In the 1980s the government of Margaret Thatcher had been targeting the rights of various communities. Stricter controls on immigration were put in place, black and Asian communities were being over-policed, and neoliberal policies cut the welfare keeping many poor and working class families from falling into poverty. As mining communities faced destitution during the 1984-5 Miners’ Strikea group of London based gays and lesbians saw the ongoing fight as their own, and from that Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) was born.
Mining and Being Queer in 1980s Britain
For many communities across Britain coal mining was the beating heart of everyone’s lives. In South Wales, Kent, southern Scotland, Nottinghamshire, and my own home of Yorkshire relied heavily on mining (two of my three granddads were miners). Since the nationalisation of Britain’s coal industry in 1947 coal mining communities had gone strength to strength and through it all was supported by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). Since its founding in 1945 the NUM had ensured miners received good pay, safety measures, holidays, and pensions, and was the backbone of the British Left. LGSM co-founder Ray Goodspeed described the NUM as ‘our Green Berets; our Paratroopers…We believed that the miners would be the 7th Cavalry coming over the hill to save us all from Thatcher‘. However, in the 1960s when oil and gas began to outcompete coal, and cheaper coal began being imported from West Germany the NUM had to begin fighting for its life. More and more coalfields were being closed, and a left-wing faction of the NUM led a wildcat strike in 1969, starting in Yorkshire, which would propel a young Arthur Scargill into prominence. Throughout the 1970s governments attempted to dock pay, close coalfields, and lay-off miners which threatened the existence of so many communities, so the miners fought back. This led to the government of Conservative Ted Heath to institute a ‘three-day week’ to conserve dwindling coal supplies caused by the strike. In February 1974 Heath declared a snap election with the slogan ‘Who governs Britain?‘. Heath or the unions. And the British public voted Heath out. The Tories would not forget this, and his defeat would issue in a new, dogmatic figure.
Meanwhile, Britain had a long history of persecuting homosexuals and gender non-conforming people. A more permissive attitude towards LGBTQ+ identities had managed to gain ground during the Second World War and shortly after – an American GI called Christine Jorgensen initially received positive headlines when she had surgery to become a ‘blond bombshell’. However, this momentary glimpse at the potential for acceptance was quashed in the 1950s; in 1945 convictions for ‘sodomy’ stood at 800 a year which rose to 2,500 in 1955. One victim of this was Alan Turing of the Enigma Project which would result in his suicide. In 1967 the Sexual Offences Act modified the law so two men over the age of 21 could have sex in a private place – the age of consent dramatically higher compared to straight couples. Female same-sex relations were never made illegal due to a sexist belief that women’s sexuality was not as dangerous or valid as men’s sexuality, so lesbianism was dismissed as a momentary fling. ‘Private place’ extended even to gay clubs and house parties which gave the homophobic police an open ticket to raid gay clubs and take part in legalised ‘queer bashing’. The LGBTQ+ community had very few allies, even among the Left. From the centre to far Left LGBTQ+ identity was dismissed as being secondary to class struggle, as in Militant, or a middle-class and bourgeoise identity, as expressed by the Communist Party. While this was not universal on the Left, although a problematic figure today Ken Livingstone openly supported gays and lesbians while he was head of the Greater London Council. However, the Right would continuously be the main opponents of LGBTQ+ rights, and the British Right had got a new champion.
Thatcher
Upon becoming prime minister in 1979 Margaret Thatcher would become one of the central figures who would map out British politics until this very day. Thatcher abandoned the consensus politics that had shaped post-War Britain in favour of neoliberal politics and she would stop at nothing to implement these politics. Under her premiership Thatcher sought to slash welfare to a minimum, privatise the British economy, create incentives for businesses to invest in the economy (often through tax cuts), and cutting inflation. True to many a neoliberal politician, including her ally the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, Thatcher would use force to knock out opposition to her neoliberal reforms. Her time as Education Secretary under Heath had marked out what was to come – her ending of free school milk earned her the nickname ‘Thatcher, Thatcher, Milk Snatcher’. In the first few years of her rule Thatcher’s policies caused a recession that saw unemployment rise to 2 million and inflation, the issue that Thatcher had ran on, rose to 20%. After a successful nationwide strike by steel workers in 1980 caused a government u-turn her approval was at a dismal 23%, an approval rating that would only be bested by Liz Truss in 2022. However, when the Argentinian military regime was collapsing due to its own fondness for neoliberal capitalism and repression invaded Las Malvinas, the Falklands, in 1982 to generate domestic support this was a god send to Thatcher. Utilising a jingoistic fervour to ‘defend the empire’ the short war made Thatcher one of the most popular prime ministers to date. With the Argentine ‘enemy with-out’ defeated it was time to target the ‘enemy within’.
