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INTERVIEWER: What were you like as a kid?
I was very, very happy, go lucky.
I would never ever take this make-up off.
You would catch me running around the neighbourhood,
skateboarding in a skirt.
It's quite rare that, isn't it?
Oh definitely, yeah.
I mean, not a lot of parents, um you know, don't really want
to let their kids express themselves in that kind of way.
It's not always been easy.
I mean, there's always gonna be people
who don't really like, you know, you.
I was walking home from school one day and this woman saw me
and I guess she really didn't like
my outfit that I was wearing at the time.
And she just decided to spit at me.
Which is kind of rude, very rude.
Like, I'm not harming anyone.
So, you know, my parents already said, you know,
"As long as you're not hurting anybody,
you can do what you want to do.'
Oh wow!
Wow!
MAN: What do you think, Bea?
I think I quite like it.
It's like the Yellow Brick Road. The Yellow Brick Road.
It is. That's exactly what I was thinking.
MARGARET THATCHER: "Children who need to be taught to respect
traditional moral values are being taught that
they have an inalienable right to be gay.'
Has anyone seen a drag queen before?
Yeah, I have seen loads.
Jacob, have you ever seen a drag queen?
No. You haven't?Never.
NEIL KINNOCK: What we're witnessing is an even greater abyss of division
than that which we witnessed previously.
The violence and intimidation we have seen should never have happened.
It is the work of extremists. It is the enemy within.'
WOMAN: (ON PHONE) A homosexual act is unnatural.
It's perverted and it's incredibly filthy.
Shut it down!
Shut it down! Shut it down!
Two groups of protestors clashed outside a children's drag story time
in Forest Hill this morning.
TAYCE: Some people think that what we're doing today is wrong.
It feels like things are starting to go backwards.
So today, I am showing them that we will not be stopped
and that there's nothing to be afraid of.
I'm going to take these kids to another world...
..and tell them a story with an important lesson.
That we're stronger together.
Oh, oh, oh, oh!
What is going on over here?
Hello, hello, hello.
ALL: Hi. Yeah!
Did somebody call for a drag queen?
ALL: Yeah.
I've got some juicy gossip for you, OK. Are you ready?
MAN: If you know what a coal mine looks like,
get a job in Britain's modern mining industry,
and get more out of life.
# Hey there, miner,
# Living life the way you want it to be
# Come on now, miner,
# Let's mine you Lots of money and security! #
Be a miner.
Ask at your local pit or job centre in South Wales.
Can anybody tell me what a miner is?
Mmmm... You, my lovely.
These miners were mining coal.
Yes! Well done, baby. Well done.
One of the big places where coal mining happened
was in my ends, gorgeous South Wales.
And this is where our story begins.
Mining was hard, scary work.
And even though there was so much risk involved,
the men that did it, loved it.
I think I was like most people.
I just wanted to go to work
and do a fair day's work for a fair day's pay, really.
Well, my father, all of my uncles,
my grandfather, my step-grandfather, they all worked in the colliery.
I remember as a child sleeping in my grandmother's,
which has got quite a steep hill outside it.
And early in the morning,
the colliery's siren would go to call the shift,
and I remember the hobnail boots of men walking down the hill, you know.
But do you know, there was something comforting about it, really.
One got used to the idea that they would always be there.
(CHILD SHOUTS)
SIAN JAMES: Everybody knew everybody else's business.
The land of the moving curtain.
(LAUGHS) You know, all those lace nets were twitching away.
I was a very happy housewife.
As long as my mother could come and visit me
and not find any evidence of dust. (LAUGHS)
You know, literally, "Ah. Hm.'
You know, not a word was said.
So, I grew up in an atmosphere
where you did your best by your neighbours
and your neighbours did their best by you.
And that community spirit was very, very safe.
Without even realising it, you were absorbing a sense of community.
You were absorbing a sense of... of pride.
All the miners paid a contribution and we built these welfare halls
and they became centres of education.
They had libraries.
But they became centres of enjoyment,
and the focus of these communities.
(LAUGHTER & CHATTER)
If you are a miner, everybody's having a couple of pints,
nearly every night.
Every day, you'd have a laugh. Every day.
Yeah, there was always banter going on.
I could name everybody down- down the street,
from the bottom all the way up.
And that would be about 60 houses or more.
(MALE VOICE CHOIR SINGING)
Male voice choirs, they were very strong in those mining communities.
The sheer joy, if you like,
of going in and listening to a male voice choir.
That was something that pleased the community.
Concerts happened usually within the Welfare Hall.
(MALE VOICE CHOIR SINGING)
# ..Loose the folds asunder
# Flag we conquer under!
# The placid sky now bright on high
# Shall launch its bolts in thunder!
I think there was that brief period of time,
between the Second World War and Margaret Thatcher,
when there was a feeling of optimism.
And it was, in many ways, an idyllic upbringing, really.
And we did feel as though everything was possible.
# Freedom, God and Right! #
The only cloud on the horizon was
Margaret Thatcher with her new plan for Britain.
Where there is discord, may we bring harmony,
and where there is despair, may we bring hope.
REPORTER: The rioters came from behind the security of
their burning barricades to lob petrol bombs.
REPORTER: Over three million people are now claiming benefits.
I grew up in the '30s with an unemployed father.
He didn't riot.
He got on his bike and looked for work
and he kept looking till he found it.
What we were seeing was vast numbers of people
in the United Kingdom being chucked on the scrapheap,
being made redundant, and put on the dole queue.
And that motivated people, at this point in time,
to say, "This is our fight.'
The National Executive Committee declare the proposed strike action
in Yorkshire and Scotland, and in any other area
which takes similar action, as official.
The miners were on strike because the government intended
to close 20 pits,
and, in that process, was going to lose 20,000 jobs.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
In South Wales, everybody was on strike.
In our particular area, I believe there were 2,500 miners on strike.
A striking miner had no money coming in.
Nothing.
If you haven't got money, you can't feed yourself.
SIAN: We had £10 a week, what was then known as family allowance,
and £10.60 a week benefit.
