Pride, directed by Matthew Warchus, is a profoundly instructive political narrative, rich in remarkably apt symbolism. Released in 2014 and screened at the Cannes Film Festival, Pride also received nominations at the Golden Globes and the BAFTA Awards. The British film tells a true story that unfolded in Britain during the 1980s, when the LGBT movement was taking its first steps against a political backdrop dominated by the ferocious anti-people offensive of Thatcher’s policies, which were quite literally sending millions of workers to their graves.
The political confrontation itself, and the demands of the strikes that were growing out of the sheer necessity of survival, are not the subject of this article. Not because they are unimportant, but because the film chooses to examine a particular aspect of social struggles, offering invaluable lessons to those who are part of them today. It explains how the genuine ideology of the working class, the ideology that enables it to survive within an exploitative system and fight for the prospect of a better life, cannot afford to apply double standards when confronting the attitudes of its adversaries — in this case, racism — if it is to emerge victorious.
The film opens at London Pride in 1984. That year, the protagonist realises something that few others have noticed. The police, who would normally beat the living daylights out of LGBT demonstrations, are remarkably “relaxed” at this particular march. The reason is that they have business elsewhere. They are busy drawing blood at the enormous and heroic miners’ strikes in western Britain, where workers are watching their lives being destroyed and hunger tightening its grip.
It is then that Mark Ashton decides to organise a campaign within the LGBT movement in support of the striking miners, collecting money and other essential supplies that would prove invaluable in helping them sustain their struggle.
The first obstacle emerges from within the LGBT movement itself. Although, for the sake of narrative economy, Mark appears to find relatively quickly the people who will form his group, LGSM (Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners), there are clear indications that this was anything but an easy undertaking.
Members of the gay community are hardly enthusiastic about supporting the struggle of masses who have traditionally harboured prejudices against them. These are poor, uneducated masses who, although they understand the necessity of fighting for survival, remain attached to traditional values and religion. Yet the question immediately arises: is Mark right, or are those who have suffered every imaginable form of mistreatment at the hands of these masses right? Is there something truly remarkable about supporting people who appear to be one’s enemies?
Very quickly, it becomes apparent that the ease with which members of the LGBT movement reject the idea of joining forces with the labour movement, beyond the narrow boundaries of their own demands, also stems from a certain kind of elitism. In liberal London, it is easy to express one’s opinions freely, organise collectively and live one’s life as one wishes, even in the face of hostility, and to maintain an open mind towards difference. Things are not nearly so easy in the mining villages, however, and many members of the LGBT movement fail to understand this.
The film illustrates this in exemplary fashion, as the protagonists discover that their inability to achieve anything substantial stems primarily from the fact that they have no contact whatsoever with the striking miners themselves. They cannot meaningfully support people they have never met simply because they are moved by their struggle. And so begins the battle to establish contact with the miners.
It is, of course, a battle. Having spent their lives struggling to be “accepted” by the society in which they live, they suddenly have to undertake something far more difficult: winning acceptance from a society that considers their very way of life de facto unnatural. This immediately raises a question that the film continues to answer throughout its narrative. Are uneducated workers capable of understanding the demands of a movement that develops predominantly among petty-bourgeois and even bourgeois sections of society? Are they perhaps more capable of doing so than the traditional bourgeoisie, which is theoretically better educated and lives under conditions where nothing prevents it from approaching these questions rationally?
The first difficulty is overcome thanks to the intervention of one person, Siân James, who decides to answer their telephone call and accept the assistance they are offering. The first meaningful encounters then follow, beginning with a visit to London by Cliff Barry, a leader of the local trade union.
When Barry meets the members of LGSM, he tells them that this is the first time he has ever seen gay people. One of them replies that it is the first time he has ever seen a miner. This brief exchange is another indication of just how completely different the worlds of these two movements are. It also helps demonstrate that, more often than not, this very distance is what prevents movements from marching together, even when their demands serve the same purpose and, of course, confront the same enemy: an exploitative system that wants people to keep their heads down, whether because they are forced to work or because they wish to live even their personal lives in ways that depart from what is considered the “conventional” path.
When Barry decides to address a gay bar to thank its patrons for their assistance, he is anything but welcome. His cheap, old-fashioned clothes and equally unfashionable haircut are entirely at odds with the aesthetic sensibilities of those around him. But could it be that they have learned to retreat into this aesthetic precisely because it offers them another form of security? His message could have been received far more negatively, but the director — and, we hope, reality itself — allows it to transform the community’s attitude towards this old-fashioned, traditional worker. A first battle has been won in cosmopolitan London.
The corresponding battle, however, must now be won in Wales, where things are far from straightforward. Every member of LGSM realises this from the moment they arrive in the village of Onllwyn, where the strike is under way. They can hardly believe their eyes when confronted with the poverty that surrounds them. The only person among them who actually knows this world, the owner of the London bookshop where they gather, has not accompanied them because he is afraid of setting foot in such places.
