In 1991 the first Gay Pride in Belfast took place. It was an event thought to be a non-starter, however the turnout of well over one hundred people for the ‘pride dander’ was simply fantastic. The support from the Belfast public was beyond belief, as was the support in terms of bodies from the QUB Students Union and the Socialist Workers Movement, as well as our guests from Dublin, ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power) – and everyone thoroughly enjoyed the dander and the crack afterwards.
How upstart, our own gay publication, remembered our dander:
But a new tradition was also set for that march (dander) – that of the Pride T-shirt. P A Maglochlainn, who was President of NIGRA (Northern Ireland Gay Rights Association) for a substantial number of years, recognised the importance of this inauguration and managed to collect a number of these during his lifetime and even was able to arrange for them to be on show a number of years later in the Central Library.
Since PA’s death, Barry his partner has been working to have his life’s work archived properly, and part of this is to have the T-Shirts placed somewhere so that people can access them and see the wealth of talent that has spread out from the initial showing.
Barry has kindly given me the task of gathering an example of each T-Shirt (or at the very least, a photo) which means that we have a pictorial record of part of our history.
So far, I have managed to collect the following, as you can see there are come gaps, are you able to help with an example of the missing T-Shirts, or at the very least a photograph or jpeg image for the record? If so then please contact me as follows:
Email: dtw.mcfarlane@hotmail.co.uk
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I have two T-Shirts so far which I cannot tie to any year, would anyone have any idea:
Other articles on Pride: