And as such, I am clearly too bitter and twisted to write the story of what happened to the bisexual involvement in London’s Pride celebrations.

It’s not going to stop me though

Once upon a time, Pride - the annual march and festival in London - was organised by a company, accountable to the community, membership open to all.

The free festival in particular had expanded greatly. At the end of the 1980s, it fitted easily into Jubilee Gardens - the tiny space alongside the then Greater London Council building by the Thames that’s now home to dodgy hotdog stalls poisoning visitors to the London Eye - but it soon outgrew one park after another.

For many years, bisexual involvement was limited to the London Bisexual Group paying to have a stall in the commercial market place (and whining quietly about the cost).

(Almost the only person from outside the bi community to notice the stall was Charlotte Raven and she wasn’t impressed. Oh well.)

By 1995, prodded by someone who’s not always the most popular person in the bi community, the directors of the Pride Trust had decided to reach out to us. Their chair, Adam Jeanes, came to Bicon 13 to speak and… well let’s just say he went away cheerfully impressed with the strength of feeling on the issue.

Pride Trust soon set up a bisexual working group to organize a presence at Pride ‘96. At its first meeting, I ended up being the male coordinator of it.

A vote on changing the company’s mission statement and the name of the festival to include ‘bisexual and transgender’ was held in January 1996, and carried overwhelmingly. There was some bitching in the gay press from the sort of poof who had objected to adding the word ‘lesbian’ to the title… but not much.

On the map

So 1996 saw over 200,000 people arrive on Clapham Common for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride. Instead of paying for a few square metres of space in the market place, bisexuals were literally on the map with our own tent, an integral part of what had become Europe’s biggest free festival.

It was a lot of fun.

Unfortunately, Pride Trust’s finances were somewhat fragile. (Indeed, it was set up after its predecessor went bankrupt in the early 90s.) Although donations of £3 were requested, many people didn’t bother and so the event was reliant on sponsorship and the sale of space to the fair, food vendors and market stalls.

So while the much larger ‘Bisexual Community Tent’ at the even more popular Pride ‘97 was a huge success, having to be closed at one point because of overcrowding, the festival that year as a whole lost roughly £60,000.

One of the key people responsible went off to be more (?) responsible for San Francisco’s Pride and it turned out that the Trust’s financial controls were not what they might have been. As far as I know, no-one had run off with any of the money, but there were a couple of deals that were slightly odd.

As arguments as to who was to blame continued, one of its important fund-raisers, Winter Pride, was missed and the Pride Trust died. (I’d love to discover what happened to the company’s assets - including owning the trademark ‘Europride’.) In theory, members were liable to pay £1 towards the company’s debts, but no-one bothered to ask them.

Soon three groups were competing for the right to run the festival. In the end, one particular bunch called ‘Freedom UK’ announced that they would definitely be running Pride ‘98 in July on Clapham Common.

A little while later, when they’d actually got permission from the local council to do so, they changed their name to Pride Events UK, otherwise known as ‘PEUK’.

Would PEUK FUK up?

Part of the announcement included the comment that the ‘bisexual and transgender’ part of the events name would be ditched. Apparently, ‘lesbian and gay’ is “more inclusive”.

Incredibly, despite that slap in the face, they were very happy to announce they’d have 1998’s most famous transsexual, Eurovision Song Contest winner Dana International, as a headline act to attempt to sell tickets.

Sell tickets? Oh, this year there would be a £5 charge. There might or might not be any concessions and just 100,000 people would be allowed in, so ‘buy those tickets now!’ Because by this time it was several months behind the Pride Trust’s planning schedule, they said they would have the same layout as in 1997.

(In June, after the deadline to include the news in Bi Community News and other monthly publications had passed, they said ‘Oops, we didn’t mean that. One of the things that’s going is the Bi Tent.’ An offer of a free stall, either in the market or health tent, was translated by someone as ‘in the health tent’ and bi activists involved in previous Prides got upset at being treated as just a health issue…

… as we can see from a couple of extracts from things sent to a mailing list for the bi input into Pride:

We have the word of people like Adam Jeanes, chair of the Pride Trust, that our presence sweetened the festival in ‘96 and ‘97. We were an integral part of the biggest queer event of the year, having got both the name and PT’s mission statement changed to be inclusive.

