I went to Clacton Pride in Nigel Farage’s constituency – here’s what I found

I called my assistant on the morning, half joking that I was going to Clacton and I did not want to die alone at Clacton Pride. For the past year I have been speaking out against Nigel Farage and Reform UK. I have received death threats, homophobic and transphobic abuse from their supporters for it. When I decided to go I reached out to LGBTQIA+ icons, celebrities, activists, NGOs and drag queens. About forty people, every one of them well known or working for our community. Each one of them said no. They were too scared or too busy.

My assistant is incredible. He is an artist and he knew that a day out with me would most certainly bring some kind of adventure with a dash of danger and uncertainty, which is what led him to say yes. He came on the hour-and-a-half train ride to the Essex coast to be there with me. On the train he called a friend to say we were going to Nigel’s constituency. A man near us told us we were on the wrong train and tried to get us off, saying we were going to a different Clacton. We were not. He had clocked us and wanted us off before we got there, using kindness as an excuse to trick us, yes really. I could believe it.

First impressions of Clacton Pride

It was twenty-seven degrees and I live as an artwork, so I decided to wear a crown and copper armour, partly for practical use in fear, in case something happened. I was not sure what to expect.

The first thing you see when you come out of the station is the bar, and on it an England flag with the word England written across it. England were also playing that day, double flags. At the station there is also a giant bee with the words “save the planet, time is running out”. We are in the constituency where Farage rules over these people and he does not believe in climate change. The first thing I noticed in the town was the speed camera sign covered in paint with a red cross. My first thought was, this is a cult.

The Pride is on the seafront. When I arrived there was a blues band playing and families were all over the front. It seemed like a family day out. The flats opposite were hanging Pride flags, progressive Pride flags, England flags and England football flags (there is a difference). Everyone seemed upbeat and happy.

Russell T Davies’s Tip Toe reflecting the times

A local lesbian lady told me I was stunning and said that if anyone touched me I should just call her and she would take them out. She mentioned the new Russell T Davies show Tip Toe and said it was very similar to her own life. She meant she was suspicious about the villain saying they were in the closet.

I met gay and lesbian couples. They told me they were happy Pride was happening. We met a mother and son on the beach and talked about Grindr, hook-up life and how good and bad it can be.

I met somebody who had never heard of PrEP, so I gave him a sex education class right there on Clacton beach and told him what it is and how it works. A man at Pride in 2026 who did not know that a daily pill can stop him getting HIV. Standing on the sand I thought this could become a whole TikTok phenomenon for our community sex education from Clacton Beach, although I should say I am not a doctor. I guess educating each other why Pride is good for the community.

Why Clacton Pride matters

The real family values were at Clacton Pride. There were gay and lesbian couples, transgender people, non-binary people and allies. That was the main takeaway I got. The families came out for their loved ones despite some supporting Reform. The friends and the allies came out for the people they care about in their community. It was beautiful. Everyone danced all day. It started with a children’s hour at eleven in the morning and opened into a whole family day for all ages. There was a drag act, which seems right in a town that has always been known for its pantomime dames. There was reggae, blues, pop and singing across the front all afternoon. People wore Union Flag bows in their hair and England football shirts and England flag tops. Surrounded by rainbows, the scene looked very familiar to a sculpture I made last year reclaiming the England flag and mixing it with the progressive Pride flag. The exhibition windows were attacked by the far right with ice picks and they left a racist message in coral-coloured lipstick on the window at the Bomb Factory in Marylebone.

We were told not to go past the RNLI because it could be dangerous, so we could only go that far. Surprisingly, down on the beach we found a message written in the sand: “Love is love.” Someone had come down to the shoreline and written it out by hand, in the open, in the constituency where I had been warned a day before that I might not be safe.

Where Clacton Pride bagan

The woman behind all of this is Cheryl Piper, an ally. She started Clacton Pride in 2020 after a post on a local spotted page, where she asked people what they would like to see in their area. She took the three most wanted answers and a Pride event was one of them, so she ran with it. It is now the second biggest event in the area. Pride was already close to her heart because her brother is gay.

Cheryl told me they apply for funding every year. Most years they are lucky and the National Lottery Community Fund comes through. They cover the extra costs with fundraising because putting on an event like this is not cheap. Since 2024 the fundraising in Clacton has stalled. Some acts have not wanted to perform because they see Clacton as a Reform town, even though the event got the place stripped of its title as the most homophobic town in the UK five years ago.

Like most Pride events, the festival gets threats. Cheryl told me that in 2024, while Farage was campaigning here, a video emerged of his team saying that once they got into power Pride would no longer be allowed. In the areas Reform now controls, council-funded Pride events have been cancelled this year. Clacton Pride has never been funded by the council despite pulling in thousands of visitors. Many of the companies and councils that do fund Prides over the world do it because they make a fortune in return. I witnessed the pink pound seems to be strong in Clacton. (I did a spot of shopping at the local artisan stores).

A display of defiance

Most Tendring District councillors support us. Many of them come and give up their own free time on the day to litter-pick for us, so we can keep the event as environmentally friendly as possible. Since Reform took over Essex County Council they have banned displays in all of their libraries. The library still came to our event yesterday, as they do every year.

