ONE other alliance, justifiably considered by many of those involved to be the most remarkable, was that which was created, nurtured and sustained between the Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners Group (LGSM) in London and the Neath, Dulais and Swansea Valley Support Group in the South Wales Coalfield.

Thanks to playwright Micheal Kerrigan and the script development by Patricia Byrne for Pits and Perverts, first performed in 2013 when it toured Northern Ireland, and writer Steven Beresford’s film Pride, released in September 2014, that alliance has now achieved a wider, indeed universal, recognition.

It is also to be welcomed that a better and deeper historical understanding has been achieved through the research of Diarmaid Kelliher, in his illuminating and groundbreaking article Solidarity and Sexuality: Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners 1984-85 in History Workshop Journal (Spring 2014).

Among other issues, Kelliher has addressed the ways in which “the concept of class, community and oppression were employed to explain this alliance.”

For me as a historian and as an activist in the strike at the local level, Pits and Perverts and Pride brought new ways of understanding the alliance.

Neither, of course, were historical documentaries, nor sought to be.

The former powerfully portrayed the linkages between the oppression of the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland, the gay community and the mining community, while the latter is witness to the strike from the gay and lesbian perspective.

For those directly involved in the Dulais Valley, a number of factors, both historical and political, need, however, to be acknowledged. Firstly, the alliance was not in any way accidental.

The minutes of the LGSM (now lodged at the People’s History Museum in Manchester) and the minutes of the Neath, Dulais and Swansea Valleys Miners’ Support Group (located at the Richard Burton Archives at Swansea University), as well as memories of activists from the time, reveal a clear and deliberate political strategy to link the two movements and forge an alliance between the gay community and the mining community.

Huw Williams, then a Communist Party member and a founder of LGSM, recently confirmed my own memory that the Communist Party, with its strategy of building a “broad democratic alliance” against the Conservative government, helped provide the link between the LGSM and the Dulais Valley after discussions Huw had with the industrial organiser of the Communist Party.

David Richards, Secretary of the Communist Party in Wales, then made the call to me as chair of the local support group.

Key to all of this was the communist Mark Ashton (a co-founder of LGSM and the driving force in making the Dulais Valley link), whose political affiliation and motivation is central to these developments but is not acknowledged, indeed is obscured, in the film.

There was to be a clear political undertaking: giving and receiving money was not enough.

It had to be publicly recognised, and an alliance had to be initiated and sustained.

Crucially, all this was carried out at the subsequent support group meetings which I chaired on October 14 and 21.

The support group was well versed in welcoming and building alliances of all kinds, although this one might have seemed to some to have been different.

At no time, then or subsequently, were any openly homophobic attitudes expressed in our locality.

This is contrary to the film’s apparently “necessary” dramatic portrayal of open hostility at the beginning of the relationship, and the fictional collapse of the alliance later. Neither actually took place, nor was there an “informer” as depicted in the film in the character of Marlene.

Further historical research needs to be undertaken to question the stereotyping of mining communities in Pride as being homophobic, intolerant and bigoted. If we had been how could we have sustained the alliance?

That said, Pride gets very near to some of the subliminal homophobic attitudes evident in our second meeting.

The minutes faithfully recorded by our secretary Hefina Headon tell a story of deliberate and determined political and cultural alliance-building, an instance of Antonio Gramsci’s “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will”:

October 14: “Letter from Lesbians and Gays asking for a speaker on October 19. They have donated £1,200. Hywel asked for a volunteer. John nominated Hywel. Hywel said Dane Hartwell will be in London and he will ask him …

Margaret stated there will be 30 of them coming down on October 26 and asked for a list of people who will accommodate them.”

October 21: “Margaret reported that the accommodation for the gays and lesbians arriving next weekend had all been arranged. Islwyn felt that people would be going to the Onllwyn Club on Saturday night for the wrong reasons. He said that Onllwyn Club had no knowledge of the concert.

“David clarified that the arrangements had been made and that Ali and John Val were aware of this. Hywel said that he and Margaret would speak to John Evans after the meeting.

“David stated that Lesbians and Gays were members of the working class, and that he felt that it was possibly a storm in a teacup, Frank endorsed this wholeheartedly.”