Thatcher and her allies viewed the previous decades as allowing the spread of ‘disorder’ and the deterioration of ‘civil society’. The rise of the feminist, gay rights, and anti-racist movements were seen just as bad as the union activity in their eyes. Especially popular was the use of an increasingly armed and violent police. Tensions with the police and Afro-Caribbean youths sparked in April in Brixton, London in what became known as the Brixton Uprising, and constant police harassment tried to whittle down the resolve of the women protesting American missiles being in Britain at Greenham Common. Showing political coincidences LGSM co-founder Stephanie Chambers and Dulais mining community activist Sian James would both be at Greenham – showing casual bigotry British police and American soldiers would say ‘dirty dykes’ to the women at Greenham. Following her defeat in 1980 by the steel union Thatcher began preparing to tackle the backbone of British unionism – the NUM. Between 1980 and 1984 a series of laws were passed which slowly whittled away the rights of unions – flying pickets and sympathy strikes were banned, the government now could seize a union’s assets if it did ‘illegal’ activity, and striking employees were now at risk of losing their jobs. Furthermore, the government began stockpiling coal in the spring, when demand for coal would be lowest, and began threatening the closure of collieries to force the NUM into premature action. Scargill had little choice but to organise a strike – after all the closure of pits would destroy communities across Britain – however he shot himself in the foot by calling for a general strike without having NUM members voting. This led to the membership being divided, the public more divided, and a perfect tool for the government and its state cronies to paint the strike as illegal and masterminded by a radical socialist.
Forming LGSM
The 1984-5 Miners’ Strike is a prime example of state and class interests coalescing in an organised movement to crush the strike. The police were given power to arrest people yelling ‘scab’ and engage in violence with miners, made infamous at Orgreave which saw police beating a woman in her own front garden; miners reported seeing their sons who were in the army standing among the ranks of the police; the media rallied around the government; and striking families were denied welfare. Paper owners Robert Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch engaged in a war of words over whose paper, Maxwell’s Daily Mirror or Murdoch’s The Sun, over who could be more pro-government, and the media openly published lies. One Scottish coillery was reported as working as normal, something not too inaccurate considering it was closed and had been for years! Mining communities had successfully shown solidarity with one another in the past, so they sprung into action here to help the hardest hit families, but it was not enough. Support networks had to set up elsewhere – namely London. And one solidarity group came along which took an intersectional approach.
The anonymity of big cities has allowed underground gay cultures to thrive and London is now exception. Many in the London LGBTQ+ community had already cut their teeth in political action whether for gay rights – many founders of the LGSM were part of the Lesbian and Gay Switchboard – or other solidarity campaigns, like Stephanie Chambers taking part at Greenham Common. Often LGSM is painted as ‘cosmopolitan queers’ forging links with ‘working-class Welsh miners’ but this overlooks the often working-class background of LGSM. The charismatic figure often associated with LGSM was Mark Ashton who grew up in working-class Northern Ireland; Wendy Caldon, in her own words, came from a ‘traditional, working-class cockney family‘; and Gethin Roberts came from a Welsh working-class family whose members were all in unions. This view also harkens back to the idea, especially on the traditional Left at the time, that being LGBTQ+ was a middle-class identity alien to the working-class which is plainly false – one of the pillars of the South Welsh mining community was Cliff Grist, played by Bill Nighy in Pride, was gay and accepted in an open secret.
It is not surprising that LGSM found its origins at London Pride. People across Britain, and even beyond, had been raising money for mining families, and Mark Ashton turned up to London Pride 1984 with buckets to raise money for the miners. Ashton was a young and extravagent gay man who had spent his childhood in Northern Ireland and Manchester. A communist and member of the Young Communist League he had a long history of activism, but was known to have a fun side – ever the subversive he got a kick out of the fact that he worked as a barmaid in a Conservative Club without the patrons realising he was a gay communist man. Originally intended to be a one-off Ray Goodspeed recalled thinking ‘Maybe we can make a bit of a movement out of it‘. Putting out ads in the Capital Gay it called for a meeting on Sunday July 15 for people to meet at his house and plan a movement. At this meeting LGSM was formed. They needed a community to send the money to as there was a fear, later to come true, that the state would seize the NUM’s assets. Dulais miners had already sent Dai Donovan to London to raise money, and luckily Dulais had a Communist Party member, Hywel Francis. Using the connection with Francis LGSM made a link with a South Welsh mining community, something especially important as in a blunder by Scargill he had sent funds raised in London to Kent and Nottingham leaving Wales high and dry. Most importantly, LGSM knew that they were raising money for a community which potentially loathed and despised them, but what was more important was identifying another oppressed group and offering a helping hand.
