Five Decades of LGBT+ Activism: Stuart Feather in conversation
Event details
During York’s Pride weekend, find out what it was like to be part of the UK’s first Pride march in London with York trailblazer Stuart Feather.
Brought up in Acomb, Stuart was one of the original members of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) which organised the first London Pride rally on 1 July 1972 in central London. Attended by around 2,000 people, the march was timed to mark the anniversary of the Stonewall uprising in 1969 which followed LGBT+ patrons at the Stonewall Inn in New York being targeted by police.
At our in-conversation event, Stuart will reflect on the events of the 1970s up until today, revealing his personal journey and that of the nation. What were the GLF’s greatest achievements and legacy? What is his assessment of progress on gay rights issues to date? Where is urgent action still needed?
As we celebrate York Pride this weekend, why not join Stuart and learn more about the birth of the Pride movement from one of its pioneers?
This year’s Festival includes a number of events featuring York Trailblazers. Look out for 'Trailblazer: Yorkshire female archaeologist’, ‘Anne Lister’s Loves’ and ‘As I Walked Out One Evening’.
York Trailblazers
This event is presented in collaboration with York Civic Trust and Make It York, organisers of the York Trailblazers initiative. Funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, York Trailblazers is bringing to light some of York’s lesser-known pioneers.
Photo: Members of the Gay Liberation Front on the steps of St Martin’s-in-the-Fields protesting the mass Rally in Trafalgar Square of the Festival of Light. (Stuart Feather as Mary Whitehouse.) 25 September 1971.
About the speaker
Stuart Feather is an activist who was an original member of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF). Born in Cross Roads-cum-Lees, a mill village near Howarth, West Yorkshire in 1940, he moved to York with his family in 1951 where he attended Beckfield Lane Secondary Modern School. Painting since he was aged five, he expected to go to art school, but was forced into York Technical College, ending up as an apprentice engineer at Cooks, Traughton and Simms. He was outed at work in 1957 by two older apprentices, which resulted in him returning from lunch one day to be met by around a hundred angry men, booing, name calling and fist shaking. After breaking his apprenticeship, he became a clerk with British Rail in Huddersfield, subsequently moving to London for a job in a travel agency in 1960. He attended the third meeting of the Gay Liberation Front at the LSE in October 1970 and was immediately inspired by the people present and the ideas they were promoting.
Stuart is a painter and the author of political biography, Blowing the Lid: Gay Liberation, Sexual Politics and Radical Queens, published in 2016. He was also a member of the Bloolips queer theatre troupe between 1977-1993, which won a New York OBIE award in 1981.
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