This didn’t just happen because a few people at PT wanted it to happen, we did a lot of work to ensure it was a success, including a lot that wasn’t generally visible. There were some whinges in the pink press following the decision to change the name, but I can’t remember any complaints following either festival about our presence. Nothing I can recall any in the private feedback to PT either.

So we were a part of PT. Let’s imagine Pride was a major employer instead of a major event. It has financial problems and is taken over by another company. It would be illegal for the second company to treat the workforce the way we’ve been treated: thrown out without any consultation.

Summer Rites [the alternative commercial festival] has shown it’s quite possible to organize another festival from scratch, it’s just harder work. PEUK don’t want to do that, they want the great benefit of the Pride name and the event’s goodwill. Fine — but they should live up to their responsibilities to everyone involved.

For 1001 reasons, we should be a part of the Pride festival (which, for at least 95% of the people *is* Pride)

I don’t think we have the numbers to ’spoil’ the festival, even if we wanted to. As I said some time ago, I also think the organisers are going the right way to undermine its success themselves. Does that stop us making our point, giving them a helping hand and having some fun while doing so? No.

Remember that ‘I also think the organisers are going the right way to undermine its success themselves’ comment. Gyspy Rose Watters sees all

I am still of the opinion that the question is not, do we want to do something about this, but how nasty do we want to be about it.

What we have is some severely pissed off people, who have had something taken away from them. Unfortunately, there are not very many such people, in comparison to the numbers expected at the festival. A boycott, for example, would go unnoticed.

Similarly, I suspect that complaining outside the festival walls is not going to be of much use — I’ll be amazed if there is not going to be a substantial number of people without tickets outside and a police presence trying to keep order. (Mind you, it would only take a light step ladder to get over the size of fence used in the past, and it is a very long boundary…)

Come the planning for next year’s event however, I suggest we have two advantages. Firstly, it doesn’t take many people to get a majority at any consultation meetings. Secondly, the festival this year is almost bound to be a disappointment compared to last year’s, being smaller and not free plus it can’t be better weather, so there’s not going to be a great deal of goodwill for PEUK around.

Let’s find out who the sponsors are for this year. Tell them how sad we are that they are sponsoring such an exclusionary event. It’s not doing their image any good to be associated with it. Has the ‘official’ magazine come out yet?

Find out who *is* appearing at the festival. Ask them to comment while on stage.

I’ve also been pondering media coverage. For the print media, we’ve missed the magazine deadlines and I don’t think there is much point in making a fuss outside the pink press, unless anyone has some contacts in the mainstream who will do the story properly. Having said that, John Lyttle in the Independent may have his problems, but he has done serious journalism in his column and might be interested. In contrast, I don’t think Paul Burston at Time Out would be.

TV/radio is a different story. We could suggest to those ‘issue of the day’ shows that keep asking every so often for bi people that here is an opportunity to see some people shouting at each other, ie their idea of good TV. Would PEUK do a programme on Pride? If not, there’s a story for the pink press for a start.

They never did meet us. They were too busy counting their chickens.

On paper, their plan must have looked great. PEUK reckoned that it would cost them £440,000 to run the event. (As a non-free festival they were being charged more than the Pride Trust had been for various things.)

But ticket income would more than cover that and sponsorship money plus selling monopolies would net at least £200,000 more. Result: a very healthy profit. And for almost no risk too - if 250,000+ people had come in ‘97, surely they could get 100,000 people in ‘98?

No, they couldn’t. With a few weeks to go, hardly any tickets had been sold.

Oh no! There was no money to pay deposits to the council or suppliers. They announced that the festival was to be ‘postponed’ to August. Only a handful of people believed them (and it turned out that they hadn’t bothered to ask the council if it was possible).

It probably didn’t help that in June they’d only just started selling tickets and their official web site wasn’t up yet (and you thought bisexuals left things to the last minute…)

Another website, http://www.gaytravel.co.uk/gaypride.htm, (still covering the mess now!) said

“The event on the park will run from 14.00 to 22-00pm. This year there’ll be more bars than ever before, a market area, a selection of community tent [sic!], 2 massive dance tents and 2 stages, with indie, mainstream acts and despite the rumours a fun fair as well.”