David Donovan, the coal washery worker and Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU) activist, who was ultimately to make the connection for us in London, on October 19 2014, and his then wife Margaret, a leading campaigner from the earliest days who was the prime mover in creating a distinct autonomous women’s group alongside the support group, were the key players in forging the alliance locally.

At the London end of the alliance, the LGSM was made up overwhelmingly of highly political people, either Communist or Labour in outlook or membership.

The minutes of the inaugural meeting decided to produce a leaflet to inform people of the facts of the dispute and explain the relevance of the miners’ struggle to lesbian and gay liberation.

The LGSM mirrored the political determination of the Miners’ Support Group with which they chose to twin.
After the visit to the coalfield, Mark Ashton reported to the LGSM that it was “the best experience of his life” (the minute-taker, Mike Jackson, added “Mine too!”).

While communists like Mark Ashton and Huw Williams provided some of the political direction, the inaugural meeting acknowledged the importance of the Labour Campaign for Lesbian and Gay rights by “following the lines of the LCLGR constitution.”

In a recent interview with Mike Jackson, co-founder of the LGSM (on November 10 2014), these political origins were confirmed:

“There was a Labour Campaign for Lesbian and Gay Rights, LCLGR, and from what I can gather, there was a Labour Party youth group, and there was a Lesbian and Gay young socialists, they were all starting to collect for the miners, but from what I can gather it wasn’t terribly coherent … What I do remember is, I bumped into Mark Ashton in King’s Cross Station very shortly before the Gay Pride March in 1984, and Mark, just off the cuff, said: ‘Do you want to take a bucket to the Pride march on Saturday and we’ll collect for the miners?’ and I said: ‘Great idea.’”

As if to confirm this wider political perspective, there is evidence in the LGSM minutes to indicate solidarity action beyond the Dulais Valley. At a fringe meeting of the LCLGR at the Labour Party Conference the following message was received from the NUM:
“We support civil liberties and the struggle of lesbian and gay people. We welcome the links forged in South Wales and other areas. Our struggle is yours. Victory to the miners.”

A month later the Lesbian and Gay Socialist conference in Edinburgh, on November 24 and 25, sent a solidarity birthday card to the imprisoned striking miner and later Labour MP David Hamilton.

The card was signed by all the delegates, some with red lipstick.

In the month leading up to Christmas 1984 and into the New Year, over £50,000 was received in donations by our support group. The bulk of this came from the LGSM and print unions in London.

The momentum was provided by alliances which defined culture and community in their broadest terms, as in Raymond Williams’s Resources of Hope. The South Wales Striking Miners’ choir and rugby team both had their origins in our support group.

The highlights of this period were the Shoulder to Shoulder concert by the choir at Hornsey Town Hall, and the Bronski Beat Pits and Perverts concert with Jimmy Somerville along with the Flying Pickets at Treorchy.

It can however be argued that the real alliance with the gays and lesbians was not with the striking miners, who were for the most part passive participants, but with the female activists within the support group.

They provided the actual leadership in the locality, not only in the remarkable food distribution they organised but in more overtly political activity such as attendance at community picket lines, the two occupations of Cynheidre Colliery, and in building and sustaining the alliance with LGSM.

Our secretary Hefina Headon, who spoke at the massive Afan Lido rally, and Women’s Group co-ordinator Margaret Donovan became leading figures across the coalfield, as did future Labour MP Sian James, especially in her campaigning on behalf of sacked miners in the Justice for Mineworkers campaign.

There is no doubt that local striking miners seemed more comfortable in building the equally effective but less challenging alliances — with London print workers, with Irish trade unionists and with Welsh-language activists. It was left to the women rather than the men to take the lead with the LGSM, though the women were strongly supported by David Donovan.

Mike Jackson recently acknowledged that “heterosexual men were always the problem.”

That said, however, they did not resist, and, significantly, they participated in the Gay Pride march in London of 1985, where the Blaenant NUM lodge banner was prominently displayed.

Another aspect of the struggle in our locality and throughout our coalfield was the linking with black and minority ethnic groups in London. The very first London donations to the support group came from the black community in Broadwater Farm in North London.

