Sometimes it seems as though the history of The Left is hoisted on the scaffold of emotionally resonant reversals.
Manchester’s own Peterloo Massacre, the Battle of Orgreave and the passing of Section 28 of the Local Government Act can all be regarded as defeats that have nonetheless proved pivotal in other ways, most notably in the galvanising of popular sentiment and the forging of community. An evening at Manchester’s People’s History Museum, Solidarity Forever, is a celebration of how the Miners’ Strike of 1984-85, while dividing some communities, also brought other, seemingly less likely bedfellows together.
The alliance that the Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) group formed with the striking members of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) was, in many respects, a coalition of the scapegoated. Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister of the day, had infamously castigated the latter as “the enemy within”, while the LGBT+ community of the time, subject to a homophobia that was still, to some extent, normalised, had been further stigmatised by association with the transmission of HIV, a virus whose effects on the auto-immune system, decades before pre-exposure prophylaxis, could all too often prove fatal. Section 28 itself, prohibiting the promotion of homosexuality as “a pretended family relationship”, was barely four years over the horizon.
Solidarity Forever: 40 Years of LGSM
Tonight, we’re given the chance to sift through the LGSM archive and the People’s History Museum‘s own banner collection. Perhaps the centrepiece of the former is what, from the exterior, seems to be a fairly unremarkable, if slightly battered suitcase. Opening its black shell, however, reveals the pearls concealed within; a series of mounted and captioned period photographs, collated by the LGSM to illustrate what would have formed a travelling exhibition. Carefully packed away, it could readily be transported, from city to city and from town to town, in order to raise funds, most often for jailed miners’ legal fees.
To cap the evening off, a conversation with Mike Jackson and Jonathan Blake, two of the LGSM’s surviving members, is promised. Blake, an HIV activist, has been living with the virus for 42 years. It was he who designed the original LGSM badge, funding for the first run of which was raised by a benefit night at Manchester’s own Napoleons. Both he and the Accrington-born Jackson have a deep seam of personal experience to mine, dating back to the formation of the LGSM and its initial meetings in London’s Gay’s The Word bookshop, an oral history to flesh out the typewritten minutes held in the museum archive.
Crucially, the alliance between the support group and the NUM didn’t end with the defeat of the strike. Rather, the union and the community it represented remained true to the pledge, passionately articulated at the Pits And Perverts benefit by Neath, Dulais and Swansea Valley Miners’ Support Group member Dai Donovan, that “now we will support you”. The NUM would go on to stand shoulder to shoulder in the campaign against Section 28, and to lobby for LGBT+ rights to be enshrined by both the Trades Union Congress and in Labour Party policy.
LGSM suitcase, 1985. Image courtesy of People’s History Museum.
Even from a distance of four decades, the refrain of voices brought together in common cause is undiminished. It rises with Jimmy Somerville’s falsetto, performing as part of Bronski Beat at the Pits And Perverts concert, from the stage at Camden’s Electric Ballroom with “you and me together, fighting for our love”. In a year in which billionaires only an ocean away seem hell-bent on steamrolling the flowering of diversity, equality and inclusion, the roar has rarely felt so urgent.
Main image: Lesbians & Gays Support The Miners banner, 1984. Image courtesy of People’s History Museum.
