15th July 2026
Belfast Pride Pinkwashing RUC/PSNI
""Love in every colour" includes PSNI Green", according to Belfast Pride... Will it also include UVF purple?
Belfast Pride organisers have made their position clear in the last few days. They have organised talks and a "community engagement" public meeting with the RUC/PSNI. This is an attempt to normalise their presence in queer events and a push towards RUC/PSNI presence in Belfast Pride regardless of their claims.
These efforts have met widespread rejection. The queer community is familiar with this force's track record and have had horrible personal and community wide experiences, or "complex" experiences, as Belfast Pride puts it. They have never cared about us, and everyone can see straight through their lazy attempts at pink washing. Despite widespread calls from the queer community of the city against this effort, the organisers have unequivocally put themselves on the side of British occupation forces, which collude with loyalist gangs and oversee fascist pogroms of minorities.
This police force, like any bourgeois police force, is there to protect the capitalist state and its interests. It is not here to protect queer people, and if it is in the state's interests to repress us, they will not hesitate to do so again. This will also not hesitate to strike at a class conscious queer movement which genuinely advocates for its liberation, thereby theatening the state. This police force is also an occupation force, here to ensure the continued British domination of the occupied 6 counties.
The PSNI may have changed its name and thinly rebranded itself, but it is still the RUC — the same institution that carried out countless horrific acts and colludes with fascist paramilitaries. They are the same hyper-militarised, violent, discriminatory tool of British occupation that beat civil rights protestors off the streets in the 1960s for their crime of seeking equal rights, just like we do today.
Belfast Pride organisers ignore all of this and betray the community because they hold the perspective of the queer sections of the capitalist class. They want a sponsor-friendly event they can use to pink wash their exploitation, not a militant, proletarian, anti-imperialist queer movement seeking liberation.
Therefore, Queers Against Imperialism and Conradh na Saoirse Náisiúnta jointly demand the cancellation of this event and call for the active rejection of RUC/PSNI involvement at any queer events. Their presence is a threat to the community.
Tiocfaidh ár lá!