Our Principles & Purpose

Sheffield radical pride is a queer grassroots group not asking to take up space in our city. As a grassroots group we believe in organising by and for ourselves, the local queer community. We work together as a collective of queer individuals to achieve our goals and fight for our collective liberation, and the liberation of all queers. We will ensure that pride is a protest.

Whilst we are not affiliated with any political organisation, we do hold certain stances. We believe that the current political consensus in this country is broken, with the leaders of the two main parties both campaigning on actively transphobic rhetoric., Our liberation will not come from quietly asking our elected leaders, but rather we must take action into our own hands and demand radical change, and build our own support structures for one another.

We believe that the police and prison system upholds queerphobia at every level. Recently, the metropolitan police were found to be institutionally homophobic. Across the country, the police misgender, deadname and insult us if we ever bother reporting being the victims of crime. The police do not look at us as people who need protecting, but rather as a threat. They have not, and will not, hesitate to enforce queerphobic laws against us. We recognise South Yorkshire Police’s historical and current role in attacks on protesters, from Orgreave to pepper spraying peaceful Kurdish activists last year. We also note their despicable role in the Hillsborough disaster, and their consistent and violent racism and misogyny.

We fiercely reject rainbow capitalism. Our liberation will not come from pandering to capital. It will not come through mass-manufactured pride t-shirts made by women on poverty wages in deadly conditions in the global south. We recognise that companies only choose to show us the mildest of support when we have successfully clawed back some of the rights we deserve, and only insofar as it increases their profits. We do not need them, consumption will not free us. Capitalism must fall.

We believe in full self-determination over our bodies. We support sex workers and their fight against their frequently dismal and dangerous working conditions. We believe in the unmitigated right to transition – we demand access to safe and quality HRT and gender-affirming surgery without delay to all those that request them, freely on the NHS. No doctor nor psychiatrist can tell us who we are, no one knows our genders better than ourselves.

We believe in the right to love who we love, and to tear down the barriers the state places on us.