Welcome back to part two of our miniseries on lesbians and gay support the minors during the 1984-5 minor strike.

If you haven't heard part one yet, I'd go back and listen to that first.

LGSM was a broad church politically, but it was an effective organisation based around a couple of fundamental principles and practical goals,

which we think something we can learn from for campaigns today.

So Martin and then Brett, who are members of the group, explain more about how they worked.

So the group was formed.

On the basis, there was unanimous agreement for this.

It was unconditional support for the miners against the government.

Those of us that came together in the very early days of LGSM were absolutely clear this was what the group was to be about. It was absolutely unconditional support for the miners against the government. So we set up

the group. We would have weekly meetings. One of the main aims was to go into the gay community and build support for the miners.

And that, from the very start, involved being outside of venues as well as inside,

collecting for the strike fund.

We'd identified Dulice Valley, Delice and Neith as the area that we would

be supporting. And we made, unlike in the film, we did actually have some initial links with

the area through a member of the Gay Young Socialist Group. A person called Hugh Williams

was actually from Swansea and he was a member of the gay young socialist group, a person called Hugh Williams was actually from Swansea and he was

a member of the Communist Party at the time and had contacts with the industrial organiser of the

Communist Party who put him in touch with the people in South Wales. I think at the time,

there were support groups all over the country,

various support groups, very strong, lots of women's groups, groups everywhere supporting the miners.

It was quite a phenomenon how these groups were set up. So we had our own group. And yet,

from the off, we were supporting, raising money. We set up a bank account.

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