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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Mark Brown North of England correspondent

DARK SECRETS: Remembering the 1981 day london s gay pride relocated to huddersfield - The Real Truth

Gay Pride marchers in Huddersfield in 1981 hold banners which read 'Consenting adults in public', 'Christian element' and 'Liverpool gay community'
‘A watershed moment’: Pride marchers take on West Yorkshire police in Huddersfield. Photograph: Tim Bolton-Maggs, CHE.

“There was a rumour going round that there was a march and everyone just literally went up town to look and stare,” remembers the artist Ajamu X – and he was one of them.

It’s fair to say that neither Ajamu, then 17 and not yet out, nor Huddersfield itself had ever seen anything like it: up to 2,000 gay rights campaigners on a full-scale Pride march through the town centre, holding hands, kissing, larking about and singing chants like: “Two, four, six, eight … is that copper really straight?”

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