Jun 2022
This route, from Stephen’s Green, down through Grafton Street, and then often on to the Central Bank was very commonly used for marches; ‘The ‘80s were a tumultuous time, there were protests every week about a whole myriad of things, not just LGBT+ specific topics, things like the increase in criminal justice bills, labour laws and restrictions on labour union organisations towards the divorce referendums, and the anti- amendment campaign were all also happening around the same time, so there was hardly a Saturday went by without there being a march” While Stephen’s Green and the Central Bank are still used today as focal points in many marches and rallies in the mid 1980’s, it was decided that although the route was to remain the same changes needed to be made to the structure of the Pride Parade. This did not come without its own problems however. Bill recounts one year in particular which he referred to as “the worst Pride ever” where in an attempt to mimic some of the things he had seen at the Pride Parade in NYC Pride the previous year met with disastrous consequences. “I believe it was 1986, that we had what would soon become known as the worst Pride ever’, for several reasons. For one, as it was on the day there was also a co-operation north cycle taking place, and despite having notified the guards of our plans ahead of time, we really had to argue our case.” The group had no option but to stray from their usual course; ”Because of the cycle of course there were huge crowds in the city, and so we had to divert from our usual route instead going from Stephen’s Green down Cuffe Street to George’s Street before ending up at the rally point at the Central Bank Plaza. “I naively thought that I could invest some of the ideas from the huge New York Pride I had gone to the year before by playing a kind of mix tape of LGBT+ songs out of the back of a car and we had balloons and all that stuff too.
“So we were this motley crew of people wandering around, wandering the streets of Dublin vaguely chanting LGBT+ slogans and following a car that was playing music. It was a terrible experience really. There were less than a hundred of us and we had a lot of kids throwing stuff at us and people shouting abuse and all sorts of things.” The lack of support from the public and official bodies alike, culminated at this march, which was the last for a while. The marches did start back up again however. Bill explained that towards the end of the 1980’s and into the early 1990’s, there was a shift away from centring the Pride Parade solely around protest as the event began to take a more celebratory tone, which came with an open invitation for anyone to join. Bill recounts that although still facing challenges, protesters and marchers started receiving less pushback from the general public; “In general, I suppose you could say people were kind of looking at us in a bemused fashion and the support began to increase over time. “We saw that the more celebratory type of Parade there was, the more people were likely to be smiling and waving at us rather than throwing anything. As well, for a lot of people, the way they approached, prior to whether they would go on the march or not, is they would line the streets with everybody else who was watching and then decide on the basis of how big the Parade was to join in or not. So the more positive response also really helped in boosting numbers at these events.” Listening to Bill’s memories of those times hammers home the bravery of those early LGBTQ+ activists and how much modern Pride events have to thank them for.
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