The march was rescued by a small group of people and community groups and went ahead, with help from a grant from Gay Times and Diva. It was less than a quarter of the size of the ‘97 march, but a new bi-inclusive community body, Pride London, was created to organize future marches as a result.

After offering refunds on the tickets they did sell, the August date came and went without any sign of the festival or refunds. PEUK soon went bust, before the refunds happened, but after they paid some of themselves…

Adam comes and goes

Adam Jeanes then announced that he had the rights to run EuroPride ‘99 over two days in Hyde Park. Sadly nothing much was heard from him again and I’ve no idea what went wrong with that plan.

Looking at some of my papers from the time, I am still amazed at how much work Adam and the other directors of Pride Trust did - for free - over many years. They all deserve enormous thanks.

“Maybe next time”

So by the time 1999 arrived, another bunch of businessmen had announced that they would absolutely definitely be running Pride ‘99 on Clapham Common. Except that it would be called ‘Mardi Gras’.

The people behind Mardi Gras were headed by Kelvin Sollis, owner of the Pink Paper, Boyz and other titles - the lesbian and gay community’s answer to Rupert Murdoch. For more on the delightful Kelvin, and his attitude to company law, see Outcast magazine’s excellent article.

[Outcast was edited by Chris Morris, one of the young men who took the UK government to court over the then different age of consent for gay men compared to heterosexuals. It's long gone, sadly, and its website seems to have gone too, but I'll have a link to a saved version of the Hello Boyz, Who Runs the Pink Paper? article soon.]

The new organisers said they included representatives of organisations not then known for being bi-inclusive like London Lesbian and Gay Switchboard and Stonewall. Presumably, they were promised a slice of the profits.

Since tickets this time would be £10, there should’ve been plenty to go around. Justifying the price, Sollis’ Pink Paper claimed the event would cost £1.2m but failed to explain why costs had nearly tripled since 1998. Perhaps the commercial partners, including concert promoter Harvey Goldsmith, charged a lot.

Or maybe the price was arrived at by studying the extensive Pride marketing survey, carried out largely through Chronos titles and which ‘forgot’ to ask about a bi tent in its community section, rather than any real relation to the costs.

In charge of actually running the event was Mardi Gras’ General Manager, Anthony McNeill. He’d been imported from the notoriously biphobic Sydney Mardi Gras (which later went bust itself - the replacement is much better.)

His first words on meeting someone from the bi community who wanted to talk about our involvement were “we’re not re-branding”. Pride, Bi and Trans were all to be dropped in favour of the ‘inclusive’ title that excluded us.

Chronos’ titles were known for not liking rivals, not annoying their advertisers with irritating questions or critical articles and not having high staffing costs - they tended to be one of their most regular advertisers in their own publications, looking for more ‘trainees’ or yet another editor. Recruits tended to add the job to their CV and move on to somewhere that paid rather better.

Given this record, it should have surprised no-one when the Pink said that the 1998 march would be a fluffy parade, with grants for some pretty floats, not a nasty political march with horrid placards complaining about things. They hadn’t bothered to ask the members of the company actually organising the march, Pride London, of course but various Chronos employees were in key roles there.

The Pink later admitted that, oops, there wouldn’t be any floats - no-one had bothered to get the necessary permission - but there would be grants and sewing circles for nice costumes in pretty colours, so people could be organised to walk in order of the colours of the rainbow flag!?!

It still, they said, wouldn’t be a political march, despite continuing outstanding political issues such as an unequal age of consent, the continuing presence on the statute books of the homophobic Section 28 and a recent murderous racist and homophobic nail-bombing campaign.

Then the venue for the festival was changed to the smaller Finsbury Park.

Just as in 1998, a week before the festival they’d sold a tiny number of tickets. Less than 10% of the 65,000 available in fact. Perhaps people were trying to puzzle out how the time of the festival, 2pm-9pm, translated into the ‘8 HOURS OF PARTYING’ promised by innumerable ads in Chronos titles.

Reading their editorials that week was hugely amusing for those in the know. Boyz for example bemoaned the fact that hardly anyone had bought a ticket, although they didn’t quite put it like that:

“I dunno why, but while queens will plan their outfits days in advance [..] they always seem happy to leave the most important purchase until it’s nearly too late.”