It was like a constant robbing Peter to pay Paul.
I had two small children, and the ice cream man used
to come round and, er, and you just couldn't afford
to buy them an ice cream, like. Oh, it was bloody heart breaking.
The minute you went on strike, you were deemed to make yourself
deliberately unemployed.
So, the men were not eligible for any form of benefit.
And in some families, you might have the father on strike,
two brothers on strike, you know.
And so, absolutely no money coming in at all.
A couple of weeks or so into the strike,
we decided to try and start getting food donations,
so financial donations, to help.
Everybody did their bit, and my role,
very early on in the strike, was very traditional.
I had no worries about selling raffle tickets door to door,
selling plants door to door, um, asking for donations.
If that's what it took to keep us out on strike,
I wasn't too proud to do that.
It's all a bit of a blur really, because one minute there was
just this little, small idea of gathering a few things together,
and then we founded the Neath & District Miners Support Group
to provide food for families of striking miners, as simple as.
DAVID WILLIAMS: Took some organising, fair play to 'em,
but leave it to a woman, isn't it? They'd organise it.
I think we'd be just scratching our heads and going,
"Where do we start?' (LAUGHS)
MARTIN: My wife, she was always collecting money,
and when this came along, it was...
she stepped into it and took over like.
We wanted people to have dignity and make decisions.
So in our support group, it was fundraising was the big thing.
Raise the funds, so then we could provide a food parcel
every week, for everybody.
And we had between about 800 or 900 mining families to support.
And we had to raise, you know, about £5,000 a week.
Well, Tesco give us a load of carrier bags.
Loaf of bread, milk, corned beef. Nothing the matter with corned beef.
You can do a lot with corned beef. Corned beef stew.
Corned beef hash. Corned beef pie. Corned beef and chips.
I heard somebody with a food parcel, he had, er, spaghetti.
And er, I think there was an announcement you know,
in a meeting, "For fuck's sake. Don't put it in the chip pan.'
(ALL LAUGH)
If your colliery was the one that was going to close,
what happened to you?
People would lose their jobs.
That's "coal not dole".
"I can't find another job.' Where do you from there?
If my husband loses his job now, he will never work again.
It was either we fought for our jobs or we laid back and said,
"Right-oh. You can do what you want.'
One of the biggest questions I was asked was,
"Why are you fighting so hard to keep these awful jobs?'
My answer to that was, "What else is there for us?'
(TAYCE READING ALOUD)
What do you think the miners and their families would have
been thinking? The stupid Prime Minister says,
"We should close down all the mines.'Yes.
Well as actually, you need the mines to pay the bills and to have heat.
It would be really challenging because you need, like, money
to do a lot of things, like...
Imagine if you were in that position.
You'd want somebody to help you.
Yes. Imagine walking a mile in someone else's shoes?
Right, now that you've met the Welsh lot,
it's time to meet the other heroes of our story.
They lived a long way from the valley, in London.
(CHORAL RENDITION OF "I Feel Love" by Donna Summer")
Beginning of 1984, I would have been 29.
I'd been out for ten years by then.
I was really, really happy, and I was free,
I was having lots of sex,
and meeting people who were similar to me, people who were left-wing,
working class, and who were gay. That was great.
# ..I feel love...
There was a gay bar in King's Cross called The Bell that became
really an important venue for people to go to.
There was very high unemployment in those days,
so people could come and spend their giros at The Bell.
NICOLA FIELD: I loved going to The Bell.
It was where you did everything and where you met everyone.
You just danced and got off with people.
You know, I'd come to London from the home counties
from a very you know, conservative family.
I didn't want to be the kind of woman
that I was being trained to be.
I couldn't cope with all the nylon tights and the high heels
and underskirts that you had to wear.
We all were part of creating a community of defiant resistance.
(MALE VOICE CHOIR CONTINUES)
# I feel love...
London as a young gay person was the only place to be really.
You were surrounded by people like you.
(CROWD CHANTING INDISTINCTLY)
Pride marches, really, were the single most important event,
without a doubt.
And it was a really exhilarating, thrilling experience just walking
down the street with hundreds, thousands of other LGBT people.
It was joyous to say, "We're here, we're queer,
and we're not going away.'
The people who tended to go on the Pride march in those days
were-were the more political elements of the LGBT community.
# THE CURE: Boys Don't Cry #
I bumped into Mark Ashton just before the Gay Pride march,
er, was about to take place.
Mark grew up in a working-class seaside town in Northern Ireland.
It was definitely in his early 20s when he became politicised.
He joined the Communist Party.
We were comrades, we were friends.
Mark said, "How about taking a couple of buckets to collect
for the striking miners on the Pride march?'
I said, "Ooh, that's a great idea.'
The miners' strike has been described
as a Civil War without guns.
And that's exactly what it was.
It completely split the country.
You were either for the miners or against the miners.
MAN: Support the miners!
Mark and I were really pleasantly surprised
quite how much support we got from the other people marching with us.
"I hate Thatcher.'
You know, gleefully putting some money in the bucket.
They'd also be saying, "My dad's a miner.'
"My uncle's a miner.' "My grandad was a miner.'
And that really was the beginning of lesbians and gays
supporting the miners. We gave birth that day. (LAUGHS)
I already knew Mark.
He spoke in such a vivid way
that it educated you just to listen to him.
But he was also giggly,
and witty, and lovable.
MARK: Like, there are three and a half million people
unemployed in this country. Where the hell are these jobs
coming from that these miners are all going to go into?
But the point is, we're going to win.
We're going to beat these bastards, and we're going to beat them
so far back, that they'll never come back again.
We decided the most natural place to collect funds
was outside lesbian and gay venues. So, that's what we did.
You had a big bucket...
..and it had, 'Support the Miners,' round it.
And you shook it.
Support the miners. Support the miners.
"Lesbian & Gays Support the Miners!
Spare some change.
Lesbian & Gays Support the Miners. Spare some...' (LAUGHS)
We'd have great fun when we were doing collecting.
I mean, The Bell was always the favourite place
for people to collect.
