Written by Diane Minnis and Ken Davis on behalf of First Mardi Gras Inc, a community association for 78ers.
In early 1978, San Francisco activists wrote to Ken Davis and Annie Talve seeking solidarity activities in June 1978. This was to support their campaign against the Briggs Initiative – a referendum to remove all supporters of gay rights from all jobs in the school system in California.
In the early 70s, we adopted lesbian gay as inclusive, politically constructed identities – not meaning exclusively homosexual and including intersex, radical drag, drag/kings and queens, transsexuals and transvestites.
The date was to coincide with the anniversary of the Stonewall riots which started on June 28, 1969 in New York. Following a police raid, patrons of the Stonewall Inn, other lesbian and gay bars and neighbourhood street people fought back when the police became violent. This catalysed a new militant era of gay liberation, during a decade of global youth rebellion and revolutionary change which started in 1968.
To prepare for international solidarity actions, Ken and others called a meeting with a coalition of lesbian and gay groups: Gay Lib and Ad Hoc at Sydney University; Acceptance and the Metropolitan Community Church; the Political Action Group of CAMP Inc; Young Labor, socialist groups and young activists. The late Marg McMann, former Co-President of CAMP Inc., moved that we take the name ‘Gay Solidarity Group’.
We planned a morning march from Town Hall to Martin Place and a forum at Paddington Town Hall on the international gay and lesbian movement. Two weeks before 24 June, people from CAMP Inc. suggested we add a night-time, fun event for our community.
People swung into action, securing a police permit, hiring a truck and sound system and painting an International Gay Solidarity banner which was also used in the morning march. Leaflets were handed out on Oxford Street and a lesbian poster squad spread the word. On the poster, our night-time street party was called a Festival, starting at 10pm in Taylor Square. But Marg McMann dubbed it a Mardi Gras and that is the name that immediately stuck.
That first Mardi Gras attracted a more diverse group of women and men than the day-time marches. It was a fun event, less serious, but no less political. We had friends from our households, inner city lefties, heterosexual as well as LGBTIQ people and those who were starting to mobilise for homosexual law reform.
But events that night did not go as planned. We were hurried down Oxford Street by police and they grabbed the keys of the sound truck at College St. Police tried to arrest the driver, Lance Gowland, but a group of lesbians pulled him back into the crowd. Someone shouted ‘To the Cross!’. The atmosphere was electric and we marched up William Street with arms linked and chanting ‘Stop Police Attacks on Gays, Women and Blacks’.
As we reached the El Alamein Fountain in Kings Cross, we started to disperse. But by then, hundreds of police had surrounded us, blocking off every exit and side street. Now numbering 2,000 people, marchers and Kings Cross locals fought back against the vicious police attack. Some protesters were seriously bashed, many were thrown bodily into police wagons and 53 were arrested and taken to Darlinghurst Police Station.
At the station, Peter Murphy was singled out and viciously bashed in a separate cell. The rest of the marchers gathered outside and started organising bail money and medical assistance. We sang the US Civil Rights anthem ‘We Shall Overcome’ and arrestees in the cells could hear us.
While police had previously arrested marchers at LGBTIQ demos since the early 1970s, the scale and violence of their actions that night was a watershed for our community.
Many groups and individuals and the Gay Solidarity Group coalition came together for a massive political and legal effort – the Drop the Charges campaign. With pro bono legal assistance from the Redfern Legal Centre and the Council for Civil Liberties, we fought the charges in court. With growing support from the Women’s movement, ALP branches, unions and students; we continued to demonstrate for the charges to be dropped. But the police continued to arrest us:
26 June – 300 protested outside the closed court in Liverpool St with 7 arrested
15 July – 2,000 take part in largest ever gay rights march with 14 arrests
27 August – 300 march down Oxford St from the 4th National Homosexual Conference with 104 arrests
The total arrested in the June, July and August period was 178.
Most of the charges against those arrested were dropped. The NSW Summary Offences Act was repealed on 11 May 1979. It had given police very wide powers to arrest people and control public spaces.
The first Mardi Gras led to an upsurge of activism. Gay rights became a broader political issue. We were campaigning for our democratic right to protest. And we were campaigning against police powers – a big issue in NSW.
We were determined to continue this momentum and have a second Mardi Gras. It was opposed by some in the LGBTIQ community, including the newly established Sydney Star newspaper. Five thousand people took part in the second Gay Mardi Gras on a bitterly cold Saturday night of 30th June 1979 – and there were no arrests. Without the police attack on the first Mardi Gras, there may not have been a second one. The second Mardi Gras in 1979 was accompanied by a fair, film festival and street march.
In these early Mardi Gras, we were publicly asserting our human rights and our democratic rights. From the start we were doing this with satire, with costumes and fabulousness, with camp humour and comment on social and political issues. All which have become hallmarks of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.
The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, particularly the Parade, is a public signal of solidarity with LGBTIQ people feeling the impact of homophobia, heterosexism and transphobia in their families, in their communities, schools, and workplaces. It is a beacon to LGBTIQ people everywhere:
in rural and regional areas
in areas of Western Sydney which voted against marriage equality
and overseas where homosexuality is still criminalised, with the death penalty still on some statute books.
With topical, creative, satirical, and edgy visibilities in the Sydney Mardi Gras we continue to fight for the rights of all LGBTIQ people and people of diverse sexualities and genders.
At a time of world-wide climate, economic and health crisis, we are ruled by monsters – Trump, Xi Jinping, Modi, Putin, Duda, Bin Zayed, Netanyahu, Bolsonaro, Bin Salman, Duterte, Orban, Rouhani, Sisi, Buhari, BoJo and ScoMo. They are united around sexism, jingoism, racism, ecocide, profits, and eliminating democratic rights.
In the world of 2020, just as in 1978, our fate as queers depends on our ability to fight alongside others – in Sydney, in Australia, globally – for health, peace, freedom and equality.
Written by Diane Minnis and Ken Davis on behalf of First Mardi Gras Inc, a community association for 78ers. www.78ers.org.au