PRIDE: The FILM

'Pride shows how disparate groups of gay and lesbian people were inspired by Ashton, a gay man from Portrush in County Antrim, who was an active member of the Young Communist League, a fact overlooked in the film, apparently so as not to alienate American audiences.
With a soundtrack that features the Smiths and Billy Bragg, the uplifting film is in the mould of Billy Elliot, Brassed Off and The Full Monty. But it is only when the credits roll that viewers learn the fate of Ashton, to whom the Communards' Jimmy Somerville paid tribute in his song, For a Friend. "I´ll never let you down, a battle I have found," Somerville sings. "And all the dreams we had, I will carry

'Money raised for the miners was seen as a declaration against Thatcherism but it was also a corrective to the power base of the president of the National Union of Miners, Arthur Scargill, who had determined that any funds raised in the US and London in support of strikers should go to his favoured pits in Yorkshire and Kent, leaving south Wales to fend for itself. Finding groups sympathetic to their plight was therefore crucial to the mining communities not favoured by Scargill.

"We sought to broaden the struggle beyond the picket lines to what we called an anti-Thatcher broad democratic alliance," recalled Hywel Francis, MP for Aberavon, and a former member of the Communist party, who helped forge links between the gay community and Welsh miners.
By January 1985 there were 11 LGSM groups around the country. Ashton died just two years later but he lived long enough to see his dream that gay rights should become part of the political agenda realised. The 1985 Labour party conference saw a motion to support equal rights for gay men and lesbians go down to the wire. It was carried only due to the block votes of the National Union of Mineworkers and its allies.'
Quoted from James Doward's review in the Guardian of 21 September 2014.

What Doward does not report in this article is the prejudice first met by the London lesbians and gays support group from the striking South Wales miners, and which was prevalent at the time in Valleys communities. At first the miners committees refused to accept their help. They did not want the association. It is not entirely clear in the film how support gathered momentum.' The Lesbian and Gays Support the Miners' challenged the prejudice, and showed themselves to be a mixed band, with the charismatic, communist Ashton at the forefront making the links between the oppression felt by both groups.

I absolutely loved the film, found it empowering, moving, funny, and uplifting. My daughter (aged 3/4 at the time of the strike) thought it 'Unoriginal clichéd rubbish.'  She'd seen Billy Elliot some years ago, and thought  the theme had been done. Perhaps it's because my husband and I lived through and supported the strike in small ways, and I had been involved in 'FALL OUT 84' (see earlier blog entry) this summer, that the film spoke to me, with some great performances; specially from Imelda Staunton and Bill Nighy.

Why not see for yourself what you think? It's currently on general release.