MANCHESTER PRIDE INVESTIGATION

IN THE BEGINNING

As the event celebrates its 18th birthday, let's begin with a quick look back at the very first, on August Bank Holiday weekend, 1990.

It's 1990 and the first August Bank Holiday event on the cobbles of Canal Street

Over the years, Manchester's August Bank Holiday gay event has been known as the Carnival of Fun, Mardi Gras, GayFest, Manchester Europride and Manchester Pride. It started off 18 years ago with the sole purpose of raising money for HIV and AIDS causes, including the ward at Monsall hospital.

But things have changed. Here is a quote from the Charity Commission, which I received from them in writing in May 2007:

Who is Marketing Manchester? On its website it describes itself as 'the tourist board' and ‘a company limited by guarantee’.

THE SET-UP: 2003-2006

In 2003, it was decided that charities would sell tickets and collect money under the name Operation Fundraiser and that (a very large) part of this money would be handed over to cover the costs of running the Pride event. To all intents and purposes, the money was handed over to Marketing Manchester, although a 'not-for-profit' company had been set up in 2003 called Manchester Europride.

Eventually it came to light that Manchester Europride didn't even have its own business accounts. It shared them with Marketing Manchester -- the tourist board.

In 2003, £200,000 of ticket and bucket collection money was handed over by Operation Fundraiser to Manchester Europride (Marketing Manchester). Operation Fundraiser deducted its own running costs (£59,520) from what was left and gave out the remainder (£129,426) to good causes.

In 2004, the not-for-profit company was renamed Manchester Pride and, being a 'new' company, it enjoyed extra time to file its business accounts.

From 2004 onwards, 50% of all ticket and bucket money was handed over by Operation Fundraiser, which then took its own substantial running costs out of the 50% that was left.

I estimate that in the years 2003 to 2006, 30% - 35% of ticket and collection bucket money reached a good cause each year after all the costs.

FAT CATS

Meanwhile, big business was doing very nicely thank you. The official estimate from Manchester City Council for extra income to businesses thanks to Pride was £20m in 2003 (mentioned here and also here in the Manchester Evening News) and the current estimate stands at £22m each year.

Due to the VAT scandal (see below) Manchester Pride 2006 raised the lowest charity amount (£65,000) for many years. While the city's businesses made tens of millions for themselves as usual.

In 2006, Operation Fundraiser's position became untenable after HM Customs and Excise decided that Pride was no longer a charity event and hadn't been since 2003. Pride was charged back VAT (sales tax) of £56,000 on the years 2004, 2005 and 2006. Needless to say, the businesses didn't cough up, it came out of the 2006 charity money, leaving just £65,000 for good causes.

Don't believe the devious organisers, who try to blame this on the tax man. It is the organisers of Pride themselves and the city council that allowed our event to stray so far from its original charity fundraising purpose.

MISLEADING LEAFLETS

There was also increased scrutiny of Operation Fundraiser's misleading publicity material.

Such as this leaflet which supposedly shows 'how your money was spent' and a 100% pie chart. However it actually starts out with a net proceeds figure, after 50% of Operation Fundraiser's income had been handed over to Manchester Pride/Marketing Manchester to cover costs. The sum that was handed over was £165,596, the same as the net proceeds figure. Read more...

This devious leaflet made the final charity amount look like a larger percentage of income than it really was and made 'expenditure' look smaller.

FROM 100% TO 30%

In 2002, one of the charities involved in Operation Fundraiser, George House Trust, told the public: '100% of what is donated over the weekend will go to charities with noting (sic) deducted for administrative expenses or the cost of the event.'

In fact, the very next year (2003), a staggering £200,000 of the ticket and collection bucket money that had been collected by Operation Fundraiser was handed over to Manchester Europride to cover costs. Plus Operation Fundraiser spent a further £59,520 on, guess what? Its own costs.

In the publicity for 2003, the public was told that 'all ticket sales for the weekend go directly to Operation Fundraiser'.

