"Pride": solidarity across the divide

A good number of film members met on 23rd September to discuss “Pride”, a 2014 film directed by Matthew Warchus and written by Stephen Beresford. 

Sally, who presented it to us, was prompted to suggest it by going to see the musical version at the National Theatre. Although she didn’t feel the music added much, she was reminded how amazing this true story of 1984-85 actually was, set against a backdrop of the national miners’ strike and the looming threat of AIDS. 

The film, which tells the story of a group of London-based gay and lesbian activists who decide to support striking miners in South Wales, achieved nominations for three BAFTAs: Best British Film, Best Supporting Actress for Imelda Staunton, and Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer. It also won the Queer Palm award at Cannes. It has a wonderful cast, including Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, Andrew Scott, Dominic West, and a very young George McKay. 

The plot centres around Mark Ashton (Ben Schnetzer), a real-life gay activist who realises that the police are no longer harassing them, because they’re harassing striking miners across the country. Together with friends, they decide to show solidarity by collecting money to support a specific mining village. After many rebuffs on the phone, one of the group, Gethin (Andrew Scott), who is from North Wales, suggests they stick a pin in a map of the South Wales coal field. He and his actor partner Jonathan (Dominic West) run the “Gay’s the Word” bookshop (still there in Marchmont Street, Bloomsbury), where the group are based.  They are eventually accepted by a South Wales village, due to the tolerance of one of their leaders (Dai Donovan), and notably by the Women’s Support Group, led by Hefina (Imelda Staunton).  Thus the “Lesbian and Gays Support the Miners” group is born.  Eventually, the group are invited to visit the village. Many of the miners are at best suspicious and at worst hostile, and one of the women, Maureen, whose husband has died in a mining accident, is frankly antagonistic and undermining (no pun intended).  The group, however, gain favour when Jonathan, well versed in harassment law, explains that the ongoing detention of local miners under such laws is illegal. This results in one of the local women getting them released, and gradually the villagers thaw and are welcoming. A memorable scene is when Jonathan hits the miners’ club dance floor in flamboyant style and is immediately surrounded by women – two of the miners then ask him for dancing lessons.

Maureen’s antagonism is further complicated by the fact that her late husband’s brother Cliff (Bill Nighy) is gay, a fact that he quietly confesses to Hefina only for her to confirm she has known ‘since 1968’. Cliff tells Maureen that her reactions are not what his late brother would have wanted. Maureen is not persuaded, and responds by informing a tabloid newspaper of the ‘goings-on’, which forces the local National Union of Mineworkers to have a vote on whether to go on accepting the LGSM’s support.  Meantime the LGSM and Women’s Support Group are in London, where Mark has organised a ‘Pits and Perverts’ concert to raise a large sum for a new minibus for the miners.  Featuring Bronski Beat, the concert is a huge success. The absence of Dai and the women allows the NUM to illegally bring the meeting forward, and they vote against accepting further support.

There are bitter-sweet endings to the film, both on a personal and national level.

Mark bumps into a former lover, who implies he is dying of AIDS – a chilling moment for Mark and ultimately for us: it is explained in a post-script that Mark did die of AIDS just two years later at the age of 26.

Gethin, who is alienated from his family, visits his mother in North Wales, and there is a reconciliation.

Joe, a young member of the group (aka ‘Bromley’), is still living at home, and is not ‘out’ with his family. Unfortunately, his parents discover newspaper cuttings, etc., in his bedroom, and there is a confrontation with them, and a final leaving scene at a family christening. He turns 21 – the legal age for male gay sex (female gay sex was never acknowledged by the law) – and leaves home to start a new life.

Jonathan remained HIV positive for years, without developing AIDS, and at the time of the film, was celebrating his 65th birthday.

On a political level, events proved devastating for mining villages. The National Union of Mineworkers lost the national strike, and miners gradually returned to work. Slowly, pits were closed and the British coal industry gradually faded away. 

In the UK, AIDS resulted in the deaths of thousands of gay men, as well as men and boys with haemophilia, and women infected by sexual partners or blood transfusions.