And it did get a bit silly sometimes because we'd have, like,
eight LGSM people shaking buckets on the door,
um, because we were not only collecting for the miners,
We were also trying to pick people up at the same time. (LAUGHS)
'Lesbians & Gays Support the Miners', you know,
it was a wonderful, kind of, community atmosphere.
I was a very insecure person, so it was just seeking
a kind of possibility of just being myself.
There were a lot of people who were angry
that we were collecting for this group of people.
You know, "What have they got to do with us?
What were they giving us?
What about all the people who were sort of, you know,
living and dying from HIV Aids?'
INTERVIEWER: A lot of people will say, you know,
if you're collecting, that, "Why should we support the miners cos the miners don't support us?'
What do you tell people who say that to you?Well, I mean, what do you mean when they say,
"The miners don't support us?' The miners dig coal,
which creates fuel, which actually, makes electricity.
I mean, would you go down a mine and work?
I wouldn't like to go down a mine and work.
One of the reasons I support miners is because they go down
and do it. I wouldn't do it.
JOHNNY PALMER: Took some degree of courage to stand there.
There was something deeply political
just about being yourself.
In the high street, it meant, "Hello, everybody, I'm gay.
Hello, everybody, I'm gay. Hello, everybody, I'm gay.'
Once, a guy, um, came up to me at The Bell and said, um,
"Why should I?' And as I opened my mouth
to try to explain, he actually head-butted me.
Of course, society was deeply homophobic.
The laws reflected that, the opinions reflected that.
"Poof, bender, queer, gay boy, bum boy.'
You know, the list is endless.
It was so part of
the atmosphere of the landscape. It just was.
INTERVIEWER: What would you do if you found out
your sister was a lesbian? Um, kill her.
Why are you concerned about lesbian?
By any chance, is there a lesbian around?
Yeah, me. Me too.(LAUGHS)
Do you know, there were still, um, queer youth on the street
being thrown out at 15 and 16, because they'd come out.
And their father wouldn't tolerate it.
MAN: I know my reaction, I couldn't believe it.
I mean, I was a macho man.
I'd come from the North. I was a...
You know, we didn't have homosexuals in working-class families.
It was only... There were poofs, weren't there?
Oh, well, you know. We didn't...
We didn't father poofs.
The people who fathered poofs were rich people or upper-class people.
And to be honest, I thought he was a little bastard.
And if I'd had got my hands on him then, I would have killed him.
Just being openly yourself in the street...
..was an offence against public decency.
You were to be stamped on. You were to be wiped out.
You were to be kept hidden.
You could choose to sort of remain, um, camouflaged,
or you could choose to try and live your life
as you wished to and take the risks.
I grew up on an island in Scotland, rural community.
On my 18th birthday, I had, kind of, taken a boat to the mainland.
I'd been at school for my final exam, got on the boat,
took off my school uniform, and threw it in the sea.
And I came down to London.
You know, I was kind of living it large,
as you do when you're in your 20s.
I was a punk. Whatever that means, you know.
I had a funny hairstyle.
I remember, I went shoplifting, don't quote me on this.
I went shoplifting in Woolworths in Brixton in a fur coat,
red leather miniskirt, face full of make-up and my...
I think it was blonde Mohican at that stage.
And it was interesting because, you know, people were a bit like...
"Ooh, OK.' (LAUGHS)
And I was part of a wee gang, and my gays...
We didn't fit in, but we got through, you know?
We lived a life. There's something about being under pressure
that brings people together.
And I think because of that, people, you know,
um, were able to-to pull together.
(TAYCE READING ALOUD)
Almost all of the striking miners in South Wales were holding firm,
but elsewhere in the country, that wasn't the case.
REPORTER: In recent weeks, the tribal beating
of police riot shields with truncheons has become
a familiar sound on the Yorkshire picket lines.
The South Wales miners needed to do everything they could
to keep the strike strong.
Miners travelled all over the country and joined
what were called picket lines, outside working mines.
Sometimes, picket lines could be scary places.
REPORTER: The miners were attempting to block the access road
to the pit, and they succeeded.
(MINERS CHANTING INDISTINCTLY)
SIAN: Picketing, at that time, was very much seen
as what the men did.
The stories were horrendous.
Can't believe that we were being treated like that
by the police, and the viciousness of the police.
DAVID: If you were just a few people,
and they were outnumbering you, they were quite calm about it.
But then when a mob, as they put it,
would turn up, their attitude would change.
It was dog eat dog then, wasn't it?
(INDISTINCT CHANTING)
I had grown up in a trade union family, you know.
We knew what a picket line meant.
That was sacrosanct. It was there.
It was there for a purpose, and that everybody had to recognise
that picket line, and stand firmly behind it.
MAN: They're determined to break this strike, by any means
that they can, but... that they can use.
All you've got to do is look around you and just have a look at
all the police here, and half of these are soldiers anyway.
They are just determined to break us,
but no way are they going to though.
You know, they... they're trying to starve us out,
but we've counteracted that with our women support groups,
and the women have been great to us.
The quickest way for an individual to feel they have to go
back to work is that they can't put food on the table for themselves,
but more importantly, for their children.
(COINS RATTLING)
We couldn't raise enough money in our communities
to buy enough food for the families that were out on strike.
Many people in London, at that time, couldn't have gone to a tube station
without seeing miners with buckets asking for support of people
in London, and that was very important.
We developed a plan where we would twin
with an organisation
that wanted to lend their support for the strike.
The miners throughout Britain were desperate for money.
London, the capital, was a honeypot.
Oh yeah, right. The full total then is £345.85.
After weeks of collecting, the gays and lesbians were raking it in.
£95 outside The Bell, £300 outside the gay bookshop.
Before they knew it, they had a pot of 500 quid.
A lot of money back then.
But they had no idea what to do with it.
Who would they actually send it to?
Any other suggestions?
So, one member of the group had the idea of sending it to miners
in South Wales. He came from that area.
You couldn't think of a more remote and isolated mining community
than one that we chose.
Around there, nearly every miner was on strike.
