Young and old, the Gay Liberation Front has a 51 year record since 1970 of non-violent and often hilarious street actions against the violence of governments.

The State’s In A State! – Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention

Dedicated to the Black Panthers, who held the first Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, September 1970.

Presented and organised by Gay Liberation Front for everyone – For full information about Gay Liberation Front, see NOTES FOR EDITORS below.

To be live-streamed from Bishopsgate Institute. 230 Bishopsgate, Spitalfields, London, EC2M 4 QH

9 hours of live presentations from the Great Hall

4 hours of video from activists round the world

Links: https://www.bishopsgate.org.uk/whats-on/activity/the-bishopsgate-debates

This is a free ticketed virtual event before you go to virtual Glasto on 20 May.

On Saturday morning 15th May

.  SEE The Tranny Trash Perverts dance-troupe perform their own version of the Carmagnole of the French Revolution

.  HEAR Jason Jones, who overturned colonial law in Trinidad & Tobago, make the Keynote Convention speech “Hate Doesn’t Discriminate”

.  JOIN  Brooke Palmieri, Amy Todd, and Lil Warren talking of Revolutionary Women who’ve already changed Constitutions   

On Saturday afternoon 15th May

.  SEE Peter Tatchell on The Future of Sexuality   

.  HEAR Stuart Feather on The English Revolution

.  JOIN  Tamsin Omond on A New Constitution for the Earth

  On Sunday morning 16th May

.  SEE Ted Brown and Brooke Palmieri on Lies About the Black Panthers 

.  HEAR Lenora Critchlow on Phillis Wheatley, as her owners called her, the slave woman who was the first celebrity Black poet in the English language

.  JOIN Jess Ives, Ashley Joiner, and Oli Mason in conversation about filming protest

On Sunday afternoon 16th May

.  SEE   Andria E Mordaunt present A Constitution for Drug Users

.  HEAR   International law student Cris van Eijk interviewed by his partner Alex on how we’re going to have to wait 400 years to get dictators into court

.  JOIN our YOUTHQUAKE session on how the young are fighting dictatorships across 6 continents 

For the full programme  – https://www.bishopsgate.org.uk/whats-on/activity/the-bishopsgate-debates

Somebody’s got to sort out 10 Downing St!

VOTE for “We the Citizens”

Assemblies in 10 Downing Street

The world’s young want to be proud of their countries.

And the world’s old are tired of being ashamed of them.

So we present a written Constitution for England, the first in 333 years:

THIS CONVENTION RESOLVES 

THAT  The terms “Great Britain” and “UK” are the inventions of hereditary monarchy and ought to be thrown away

THAT  England should resume a beautiful name it once had, ‘The Commonwealth of England’, used for eleven years between 1649-1660 

THAT  England should have a devolved Parliament, as was suggested by Winston Churchill in 1912

THAT  The title “Prime Minister of Great Britain” was a joke when it was invented in the London coffee-houses in the 1730s, and remains a joke, and should be abolished

THAT  The chief executive of English government should be called ‘First Minister’

THAT  A Speaker’s Conference should resume the reform of English voting practices that began in 1832 and has been suspended since 1969

THAT  A Seventh Reform Bill should end “first-past-the-post’ elections as a relic of 19th century aristocratic horse-racing & its accompanying gambling frenzies

THAT  There are issues in England, such as assisted-dying and drugs policy, which Parliament refuses to resolve.

THAT  These should be addressed, infrequently, by “We the Citizens” Assemblies on the Irish model

THAT Families still benefiting from the taxpayer buy-out of their Black slaves by the Westminster Parliament in 1833 should pay the money back

THAT  The task of monarchy is too much for one family and as we return to being the Commonwealth of England the present sufferers should be let go

AND  Helped to a flat above the Joiner’s Arms, or perhaps to Los Angeles, as they prefer   

For press contacts: GLF inbox @ gayliberationfrontuk@gmail.com and / or Steven Dryden – stevengdryden@gmail.com

HIGH RESOLUTION IMAGES OF PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL AVAILABLE

NOTE TO EDITORS

About Gay Liberation Front: 

‘Gay liberation does not just mean reforms. It means a revolutionary change in our whole society.’ Gay Liberation Front Manifesto, 1971.

Gay Liberation Front (GLF) was founded in October 1970 by students Aubrey Walter and Bob Mellors after encountering the American gay liberation movement, and the each other at the Black Panther Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention in post-Stonewall Philadelphia (1970).

Though its time as a political collective was short, the impact of GLF, through newspapers, pamphlets, phone lines, discos, demonstrations, communes, street theatre and marches, lasted long after it stopped organising in late 1973. Generations of LGBTQ+ people in the UK would come to understand their oppression by society through the work of GLF.

50 years after the founding of Gay Liberation Front organise Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention, the first ‘Bishopsgate Debate’, to commemorate the work of the Black Panther Party and there solidarity work with women’s and gay liberation movements in the 1970s.

GLF Reclaim Pride Group have been meeting at London School of Economics since Summer 2018. They began to organise after Pride in London allowed a Trans exclusionary radical feminist group to lead the march in 2018. Since then GLF Reclaim Pride has actively campaign against trans exclusionary groups within the community, most prominently – working with allies such as L with the T and Voices4London in a joint action outside the launch meeting, in 2020, of the LGB Alliance,  a trans exclusionary group of lesbian, gay and bisexual men and women who formed in 2019. 

Link to GLF Reclaim Pride Group: https://gayliberationfrontuk.home.blog/

About Bishopsgate: https://www.bishopsgate.org.uk/about