John Coffey and Bernardo Marti

THERE is a conference speech clip which loyalist Labour members like to share every now and again: the one where Gordon Brown reels off the list of achievements he felt his party had made in government.

With each reform, the applause for the then prime minister gets louder.

Despite 13 years in power, it was always a puzzle, then, why the party could not put ending the long wait for same-sex marriage onto that list. It was the Liberal Democrats in the coalition government who raced in to take the credit for pushing it through the parliamentary agenda.

Brown, before, had mumbled something about how it was all too “intimately bound up with questions of religious freedom”, but time has shown that doesn’t really wash.

People with a religious conviction on the issue cannot be allowed to dictate to wider society rules which leave others feeling excluded.

Campaigners were frustrated with New Labour and look! – 10 years on – the world has not collapsed because two people of the same sex get married in Westminster City Hall every weekend.

We celebrate the 10th anniversary of The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act coming to fruition in today’s issue as a testament to it being the right thing to do.

Westminster City Council was among the very first local authorities to marry a same-sex couple a few minutes after midnight at Mayfair Library, on March 29 2014.

John Coffey and Bernardo Marti, who lived in Pimlico, were wed about 20 seconds after midnight.

Mr Coffey, then 52, a television producer and director, and Mr Marti, then 47, a brand stylist for a gardening business, said they hoped to make history twice by becoming not only the first same-sex couple to wed but also to do so in a double ceremony with friends who are straight.

Mr Coffey had said: “We were thinking of a civil partnership. Then when the whole thing about gay marriage came in. It meant more, because of the equality thing. Growing up in London, I can still remember the little white stickers on the tube station saying: ‘Are you an isolated homosexual? If so ring…’ It’s very stark. To have gone from that to this in my lifetime is, to me, astonishing. Five years ago I would never have believed it.”

A change in law had lifted the 8am-6pm restrictions for weddings, allowing people to get married at registered venues 24/7.

This week the happy couple told me: “We never dreamed that the day would come when we could get married as two gay men. Thank you to everyone who made that happen and afforded us so much happiness. We want this for the whole world one day.”

And the registrar that officiated at the ceremony, Tommy Hanover said: “Ten years ago, today at 10pm, I left my flat in Maida Vale and walked through central London to Mayfair Library to conduct the first same-sex wedding in the UK. It was a beautiful ceremony, and the couple were legally married 20 seconds after the strike of midnight. Our general office confirmed we were the first and it was beyond thrilling to be a part of this milestone. Even more rewarding was the realisation that we could finally celebrate the love of same-sex couples through marriage.”

John and Bernardo are looking forward to marking the 10 years milestone this weekend, with a meal at their favourite restaurant in sunny Spain.

Happy anniversary John and Bernardo!