So, we knew that they were desperately in need of...
of funds to keep going.
And I wrote a letter to say, you know, "Hello, we're, er,
a group called Lesbians & Gays Support the Miners.'
I remember vividly posting that letter and thinking,
"God, I'd love to be a fly on"
CHRISTINE: We basically had a meeting every Sunday evening.
We're all in the hall, sitting around the table.
The tables would be laid out for a meeting.
Dai Donovan got up and he said, "Oh, we've got
a new support group from London.'
And he said, "The group is Lesbians & Gays Support the Miners.'
Deathly silence.
I looked up...
Lesbians and gays?
Jaw dropped and then... (LAUGHS)
Dai got a bit, um, defensive, you know.
And he said, "Hang about now. These-These boys have been
rattling buckets and done this, that and the other.'
I think people's attitude to gay people in Wales, right, was,
it was... it was never really spoken about, you know?
I have no doubt whatsoever that there was homophobia in the valley.
Bound to be.
Well, poofs, weren't they? Poofters and uphill gardeners.
Arse bandits and then, you know...
INTERVIEWER: Would you have used those words, do you think?
Yes. (CROSS TALK)
Yes, I would have, more than likely. Yeah.
It's to fit in, isn't it? Yeah.
MIKE: I got a reply within a week.
They were sending somebody to meet us.
Er, that we didn't expect.
DAI: I do remember coming out of Paddington Station.
There's a ramp that comes up out of the station
and I remember walking up there.
You had to turn right, and on the opposite side of the road,
there was a Wimpy Bar, and we'd arranged to meet there.
I am not sure what they felt about meeting
a so-called miner for the first time.
We expected some discomfort on both sides.
And there wasn't any.
He seemed completely unfazed about our sexuality.
At a very young age, I joined the Air Force,
and I was stationed overseas.
And there was outrage one day, because a young lad...
,,had been, uh, found out to be a homosexual.
At that time, and until very recently in the military,
if you were gay, you know, it was a court martial offence.
And I remember listening then to the talk amongst all my mates,
then, isn't it? How, well, how awful this was.
Not his treatment, but that he was a blooming gay bloke, you know?
Maybe that's why I wasn't ideally suited in the Air Force.
I didn't subscribe to the view that his sexuality should be
something that would threaten us as individuals.
Then we arranged for him to come to The Bell, later that evening,
to collect the money from us formally.
It was quite brave, a group of 200 LGBT people.
He'd never been in a situation like that before,
and there he is on stage, facing them.
DAI:
(APPLAUSE)
He got lots of applause and cheers, and we were beside ourselves.
We never expected this positivity and-and this warmth.
For the first time, the miners were finding out what it was like
when the state comes for you.
These people had been living with this.
They took that opportunity to help us at that time,
despite everything they had been attacked by,
despite everything they were living through.
They were wearing the t-shirt.
And yet, do you know what they did?
They said, "These people need our help.'
Few weeks later, Dai stood up and said that they'd like
to come down and meet us.
One minute, you're talking about the food parcels for the next week,
and then Dai says, "There's a bunch of gay people
want to come down and stay with us.'
Somebody said, "Will this mean, that we will have to watch men,
dancing with each other?'
A member in the support group got up and said, "Hey, hold on
a minute now, boys, what the hell's going on here?'
I made it quite clear where our loyalties should lay and that
we should be supporting people that were prepared to support us.
We did have reservations before they came down.
Um, to be quite honest with you, we flipped a coin to see whether
we would have lesbians or gays. You know, it sounds an awful thing
to say, but we didn't know what to expect.
I just went home and said, "Stuart, you know that gay lot
that's been supporting us?' "Yes.'
"Well, they're coming down to visit us,' and I said,
"We'll put some people up.' I didn't ask him,
"Do you think... Do you mind?' whatever, I just told him.
I remember one of my neighbours complaining
that she might get AIDS from using the telephone box.
You know, they were very ignorant.
The only thing they knew about gay people and the only thing
they knew about AIDS, as we called it then, was what they were
reading in the tabloid press.
JOHNATHAN: This notion that somehow you are dirty, you are diseased,
eventually that kind of does get to you and it makes me cross.
I was diagnosed in October 1982.
It was an incredibly lonely, isolating time.
One felt like a modern-day leper, you know?
I think one hoped to be accepted.
But maybe this has been some huge mistake and that, actually,
people are not going to want us, not going to accept us.
NICOLA: I didn't go down to Wales during the strike.
I really had had, um, very bad experiences
of rejection from my family.
My mum had said to me she wasn't sure she wanted to be
my mother anymore.
Um, my father said that nobody in the wider family should know
and it should be kept a secret.
It was my normal to feel like I was a monster.
I revolted people.
Shame eats the soul...
..and I wish actually that I just said,
"I'll tell you what. I'm going to go and live my own life.
Give us a ring if you change your mind. But I'm off.'
I wish I had done that.
It's sad, isn't it? It's a common thing. It happens all the time.
Like, you know, I even have friends, literally their parents don't
speak to them. Their parents kicked them out and they from, like,
a young age, from, like, 13/14.
So, why would, like, her parents just kick her out?
Um, well, that's the craziest thing, like, what I've seen today.
I think that's very sad, because no mother, no father should
disown their child because they are different.
And they should follow their own path because
it's their job to take care of them.
It's not their job to tell them what's right and what's not right.
Yes.
MIKE: Sure the miners had never done anything for us.
And we ourselves were aware that we might get rejected.
We... You know, we weren't naive.
Where I grew up, it was classic northern,
industrial, working class.
Although I am proud of that kind of working-class heritage
and the values that I was taught, er, the bit that I'm not proud of
is the widespread homophobia.
Because I came from that kind of background, I mean, there was
a coal mine in the town I grew up in when I was a young lad,
when I was in my late teens I'd go
to working men's clubs with my family.
So, I knew what to expect that weekend.
We were going to the Miners' Welfare Hall, which is essentially
a working men's club.
What was utterly new...
..is it would be the first time I'd walk into one of those places
proudly out as a gay man.
That was a new experience for me.
