Irish Gay Rights Movement celebrates 50th anniversary with landmark Pride event
The Irish Gay Rights Movement (IGRM), also known as the Campaign for Homosexual Law Reform, was founded in Dublin by former openly gay Senator David Norris in 1974 and celebrated its 50th anniversary this June.
Less than a year after Norris played an instrumental role in the establishment of Ireland’s first Sexual Liberation Movement (SLM), the then-Trinity College student joined forces with a number of other LGBTQ+ students in Dublin to establish IGRM, a movement dedicated to campaigning for the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the Republic of Ireland.
Some of IGRM’s original members included Séan Connolly, a civil engineer from Roscommon, Clem Clancy, a supermarket worker from Dublin, and Edmund Lynch, a man who would go on to become a trailblazing LGBTQ+ advocate and archivist before his passing last November.
Former Irish Presidents Mary McAleese and Mary Robinson similarly worked with IGRM in its infancy.In the space of its first year as a campaigning force, IGRM held its first public meeting at the South County Hotel in Dublin in July of 1974, before setting up a dedicated office at 23 Lower Leeson Street that same year.
