The clenched fist on this badge was the symbol of the Gay Liberation Front.
The Gay Liberation Front was initially founded in the United States in the wake of the Stonewall Riots of 1969. Its members organised the first Pride march in New York City. They demanded an end to the oppression and persecution of lesbian and gay people, and an end to police brutality against the lesbian and gay community. The leaders of the movement included members of the trans community, most notably Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Ray Rivera who co-founded Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) which was a mutual aid project between trans sex workers and queer homeless youth.
In 1970, a parallel movement of the Gay Liberation Front was founded in the UK at the London School of Economics. It spread elsewhere in the UK, and organised a series of direct-action events including disruption of Mary Whitehouse’s Festival of Light.
The organisation in the UK splintered after 1973, but many of the rights fought for and won by the LGBT community in the UK can trace their roots back to the GLF. The organisations that spun off from the GLF included the Gay and Lesbian Switchboard, the Gay Times, the activist organisation Out!Rage founded by Peter Tatchell, and Gay Icebreakers, which produced a group which in turn founded “Gay’s The Word”, the first independent LGBT bookshop in the UK.