Debbie’s Pride Collection
I delivered a presentation to the Croydon Council LGBT + Allies network over Microsoft Teams in June 2020.
I encouraged members to make donations to the archive and in the process got chatting to former chair Debbie Bentley-Ross.
The following write up was taken from an interview with Debbie. She has also donated her Pride t-shirts and brochures to the archive.
Thank you also to Michelle Bigden for permission to use images from her 2017 Network Presentation.
For the last six years, Debbie has worked for Croydon Council in Bernard Weatherill House. Within 3 months of joining, she had become chair of the council’s LGBT Network group and remained so for 2 years. One of her most memorable moments was being invited to deliver a presentation in 2015 about the Network at a conference in Fairfield Hall.
“It was pretty terrifying Mark. I had to stand on the stage at the Ashcroft Theatre…there was over 300 people.”
Encouraged by some drama coaching from her middle son, Debbie delivered a presentation playing around with the idea of positive and negative labelling. She placed envelopes under each seat containing good terms and derogatory terms for LGBT+ people. The audience was asked to stand up when their word was read aloud and asked how it made them feel.
“I used that as a sort of litmus paper really for anything I do now…speaking to a large number of people is terrifying…if I have to speak to anyone now I think ‘I managed to do that’.”
Debbie attended The Culture Board, a meeting between council networks and directors occurring once a month, and in 2016 the network was invited to the Parlour, where they met Croydon’s first openly gay Mayor, Wayne Trakas-Lawlor
“We all bonded straight away we got on extremely well…he is such a character, very charismatic!”
The mayor came to speak at their next network meeting where they discussed yearly LGBT+ milestones such as LGBT History Month, IDAHO Day, Trans Day of Remembrance and Pride.
“It was a very exciting time for us. We had our first Croydon PrideFest down in Surrey Street.”
Croydon Pride in 2016 was the first ever Pride to benefit from full civic backing throughout the council. The Pride Committee and the council’s LGBT network worked together to help raise funds for Pride Fest by putting on bake sales,
“we’re very good at making cakes and bakes. We used to sell them in the café on the 8th floor at Bernard Weatherill House.”
The 2016 Pride Parade began in the high street and eventually ended up at Surrey Street for a street party. There was a very small portable stage and the atmosphere was that of a mini festival.
“It was fabulous we did our usual march and turned down into Surrey Street…It was exciting because it was the first…it was a celebration like no one had seen in Croydon before.”
Towards the end of Debbie’s time as Chair, the network changed their name from the LGBT Network to LGBT+ Allies. I asked Debbie how she defined the term ‘ally’
“anyone who supports LGBT issues and wants to help raise awareness. It tends to be people with a brother, sister, mum or dad…all the combinations who are LGBT…we’re trying to get away from that sort of labelling that you have to be a certain sexuality to join….I think it’s one of the reasons why we’ve grown so much. When we started out there was about 15 of us, now there’s about 200.”
In 2017, Andrew Curtis took over as Chair of the network and Debbie became Vice Chair. With a new logo and name, the network attended London Pride in their Croydon network t-shirts.
“When we go on London Pride we’re always so well received…the crowd was really shouting for us! It’s not like we have any special regalia…they were just really excited to see us!”
Perhaps the network’s hard work promoting Croydon Pride with leaflets and sweets had something to do with the increasing numbers of people coming to celebrate at Croydon PrideFest, one week after London Pride. In 2017 the Festival was held at Queen’s Gardens, a much bigger space than the year before with a larger stage, stalls, plenty of live music, and Ally McKinlay’s project ‘Chasing Rainbows’, held inside Croydon Saffron Central garden. Ally’s idea was to recreate a giant rainbow flag made out of rows of planted flowers to celebrate diversity and love and the network were heavily involved,
“we went to Saffron garden and planted them [flowers] and there was quite a few weekends with yoga, meditation…Oh yeah! I did a painting and Michelle donated some of her mosaic and pottery things she does.”
Due to popular demand Croydon PrideFest moved to a much bigger venue in Wandle Park in 2018, sharing the weekend with the Croydon Mela festival. Armed with a much bigger stage, and local food and drink the Pride event had a festival feeling about it. It even had stalls where local groups could help raise awareness, including the network,
“we had a network tea stall raising money to put back into Croydon PrideFest…ours was homemade cakes…we also had donations from the network group but on the whole I did the baking…I was quite out of pocket that year Mark!”
In 2019, Jane Raper became the Chair of the network as an ally, and Croydon Pride that year was even bigger still, with estimates of 1000 people attending the parade. For the most part Pride has been received very well in Croydon, though Debbie recalls an incident in 2019 that reminds us that we are yet to be fully embraced by society,
“I was walking through Croydon and I had some abuse…I was in my Pride tshirt, this guy shouted at me something like “Love is between a man and a woman” and swore at me. He was far enough away from not to feel physically threatened. I wasn’t going to report it, but I did because it’s good for their data.”
In 2020, Croydon is well armed for dealing with homophobic abuse and hate crime, with the policing group Aurora, a Metropolitan Police LGBT Liaison Officer and the Metro Charity’s new Hate Crime service. Hate Crime Officer Mark can be reached by email safer@metrocharity.org.uk, and works Wednesday to Friday, 10am – 5pm.
By 2020, the network have a new Chair and Vice Chair in Ed Budden and Simon Sanders respectively, while Debbie remains as Secretary. The Croydon Council LGBT+ allies network group have done an incredible job remaining active even during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Network meetings are now attended online, and despite the cancellation of Croydon Pride and LGBT History Month as physical events, the network continues to be instrumental in marking important LGBT+ occasions such as the raising of the Pride flag at Croydon Town Hall to mark National Coming Out Day, and volunteering to help deliver free HIV tests for World Aids Day.