Perhaps it was the Official Programme that was putting people off. There were certainly some odd omissions from it. For an organization that boasted of its community involvement, there was no list of the “partners” of Mardi Gras, just a pic and a few words (”Welcome to the inaugural London Mardi Gras, the new lesbian and gay celebration to take our diverse communities into the millennium. blah blah blah.”) from Anthony ‘no rebranding’ McNeill.

There were also smaller pics for the Pride Arts Festival co-ordinator, Events co-ordinator, Mardi Gras’s spotty teenage receptionist, the Parade Director, and the Creative co-ordinator.

What was in the March, sorry Parade, section? Well, not only did the word ‘bisexual’ not appear there, the words ‘lesbian’ and ‘gay’ didn’t either!

OK, they were there once (”The gay and lesbian scene in the 90s hasn’t really been the most colourful place…”) on the page on costumes, aka an excuse to show some (male) tits. I’m sorry, but stripping to the waist and sticking a sailor’s hat on does not count as a “costume”.

Just before that, there was a list of “five things not to do on the London Mardi Gras (sic) Parade” (remember, it wasn’t Mardi Gras that were organising the march, but the bi-inclusive Pride London):

1. (fail to dress up)
2. No-one cares if that copper is really straight, so chanting ditties like, “We’re here, we’re queer and we’re not going shopping” are seriously out. Arias from Carmen, however, are actively encouraged.
3. (don’t drink lager, buy tequilla)
4. (don’t do drugs)
5. Leave the whistle-blowing to Kara Noble (get a rattle instead)

OK, but at least the acts on the main festival stage would be good, I mean they’ve got piles of money to pay for them. Who’s there? Gosh, the top acts will be Marc Almond, Ultra Nate, Jimmy Sommerville, Billie Ray Martin, The Creatures and Phats & Smalls.

Ooooops, that’s Summer Rites 99. Mardi Gras has Boy George, five indistinguishable boy bands, Human League, Gary Barlow. Oh, and the Weather Girls will sing their greatest hit.

What else was there going to be in “the most colourful and diverse Gay and Lesbian event EVER in the UK”? Well,

• people selling you overpriced food
• a fun fair selling you rides (”we won’t mention the smell of spilt poppers on the upside-down rides or the number of stillies spoiled by vomit”)
• a market place with a staggering 48 stalls - about a quarter of the size of the last Pride. They were also helpfully listed so you could see that “the huge selection” including “spokespeople from your fave political parties and trades unions” meant the LibDems had a stall
• assorted club tents selling you alcohol.

And according to the Official Programme, that was it.

And it was supposed to cost over £1m to put on?!? All I can say is that they must have been paying themselves and Harvey Goldsmith one hell of a lot, both directly and through advertising in publications they own. (I wonder how much the spotty teenage receptionist got?)

If you never saw the map, think of a fiddler crab (one with one front claw much bigger than the other). The little left claw has the Candy Bar/Kitty Lips women’s club tent, the big right claw has Trade at one end, a big toilet block in the middle, and the Radio One roadshow next to the ‘picnic area’ (ie the “we didn’t want to pay for anything area”), fun fair, food outlets and market place.

Stuffed into the west side of the ‘body’ are yet more club tents side-by-side (resulting in some serious noise spillage problems) and the main stage, plus more toilets. At the mouth, there’s a “orchestral tea tent” ie the London Gay Symphony Orchestra.

Aptly enough, the punters arrived up the crab’s bottom…

Looking at it, it was abundantly clear that Mardi Gras was from the outset an out-and-out “let’s make money” Summer Rites clone rather than an attempt to do a Pride Festival. Never mind no Pride staples like a cabaret stage, there was no health tent, women’s space (apart from a club tent stuffed in one corner), etc etc etc. No wonder they weren’t interested in a bi tent.

True diversity means more than having eight commercial club tents playing house and techno music to choose from.

Fortunately for the Mardi Gras bank account, a substantial number of tickets were sold on the day (at £12 each) largely to people coming from outside London.

Even so, the businessmen who repeatedly slagged off Pride Trust for incompetence and failed to help it in its hour of greatest glory and greatest need to the tune of £60,000 still managed to lose over £100,000.

