Why ‘big hairy’ Welsh miners led London Pride in 1985

When Mike Jackson and 26 of his gay friends from London walked into a remote Welsh miner’s club, they were met with stoney cold silence.

‘The whole crowd stopped talking – then one person started clapping. Within seconds, 300 people stood up and applauded us,’ Mike tells Metro, as he recalls that unforgettable day in October 1984.

It was a moment that marked the beginning of an unlikely friendship  between two oppressed groups – striking miners and the LGBT community –  that not only inspired a star-studded comedy movie 30 years later, but also spurred a transformation of gay rights in the UK.

It even led to a historical spectacle that captured their unique bond, as dozens of ‘big hairy miners’ led the London Pride parade, 40 years ago this summer.

Back in 1984, as the LGBTQ+ community were getting ready for their annual pride march, miners across the country had been on strike for over three months.

They were protesting plans by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government to close 20 collieries, which threatened to cut 20,000 jobs from many towns who relied on the coal pits for employment.

Despite being hundreds of miles away from the nearest coal mines, Mike and his friend Mark Ashton decided they had to do something to stop this happening.

‘It was in my blood to support the miners. It was the most obvious thing to do,’ Mike, 71, explains. ‘We were having a bad time, too. Gay men faced completely undiluted bigotry shown by everybody – the courts, the police, the government, schools, colleges, you name it.

‘We were sick of Thatcher and were desperate to get rid of her. The miners had shown us a way. They could have hated our guts and we still would have supported them because we knew that if Thatcher won, Britain would go down the pan as far as working class people are concerned.’

Mike and Mark decided to rattle some donation buckets with friends during the Pride march that year and managed to raise hundreds of pounds for the miners. Spurred on by their efforts they created a group to help raise more money called Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM).

Numbers grew rapidly, with as many as 50 regular attendees helping them to fundraise for the striking miners. Within a few weeks LGSM were regularly collecting outside every main gay or lesbian venue in London, including the ‘Gay’s the Word’ bookshop.

In total the group raised a staggering £22,500 (£73,500 in today’s money) in their year long campaign, but hit a stumbling block early on – who should they donate it to? 

The Thatcher government had sequestered National Union of Mineworkers (NUM)’s funds, meaning it was pointless for supporters of the strike to send donations to them. So, in the end, LGSM decided to twin with the Neath, Dulais, and Swansea Valleys Miners Support Group deep in South Wales.

Keen to meet the miners they were working so hard to help, in October 1984, Mark, Mike and 25 members of their crew rocked up at Onllwyn Miners’ Welfare Hall in the Dulais.

They had no idea how a town of gruff miners would react to a group of LGBTQ+ people from London.

‘We were young and we were quite conspicuous because we were LGBT,’ remembers Mike. ‘When we walked in, the whole crowd of people stopped talking for a moment. We knew that was a response to us – we just didn’t know what it meant.’

That was, until the miners broke into rowdy applause for their newfound friends. 

‘Who would have expected, miners who have very tough, hard jobs, would give us that kind of reception?

‘We all then got drunk and exchanged stories. By the end of that weekend, we’d cemented friendships that were to last to this day. We never expected that kind of welcome.’

Why were LGSM met with such tolerance? Mike thinks the miner’s wives might have had something to do with it.

While their husbands were off at protests, they were busy fundraising and liaising with their support groups – so they saw first hand how important LGSM’s work was for their community.

‘I think in the weeks leading up to our visit, the women had talked to the men and made them think in an adult way about gay people,’ Mike explains.

‘So by the time we got there, the miners were thinking, “This is brave of these queer boys coming in here. Very brave of them”.’

The miners even returned the favour and travelled to London, where Mike and his friends took them to bars in Soho.

Their unlikely friendship turned out not just to be crucial support for the striking workers, but also sparked an outpouring of support for LGBTQ+ people after the Neath, Dulais, and Swansea miners began wearing LGSM’s badges in solidarity.

They even stuck the group’s logo on their van as they travelled up and down the country to join strikes at other pits.

‘There was these big hairy miners on picket lines, facing up to the police and getting the s**t kicked out of them by the police – and they’re wearing gay badges,’ remembers Mike.

‘And the really crucial way for miners to know what was happening nationally was literally speaking to each other on these picket lines. So our Welsh guys would go around saying, “Oh, we’ve got the gays supporting us. Marvellous people. They’ve been so good to us”.

‘They realised what we needed in terms of support was people to identify with us, to be our allies.’

Ten other LGSM groups sprung up across the country during the year long strike and began fundraising for other towns battling to keep their coal pits open.

However, as the New Year approached, the number of people crossing the picket line had increased as many miners faced serious financial hardship, while arrests, clashes with police and divisions within the movement demoralised those striking. By March 1985, thousands of miners marched back to work, which marked the end of a year of industrial action – and weakened the power of trade unions under Thatcher’s government.

Defeated and demoralised, a group of 70 miners travelled down from Dulais in June 1985 to London Pride in the very van they had brought from LGSM’s donations, to say thank you for all the support they had received from the LGBTQ+ community. 

Their arrival was met with awe from the crowd – just as Mike and his friends had, when they turned up in Wales. Remembering the scene as they unfolded their trade union and LGSM bannersat the march’s starting point in Hyde Park, he says: ‘The crowd arrived and they saw this huge banner. They gathered around it and wouldn’t move.

‘So the organisers came round and said: “Look, you’re going to have to lead the march because the crowd around you is so big”.’

The miner’s support did not end there. 

The NUM had once been dismissive of gay rights campaigning, but that changed at the Labour Party conference in Bournemouth in 1985, when miners voted as a block to support a resolution committing the party to gay rights. The same happened at the Trade Union Conference that year.

‘The whole of the entire trade union movement followed the miners’ example and supported lesbian and gay rights in homage to the recently defeated miners,’ Mike recalls.

Mining groups soon became some of the most vocal supports of LGBT rights and began leading fundraising efforts for HIV/Aids charities.

For author and playwright Clayton Littlewood, who was a gay man in London during the strike, the legacy of LGSM ‘has been incredible’.

He tells Metro: ‘Back then, I thought, “Why are we collecting for striking miners?” Now it all makes sense.

‘That unity between two attack groups, it almost put the sexuality aside and was like, “You’re oppressed, we’re oppressed. How can we join forces?”

It helped the miners, it helped gay people.We need that kind of solidarity again.’

Clayton now helps the dating app Grindr with a social media project called ‘Daddy Lessons’, dedicated to commemorating key moments in gay history and features the history of LGSM, hoping to educate more young people about its importance.

‘If people can see that kind of history and see what happened then and how successful it was, they may think of trying to join forces with other groups because we need support at the moment,’ he explains.

However, the history of LGSM was ‘almost invisible’, until screenplay writer Stephen Beresford decided to make a movie out of it in 2014, adds Mike.

Called Pride, the film had a star-studded cast including Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton and Dominic West, and was met with critical acclaim across the globe. Mike, who was played by Joe Gilgun, was even invited to speak to miners in Belgium after the film aired.

Despite the miners’ defeat, Mike says he is proud of his role in the fight and the legacy it has left.

‘Thatcher won – history is always the history of the victors and not the losers. But we put up a fight and that itself is something to be proud of,’ he insists.

‘There are mining communities across the world that have been influenced by the striking British miners from the ’80s. 

‘Even in countries which are are viciously homophobic, I wouldn’t mind betting that in those communities, there isn’t as much homophobia as there is in their communities at large.’

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.