Inspired by events in America, Britain's Gay Liberation Front was formed in 1970 in a London School of Economics basement starting with a list of demands for equal treatment of homosexuals. Attendance quickly expanded beyond the small basement room into auditoriums and across the city, members included gay men and lesbians as well as many from the women’s liberation movements. The group operated with a committee but no hierarchy, everyone who wanted to speak could and ‘think-ins’ were held where smaller groups could discuss and work through ideas together.

In August 1971 their youth wing organised a march against the age of consent, which had been set as 21 for homosexual couples against 16 for heterosexual couples. It was one of the first LBGTQ+ protests in Britain and one of many that the Gay Liberation Front organised. In July 1972 they organised London’s first Pride March with 2,000 people celebrating and protesting on the streets of London. It was this march that would repeat yearly on the closest Saturday to the anniversary of Stonewall Riots and become London Pride.

After just two days in London, Gregg attended an SGLF (South London Gay Liberation Front) dance in Oval. Having grown exponentially, there were now localised GLF groups across the United Kingdom, campaigning on both a local and national level. Across London you could find many groups who explored different activities, like the Notting Hill group who centred on radical drag, and although the mass GLF meetings were no longer taking place the smaller groups were still coordinating together. Gregg found himself at the Gay Culture Society which met in the same basement room at the LSE in Holborn where the first GLF meetings had taken place. Here he became deeply involved with learning about gay culture and politics. As GLF members became friends and weekly meetings extended on into the night and days the community of the GLF became less formal and a closer community. “We had begun to intersperse our readings of Marxist and other texts with telling stories of our own personal, political and social developments in a more informal setting of a shared dinner. This style of “sharing and caring” came from the 60s cultural revolution that most of us had immersed ourselves in and was still part of our essence.”

Gregg and his friends would later produce Gay Left: A Socialist Journal Produced By Gay Men. The journal was made with the intention to introduce more socialism to the Gay movement whilst also bringing the gay liberation movement to socialism and labour movements.

The Gay Liberation Front believed it was important to protect gay men and lesbians in the workplace and Gregg would often work closely with Gay Lib and Trade Union groups. Gregg and the GLF saw that discrimination against a worker's sexuality was not protected and defended by trade unions, unlike race and gender it was seen as a personal choice, Gregg worked to change this and succeeded.

Alongside his campaigning, Gregg’s images tell a story of excited youth in London with a taste for adventure taking him around Europe. His images show friendship and blossoming love amongst ancient buildings and beaches. Gregg never saw his documentation as important and it is only with forty years since many of these photos were taken that he’s re-evaluating them. “Never thinking I was archiving, I was just taking photos but now it’s interesting 40 years later to see some of these images.”

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the first London Pride, organised by the Gay Liberation Front in 1972. Gregg’s photographs provide an intimate snapshot of one gay man’s experiences of the time and allow us to reflect that whilst Pride is huge celebration on summer calendar, it is rooted radical protest tradition.