To the Directors of Pride in London

Every member of the Community Advisory Board (CAB) hereby tenders their resignation with immediate effect.

In light of recent information received by the CAB, we have no other option but to step down in order to draw attention to the culture of bullying, gaslighting and marginalisation at Pride in London, especially for Black and people of colour (POC) volunteers.

Over the past few weeks, Pride in London has experienced a high number of resignations across all levels of the organisation. The CAB has heard first-hand from some of those who have resigned and come forward to share their experiences with us. Their accounts cite dysfunctional working environments that are marked by bullying and appalling behaviour from senior individuals, who have acted with impunity.

Some of these allegations directly implicate members of the Pride in London board as contributing to this hostile environment and raise troubling allegations about your failure to respond to complaints on racism and bullying.

In multiple Annual Reports, the CAB has raised serious concerns as to the absence of any formal complaints procedure available. Despite this, you have failed to act. Without an anonymous process to report bullying or raise concerns, the most vulnerable and marginalised volunteers remain unprotected in a hostile culture.

There is still no complaints procedure that exists outside the direct influence of directors, and your recent attempts to misrepresent and minimise the nature of these complaints at our February meeting is greatly troubling.

Contributing to this hostile environment, is the increasing preoccupation at Pride in London with managing the public relations concerns of its leadership, at the cost of supporting its Black and POC volunteers or community members.

The CAB believes Pride in London has reneged on its support of Black Lives Matter and its commitments to ‘listen to, advocate for and platform Black LGBT+ people’.

This is evidenced by your recent decision to reject the request made by hundreds in our community following the murder of George Floyd on 25 May 2020. We believe you failed to centre Black and POC experiences in your decision making and community consultation and ignored clear evidence of lived experience provided by the CAB and your own senior Black volunteers.

Pride in London did not uphold its public commitment when it mattered most and failed to set even the most basic conditions on continued police involvement – like an acknowledgement of institutional racism. As decision makers, you have failed to back words with action, and failed the Black and POC communities you’ve purported to champion.

We are not confident that Pride in London can act on behalf of Black and POC communities on the issue of policing with any credence, given the alarming accounts of marginalisation and bullying from Black and POC volunteers.

This is not new. Pride in London has repeatedly been called out on these issues in the past by the CAB and other LGBTQ+ organisations and repeatedly made commitments to improve in future. Nevertheless, this culture persists.

It is our view that Pride in London has acted less as custodians of a sacred event that champions the rights of all in our community, and more as a personal project of a privileged few. At this point, it is clear that there is no desire from Pride in London to take on board recommendations by the CAB or the wider community.

In our experience, attempts at meaningful community-led scrutiny of the decisions and workings at Pride in London have been deliberately frustrated by its leadership. This has included the CAB being left out of key decision making since June 2020, a continued failure to respond to recommendations and repeated breaches of agreed processes.

We no longer have confidence that the current board of directors are the right people to continue leading the Pride movement in London and call for a new leadership to take the organisation forward. The CAB also calls for an independent investigation by the Mayor’s office into the alarming accounts of marginalisation and bullying of volunteers, with publication of the outcome.

To close, we offer a final piece of advice to anyone in the community who may be reading this and especially Black and POC members who wish to volunteer their time at Pride in London.

If you wish to volunteer for an organisation that:

• values your lived experiences
• backs its publicly stated values with action
• can protect its most vulnerable and marginalised volunteers
• whose leaders embrace community oversight and transparency

Look elsewhere.

Signed,