Arrested 78-er returns to Mardi Gras

by Alexandra Beech
One of the original participants in Sydney’s Mardi Gras will return this year despite her concerns that much of the parade’s political roots have been lost.

Robyn Plaister helped plan the original 1978 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in commemoration of the Stonewall riots, in which the San Francisco gay community had first fought police discrimination. But that parade looked very different to today’s street party, she said.

‘A few people dressed up but it wasn’t like now. I mean, most of us were in our normal clothes. It was winter,’ Ms Plaister said.

But the changes made to the festival over the years had detracted from its political background.

‘It got taken over by some of the gay businesses in Oxford Street and they were just pushing their agenda,’ she said.

‘It still covers support, it covers visibility, it covers attitudinal change and it covers some political action. But not as much as what it was set up to do… I want it to be more than bums and tits I suppose.’

David Imrie, Chair of New Mardi Gras Ltd, said while the Mardi Gras became very much a party scene in the mid to late nineties, this year’s ‘Nations United’ theme was one of the most political in a decade or so.

‘We have all sorts of politically themed floats in this year’s parade. That’s what the parade is for ‘ to facilitate a political statement as much as a celebration,’ Mr Imrie said.

‘It’s always going to be an interesting combination of celebration and demonstration.’

Ms Plaister said the 1978 march was the first time gay protesters had been attacked by police en masse in Sydney, and the first time they really fought back as a group. She was one of the first protesters arrested.

‘I was tall and up the front. I think that’s why they picked on me,’ she said.

‘Up to that point it had been fun. We’d been enjoying ourselves, been laughing, singing along.’

The police were trying to rush through a van filled with protesters unable to walk in the march, Ms Plaister said, and pulled the driver from the van when he didn’t speed up.

As a policeman started to drive off in the van, protesters surrounded it and the police began making arrests. Ms Plaister and a friend walked away, but other marchers followed and the police saw this as a deviation from the planned route.

‘It was mainly the women they picked on to start with. I saw the police dragging women by their hair across the ground.’

As the policemen put Ms Plaister in the van, those inside charged at the door, and she was able to run into the crowd.

The protesters gathered bail money as 50 people were taken to Darlinghurst police station. ‘I have never seen so much money to be given in one hit, Ms Plaister said.’

‘We heard somebody screaming and we later found that that was Peter Murphy. He was taken into a single cell and beaten by three cops,’ she said.

Ms Plaister hasn’t regularly joined subsequent parades as politics was sidelined.

However, she will campaign this year for a clause protecting older couples to be included in the government’s legislation countering legal discrimination against same-sex couples. She said these couples have not enjoyed the advantages being classified as a couple can bring.