On 15 August, supporters of FRFI and the Anti-Racism Protest Defence Campaign supported an LGBT event at Grey’s Monument, Newcastle. The protest was organised by the Alliance for Workers Liberty (AWL) in response to the re-election of Andrzej Duda in Poland and his homophobic policies. We stood in solidarity with the LGBT struggle in Poland making the links to the homophobic and transphobic character of the British state – as evidenced in the government’s U-turn on the Gender Recognition Act. We have an article on this in the current issue of our newspaper.
We got a great response from the crowd when speaking about the defence campaign and the need to challenge police proscriptions of anti-racist and indeed all left-wing events. We provided our sound system for speeches and chants. The organisers ran an open mic which we used. At the end, the AWL and most people on the protest stuck around for longer to support the defence campaign with a speak-out.
This was a great show of solidarity and shows that different organisations can work together in a non-sectarian way to defend political spaces. There were a lot of police, with riot vans, keeping a close eye on the event. If there had not been so many people standing together then they may well have tried to disperse FRFI supporters, like they did just two weeks earlier.