When they come face to face with the miners, they realise that it is harder to “come out” to their “friends” — the very people they have decided to support — than to their enemies: the cops, the neo-Nazis and all the other varieties of scum they encounter in London. Mark Ashton decides to speak. What he says makes little sense, because his words are mere generalities when confronted with a struggle for survival. The reception he receives is far worse than the one Barry encountered in London.
It is here that the differences between the problems faced by the two groups become apparent. Yet they have the same enemy and their problems share the same underlying cause, something that even the protagonists who initiated the campaign had not easily understood. The enemy may be the same, but a prolonged strike cannot embrace demands that the strikers do not fully understand and for which they cannot therefore make the necessary sacrifices. This is not mere activism.
Nevertheless, through the coordinated efforts of experienced miners’ trade unionists and the women serving on the strike committee, contact between the two groups helps break down stereotypes. What is particularly revealing is that the ease with which these prejudices are overcome depends on each person’s experience of collective struggle, rather than their age. Being young does not necessarily mean thinking more rationally or more freely.
The film delivers its messages with remarkable precision. The shattering of the local men’s conventional ideas of “masculinity” through the dancing of a gay man who captivates the women of the village brings a festive atmosphere to the demonstration of how rotten beliefs can be broken and brought crashing down by the simplest of human gestures.
It is at this point, however, that the narrative begins to reveal the genuinely militant character of both sides. Struggle is not something easy; if it were, everyone would take part in it. Sabotage against the strike and its organisation, combined with the exhaustion brought about by its duration, pushes the situation towards a critical turning point in the cold Welsh winter. Food supplies are dwindling, the money raised in support is insufficient, and Thatcher’s policies have one objective and one objective alone: to wipe entire villages and regions off the map through a concealed form of class genocide, since these disposable workers are no longer quite so necessary to their exploiters. It is then that Mark Ashton decides that more is needed from London’s gay community.
The response is particularly characteristic, and it comes in the form of a collective song. Those present in the scene, virtually the entire population of the village, sing Bread and Roses, attributed in the article to John Denver. The struggle for bread, for survival itself, is accompanied by the struggle for a life in which every human being can be happy and live with complete dignity and freedom — symbolised by the roses.
All this, however, unfolds under the constant questioning of LGSM by a section of the local population. By a “remarkable” coincidence, these are the very people who are also undermining the strike from within, organising provocations with the assistance of the media in an attempt to sever the bond between the two movements. One might argue that their motives are simply rooted in superficial racism, but there is more to it than that. Such ideologies offer an escape only to those who seek the triumph of their personal, often temporary, interests over the collective good. Careerist trade unionism, just like employer-controlled trade unionism, cares nothing for what is truly at stake — genuine victory — even when it constantly invokes that victory in the name of “realism”. Unfortunately, the same is true of the compromised masses in every exploitative society.
The manoeuvres of the sell-out trade unionists eventually succeed through a barrage of provocations. At the very moment when enormous social forces could be mobilised to secure a genuine victory for the strike, they manage instead to bring it to an end. In essence, the refusal to accept LGSM’s assistance, under the pretext of press coverage that was supposedly “damaging” the strikers’ public image, leaves the strike unable to continue. It is characteristic of social-democratic trade union leaderships to prolong strikes for as long as it suits them, only to “democratically undermine” them when they become genuinely dangerous to the system.
The defeat breaks the protagonist, who decides to abandon both the labour movement and the LGBT movement. Fortunately, not for long. At the same time, another central character, the child of a traditional bourgeois family, decides to sever ties with his home. His “loving” parents have never accepted his identity, despite living under conditions that should have enabled them to understand far more than the supposedly “uneducated” workers of Wales.
On 29 June 1985, the protagonist returns to the bookshop for London Pride, exactly one year after the beginning of the film. From there, the entire LGSM group sets off to demonstrate, as it does every year, but this time carrying red working-class flags, determined to bring their struggle alongside their own demands into the public eye.
At this point, although the narrative moves quickly, the same confrontation unfolds from the other side. The organisations of the LGBT movement do not want the workers. At Pride, LGSM finds itself confronting the advocates of “no politics”, who want the march to become a “celebration”. Fortunately, however, the answer comes from the Welsh workers themselves, who arrive in busloads to stand shoulder to shoulder with the LGBT movement, with the very people who had supported them.
LGSM takes its place at the head of the Pride march alongside the trade unions, and the police, who had been enjoying what amounted to a leisurely summer stroll, prepare themselves for battle, as they do whenever ordinary people find themselves in a strong position to demand their genuine right to a dignified life.
Ultimately, the petty-bourgeois Pride movement managed to overcome, if only temporarily, its own inherent weaknesses and gained something far greater: an entire people standing by its side, people with whom it shared the same enemy and problems rooted in the same cause.
In 1985, the flags at the head of London Pride were red. Life, if only for a moment, seemed to be full of colour.
