"We are a shining beacon to queer communities across the world." Council leader Bella Sankey releases statement ahead of Brighton & Hove Pride

Words by Councillor Bella Sankey, Leader of Brighton & Hove City Council.

Pride weekend is one of this city’s largest and most important celebrations. It is a collective outpouring of love, unity and solidarity which shows Brighton & Hove at its very best.  

This city has long been a place where people’s individuality could thrive.  

When the Prince Regent started building his pavilion here in the 1780s, he turned this town into somewhere people came to be a little more themselves than they could afford to be anywhere else. That spirit of freedom and self-expression didn't leave when he did. It took root in the fabric of our city and found new people to hold onto it. 

By the Victorian age, working class Londoners could embrace this spirit too. A weekend by the sea, a cheap train ticket down from London, a boarding house where nobody knew your name, that was permission enough for thousands of ordinary people to loosen the grip of a society that watched them – and judged them - too closely at home.  

Brighton & Hove became a place you escaped to. A place you could unashamedly be your authentic self. A place you could breathe. And for generations of people whose lives didn't fit the restrictive and draconian rules of the time, that weekend away or trip to Brighton & Hove was often the only freedom they got all year.   

Blue plaques, buildings, street and buses across the city bear the names and witness influential people who made their homes here, discretely living lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer lives even if the language they used was different in those days. 

By 1972, that spirit had a ‘new’ name and a cause. Twenty people - students, local gay men and lesbians - barely more than a decade after homosexuality had even been partially decriminalised -, walked along our seafront between the piers, chanting into the wind that being gay was good, not shameful. The city – and the wider movement – would never be the same again.  

A year later, they held Britain's second-ever Pride march. It didn't need to repeat immediately, because something had already changed - a phone line had opened, a switchboard had started ringing, and people in this city had decided that support and visibility mattered.  

Through the AIDS crisis, through Section 28, through years when the law and the press were actively hostile, this city kept building support services; kept showing and sharing love.   

That collective spirit, that bravery and sense of community and solidarity – that determination to change society for the better - is something we should always make time to remember and reflect on because it mattered and continues to matter today.  

The Tay memorial in New Steine Gardens still catches the light in the shape of a red ribbon, so that no one who walks through those gardens forgets who we lost during the dark years of the AIDS epidemic and who we keep fighting for. Pride may be the city’s biggest celebration, but finding time throughout the year for contemplation and reflection remains vital. 

As a city we celebrate, but we must also remember the sacrifices, the hard-won freedoms, and the very real challenges and barriers so many still face today. 

In 2013, Brighton & Hove did something no other British city had done - it held the country's first Trans Pride, because the TNBI people organising it understood that "be yourself" isn't a slogan you get to apply selectively.  

So, when people ask why Brighton & Hove is known as the gay capital, the answer is clear: it's because we have never been quiet about our LGBTQ+ community or our unwavering belief that all our communities help make this such a special place.  

We are a shining beacon to queer communities across the world. And that’s what fills me with pride.  

From a windy seafront in 1972 to Trans Pride marches 40,000 strong, our city’s bold voice continues to carry – to reach every LGBTQ+ person elsewhere who has ever wondered if there's somewhere they'd be safe to simply be who they are.  

So, whether you're marching in the parade, dancing at the street party, cheering from your window, quietly expressing your truth, following events from elsewhere in the world, or helping the city run smoothly over a busy weekend, I wish you a wonderful, meaningful and uplifting Pride.