Sadly, thanks to the profits of papers like Boyz, they survived.

The following years were not always been easy and for self-proclaimed seriously successful businessmen, they made some staggeringly bad decisions.

The 2002 event, for example was switched from the Brockwell Park that had held several hugely successful Pride Festivals, and ended up in the windswept swamp of the Hackney Marshes. Entirely predictably, despite Boyz et al lying about how easy the venue was to get to, hardly anyone went. Mardi Gras was only saved from bankruptcy by paying creditors a few pennies for each pound they owed.

Community consultation - the attempt to replace the active involvement in the Pride Trust days - also went. Mardi Gras’ Festival Director Jason Pollock said that the reason there was “no need” for a community forum before the 2001 event was that it going to be “identical” to the 2000 one!

In 2002, it reappeared.

The Pride Parade - who said dropping the word ‘march’ was a foregone conclusion - team has been listening to our bosses.

As a private for-profit organisation, we don’t want any nasty politics getting in the way of the money.

So what if Section 28 is still in place in England and Wales? Who cares that the government are delaying until the very last minute before complying with a EU Directive that’d mean an end to workplace discrimination? We don’t!

We want as many suckers (and lickers, and hell straight people if they’re prepared to buy a ticket) to come to the ‘festival’ as possible. Ghod knows it’s going to be difficult to persuade people to go to the windswept out of the way swamp that’s this year’s venue.

Oddly, compared to the community owned events we’re having an awful problem getting volunteers to run this. Please help us make money off the community. Go on. Go on. Go on.

We’re even prepared to talk about the LGBT community in the article in our house magazine, the Pink Paper. OK, it’s in the last sentence and everywhere else only talks about ‘lesbian and gay’. Who knows? In twenty years time, we might even have ‘bisexual and transgender’ back in the event’s subtitle.

So dress up, be there and we’ll be the centre of world media attention on July 6th - with a total of six column inches of UK coverage instead of the usual five. And we all want six inches, don’t we?

Oops, that was my version. Here’s what Mardi Gras actually said:

Update on the national Pride Parade

The National Pride leopard is changing it’s spots…

The Pride Parade team has been listening carefully to you and is now taking action. The old March & Parade is emerging, chrysalis-like, into a more spectacular and colourful Pride Parade. Prouder and bigger than ever and still the centre of world media attention on July 6th as thousands make their way through the centre of our capital city.

So what was wrong with the old march?

Times have changed and so have you. The LGBT community is still well and strong but throughout our 30 year history since those early Stonewall days the world and the nature of gay lifestyle has changed. Just as the Mardi Gras festival is responding to the demands of change so, we feel, should The National Pride Parade reflect these changes in attitude.

All right so what’s new?

Colour, spectacle and excitement. What more do you want! The 2002 Parade on July 6th is seen as a sea change from past ‘marches’. It’s an opportunity to show your own individuality through style, costumes, fabulous floats, music and celebration. Use your imagination and enjoy this one day of total freedom of London’s streets. And it’s all legal!

How does it all work then?

Currently (and let’s not get too boring about this) we are under the control of the police as a political demonstration- so lots of restrictions apply. Next year, however, things will change as we work directly with the Westminster City Council and are allowed more floats, more spectacle, more music and much more fun. So let’s say thanks to a tolerant attitude from the Metropolitan Police this year is something of a dress rehearsal for the shape of things to come.

So what happened to the politics?

One thing we will never do is turn our back on LGBT issues. OK, so we’ve come a long way but it’s still not far enough. Yes, we have lots to change and we need your help to tell the world but in the modern world of spin-doctors spectacle is news. Come loaded with banners and slogans; in fact let us make them for you! Free pairs of tickets to Mardi Gras for the 10 best slogans which we will transform into colourful free banners for all on the day. Check www.londonmardigras.com and register your slogan now!

[Sadly, despite lots of people nominating it, "Pride Not Profit" was not chosen!]

What about one of those float things?

Anyone can organize one; first think of a theme and then look at our comprehensive float pack on the web. Those push pull type ideas are probably best unless you want to hire a big truck with a beefy driver……..!

Hey, but I’ve got a Pride parade near me isn’t that enough

Yes, attend your local Pride Parade but don’t forget that London is the national event and where we make our demands long, loud and clear not only with the politicians who control the country but also the international media. So make a point of coming to London for the big event. Be seen and be proud!

