Time - Wednesday 24th March 2021 4-5pm
Livestreamed from The Dome Club https://www.domeclublondon.co.uk - 2A Dartmouth Park Hill, Tufnell Park, London NW5 1HL - independent live music and club nights venue
Social Media - facebook event here
Press contact - gayliberationfrontuk@gmail.com
‘Gay liberation does not just mean reforms. It means a revolutionary change in our whole society.’ Gay Liberation Front Manifesto, 1971.
The Gay Liberation Front (GLF) in alliance with ‘Make Poland Queer Again’ will be hosting a commemoration in London and in Warsaw of the death 25 years ago on 24 March 1996 of Bob Mellors (b.1950), one of the founders of the Gay Liberation Front London in 1970.
This event will include an unveiling of a plaque on the central Warsaw building where Bob lived and died alongside an online vigil.
BOB MELLORS
born 1950 in England - died 24 March 1996 in Warsaw
Gay rights activist
lived here
Make Poland Queer Again is a growing grassroots international movement organising for critical actions including the ‘Summer of Solidarity 2021’ whereby buses will leave from Britain to Poland to connect and empower the global LGBT+ solidarity movement against the ‘LGBT Free Zones’. plus' and in solidarity with all Polish women in the recent attacks on their rights. LGBTQ+ and every woman is oppressed in common by sexist society.
Gay Liberation Front (GLF) was founded in October 1970 by students Aubrey Walter and Bob Mellors after encountering the American Gay Liberation Front at the Black Panther Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention in post-Stonewall Philadelphia (1970).
Though it's time as a political collective was short, the impact of GLF, through newspapers, acts of solidarity with other oppressed groups, pamphlets, phone lines, discos, demonstrations, communes, street theatre and marches, lasted long after it stopped organising in late 1973. Generations of people in the UK would come to understand their oppression by society through the work of GLF.
Bob was murdered. Polish police stated that the death was in the course of a burglary and they informed Interpol, but no arrest was ever made. The purpose is to introduce Bob’s career, his love of Poland, and his outstanding LGBT record, including non-binary pioneering and co-founding of GLF London, to young LGBT people in Poland.
Event running order -
- Welcome from the LGBTQIA+ Rep at The Dome Club
- Welcome and Intro from ‘Make Poland Queer Again’
- Show video recording of plaque unveiling in Warsaw
- Welcome from the Gay Liberation Front - Andrew and Nettie.
- Stuart's interview with one of Bob's friends
- Reading a letter from Bob Mellors mum
- Reading of Bob’s letters to Andrew from Warsaw when he was happy.
- The struggle for international freedom - and the focus of this Summer of Solidarity with Polish queer and feminist struggles! What's happening / how to get involved.