Connections and Tactics
LGSM’s plan was simple – raise money and send it to Dulais, or use it to buy food and send it to Dulais. As the organisation grew and other groups tagged along the risk of sectarianism, ever an issue in British Left politics (in 2023 we have around 20 Trotskyist parties in the UK and Ireland), so Mark Ashton took action. In a flair of the extravagent, he announced a resolution written on a scroll saying that LGSM’s sole purpose was to raise money for miners and the NUM. This was not without controversy – later on in the year an offshoot called Lesbians Against Pit Closures (LAPC) would be founded to also engage women in mining communities with feminist issues. Another reason why LAPC was founded was due to male domination of discussions and planning which is sadly still an issue within political organising. LGSM would still create further intersectional links – black lesbian Wilmette Brown was invited to speak at one of their events which was also attended by gay rights, women rights, and anti-Apartheid groups. Brown herself would found another group to rally black support for mining communities. Standing on street corners LGSM and LAPC would hope people would donate to the cause, and they operated from Gays the Word. This was a radical book shop that also operated as a cafe, hangout spot, and place for LGBTQ+ to simply be without feeling persecuted.
LGSM was not without those opposing it. Even in Dulais there was controversy. When it was announced that LGSM would be supporting Dulais several men made homophobic jokes until they were shut down by the force of nature that was Hefina Headon, an awe-inspiring activist. Meanwhile, members of the gay community reacted negatively to LGSM. The first month after LGSM’s founding there were many letters to Capital Gay asking why should their support be offered when miners had not shown the same to them, and also how many miners were homophobic. Others argued that LGSM should really be raising funds for HIV/AIDS victims, ironic considering co-founder Jonathan Blake was one of the first people in the UK to contract HIV/AIDS, but as Dave Lewis said ‘People were very good about telling you what you ought to do but not so good at actually doing it themselves‘. Class interestes also played a role in opposition to LGSM. The bouncers and owners of the gay club Heaven often barred them from collecting there, quoting Ray Goodspeed ‘It was run by big businessmen and many gay businessmen opposed the miners because they were Tories‘. As if having money and being a Tory would save them when the looming threat of bigotry came for them.
First delivering money and food via cars LGSM would eventually get a minivan, and visits were established between the London gay scene and Dulais. It also helped establish connections between various communities. LGSM found that they raised a lot of money in Brixton – while LGSM itself failed to engage with black and Asian gays it did show that those in Brixton recognised the same people who sent the police after them were the same harassing gay clubs and miners. Links between mining communities and gay communities were further established, while not always without difficulty due to prevailing machismo in mining communities. As Sian James noted, ‘these mutual visits had done much to break down ignorance and prejudice and establish a new understanding and trust‘. Soon branches of LGSM emerged across the country, each operating as an independent and grassroots group, and similar visits happened with similar effects. Nottinghamshire miner Brian Lawton said ‘I’ve known people who
were homophobic as fuck and they come down here [to London], within a week
they’re stopping at gay people’s houses‘. A big help was that miners could watch the news or read a paper calling them the ‘enemy within’ and question it – if we are the ‘enemy’ then what about these other people called the enemy?
Pits and Perverts
LGSM was not without celebrity fans. Most notably the late great Paul O’Grady who personally donated, and in the persona of Lily Savage got people seeing the show to donate before they could leave. Director Derek Jarman dropped a staggering £50 into one collection bucket! However, by December things were getting tough. Police pressure on both the LGSM and miners had put strain on communities with some police even stealing LGSM donation boxes. Traditional ally on unions the Labour Party, now under Neil Kinnock, had not done anything to defend the miners and was even undermining them internationally. It was during this period that LGSM tried to do one big fundraising event – Pits and Perverts. A parody of tabloid newspaper titles it was a music concert headed by Bronsky Beat, a recently outed band, and saw speaches by Hefina Headon and Dai Donovan. It would raise a staggering £5,000 and would inspire other balls in different parts of the country.
