June is a time many of us have come to dread, it being the occasion in which Pride Month is foisted upon us
By: Patrick West
Published: Jun 8, 2026
June is a month most people anticipate for various reasons, it heralding the Isle of Wight Festival, the Summer Solstice and Wimbledon. It’s also a time many of us have come to dread, it being the occasion in which Pride Month is foisted upon a compliant and increasingly resentful population.
What began in San Francisco in 1981 as simply the International Lesbian and Gay Freedom Day Parade has evolved into an entire month of worldwide celebrations chiefly dedicated to the trans movement, and at the expense of actual gay people. This metamorphosis can be seen by the original, simple Rainbow Flag having been supplanted by the chevroned, omnicause standard of the Progress Pride Flag.
Most institutions duly obey, especially progressive-run councils with delusions of grandeur, and amoral corporate bodies who will adopt any fashionable cause if they think there’s money in it. But not this year. This June, some are refusing to signal their obeisance.
The newly-elected Reform council in Gateshead has announced that it will stop flying the Pride flag outside its civic centre and no longer fund future Pride events.
In Havering, on the eastern fringe of Greater London, the Reform council announced the cancellation the Pride flag ceremony on 5 June, the customary date upon which the revised rainbow flag is hoisted and then flown outside the town hall throughout the month. This move is in accordance with the party’s pledge not to fly flags other than the Union flag or the St George’s Cross in council areas it controls.
Meanwhile, across the border, library staff have this week been told by Essex County Council not to promote any events at the county’s 74 libraries that are not related to their daily activities, including Pride. The Reform UK-led council there said it wanted to avoid highlighting ‘any particular groups or themes’ in its institutions.
Naturally, activists and their allies are not happy. A spokesman for Save Our Libraries Essex has called the latter move ‘just bigotry’, adding: ‘What possible reason is there not to display pride promotional material – it’s not as if it’s costing the library service anything – other than pure prejudice?’
Mark Whiley, leader of the Green Party in Havering, said that visible support was still needed, recalling his own recent homophobic experience. ‘I grew up in the borough, and suffered homophobic bullying at school. But it’s starting to creep back. I experienced abuse on the bus by some young people only last year.’
Both reactions are telling in their own way. While homophobia has never gone away, and like most prejudices, never will, it is nothing compared to what it was in most of our lifetimes. The imprisonment this week of two brothers for murdering a civil servant in London in 1984 is a reminder of how common ‘queer bashing’ used to be, when it wasn’t remotely fashionable to be ‘out’. There is no need to campaign for gay visibility today, in an age when the majority of people find homosexuality neither remarkable nor objectionable.
That was also a time before campaigns for gay equality, or organisations such as Stonewall established for that purpose, had become movements orientated towards pushing a trans agenda. This is why many gays regard the rainbow flag in its modern incarnation as a hostile symbol. To them it represents an ideology seemingly happy to see youths castrated or endure mastectomies – because we must believe their confused pleas that they were born in the wrong body.
Most people who dutifully put up the Progress Pride Flags and the attendant paraphernalia every year probably don’t realise this, believing they are merely doing the nice, caring thing. This is where comments from Save Our Libraries Essex come in. Because putting up these symbols is deemed an obvious sign of compassion, it must logically follow that not doing so signifies bigotry and intolerance. That’s the main reason for the ubiquitous presence of these flags every summer: people, especially businesses, are terrified of not flying them. They are scared of the accusations which might ensue – of those which this week in Essex duly have.
The trans lobby understands this fear well. This is why they have been able to push their agenda to such extraordinary lengths and with such bizarre outcomes. London’s Regent Street has in recent years come to resemble a kind of trans version of North Korea, what with its menacing panoply of more than 300 LGBTQI+ flags fluttering for weeks on end, an overbearing reminder to everyone of ‘the cause’.
The events surrounding the jailing of Henry Nowak’s killer have been a lesson in how hyperliberal ideology has managed to seduce so many. In that particular case, the ideology of ‘anti-racism’ was slavishly adopted because many thought it well-intentioned in its desire to eradicate prejudice. Yet it was also an ideology taken up thoughtlessly because everyone feared being tarnished as bigots, because everyone else was complying, because everyone was terrified of not doing so.
