This year’s London Trans+ Pride saw tens of thousands of people take to the city streets to celebrate trans life and advocate for trans rights.
With an attendance of around 60,000 people, the parade was a huge success. According to Pink News, Trans+ Pride co-founder Lewis G Burton said they were immeasurably proud of the turnout, calling the event “powerful and poignant” at this moment of strife for the trans community.
The event was a beacon of hope for the U.K.’s trans community considering it was just last year when a Trans Rights Map published by Transgender Europe analyzed policies impacting trans people in 49 EU and Central Asians countries, only to find that the U.K. was one of the worst places in the world for trans people to live.
Signs at London Trans+ Pride read “Let trans people tell their own stories,” and “Protect trans kids,” and participants called on the recently appointed prime minister Keir Starmer to “reverse the years of systematic transphobia under the Conservatives, while others condemned the rising number of hate crimes against the community.”
Pink News reports a spokesperson for trans+ charity Mermaids wrote: “London Trans+ Pride provides a sanctity of community at a time of fear, uncertainty and anger across the trans and wider LGBTQ+ community. The government’s attempts to roll back our basic human rights, including our access to healthcare provisions and our right to an education free from discrimination, have cultivated a harmful climate of toxicity… Trans Pride is a salve for that. It gives the community, friends, supporters and acquaintances the opportunity to laugh, cry, shout and celebrate [one another], mobilized by the message that none of us are free until all of us are free.”
