A couple of days before the Pride in London Parade, campaigning group Just Stop Oil issued a statement; or perhaps some might call it an ultimatum.

The statement was dated 4pm on the 28th of June, and said they would wait 24 hours for a response, with a vague threat of possible action at the weekend’s events, if there was not clarity the three points raised.

This has, not surprisingly, somewhat set the cat amongst the pigeons.

There are those who view climate as the biggest emergency facing us right now.

There are those who think that attacks on trans people are a more pressing issue.

There are those who have long held that Pride has way too much corporate pink-washing.

There are those who think that disrupting – or threatening to disrupt – Pride is itself a homophobic act.

And that’s before you get into the different shades of opinion; for example, there are many who call themselves trans allies, who are horrified that an action may be taken against Pride, when the ‘theme’ of the year is about bringing people together, yet there are also voices amongst trans commentators who are committed to intersectionality, and placing their fights firmly within a context where climate change, and fossil fuels have a massive impact on our community.

There are also ‘gender critical’ people who are seizing with glee upon the idea of a protest against Pride – not, I suspect because they really care passionately about Just Stop Oil and climate change, but because they revel in the thought of a Parade celebrating inclusion being disrupted; they want, after all, for the rest of the community to ‘ditch the TQ,’ and they don’t really care how that happens.

In short, you will find an awful lot of different opinions about this; try to draw a Venn diagram of the beliefs of those I’ve mentioned above, and you’ll get something more akin to a picture of a plate of spaghetti.

I could be wrong. I could be right.

On the subject of the climate crisis, it seems clear to a lot of people that many governments aren’t doing enough; as a pessimist myself, I’m glad I don’t have children, because I shudder to think of the world they’ll be growing up into.

One phrase you will see with regard to his is that there’s no Pride on a dead planet, and that’s undoubtedly true, though I suspect many will feel it’s something of an alarmist message. However, I think it’s fairly easy to argue that climate change will stress societies. Whether it’s failing crops or raising sea levels, communities around the world – and especially in those areas still not as developed – will face the fallout of climate change.

And if there’s one thing that recent Western events ought to have taught us, it’s surely that in times where there are stressed societies, it’s very easy for politicians to use minority groups as scapegoats. Whether that’s the attacks on ‘small boats’ of refugees crossing the English Channel, or on simplifying processes for trans people, these ‘culture wars’ help distract from things like the housing and energy crises, just as attacks on gay people in the 80s that led to Section 28 also provided a rallying point to distract from the destruction of UK industry and the resulting mass unemployment.

Of course, history doesn’t always repeat in the same way; we have no way of knowing exactly how things will play out in other countries as climate events fracture their societies – but I think only a fool would deny that there’s no chance of a backlash against LGBTQ people.

Pride before a fall?

I think it’s also true that only a fool would argue there is no pinkwashing at Pride. Corporates hire a bus for the day, adorn it with the most buff of their LGBTQ employees and a few rainbow flags and hope that we’ll all feel good about them.

Pride in London isn’t alone in this of course; I remember seeing a photo of GCHQ (the UK government monitoring centre, for those outside the UK) lit up in rainbow colours and thinking “Oh, that’s nice. They may have refused Turing a job; they may be spying on us all, but at least they really care about poofs. Don’t they?”

As Pride has become more corporate, it has necessarily had to seek more money, and a lot of that money ends up coming from people that we might rather it didn’t. This is the constant dilemma faced by many in different communities. Whose shilling do you take, and how do you square that with your principles?

Sometimes that’s an easy question. I’d say, for example, that given the way Budweiser dropped a trans influencer from their marketing at the first sign of backlash, to take their money now would be a particularly egregious example of pinkwashing. They’re not real allies if they fold at the first challenge, are they?

But what of fossil fuels? Some would say that they have deep pockets, and if that’s what it takes to pay for a giant event like Pride in London, we should pick those pockets because hey, they have nice Diversity and Inclusion policies, don’t they? They’re happy to employ queers (even if those queers might not be so happy if they have to work in the Gulf states where expression of queerness could be fatal), so let them join in.

That’s one view – but the more holistic one is that, actually, many of those fossil fuel companies will be using Pride to burnish their image, while simultaneously doing little about the transition to cleaner energy, or mitigating climate change. Put a few buff queers on a bus, and hope we don’t notice some of the smaller Pacific island nations sinking under the waves.

Put like that, it all seems very cynical, doesn’t it? And so, perhaps, Just Stop Oil have a point?

The sum of the parts

The problem, however, is that while the thoughts I set out above lead me to a fair degree of sympathy with the JSO view, I still have a problem with the implied threat to disrupt the Pride Parade.

Pride in London is an organisation; it’s not one without problems already, and as an organisation it’s fair game for people questioning its policies, and asking it to make statements about topics of the day.

However, it’s largely run by volunteers, with everything building up to the Big Day, 1st of July, with a large and complicated event to marshall on the streets of London, involving co-ordination with many other people like TfL, Westminster Council, the police, and so on – before you even get to the many community groups taking part.

So, given my experience of actually trying to get things done, I do think it seems a little unrealistic to give a 24 hour deadline, right before the busiest time of the year, and expect that Pride in London will turn on a sixpence and be able to accomplish this in the time given.

More than that, though, while Pride in London itself is an organisation that has questions to answer, that’s not so true of the Parade itself; that is very much the sum of its parts, and amongst the corporate floats and groups you’ll find plenty of grassroots LGBTQ organisations.

For many of those, this is their day; often one of the biggest chances they have each year to be seen, to be Proud, and to let others know they exist.

Some of those organisations might themselves have links to fossil fuels; some won’t. Some will be quite big, and could reasonably be expected to have considered such issues, others will be much smaller or less formally organised, and focussed much, much more on whatever their core interest is.

Is it right to potentially disrupt the day of these organisations, in the name of the greater good? Is it the right way to achieve the ends sought?

And here is where I have my main beef with the hints from JSO that there could be disruption over the weekend. Even if you only target, for example, a few corporate floats for their pink and green-washing, you may still have a knock on effect on all those other community groups taking part.

Depending on the degree to which you disrupt, some of those may well consider their day to be ‘ruined.’ Yes, ruined in the cause of what some will perceive as a greater good, but I can’t help thinking there is a lot to be lost here, in terms of goodwill.

For me – and I probably risk sounding like a centrist dad here – I think the better prize would be to quietly distribute information, or to reach out to Parade participants after the event, to win them over to thinking about environmental issues, and green or pink-washing. To encourage an holistic view in grassroots groups for the future.

It is, I believe, right to be angry about the lack of progress on climate issues; indeed, we seem to be going backwards. But how much would be gained by disrupting countless small community groups on what’s often seen as one of the most important days of the year for them? How many allies gained, vs minds closed?

Anger is an energy. One that should be channeled wisely.