We were preparing to walk into the lion's mouth.
# DOLLY PARTON: Islands in the Stream #
When we walked into the Miners' Welfare Hall, the place was packed.
27 of us, young, charity shop chic...
..we walk in single file.
Suddenly, this was where...
"What the fuck are we doing here?
This is just crazy.'
That's pretty terrifying.
There was absolute silence.
"What the fuck?'
And then, somebody started clapping.
And suddenly the whole room just erupted in applause,
and you thought, "It's alright, we're home.'
And we're looking round at each other, going,
"God, fuck. What's this?
My God, didn't expect this.'
It's just overwhelming really.
# Are you ready for the time of your life?
# Time to stand up and fight
# It's alright, it's alright...
And the hair was standing up on my body,
and you couldn't stop us after that.
We were just like, "Yeah.' (LAUGHS) "Fantastic.'
# Every woman, every man
# Join the caravan of love
# Stand up, stand up
# Stand up
# Everybody take a stand
# Join the caravan of love
# Stand up, stand up
# Stand up...
We'd all fled to London because of the widespread homophobia
that there was in our communities, and we didn't expect
a Welsh mining community to be any different.
All I wanted was to be accepted. That's all we ever wanted.
In those few seconds in a miners' hall in Wales,
I was just given that absolute acceptance.
# Are you ready? Don't worry
# You better get ready # Don't worry
# You better get ready for the caravan
# Ah...
# Ah... #
The few steps from that door to here, my life changed.
# NEW ORDER: Blue Monday #
You know, the local kids, they're cheeky.
One of them went and said, "Are you a poof, mister?'
And I, sort of, said, "Yes, I'm a poof, and all your visitors
this weekend are poofs too.'
And he, kind of, laughed, he said, "Oh!'
When I had that sort of honesty, it made me, sort of, think,
"This is gonna go alright.'
Well, I think we were more curious.
Do they have two heads?
Have they got green noses? You know, I mean...
It's Saturday night, you know, let's have a party,
let's have a drink, and just relax and have fun.
You were having conversations with people that you would never
have had with people in your own community.
"What's poppers then?' "Oh.'
"What's a cock ring?' "Oh!'
"You ought to try that.' "Ooh!'
I got in conversation with a miner at the bar, and he went,
"Have you got anywhere to stay?' "Yes, I have.'
He said, "Oh, that's a shame, you could've come and stayed with me.'
I must admit, my little heart went ooh, ooh. (LAUGHS)
One of the boys said, "We're vegetarians.'
"Oh.'
I could feed gay people, but I didn't know what
to do with vegetarians. (LAUGHS)
Egg and chips, egg, beans and chips, egg and beans, beans and chips.
Combinations thereof.
I was too busy trying to pick up a miner to be...
(LAUGHS) I joke.
MARTIN: They were nice people, like. DAVID: Yeah.
Breath of fresh air in the strike, wasn't they?
Yeah, they were, yeah.
Yeah, genuine people.
When the lesbians and gays came down, my brain was just
absolutely whirring. I had no idea what was gonna come.
I actually had no idea what that impact would be, yeah.
I get emotional.
I'd just turned 16, I was a bit of an outcast, to be fair.
I didn't like living in the village, I had some girls
who used to pick on me.
They called me Patch, cos I had.... like, I've got the birthmark
here on my face. "Patch, you're a lesbian.'
There were this group of young people, they were very
tactile and huggy, so that wasn't something that we were used to.
Nobody hugged you, nobody had that, you know, that... They...
nobody showed that outward affection.
"I'll let you do that, because I feel safe enough for you to
do that with me.'
So, I felt embraced by them.
I felt safe with them.
JOHNATHAN: That photograph of me clapping my hands with joy,
I mean, it's lovely.
Just so full of life.
And if you notice, Cliff, he's the only other man
that's dancing, apart from all we gay men.
You know, he's up there having a ball.
Cliff was just a darling.
He was really, sort of, gentle, very naughty...
..and so happy to, kind of, sort of, to have us boys there.
The lesbian and gays has been super-duper.
And I mean that sincerely.
There's no other words that can explain it.
Jonathan said, "We've found the gay one.'
(LAUGHS)
And we all went, "No!'
He came out to us, and he didn't hold back.
He told us everything.
He told about... told us about the sex he had in the pits.
And Cliff had many an enjoyable time
down these pits with these men.
# If I
# Should stay
# I would only be... #
At the end of the night, you have slow dances, right,
and people get... You know, it's like slushy dance,
and two of the men, two of the gay men, got together
and did a slow dance together.
And I just... it just made me think, "Oh god, they feel
comfortable enough, not just to be, 'Hello, I'm a gay, political gay,'
it's like, you,' and they just had that moment,
that private moment, where they just wanted to be smoochy, you know?
For a lot of the gay men, I got the sense that, that was really
the first time they had been out and proud in a community similar
to the ones they'd grown up in, where that didn't feel possible.
INTERVIEWER: Did you manage to pull a miner that night?
What a thing to be asking somebody! (LAUGHS)
Yeah.
I don't wanna come across as cheap, but we shared a bed,
and we shared more than that, we shared sexual intimacy.
You know, we did, that night.
And can I just sort of say, it wasn't about pulling a miner,
let's be really clear about that, yeah?
If Lesbian & Gays Support the Miners was important
in our community, particularly for working-class people,
Lesbian & Gays Support the Miners in a working class community,
was hugely important for queer people, like Cliff.
I moved 500 miles to express my sexuality, you know,
and that meant giving up an awful lot.
Um, he hadn't done that.
He was trying to live that life there and that was to be admired,
as far as I was concerned.
DAVID: You never realised, did you?
Miners could have been gay.
You could be working with a bloke.
He wasn't going to tell you though, was he?
He'd be too frightened wouldn't he? 'By the way, I'm gay.'
You know, not going to tell you that, is he?
He was opening himself up for a real ribbing, ribbing.
So, no.
JAYNE: I don't know if I knew if Cliff was gay.
I don't think I remember if I knew that.
I just knew that there was a difference in him,
after they'd been.