Meet your old friends (and probably lots of new ones) in Hyde Park

To make it easy we have designed specific meeting areas by region, by club, group or old tricks! These meeting points will be published on the web site and in our official guide nearer to parade date.

Can you advise me about travel and London accommodation?

Check out the travel pages on our web site. We even have a specialist accommodation agency, Rainbow Holidays, Rainbow guarantees a gay-friendly welcome at the hotel of your choice (and to suit your budget). If you belong to a LGBT group we even have details of your local coach companies. If you are organising a group of more than 10 people call Rory at the office for information on leader travel reductions. Optional rail travel is available from all major UK stations.

PRIZES PRIZES PRIZES!

There’s more. Firstly for the best 50 costume designs sent to Mardi Gras we will give free tickets to Mardi Gras. On the day? If you’re wearing a costume (and let your imagination run wild) our judges will be cruising the Hyde Park meeting area and giving away free, yes free, tickets to Mardi Gras for those of you wearing the most over the top or colourful couture cocktails. And that’s not all…you also get to appear in the Main Street Parade in the park at 4.00. Disneyland eat your heart out! And don’t forget all you float designers there are also prizes for the best floats both motorised and non-motorised. So get designing and building.

And another thing..!

If you are part of a gay charity or group there are a limited number of free stalls available at Mardi Gras. Just call the office on 0207 354 xxxx for details.

I get the basic facts but might want more…..

Just check our web site www.londonmardigras.com under pride parade for all you need to know about floats and costumes and all the fine detail bits. Have a great time and remember we are here to help. Just call us on 0207 354 xxxx. Have a great day on July 6th.

As you’ve already seen, hardly anyone listened to them. It was then I realised that perhaps there was hope after all.

Whatever happened to…?

Pride London

After stringing the organisers of the march along, Mardi Gras stopped all financial support and all of the Chronos employees resigned from their roles. With no time to find replacements, or raise the necessary money, Pride London sadly had to fold in 2001, leaving Mardi Gras in charge of the march parade.

Mardi Gras

After the 2002 debacle, it announced it had achieved the Holy Grail of London Pride organisers: the 2003 event would be in Hyde Park itself!

To reflect this, the name was changed, again, to “Mardi Gras presents ‘Pride in the Park 2003′” (and that from the people who thought Pride’s old title was too long!)

Despite this, and numerous ads on the London Underground system and elsewhere that promoted the event as a music festival with no mention of sexuality beyond the four letters “LGBT” in small type, they lost another huge pile of money with thousands of unsold tickets.

The Directors finally gave up. Mardi Gras was dead. Good riddance.

Jason Pollock

In charge of running the festival in all but one of the Mardi Gras years, and thus responsible for losing well over a million quid. (In only one year did he make a profit.)

According to him, “Neither of [2002 and 2003] were failures.”

Well, his dictionary must be different to mine and that of the creditors of Mardi Gras who lost hundreds of thousands of pounds. Or perhaps he means personally? How much was he paid? I’d love to know.

Jason was somehow appointed to be Chief Executive in charge of the replacement organisation “Pride London” which organised a free event in 2004 - a micro event in Trafalgar Square following the march, before finally leaving a couple of years later.

Paul Wilde

Could this be the same person? Then: one of the people behind Pride Events UK, the group that failed to run the Pride ‘98 festival, first postponing the event then going bust without paying the promised refunds to the people who had bought tickets.

Now: part of Wilde Ones International, sellers of crystals from a shop on London’s Kings Road… and the organisers of the commercial bits of pride festivals. No, I don’t see the link either.

They were running part of the Brighton Pride in 2002 where over ten thousand pounds is missing rather than going to the charities it was promised to. Whether they donated any of their profits to replace the missing money is unknown.

They also did the stalls at London’s “Mardi Gras presents ‘Pride in the Park 2003′”. Their emailed and appallingly badly formatted MS Word documents proclaimed “This organisation is committed to upholding the eight Data Protection Principles of good information handling practice”.

Unfortunately, they emailed them by sticking everyone’s email addresses in a cc: line, so everyone who received it knew everyone else’s confidential details…