Street Liberation Day, but we called it Pride,” he tells BBC’s Newsnight. “This was completely against the prevailing consensus. Society said we should be ashamed of being gay, so our idea was to give LGBT+ people a sense of confidence and worth to shake off that guilt and shame and be out and proud of who they were,” he says.