Hardly surprisingly then, that many people in Manchester are confused and even now believe that that 'all' Operation Fundraiser money went to good causes.

In some leaflets, Operation Fundraiser used the word 'raised' to mean the money left after costs had been taken off.

In other leaflets it used the word 'raised' to mean before costs had been taken off.

What the jargon phrase 'community futures' means in the screengrab above, I don't know, but 50% of Operation Fundraiser money was certainly not reaching charitable causes (other than Operation Fundraiser itself) in the end. The exact percentage is difficult to work out, but I think 30% - 35%.

QUITE A COINCIDENCE

In 2003, Operation Fundraiser's own costs were £59,520 and in 2004 they were £79,982. A 30% increase in costs in one year and leaving a final figure for good causes in 2004 that is just £1,736 more than the previous year.

Quite a coincidence and many people have pointed out that for four years (2003-2006) the charity amount remained much the same each year while ticket prices rose, but costs did too. A cynic might wonder if costs were being arranged around a set amount to be left for charity.

CHARITY AMOUNTS

2007: £95000 (pay event)
2006: £65,000 after paying £56,000 VAT (pay event)
2005: £120,772 (pay event)
2004: £129,426 (pay event)
2003: £127,690 (pay event)
2002: £65,000 (free event)
2001: £70,000 or £100,000 - reports vary (free event)
2000: £105,000 (free event)
1999: zero raised (pay event - the first year with the ‘pledgeband’/wristband)

To cover up the small charity amounts and further confuse people, they began to add together several years in their publicity. As in this poster, which shows a total of all the amounts from the years 2003-2006. The total shown on the poster is some £24,000 more than the figures I've quoted above for those years. I don't know why that is.

Is all the above just cock-up or is it conspiracy? Certainly, tricky and contradictory text and confusing leaflets often gave the public only half the story and it's hard to imagine that wasn't deliberate. Questions were ignored completely or attempts made to fob me off. 'Why do you want to know?' I was asked on one occasion.

The whole arrangement from 2003 until 2006 seems to have been designed to use the good names of the charities to squeeze the maximum amount of cash from the public.

Most of which was then handed over to Manchester Pride/the tourist board and paid out in costs to businesses that supplied various services.

How many of us realised, when putting a pound into an Operation Fundraiser collection bucket, that more than two-thirds of that money went to cover 'costs' and not to a good cause?

But don't expect to read anything other than a glowing retrospective of Operation Fundraiser in the gay press.

A CHANGE IN 2007

In 2007 things changed. Operation Fundraiser 'hung up its buckets', before things got even hotter for them, and Manchester Pride became a charity in its own right. However some things didn't change. The current Chair of Manchester Pride is also Chief Executive of Marketing Manchester...

Again one of the lowest-ever amounts was raised for good causes in 2007: just £95,000 from income of £803,000. This was despite tickets being at the highest prices ever: some people paid £18.

Pride 2007 costs were £708,000. Another way of looking at costs is as money that is paid out to other businesses: security guards, equipment hire, performers, printers, street cleaners. Lots of people are now on this lucrative cash-stuffed gravy train.

Compare those £708,000 costs in 2007 to the reported cost of £106,000 for the free-to-enter Mardi Gras back in 2002.

12% OF TOTAL INCOME WENT TO GOOD CAUSES IN 2007

One body (Manchester Pride) now deals with all the income (tickets, collections, sponsors, advertisers etc) and all the costs.

12% of Manchester Pride's total income went to good causes in 2007.

To make a like-for-like comparison with previous years, if we reckon the typical 35,000 tickets were sold, at an average of £14 each, it comes to £490,000 from tickets.

If gross income from tickets was £490,000, then £95,000 for good causes would represent about 19.5% of that ticket income figure. Which must be one of the lowest percentages ever.

BUSINESSES PROFIT MASSIVELY WHILE GIVING LITTLE

Costs are out of control and businesses contribute very little compared to the huge amount of money they make.

