Andrew Lumsden, who has died aged 82, was a leading light of the London Gay Liberation Front (GLF) when it started up in 1970, co-founded the fortnightly Gay News in 1971 and the following year helped organise the first Gay Pride march, out of which came the global phenomenon known simply as Pride. He set the tone for a community.
GLF was a large, anarchic group with no register of members and few rules, and a manifesto that called for changes to the law, professional psychiatry and public attitudes, and “absolute freedom for all”, which met at the London School of Economics. Andrew was in the counter-psychiatry group, which objected to homosexuality being treated as a sickness or immaturity with “cures” such as electric shock therapy. He was appreciated for his charm and wit, and was swiftly elected to the GLF steering committee, though rather than functioning from the top down, GLF worked on the basis of people making suggestions and seeing if others liked them.