Aftermath
In the end Thatcher won. Hostile media, police violence, and effectively starving out mining communities meant that the strike petered out, and the NUM collapsed. With that Thatcher was given a free reign to devastate working-class communities where many have never recovered – my home of Doncaster has one of the highest poverty rates in Europe due to the impact of Thatcher. While LGSM managed to survive infighting due to the single issue nature of the group it failed to out last the strike for this reason. Although LAPC had tried to expand its scope to include engaging with feminist activism it too suffered the same fate as it was still very much a single-issue group. However, LGSM and LAPC had forged important links, and offered a beacon of hope for many LGBTQ+ miners who now felt they could come out of the closet a little bit easier.
The impact of the LGSM also created a radical shift in the British Left. Soon enough the Left began to universally advocate for gay rights – first the NUM and far-left, and through NUM lobbying the Labour party would begin advocating for gay rights. Most famously, the South Wales branch of the NUM attended the 1985 London Pride with LGSM. However, things would become worse for LGBTQ+ people. The state’s indifference to AIDS devastated the community and it was cheered on by the press. AIDS was not seen as a pandemic, but the symptom of an ‘immoral’ life or even divine punishment. The most destructive, intentional, policy undertaken by Thatcher was Section 28 which stated that local authorities could not ‘promote homosexuality’ or ‘promote the teaching…of the acceptability of homosexuality’. It would take until 2000 for it to be repealed in Scotland and 2003 in England and Wales. This clause meant that so many LGBTQ+ people were forced into the closet and provided and green light for homophobic bullying. Thanks to the NUM the normally socially conservative (on gay rights) Labour party came out in opposition to Section 28, and unions would be a key opposition bloc.
Final Points
Although LGSM came to an end with the Miners’ Strike it marked a blueprint for future solidarity. There is currently a new LGSM in the UK – Lesbians and Gays support the Migrants. As I am writing this post transphobia is rampant in the UK, so much so that I was scared as a non-binary person to go to Pride this year, and the pick-me gays taking part in transphobia seem to forget that the bigots will just trample over them as well. The same transphobic British government, walking hand-in-hand with the press and the spineless Labour party, is also restricting the right to strike and protest, and is making life for immigrants hell with a particularly ghoulish plan to deport refugees to Rwanda being tossed about. Similarly, the competent version of Trump Ron DeSantis has made Florida especially hostile to trans people, and he has issued a warning to socialists wanting to enter Florida, with the NAACP issuing a travel warning for African-Americans entering Florida. Putin has doubled-down on transphobia as his invasion of Ukraine falters and Yoweri Musevani has issued a new round a strict anti-gay laws just as union activity has been on the rise in Uganda. Throughout history reactionaries never target just one community and may even use divide-and-rule to marginalise the already marginalised. Groups like LGSM shows us that we need solidarity among the oppressed, even if you feel that one side may be bigoted. LGSM showed that offering a hand can cause the walls built by bigotry to crumble. Mark Ashton died due to AIDS in 1987 when he was just 26, a sobering thought for me as I am his age now, but he highlighted that solidarity should not be conditional. His own words say it all:
It’s quite illogical to say, ‘Well, I’m gay and I’m into defending the gay community but I don’t care about anything else’. It’s important that, if you’re defending communities, you also defend all communities. The miners dig coal, which creates fuel, which actually creates electricity. One of the reasons I support the miners is that they go down and do it. I wouldn’t do it. I mean, would you go down a mine and work?
Bibliography:
- Tim Tate, Pride, (London: John Blake, 2017)
- Diarmaid Kelliher, Making Cultures of Solidarity: London and the 1984-5 Miners’ Strike, (London: Routledge, 2021)
- Clive Bradley, ‘A Political History’, LGSM, [Accessed 17/06/2023]
- Jeff Cole, ‘All Out! Dancing in Dulais’, YouTube, (11/11/2012), [Accessed 20/06/2023]
- Seumas Milne, The Enemy Within: The Secret War Against the Miners, (London: Verso, 2014)
- Nicola Field, Over the Rainbow: Money, class, and homophobia, Second Edition, (Batley: Dog Horn Publishing, 2016)
- Francis Beckett and David Hencke, Marching to the Fault Line: The Miners’ Strike and the Battle for Industrial Britain, (London: Constable and Robinsons, 2009)
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