I well recall the occasion when Phil Bowen, chair of the Blaenant NUM Lodge, reported to our support group that he had successfully collected a significant amount of money from that community, and had also established links in the nearby Turkish community. He came back full of enthusiasm for both communities, and in particular for the Kurdish cause and (prophetically) the need for a Human Rights Act.

After the strike, these links were remembered, and a young black woman, Mary John Baptiste, representing the Broadwater Farm community, was invited to speak at the South Wales Area NUM Annual Conference in 1986. Hefina Headon and I met her at Neath Railway Station and took her to the conference.

She was very nervous, but Hefina encouraged her by saying simply, ‘Be proud!’ In other words, she should be proud of her own community and its history, and the way in which it responded to ours.

Of all the valleys in the South Wales coalfield, the Dulais Valley has the most benign and lasting legacies from the strike, and all these legacies involve women. The successful Dove workshop — a training and educational centre with a nursery, a cafe and a community garden — has as its chair Glynis Howell, the wife of a striking miner. Gill Watts, daughter of a striking miner, is today the cafe manager, and Jill Douglas, sister of two striking miners, is the nursery manager.

The Dulais Valley Divas is a new women’s choir, whose founding members include Jill Douglas and Kay Bowen, who was the main food coordinator of the strike when it was supporting over one thousand families. This is one of the more significant cultural developments in the valleys today.

And then there is the Seven Sisters women’s rugby team, successfully led by its captain Bethan Kelland-Howell daughter of a striking miner. Bethan is an Ospreys player as well as a Welsh International Cap, and is also a gay icon in the locality.

A women’s youth team has also recently been established, indicating that this unique women’s valley community initiative is flourishing and growing.

The crucial autonomous women’s role, so evident in the alliance with our gay and lesbian supporters, is perhaps the real story and legacy of the strike.

Pits and Perverts and Pride have shown the way in telling one part of the story. A film from the women’s perspective would be a fitting sequel, to tell of another important aspect of the struggle. The more we revisit the events of 1984-85, the more we can explore the claim made in this book, that in making history, history was on our side.

With the passing of time, it has become increasingly evident that a vital industry — coal — and a vital institution — the South Wales Area of the National Union of Mineworkers — were all but destroyed by the defeat. Those two great institutions of post-war Britain, the nationalised coal industry and the NUM, no longer dominate our economic and political landscape, largely as a consequence of the intensity and length of the dispute. Nonetheless, the assertion of a complex political legacy remains.

After the strike, the writer Beatrix Campbell posed this perceptive question: “In decades to come, when we come to write and reflect upon the history of this strike as a watershed in working class politics, the real test of change to come will be whether this women’s movement is allowed to survive — for the women themselves.”

Another essential link with the past can be seen in young people like Carwyn Donovan, one of the small number of South Wales mining apprentices. Carwyn’s parents, Carole and David, represented the finest traditions of solidarity between the coalfield and the wider world during 1984-85. And his own commitment to his industry, his community and to his union, are vital clues to our understanding of our past, and our future.

Reflecting on the past 30 years, the experience of defeat has meant a seeking of new explanations, and some new perspectives. The valleys are, after all, still with us — just — and we are certainly part of a much more democratic Wales, which they helped to achieve.

The reality of economic and social loss after 1984-85 has in recent years been deepened by the current austerity cuts to benefits and local public services. Nevertheless, changing gender relationships, greater sexual tolerance and the enduring sense of community remain the lasting legacies of the year-long struggle.

It is now time for new generations of playwrights, filmmakers and historians, working in alliance with political activists within new and old social movements, to test and deconstruct the claim that history is on our side.

Polly Vittorini, Nicola Field and Caron Methol wrote prophetically in 1986: “Tremendous links were forged during the strike, and we must never forget them. They can be the basis for struggles in the future.”

That is indeed why, on March 14 2015 at Onllwyn Miners’ Welfare Hall, on the thirtieth anniversary of the strike, the re-established Neath, Dulais and Swansea Valleys Miners’ Support Group remember and honour Mark Ashton and his re-established Lesbian and Gays Support the Miners Group.

It is for historians, now and in the future, to tell the real story. The task has begun.

This extract was taken from p109-118 of History on our Side: Wales and the 1984-85 Miners’ Strike by Hywel Francis.