E27: Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, part 1

Working Class History

Society & Culture, Education, History

5.0 • 813 Ratings

🗓️ 17 June 2019

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

First in a three-part podcast miniseries this Pride month about Lesbians & Gays Support the Miners, a small group of LGBTQ people in London who began to raise money for striking workers in the Welsh valleys during the great miners’ strike of 1984-5. Unknown to them at the time, they would end up transforming both communities, and Britain as a whole.
LGSM have recently achieved a level of fame due to the excellent 2014 film by Steven Beresford, Pride. In these episodes, participants in the group, and in the Welsh mining communities, tell their story.
This podcast is funded entirely by our listeners and readers on patreon. You can listen to all 3 parts of this miniseries now, as well as 2 bonus episodes, as well as exclusive early access to all episodes and other benefits at https://patreon.com/workingclasshistory
Read the full show notes with more information, photos and videos here on our website: https://workingclasshistory.com/2019/06/10/e23-25-lesbians-gays-support-the-miners/

Transcript

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0:00.0	In 1984, a battle was going on between striking mine workers and Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government.
0:05.4	A small group of LGBT people in London came together to support the workers,
0:09.4	in a way which, unknown to them at the time, would bring both communities together
0:13.0	in ways which had changed them and the country forever.
0:16.5	This is working class history.
0:32.5	This is the first in a three-part mini-series about lesbians and gays support the minors,
0:38.3	LGSM, a group which was set up to support minors in Britain during the Great Strike of 1984-to-5. Now, if you're not familiar with what the minor strike was about, we're going to go into a lot more detail about this in a future episode.
0:44.3	But in short, coal mining in the UK was a nationalised industry, run by the National Coal Board headed by Ian McGregor.
0:50.3	And miners were the best organised and most powerful group of workers in the country,
0:54.8	and they'd brought down the Conservative government in 1974.
0:57.8	So to break the workers movement, the government planned to close pits on mass,
1:01.6	essentially to destroy the industry and with it the National Union of Mine Workers,
1:05.6	the NUM, whose president was Arthur Scarkeill.
1:08.5	So an all-out strike broke out against a closure plan in March
1:11.0	1984, which the government had prepared for. So their strategy was, along with massive violent
1:16.8	repression by the police, to basically wait it out until the miners were staffed back to work. So,
1:22.5	raising money to support mining communities to help them hold out was a key part of the struggle.
1:27.0	LJSM was formed by a key part of the struggle.
1:28.1	LJSM was formed by a small number of young people initially in London, but it later spread
1:32.9	around the country and raise huge amounts of money for miners and their families.
1:37.0	And this is their story.
1:39.3	Mike Jackson was one of the founders of the group.
	...

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