It sounds like the visit from the lesbians and gays
was pretty important to Cliff.
Isn't it nice he was finally able to be himself?
Like basically, he probably felt desolate and like, he, like,
really isolated that he couldn't tell anyone.
But once he told... Once he probably told people, he probably felt free.
Like, he escaped from... And the relief.
You know that deep down inside, you need to let it go at some point.
Otherwise, you will explode and like, you just want to let
your emotions out and do what you want to do. Yes.
It was a life changing trip for the gays and lesbians.
They'd made incredible friendships and now, they really understood
what mining meant to these communities.
But for Nicola, it was bitter sweet.
I used to feel ashamed that I hadn't gone and everybody would say,
'What was it like going to the miners' welfare and you were
all dancing together?' and I didn't go.
Wasn't all wonderful.
(LAUGHS) I mean I think it was very difficult for women who came along,
you know, Lesbian & Gays Support the Miners.
Well, where are the lesbians?
I bet I wasn't the only one who, sort of, was part of it
but kind of...
not quite in the centre of it.
Some of the women felt that the men were sexist.
Women, lesbians, um, didn't get much of a look-in.
Well, I mean within the group itself it's been really shit because
like we have... and when I say 'we', I mean the men, right,
get that really guilty look on their face, have totally monopolised
this group and women have been excluded, and it's a fact.
(WOMEN SINGING ON LESBIANS AGAINST PIT CLOSURES MARCH)
So what some of the women in the group and I did was formed
a lesbian group called Lesbians Against Pit Closures.
You know, I was led by the heart, I suppose.
I kind of felt more comfortable in the women-only group.
That young person was a very, very lonely and frightened young person
who was desperately looking for community and belonging.
The good thing about Lesbians Against Pit Closures and they...
they raised money as well.
Isn't it great that Nicola finally found her voice, and a group
she could raise money with?
It was needed more than ever.
For the South Wales miners and the gays in London,
it really felt like everyone was against them.
There were some rough times ahead.
REPORTER: Dawn at the Point of Ayr Colliery in North Wales,
the start of another week in the miners' dispute,
and for the first time in the union's history,
miners decided to cross picket lines manned by fellow miners.
What about the NUM men who are going into work?
What's your view there? My view? I think they're scabs.
You know, they're... (CROSSTALK)
A trickle of people start to return to work.
INTERVIEWER: In South Wales? Yeah.
So we'd had to picket locally.
# Oh, I'd rather be a picket than a scab
# Oh, I'd rather be a picket
# Rather be a picket
# Rather be a picket than a scab. #
At different points in the strike, women started to become more
confident about what they could do and what they wanted to do,
and that led to the women deciding that they were gonna
take part in the picket lines.
It's made a lot of women aware that they're capable of doing things
that they didn't realise they were capable of doing before.
There's a changed sort of attitude in the home, you know,
they've got... they're out at meetings and they're...
and they're out on the picket line.
We were starting to step up to the plate a little bit more.
We were stepping out of our traditional role of
fund raising, nurturing.
There was a growing awareness,
the backbone of the strike were the women.
The first time we had to picket our colliery, Abernant Colliery,
there was one person we would've all put money on him going back in.
(LAUGHS) But... Who was it?
Oh, I'm not gonna name him, because his family are terribly,
terribly ashamed of him.
We were so angry, we went up to picket the colliery,
to try and stop him going in...
..and then the bus trundles up, and the door opened,
and you could hear the driver saying, 'Right...
..eff off out.'
'Nah, he's never gonna come out of that bus, the coward.
He's never gonna come out that bus.'
And he got out of the bus. Everybody went nuts.
And that's when all hell broke loose.
And I could hear this shouting, I can hear it now.
'Troi nol' 'Turn back,'
appealing to him as a neighbour.
The police had to snatch him in through the gates
and they started bonking people on heads
and dragging people away.
It was unbelievable.
I suppose it's an emotional thing.
It's anger, I suppose.
What were you angry about?
Being undermined.
Well, they're people that should've been fighting alongside us.
We wanted them to know that we were ostracising them for a reason.
"Despise" is a strong word, but, you know, but we had forsaken them.
They weren't any longer part of our community.
(CROWD SHOUTS)
REPORTER: This afternoon, Joy Watson was driving her husband into work.
The women were waiting. Paint and oil were thrown over the windscreen.
Inside the plant, Paul Watson cleared the windscreen,
before leaving his wife to run the gauntlet again.
All the best, then. Here goes.
This time, the reception was even more violent.
A stone smashed through the window, hitting the driver.
(PROTESTORS CHEER) (ENGINE REVS)
The traffic forced the car to stop. The women took advantage.
Woo! Fuck off!
It's unbelievable, it really is.
I dunno, I just think they want blood.
They want blood before they're finished.
I say to Mrs Watson and any other potential scab
in that community or in any other part of South Wales...
you go back to work.
You break the solidarity in that community and I will tell you
something, and this isn't an idle threat.
There is no place for you in that community now or in the future.
You know, in one respect, violence cannot be condoned.
But you're fighting for your way of life and you're fighting for your
families, and you're fighting to put food on the table for your kids.
'Ah, but you're on strike.
If you went back to work, you'd have had money.' Yeah, but for how long?
This was the sort of tragedy that police, the Coal Board and
miners' leaders had forecast and feared.
Early this morning, 35-year-old David Wilkie was driving to
Merthyr Vale Colliery in the village of Aberfan.
In the cab with him was Dai Williams, one of two working
miners at the pit.
But at this point, a three foot concrete post dropped from
the bridge, smashed through the windscreen of the
Cortina Estate car, killing Mr Wilkie instantly.
No, I'm not gonna talk about that. Didn't happen in our area.
It's dreadful, it should never have happened. No, no, sorry, no.
Nah, we don't know... Nothing to do with us.
It's a different area.
It's a different area, and it's nothing to do with us.
Mr Wilkie was a volunteer, as are all the city centre cab men
who've driven working miners through picket lines.
Earlier this week, a concrete block was dropped on to the bonnet
of one taxi.
