To help celebrate Stonewall’s Rainbow Laces campaign, we spoke to Pride of Irons’ Jo Bailey, Chair of the official West Ham United LGBTQ+ Inclusion Supporters’ Group, existing to support LGBTQ+ fans, their friends and families.
The group was founded in early 2015 after it was perceived there needed to be an LGBT presence within the Club.
Pride of Irons want LGBTQ+ football fans (and non-fans too!) to know that West Ham are an inclusive Club where anyone, regardless of gender, age, race or sexual orientation, can feel welcome and included, and enjoy being part of the West Ham family.
Jo, how did the Pride of Irons group originally form?
Back in 2015, our founder Jim Dolan, who is a Season Ticket Holder, was at a game with his boyfriend at the time, and there was someone who was being very offensive. Instead of challenging it and calling it out, he decided to put something on Twitter (now X) asking if anyone wanted to be part of a group, and he got a lot of interest. He got in touch with the Club at one of the earliest possible stages, and that’s how Pride of Irons was born. As they say, the rest is history.
Can you tell us a bit about the group’s aims and objectives?
We do so much more than providing a safe space. We do a lot more work behind the scenes, such as inclusion and collaborations with other groups. One of our main aims is that we believe in giving people a second chance, so it’s about ensuring there are education projects together with Kick It Out, who work with fans who have received bans for discriminatory language or behaviour and give them a second chance. There’s a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes.
How much of a change have you seen in attitudes towards acceptance and inclusion of the LGBTQ+ community since Stonewall’s Rainbow Laces campaign began back in 2013?
Campaigns aren’t just visibility; they start conversations as well. People in the stadium chat to me because they recognise me due to campaigns, and they have more understanding. Attitudes have changed without a question, and that’s thanks to clubs such as West Ham, who ensure that the visibility is there and that we have more content. For example, we as the Pride of Irons have a voice on the Fan Advisory Board, while we also work with Inclusive Irons and Any Old Irons, which is just as vital.
To highlight LGBTQ+ fans and have a dedicated Rainbow Laces fixture is essential, and that’s what we’re here for on the most basic level - to help provide safe spaces for fans, their friends and family. There’s still more to do, and often it feels like we take two steps forward and then one back, because there is a lot of hate on social media in particular. We’ve seen improvement and a lot of clubs doing more around awareness, but there is more to be done and that’s why campaigns such as Rainbow Laces are vital.
You’ve got your ten-year anniversary coming up soon. How much do you believe you have achieved since starting out, and what are your plans to celebrate that milestone?
We want to celebrate it by providing more visibility and more inclusion. We’re going to have a little bit of a party as well because it’s a bunch of hard-working volunteers who have also had to put up with a lot of hate.
We’re hoping to do something with the Club as well to celebrate our collaboration on work such as Rainbow Laces and thank them for listening to us. We want to celebrate all different aspects of the LGBTQ+ community.
It’s not about achieving. We won’t achieve anything until we don’t exist - that’s our goal. I’m proud of what our committee and members do, but it’s a case of we won’t be happy until there’s no longer a need for Pride of Irons and discrimination has been completely eradicated. I’m always hoping that that might be the case one day.
You’ve provided education sessions for the Club and staff. Can you give us an insight into that and the importance of it?
We’ve been doing awareness sessions with the Club for quite some time, but we recently had our biggest session with the SLOs (Supporter Liaison Officers) at West Ham this year. We wanted it to be a more open dialogue and open questions session to really find out how other people feel. It was a really constructive piece of work that we would like to carry on with the Club to help spread awareness.
It’s just as important to spread awareness at a men’s game as it is to spread awareness at a women’s game. We need the Pride of Irons flag to fly at every West Ham game, and it’s imperative that people have awareness of the LGBTQ+ community and the fans from West Ham United.
You’re also conducting a briefing with the stewards at a women’s game, having done similar with the men’s first team. Can you give us an insight into the topics that are spoken about?
What we do is give a bit of insight into what the Pride of Irons do behind the scenes, because we’re not just about going to games to support the teams in the stands; it’s also about the work we do off the pitch. It’s important to make them aware of the work we do with the Football Supporters’ Association and organisations like Her Game Too.
It’s also important to make them aware of the facts as well, such as that 29 per cent of sports fans think that homophobic comments about players are considered acceptable, and advise them of some people’s stories. The stewards also need to be made aware of how things haven’t improved as much as they should have, and overall just increasing that awareness.
To find out more about Pride of Irons, or to get involved click HERE.
