{"id":130624,"date":"2025-05-25T12:27:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-25T12:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/130624\/"},"modified":"2025-05-25T12:27:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-25T12:27:09","slug":"peter-tatchell-forcibly-removed-by-police-from-birmingham-pride-parade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/130624\/","title":{"rendered":"Peter Tatchell \u2018forcibly removed\u2019 by police from Birmingham Pride parade"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The human rights campaigner, who gave a speech at the launch of the\u00a0Birmingham\u00a0Pride\u00a0event on Saturday, claimed he was told to leave the march by an officer who said event organisers had directed the removal.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.westmidlands.police.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">West Midlands Police<\/a> said Mr Tatchell was not arrested.<\/p>\n<p>The 73-year-old, who was marching with a placard that called on police to apologise \u201cfor anti-LGBT+ witch-hunts\u201d, said: \u201cWhen I detailed some of the things the police did in the 1970s and 80s, the police laughed. They laughed in my face.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThen they crowded around me blowing whistles so I couldn\u2019t speak to the public.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAbout halfway down New Street a steward working with the police tried to eject me and other members of my foundation. The police tried to drag me out.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI asked them who\u2019s your authority and they blanked me. I said I\u2019m not leaving until you tell me which authority told you. At that point they let me march on.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAbout 10 minutes later I was ejected. It\u2019s shocking \u2013 not that I got forcibly removed from the parade, but what makes it worse is that the police falsely claimed parade organisers told them to remove me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll the people with my foundation were removed and were threatened with arrest unless they left.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/8f09019d-1b6d-4d97-b271-5bf5f4772298.jpg\"   alt=\" Peter Tatchell \" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"w-full max-w-none\"\/> Peter Tatchell <\/p>\n<p>Birmingham Pride organisers said Mr Tatchell was an invited guest speaker at a large community event on Friday and at the official launch of the march from Centenary Square on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>Organiser David Nash said: \u201cWe can confirm that Peter Tatchell was authorised to take part in the parade.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeter is an internationally recognised human rights activist and we can categorically confirm that absolutely no instruction was given by anyone from\u00a0Birmingham\u00a0Pride\u00a0to West Midlands Police to remove him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFurther, we do not understand why this action was undertaken.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Birmingham\u00a0Pride\u00a0director Lawrence Barton said: \u201cPeter was a very special guest today. There\u2019s no way on the planet we would have endorsed the police removing him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mr Tatchell said: \u201cI\u2019ve marched in dozens of\u00a0Birmingham\u00a0Prides\u00a0before without incident.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy speech included a criticism of the police\u2019s refusal to apologise. I fear that may have riled them and caused them to remove me later on.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s so painful because we want a good relationship with the police.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.westmidlands.police.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">West Midlands Police<\/a> spokesperson said: \u201cWe assisted security staff at Saturday\u2019s event with the removal of a man who made his way amongst people who were taking part in the parade. He was not arrested.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The human rights campaigner, who gave a speech at the launch of the\u00a0Birmingham\u00a0Pride\u00a0event on Saturday, claimed he was&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130625,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7820],"tags":[855,748,393,4884,379,12,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-130624","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-birmingham","8":"tag-birmingham","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-local-hubs","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114568471862343128","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}