Pride in London through the years as capital prepares for biggest parade yet

More than a million people are expected to descend onto London’s streets on Saturday to celebrate Pride with the UK’s world-famous LGBT+ parade.

As the community celebrates 50 years since the birth of modern LGBT+ rights, Pride organisers say they are expecting the biggest parade yet with 30,000 people performing from 600 groups.

Crowds will set off from Portland Place in the capital at midday before heading towards Oxford Circus then all the way to Whitehall until around 5.30pm.

The parade is already the second largest event in the capital after the marathon but is run and led entirely by 200 volunteers.

This year Pride London is launching the “World Area” in Golden Square created by the organisation called Juice to showcase LGBT+ BAME talent.

“We are launching it in response to feedback from the community because BAME members wanted a space where they are visible and they feel it is by them and from them,” said Alison Camps, co-chair of Pride in London.

The family area is also moving to St Giles Church near Tottenham Court Road Tube station where Pride is partnering with the Scouts to run a programme for children and parents.

Ms Camps said: “One of the important things about Pride in London is it is volunteer led and run.

“The amazing thing from my perspective is the way these volunteers go above and beyond every year.

“They really embrace that great British, and I would argue, London spirit of getting involved.

This year’s pride has 30,000 people taking part in the parade, up from 25,000 last year.

“It is London’s second biggest event which makes the fact that it is run by volunteers even more remarkable,” she said.

When the first official UK Gay Pride Rally was held on July 1, 1972, it was chosen as the nearest Saturday to the anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York three years earlier.

A series of violent protests erupted across the city after the police raided the Stonewall Inn gay bar in Manhattan, sparking the modern LGBT+ movement.

In 1976, a picnic was held in Victoria Gardens by the Houses of Parliament during what was then called Gay Pride Week.

The Pride march moved to Huddersfield for one year in 1981 to support the Gemini Club, a place the police had once called “a cesspit of filth”.

In 1983, the march was renamed Lesbian and Gay Pride.

By the 1990s it had evolved into a carnival-style event and in 1996 saw gay men took to the streets to make a statement about religious attitudes to homosexuality by impersonating the Pope and members of the mafia.

Pride London was formed in 2004 and ever since a political rally is held in Trafalgar Square straight after the parade.