On a much more positive note, in 1985 the South Wales miners turned up in bus loads to support the Gay Pride march in London – a very moving end to the film.  A further postscript is that the Labour Party eventually enshrined gay and lesbian rights into its constitution, largely due to a block vote by the National Union of Mineworkers! The changes to the laws on gay rights from 1967 onwards, and the parallel cultural acceptance, have been among the biggest changes to our society in our lifetimes. 

Reviews of the film at the time were largely positive, though Nigel Andrews in the Financial Times criticised both its political correctness and the ‘cultural rebranding of the miners’ strike as a heroic crusade, rather than a Luddite stand for (inter alia) union demagoguery, greenhouse gas and emphysema’. 

The group all agreed that this was a remarkable story of two seemingly disparate communities finding common cause in fighting state control and police brutality.  We recognised that in working communities, it would have been generally difficult to come out as gay, with perhaps more tolerance in London, though not with integration, and in certain professions, such as the theatre. We remembered the truth of the alienation from their families that young gay men and women experienced, though we also felt a grain of sympathy for Joe’s mother, who was tearfully trying to persuade him away from what was going to be a very hard life of prejudice, secrecy, and as it turned out, major health risks. We remembered the chilling health warnings about AIDS on TV, and the social taboo of being HIV positive, which some saw as retribution for the promiscuous gay lifestyle. Sally pointed us to a recent book “A Family Matter”, by Claire Lynch, set in 1982, about the court battle of a lesbian woman to obtain custody of her child after her divorce from her husband; she lost.   

We reflected on similarities with other films set against the backdrop of the miners’ strike –  “Billy Elliot” and “Brassed Off” in particular.  The key supportive role of women in mining communities was also well reflected in “Brassed Off”, although miner father/son relationships were more varied, ranging from supportive of his son’s ballet career in “Billy Elliot” to neglectful in favour of his brass band, in “Brassed Off”. We were left a little unclear as to the events in the background which resulted in bus-loads of South Wales miners appearing at the 1985 Gay Pride march – it would have been interesting to be a fly on the wall when the union officials discussed this.  

We had a broader discussion about the miners’ strike, now at a distance of 40+ years, and how adversarial it was, with uncompromising leaders on both sides – Margaret Thatcher and Arthur Scargill. A document written in 1968 ‘In Place of Strife’ by the Labour Minister Barbara Castle, and proposing alternative ways of dealing with employee demands, had been rejected in the mid-70s by the Labour Prime Minister Jim Callaghan. 

At the same time, there were increasing links between UK trade unions and communist groups, and therefore perhaps a fear within government that communist infiltration would increase – hence the power of the unions had to be crushed.  Margaret Thatcher referred to them as ‘the enemy within’. Mark Ashton himself was Chair of Youth Communism, and the very left-wing group within Labour called Militant Tendency were practically Trotskyites. The UK, USA and USSR were all courting different factions and ‘neutral’ countries. Indeed, it was the Russians who coined the term ‘Iron Lady’, for Margaret Thatcher – one she was more than happy to adopt. Arthur Scargill raised the ante by the use of secondary picketing of power stations, so counteracting government strategies to prevent electricity cuts by building up coal supplies. Equally badly, the government created no alternative employment for mining communities – so the strike did become a heroic struggle for livelihoods and identity. Nowadays, we see mining as a dangerous, unpleasant and polluting industry, but at the time, there seemed to be no alternatives.

A further angle to the film was the role of Bronski Beat, and the wider music industry, in supporting gay rights, and in developing political connections. Founder members of the band were friends of Mark Ashton, and their album was titled “Age of Consent” (’18 for straights, 21 for gays’), with a track “Smalltown Boy” – like Joe/Bromley in the film. A 1983 documentary, “Red Wedge”, highlighted links between music and politics, with the leftwing singer Billy Bragg using Woody Guthrie lyrics to create new political songs.

Our attention was also drawn to a photojournalist, Brenda Prince, who covered not only the miners’ strike, but also the Greenham Common protests, as part of a female co-operative of photographers, “Format”. 

We agreed that “Pride” had been an excellent choice, with, as always, a fruitful and wide-ranging discussion.  

The next meeting will be on Wednesday 7th October when Mark will introduce the 2012 British comedy-drama “Quartet”.