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“It’s a truly affirming and inspiring story, funny, honest and moving, and by the end of it you want to punch the air and cheer.” It made me laugh out loud, it surprised and delighted me at every turn, and it ultimately moved me to tears. He said of Pride: “This was a script I just couldn’t say no to. Pride, now in post-production and due to be released later this year, was directed by Tony award-winning Matthew Warchus, best known for staging theatre adaptions of Matilda, Lord of the Rings and Ghost. The stars, joined by Harry Potter actress Imelda Staunton, shot Pride towards the end of last year in Banwen, South Wales, and in London.īased on the true story of London based Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM), the film will look at how the two groups Margaret Thatcher tried to repress – the LGBT community and miners – joined together to fight back.
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#BBC PICTURE GAY PRIDE HAT MOVIE#
The link up between miners and lesbians and gays has now been turned into a movie with top British actors Bill Nighy (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Valkyrie, Notes on a Scandal) and Dominic West (Jimmy McNulty in The Wire and Richard Burton in the TV movie Burton&Taylor) starring in Pride. “The outstanding speaker in these meetings and rallies was Sian James (now the Swansea East MP), from our women’s support group, who spoke at the first London Gay pride March,with the Abernant NUM banner in pride of place at the head of the march.” And we will never be the same.”Īli (Alun) Thomas, a striking Blaenant miner in 1984, now leader of Neath Port Talbot Council, played a key part in the alliance, as he was sent to London to receive a cheque at a gay pub in London on behalf of the strikers and their families, the money having being raised by the gay community in the UK capital which was forming a considerable lobby group due to the AIDS issue.ĭulais Valley born Aberavon AM Hywel Francis, son of miners’ leader Dai Francis and author of History On Our Side: Wales and the 1984/85 Miners’ Strike, said: “In South Wales we wanted to broaden the appeal of the miners’ case and we did it through links with women’s groups, trade union groups like Brent NALGO, peace groups like CND, and the gays and lesbians, who became some of the main advocates of the miners’ cause. We know about blacks, and gays, and nuclear disarmament. It won’t change overnight, but now 140,000 miners know that there are other causes and other problems. “Now we will pin your badge on us, we will support you. Meant to undermine the striking miners and their new found allies, it backfired and only served to strengthen support from the broader community against the “Iron Lady”.Īt the concert, David Donovan, a South Wales miner, said in a speech to the miners’ new comrades: “You have worn our badge ’Coal not Dole’ and you know what harassment means, as we do. It was the Sun newspaper which at the time described the concert as a “Pits and Perverts” function.
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One of the highlights of the fund raising events was undoubtedly the “Pits and Perverts” concert at the Electric Ballroom where Bronski Beat headed the bill and where £5,650 was raised for the miners. The activists saw the miners as another group who were seemingly being ostracised by society, particularly after Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher labelled the strikers “the enemy within”.īy December 1984, the London group had collected over £11,000 by a mixture of pub, club and street collections, benefits, parties and other events and were able to donate a minibus to a miners’ support group in the Dulais Valley near Neath. Before the titanic struggle between miners and Margaret Thatcher, it would have been hard to imagine a colliers’ minibus running around South Wales with the slogan on its doors pronouncing : “This vehicle was donated by the Lesbians’ and Gay men’s miners’ support group.”īut in the summer of 1984, a group of gay and lesbian activists in London, at a time when the AIDS issue was seeing prejudices come to the fore, decided to raise money to support the families of striking miners.