This isn't industrial action,
this isn't picketing. This is murder.
This terrible thing had happened, which was unforgiveable, but
we still had a job to do.
We had to get on.
Passions run high and people do things
and, you know, they do the wrong thing,
and that's what happened in that case of the...
taxi driver.
It was awful, and a few days later there's Lesbians &
Gays Support the Miners in London, collecting for the miners, and
a member of the public just walks past
and shouts, at us, 'Murderers!'
The strike had been dragging on and on and on.
Christmas was looming, winter was closing in, means that
picketing would be cold and difficult.
It's the last thing we needed really, yeah.
Obviously any acts of violence against people, no matter how much
they're in opposition to you, is not acceptable.
But the violence I was witnessing was where police
were cracking skulls, police horses were trampling.
Um...
It was the bloody face of miners that had been...
I find it really triggering to talk about violence.
Because of course it's my life too.
I've been in receipt of violence through my life, and...
I'm aware of its consequence and how much
it's pushed me in different places.
We knew what the state could do.
We were forever being harassed, hassled. It was grim.
It was really, really awful.
# The British police are the best in the world
# I don't believe one of these stories I've heard
# About them raiding our pubs for no reason at all
# Lining the customers up by the wall
# I had a friend who was gentle and short
# He was lonely one evening, he went for a walk
# Queer bashers caught him, kicked in his teeth
# He was only hospitalised for a week
# And he still bears the scars
# Sing if you're glad to be gay, sing if you're happy that way, hey,
# Sing if you're glad to be gay, sing if you're happy that way...
Violence is a mechanism of state control and has been used against
anyone that seemed to be stepping outside of the mainstream position.
Be that through class, be it through sexuality, gender.
Whatever way it is.
Violence, condoned and organised by the state, has always
impacted on gay people.
# Sing if you're glad to be gay, sing if you're happy that way, hey
# Sing if you're glad to be gay
# Sing if you're happy this way. #
As Christmas was approaching, the strike was entering a new phase.
Miners were being offered a lot of money to come back to work
before Christmas.
After months of living without pay, for some, it was just all too much.
Eight heavily protected buses, each carrying 40 or so working
miners, rumbled past the pickets at Shirebrook.
74 men abandoned the strike and came to work here for the first
time today.
In debt. Mortgage was running up.
Had to come back to work.
Do you think that you at this pit now are showing the way back?
Yes, definite.
It's to be hoped so. The men suffered enough.
How much more can they suffer? How much more can they suffer?
How much more can their families take?
We were in there for the duration and, you know, when that
change came, that hardening in the attitude of the government,
the police, people were tired of the story, you know, on their
TV's all the time, er, you had to step up and do more.
When it was December and Christmas was looming, so I was looking
at, 'What are we now gonna do to be able to put food on the table
on Christmas Day for every single mining family?
Put a present in a stocking for every single miner's child'.
The lesbians and gays were determined not to let their
friends down when they needed help the most.
But collecting money on the street wasn't going to be enough.
They had to come up with something massive.
Mark Ashton was a personal friend of Jimmy Somerville who is the
singer with Bronski Beat, someone had an idea, we were good at
partying, why not just have a massive party and sell
tickets and raise money that way, and that was it.
The Pits and Perverts Ball.
It was an invitation to attend the event if you wanted to.
It was a-a great group of people who travelled in hope.
(WOMEN ON BUS SINGING)
We took them to the Tower of London.
Dai Donovan's son, Owain, was with us.
He put his hands on his hips, as a four-year-old, and walked up
to this beefeater, and just said, 'You're a scabby piggy, you are.
You're a scabby piggy, you wanna lock my daddy up.
Scabby piggy, scabby piggy.' (LAUGHS)
I do not believe that it was restricted to gay people.
But there were an awful lot of gay people there.
Very avant-garde in the way they dressed.
It wasn't like a local club in South Wales, you know.
I think Jimmy Somerville bought me a pint. I remember that.
Fantastic night. Really good night.
It was a joyful moment, and we raised lots of money, and
that was great, and that was the purpose.
All I'd like to say in conclusion is victory to the miners,
victory to the lesbians and gays, victory to the old, victory
to the young, victory to the sick, and victory to the working class.
Thank you.I gave a speech at Pits and Perverts, for that exciting
night where I said, 'You have worn our badge, now we will wear yours'.
First event that I'd ever been to, first night club, first
concert like that that I'd ever been to.
A lot of firsts happened in '84/'85 for me, absolutely, yeah.
I'd known Mark from day one.
He kind of took me under his wing.
So, you know, that's why he said, 'Come on, come on up, stay with us.
And they took me to Heaven.
So here I am, 17 years old now, walking into a gay nightclub
that I'd never, ever been to in London.
Didn't expect what I saw. Er, absolutely blew my head off.
Sex everywhere. Just openly.
It was just, yeah, I kind of had my eyes opened to all sorts of things.
I wanted to be part of it but I didn't know how.
"This is a different life completely.'
The Pits and Perverts Ball raised 5,500
that night, which was a quarter of what we'd raised the entire
year elsewhere on street corners so it was a-a very successful event.
We were determined every family would have a turkey and every
kid would have a Christmas present and we did it.
It's quite simple really.
If we hadn't had support over that period of time, we wouldn't
have been able to sustain the strike.
In total, I would say, that LGSM
raised in excess of £20,000.
They came in and supported us, when we were starting to run out
of options.
We've still got to stress to all the members.
You may not be a dirty scab but you're still a scab if you go back
after ten months now. Boys, we've still got to stick it out.
(ATTENDEES MURMUR IN AGREEMENT) (APPLAUSE)
With division and hardship intensifying, the South Wales
miners were struggling to keep going.
Times were so desperate.
I even heard about one family who cooked and ate their pet
rabbit, because there was literally nothing else to eat.
The breaking point of individuals is different, and when you think
that men have been out for 11 months and up to their neck in debt,
lots of men, throughout the British coalfield, are on breaking
point and you've got to recognise it.
I just broke down in tears one day after work because obviously
the stress had upset my system, and I cried then.