I spoke to members of the community on the day. Someone said Farage has been here mainly in the pubs. Someone said he has visited a few of the businesses. “I know that is true because I know the owners. He does not stay long. Reform is bad for business in this town. We are seeing fewer holidaymakers come here and people are too scared.” Pride said they have reached out to pop stars, celebrities and other names. People are too scared to come to Clacton for Pride.

Reform UK backtracks on Pride

There used to be Reform councillors who came to Pride. That stopped this year. The thing people kept saying to me was that they only did it for the photo op. Someone said the Reform members here come in two forms. There are the ones who one hundred per cent get behind Pride and seem to only vote for them over immigration. There are the ones who hate Pride and everything else. “Nobody could really say why the Reform vote here was so high beyond the immigration issue, because Farage doesn’t do much here for us.” The same thing came back more than once, that people are falling for the rhetoric even when the facts are given. They know this because they know some of these voters. Some of them are related to them, which is disturbing. Because they know them, they also know that for a lot of them it really is just that one issue.

Pride have asked for three meetings with Farage and he never turned up. You only have to look at the comments against Pride on the local pages and match the names to the posts supporting Reform. “A lot of Reform members do come to our event. They will not call out the other members writing those abusive comments, which is disheartening.” Some of it reads to me as self-loathing, because the people writing it know exactly who they are turning on. “Everyone in this town knows someone in the community, including the people right at the top. It must be so disheartening for them to know how their own relatives and friends truly feel.”

A space for every letter of the LGBTQ+ community

We met the young people of the town. They were transgender, non-binary, bisexual, asexual, gay and lesbian, with their friends who did not fit in with the rest of the Clacton community. I asked how it was in the town for them and they told us they hang out in their own areas and that the only trouble they really get is usually from younger people who they suspected were probably in the closet and had not realised who they were yet. They mentioned that some of the guys walking around with the sunburnt heads were some of the nicer ones. They said we never judge how someone looks; some of the roughest people in the town were kind to the transgender people. In the same sentence we were warned maybe not in the town centre. There were a few local Reform supporters who wanted to ban Pride and crack down on LGBTQIA+ people, speaking out against gay marriage and LGBTQ+ adoption, and wanting to make transgender healthcare illegal, but later popped up in their Grindr DMs.

I do not think anything has really changed since I was younger. This is often the case in these small towns, as I know myself. Where I am from, a small village outside of Coventry, the same thing happened there. The biggest homophobes later were the ones messaging me on Gaydar (that’s what we used back then) asking me to meet them in fields. Many of us often have our gaydars switched on and were used to guys on the DL coming and asking us for sex. When I arrived in the small seaside town I was curious, so I switched on Tinder and Grindr. To say I was extremely surprised at how popular I was in Essex would be an understatement. I did not see any of those faces at Pride that day.

Why should Clacton be any different?

People are asking why I was in Clacton. The organiser asked me if I would like to come, and I kept my promise and said yes. I wanted to show solidarity with the community there, the way I do all over the world. Why should Clacton be any different? I was the first living sculpture in Qatar, so I could be the first living sculpture in Clacton, if Gilbert and George have not already beaten me to it. After all, art helps change culture and minds, and art is for everyone, including those who hate it. This is my job. Beyond the solidarity and the art, I had my own reasons, because over the past few years I have watched Reform and Nigel Farage on LGBTQ+ rights and women’s rights, and my concerns are serious ones.

Farage opposed same-sex marriage when it came in and has never reversed his position, telling LBC again in 2025 that the legislation was wrong. As UKIP leader he said he would not expel members who called homosexuality disgusting. He defended Boris Johnson over the “tank-topped bum boys” remark and Ann Widdecombe over her suggestion that science might one day cure people of being gay. He once argued that people living with HIV should be barred from entering the country. In 2025 he was accused by MPs of “vile homophobia” after he said the most stable relationships tend to be between men and women.

The harm is written into Reform policy, not just in his interviews. The manifesto claims transgender indoctrination is causing irreversible harm to children. It pledges to ban what it calls transgender ideology in schools, to halt social transitioning, to out any under-16 who questions their gender to their parents, and to mandate single-sex toilets and changing rooms. When Reform took control of ten councils in 2025, the party banned every flag but the Union Jack and the St George’s flag, which removed the Pride flag by design. During the 2024 Clacton campaign Channel 4 filmed Reform canvassers using racist and homophobic language, with one calling the Pride flag “degenerate”. This is what I knew before going to their town and it is why I went. People deserve safety and solidarity, and at times like this we need to stick together.

Pathetic fallacy rainbow

At the end of my lovely day out, when I got home, I posted online that I was at Clacton Pride, a photo of me looking like I was radiating a rainbow from my hand. As the day went on, a giant rainbow came out over the town. Everyone took out their phones and the whole seafront took photos. Behind it there was lightning, a few bolts going off against the colour, with that bit of delayed noise that comes a beat after the flash. It is the only analogy I have for Clacton and my day out by the seaside. People were fine with me being there in person. Others saw it later and made some ugly noises online on my Facebook page. Other members of the community who were not there that day could not believe I had been in their small little town. The rainbow was the thing everyone came out to look at. It brought people together walking along the seafront, and I think that is what our community does for the people who dislike us. When we are visible and we interact, people like us more. When we post photos of love, life or a proud existence as a human being, people get angry. The thunder and lightning felt like it was the handful of people who saw I had posted and came out angry at the rainbow. Yes, they were angry at the rainbow.

I’m looking forward to going back. Join me?