Just one example: in 2004 the UniChallenge club night sold 4,500 tickets at £20 each. Making the promoters £90,000 just from admissions alone. A figure that is nearly as much as the total raised for good causes from the entire Pride event in 2007 and almost 50% more than was raised for charity in 2006.

In 2004, UniChallenge gave a pitiful £1 from each ticket to Operation Fundraiser.

However, as already mentioned, about 70% of Operation Fundraiser's income ended up being spent on the costs of running the Pride event and its own costs that year.

So, after costs, probably 30p from each of those £20 UniChallenge tickets reached a final good cause in 2004.

It is even less now: just 12% of Manchester Pride's income reached a good cause in 2007. That's 12p from each £22 UniChallenge ticket! Quite obscene when you think about it, although other club nights seem to give nothing at all.

This year (2008) a Unichallenge is £23 a ticket with still just a £1 donation to Manchester Pride. Compare that to Monday 26 August 1991 when Rockies gave 50% of its door money to good causes...

Events should start giving their donations direct to a charity and not to Manchester Pride, which spends 88% of income on costs.

THE CHARITY COMMISSION

In late 2005 I contacted The Charity Commission and they started an investigation into Operation Fundraiser and Manchester Pride.

Over the following months I sent further information and, each time, the Charity Commission replied saying that it could not comment on an ongoing investion. Which was fine, as I was happy to wait.

However, by February 2007, there was still no conclusion and I hadn't heard anything from them for a year. So I wrote again.

To cut the story short, it turned out that they had 'lost' the file of their investigation.

I was put under pressure to discuss the whole thing on the telephone, rather than have anything in writing. However, eventually, I did receive an email from them in May 2007. This explained that the file was still missing and 'in the meantime' they could only confirm their 'recollections of the case'.

The Charity Commission promised to contact me when it found the file. But more than a year later I am still waiting. If you think this all sounds suspicious and unprofessional, I would agree with you.

However, there was some result. Operation Fundraiser was told that the set-up had to be made clearer to the public as it was 'not the case that the price of a ticket for the Pride event goes directly to Operation Fundraiser' as they had claimed in publicity. Also that they should account for the income gross and not net.

HUGELY EXAGGERATED CROWD FIGURES

These false figures are sent out to the press who publish them apparently without any analysis or thought.

This article from the Manchester Evening News claims that '300,000' were expected in Manchester for Europride in 2003. However Operation Fundraiser only collected £387,210 from wristband sales and collection buckets that year. There was no entry to the fenced off gay village without a £10 wristband/ticket. So the total amount collected suggests that, in reality, less than 39,000 tickets were sold -- little more than one tenth of the 'expected' number.

My analysis of the rather short parade route (just 2,270 yards/1.3 miles long in 2007) suggests that probably only 50,000 people are on the narrow city streets watching it. Many of whom have also bought a ticket to get into the gay village. So where were the 300,000 people in 2003? The answer is, they never existed.

There are numerous examples of the crowd figures being grossly exaggerated.

But don't take my word for it! On the page linked below there are maps and links to satellite images on Google Maps, so you can measure the parade route and the width of Manchester's Victorian streets for yourself.

The streets are only about 15 yards wide from building to building along almost the entire parade route. The crowd figures the organisers and some sections of the media quote (often 200,000 or 250,000) are physically impossible, even if the full width of every street (pavement and road) was filled with people along the entire parade route. Here is the evidence.

PROPPING UP TOURISM AND THE EXISTING ORGANISERS

These fake figures are intended to make Manchester Pride seem much more popular than it really is. Indeed, in this PDF document, the North West Regional Development Agency describes Manchester 'Gay' Pride as 'one of the biggest Pride events in Europe'.

However Berlin Pride claims to attract 400,000 people, while Manchester Pride sells only about 35,000 tickets and I reckon 50,000 watch the parade (many of them ticket buyers). The BBC says tens of thousands at the parade and the Associated Press puts the figure at 45,000. You see the problem for Manchester's desperate marketeers and tourist chiefs...

