Rainy weather and train cancellations failed to deter revellers from taking part in Brighton’s Pride festival on Saturday.
The festival was expected to attract as many as 30,000 people – including community groups, small businesses and NHS services – to the city centre despite yellow weather warnings from the Met Office.
“We’ve encouraged people to wear ponchos so it might be a little bit Glastonbury. That wouldn’t stop us from having a great celebration and a great Pride in our city,” the festival’s managing director Paul Kemp said.
Photos and videos on social media showed attenders undaunted by strong winds, and dressed in rain ponchos and armed with umbrellas as they marched the streets.
Ahead of the event, attenders faced travel disruptions due to train cancellations between London and Brighton on Saturday. Talks between Brighton and Hove city council and Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR), which operates Southern rail, collapsed after they failed to reach a compromise amid an overtime ban by members of the Aslef drivers’ union.
As an organiser for Sainsbury’s parade group, 36-year-old Jamie Sanders travelled from Hastings, East Sussex. The “buses were brilliant” said Sanders, who was able to book an overnight hotel. However, of the 100 colleagues anticipated to take part in the company’s parade, only 60 arrived due to the rail disruption.
Organisers apologised to individuals who booked and paid for accommodation but could no longer attend. “It will affect turnout absolutely because people will be cut off from the rest of the country,” said Kemp, adding the strikes “won’t derail us” and “the show goes on”.
“But we would like to be clear that we don’t agree with GTR’s decision, nor the reasons given for completely stopping train services and the potential of adverse knock-on effects,” he said.
The event, one of the UK’s largest Pride celebrations, is expected to bring more than £20m to the local economy over the weekend. This year’s parade marks the 50th anniversary of the first Brighton Pride march, organised by the Sussex Gay Liberation Front in July 1973.
“Those early pioneers 50 years ago who put their head above the parapet in different times, it was a very different environment for LGBT people at that time,” said Kemp.
“We’re recognising the trailblazers around the city, we have lamp-posts around the city of people who have been part of the movement and are current trailblazers. We’re celebrating being different.”
In 2022, the Pride event returned after a two-year hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic.