But I, I suppose you roll your sleeves up and you get on with it.
Somebody once asked me, what would happen if my husband said he
was going back to work?
And I said, 'I'd shoot him in the back.'
I haven't come through 11 months
of this strike to give up now.
Now, will you not negotiate with them, ever?
I will never negotiate with people who use coercion and violence
to achieve their objective.
They are the enemies of democracy, they are not interested in
the future of democracy, they are trying to kill democracy for
their own purposes.
The conference recommends that the nationally organised return to
work should take place on Tuesday March 5th without an agreement.
Britain's longest running national strike is over.
Amongst scenes of bitterness and anger, NUM delegates voted
narrowly for an organised return to work on Tuesday.
You were fighting tooth and nail for something you believe in, and
that's hard to deal with.
It really... it really is hard to deal with.
Anger is the best-best word to use.
It was the feeling that we'd lost.
That's the thing, that we'd lost the strike. It felt awful.
She took our livelihoods from us, eventually.
As soon as '84 strike was over, the writing was on the wall for us.
She had it in her head that she was going to defeat us
and she defeated us, in the end.
Not a nice feeling. It was a sad day. But there you are.
You've just got to take it on the chin and fight another day.
Yeah.
We were there in South Wales when that was announced.
So, we were all heartbroken.
All that sacrifice had come to nothing and there's nothing
you can say.
I mean, we tried our best, er, and we hadn't won.
It's as simple as that.
Fair play to 'em, they tried to back us up, you know, and it's
alright, like, it'll be alright, and all this, but, we knew that
er, it wouldn't be alright.
(MALE VOICE CHOIR VOCALISING)
I think every man that was here this morning felt exactly the same.
They had a lump in their stomach, going in through these gates.
We want a livelihood.
We want to earn our own livelihood and we want to look after our
families and bring up our families the way we've been brought up
ourselves, with dignity.
And we want to go to work every morning.
Even though it's down that pit there and it's a stinking, horrible
place to work.
We want to go there with dignity.
You know, it broke my heart, every step that he took was like
a knife in his heart.
(MALE VOICE CHOIR SINGING FOR A FRIEND - THE COMMUNARDS)
It will be the last struggle of the working class.
The fight between the things that we'd known and loved all of
our lives and the things that were ahead of us that were unknown
and very frightening.
Mark Ashton. Phenomenal man.
Yeah, he would have...
(MALE VOICE CHOIR SINGING)
..changed the world...
if he'd survived.
Oh God.
Yeah, many of my contemporaries didn't survive because of
AIDS and the world was deprived.
And it's my view Mark was a... a fine example of that.
(MALE VOICE CHOIR SINGING)
We lost quite a few people within Lesbians & Gays Support the
Miners to AIDS, yeah.
And fortunately, we didn't lose Jonathan, who miraculously
lived through it.
And so glad because Jonathan's still here and he's still dancing.
And I'm one of the lucky ones.
Joining Lesbian & Gay Men Support the Miners, it was brilliant
displacement activity.
(MALE VOICE CHOIR SINGING)
I was quite close to Mark. It was just devastating.
For such a powerful guy like him.
I never let this story stop and I never let this story die,
and I told this story, I've told this story forever.
The Gay Pride march in 1985 was a very, very special one.
The lesbians and gays had invited their new friends from
South Wales to come to march with them.
But they weren't sure anyone would actually come.
By now, we've got very deep, personal friendships with the
mining community in Wales.
They had been up to visit us in London twice at least during
the strike. So, there was no doubt, that we would invite them to come on
the Pride march in 1985.
I think one hoped that they would come,
because we were a community.
As they were waiting for the march to start, the miners started
to arrive in huge numbers.
Normally, you wouldn't even get any straight people at Pride,
never mind hundreds of miners.
The crowd grew and grew and grew.
Until one of the Pride organisers came up to us and said,
'You're going to have to be the ones who take us out the park.'
There were thousands of people walking behind Lesbians &
Gays Support the Miners banner.
It was history being made. It was fantastic.
Amazing.
There was all sorts of people there. A real carnival atmosphere then.
Well, it was a, sort of, a thank you to the gay community.
What they done for us is still with us.
Even 40 years on it's still with us.
I'm very proud that my friends that I made are still my friends.
You don't often get that in life.
You know, it's not about two people who fell in love.
It's about two communities that fell in love.
(MALE VOICE CHOIR SINGING SOLIDARITY FOREVER)
You know, the women that came from the mining valleys who were
marching had had their lives transformed.
You know, their lives were never the same again.
I spoke to a lot of women.
We're not going to be little housewives anymore.
Oh no. Oh no, no way.
I mean, we have decided that after this, we will join in
everything that's going.
I mean and I never went outside my front door.
I was very afraid that I would be pushed back in to that
traditional original role that I had been quite happy with.
Fortunately, I discovered a route through further education and
going to university fulfilled all those hopes and desires that
I had developed during the strike.
I got to a point in my life where I thought 'This is enough now',
and I'd already met my now wife, Emily, and it wasn't until
after she declared that she loved me — here I am, getting
upset again, it's taken me a long time
but I can only thank the lesbians and gays of London
for allowing me to realise that
I can do that. Albeit 30 years later, I can still do that.
If I met 16-year-old Jayne now, I would say, 'You should just
be you and just one day, you know, you will be you,' yeah.
Just about Christmas time, I was walking down the street in,
in Cardiff and coming towards me were two young women and they
were hand in hand, walking towards me.
In my mind, that... (LAUGHS)
(VOICE BREAKING): In my mind, that's what I thought we should have.
(MALE CHOIR SINGING)
The support the miners went on to show the gay community, was
so important.
The rights queer people enjoy today were kick-started by this
amazing act of solidarity.
So, what's the lesson of the story?
If you think something isn't right, go out there and do something
about it.
Be loud. Be noisy. Be active.
Stand in solidarity with others who need help
and you can really make a difference.
(SCHOOL CHILDREN CHEER AND CLAP)
(MALE CHOIR SINGING)
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