In June 2008, Trading Standards asked Manchester Pride about its published attendance figures. Pride admitted it could not substantiate them and agreed to remove from its website references to 200,000 or 250,000 people watching the Saturday parade.

Were these figures a mistake or a deliberate attempt to mislead the public over the years?

The organisers had been aware that many of their crowd figures were physically impossible and therefore untrue since at least February 2007, when the issue was brought to their attention. However the existing pages remained online and the same old inflated numbers were even published in new press releases and on web pages for 2008. They continued to mislead the public and advertisers for sixteen months until Trading Standards investigated.

The hype is a desperate attempt to promote the city of Manchester regardless of any other considerations (such as honesty) and to hold onto control of Pride. Powerful vested interests (business owners, politicians and the city council) want to prevent debate on the future of Pride and the discussion of possible alternatives that might be less commercial.

As mentioned, in 2003, Manchester Europride (as it was then known) didn't have its own business accounts. They were part of Marketing Manchester's accounts. That year, Operation Fundraiser handed over £200,000 of money it had collected from the public (in the form of ticket sales and bucket collections) to Manchester Europride/Marketing Manchester to cover the costs of running the event.

Manchester Pride and Marketing Manchester (the tourist board) shared an office until mid-2007. Not just an office, but the same telephone, fax number and same email addresses.

THE FUTURE

There is a clear conflict of interest in the tourist board being so closely involved in the running of our Pride event.

Manchester needs a Pride that is not mainly a tourist attraction and profit machine for big business and the city council. One that is free, more inclusive of all LGBT people, not based entirely around alcohol and which raises more for good causes. There needs to be transparency and honesty, which are seriously lacking at the moment.

PHOTOS & VIDEO

Videos and photos from Pride 2004 can be found here. Pride 2005 here. I boycotted Pride 2006 because of the £50 charge for HIV charities to take part in the parade that year. 2007 video coming soon.

Contains swearing which some viewers may find offensive!

Here's a video about the 2007 Manchester Pride poster, which didn't include the words gay, lesbian, bi or transgender. However there was room to include the logos of Manchester City Council and West Properties -- the developers behind the controversial tower that is about to overshadow the gay village and which a large proportion of the local LGBT community is against.

COMING SOON

The candlelight AIDS vigil on the final night of Pride has always been a key event and, to some people, the most important part.

Our documentary video, filmed at Manchester Pride 2007, shows how people without Pride tickets were made to queue on the street for 40 minutes to get into the Vigil, while ticket holders walked in ahead of them. Some of these people were there to remember lost friends, lovers and relatives and they were treated with disrespect.

You'll also see on-camera how, despite years of denials by the Pride organisers, some security guards tell people there is no entry to the fenced-off gay village for the Vigil unless they buy a Pride ticket.

Plus, see how the security that the ticket is supposed to pay for, was seriously lacking, just two months after the Glasgow airport terrorist attack. No surprise, as many people believe that the fences at Pride are as much about penning LGBT people in beside various businesses (many of which increase their prices during the weekend) as they are about keeping undesirables out.

OTHER LINKS

Now Meet the Real Gay Mafia By Chris Morris and published in The New Statesman in 1999.

DOCUMENTS

If you have any old magazine or newspaper articles, press releases, leaflets or other documents that show the attendance figures or the charity amounts (especially from the years 1990-2002), I would love to hear from you. Contact me here.

CONTACT

The information above and on the rest of my website is presented in good faith and a lot of time and effort has been spent to make it accurate to the best of my knowledge and ability. But don't take my word for it, do your own calculations on ticket sales, charity amounts and the parade distance and crowd numbers.

Also, you could contact Manchester Pride, the Charity Commission, Manchester City Council, Trading Standards or your MP. You can also email me here if you have a comment, question or information to share (in confidence).