Pride, 23.9.14

George Mackay's Bromley discovers his inner activist

A bevy of luvvies (Imelda Staunton, Bill Nighy, Dominic West, Andrew Scott, Paddy Considine) starred in this warm crowd-pleaser about a small group of gay activists who fund-raised for the miners during the 1984/5 strike, despite themselves being under attack from homophobes, viruses and the tabloids. 

Heavily-inspired by “Made in Dagenham”, an earlier Brit-flick about marginalised people coming of age during a strike, Matthew Warchus’s feel-good ensemble flick transmuted challenging story-lines into something more uplifting, while occasionally teetering on the verge of corniness.  Much of the story-line was apparently based on fact:  a South Wales colliery band did indeed repay the gay activists' support by leading the 1985 London “Pride” march and NUM block-votes subsequently helped shift Labour party policy on the age of consent. 

Imelda Staunton hits the dance-floor at the Miners' Welfare Club

In the tradition of miners' strike films ("Billy Elliott", "The Full Monty"), Stephen Beresford's script focused squarely on the links between the personal and the political.  Framed as a coming-out tale for 20yo “Bromley” (a gawky catering student well under-played by George Mackay), the film was saturated in Eighties cultural signifiers (à la “Peter’s Friends”, “Starter for Ten”) and looked back nostalgically to the days when playing Bronski Beat, Frankie and Billy Bragg was the standard form of protest. 

A morality tale about the personal confidence to be gained from standing up and reaching across social borders, the film had fun with the classic British trope of introducing urbanites to a traditional provincial setting (cf “Withnail and I”).  Most of the best lines went to the miners' wives, very much the glue holding the pit-village together.  A bulked-up Staunton rather stole the show as a redoubtable Welsh battle-axe you probably wouldn't want to bump into on an unlit street at night. 
 

"LGSM:  Lesbians & Gays Support the Miners"

Ben Schnetzer was the quiffed and gobby activist who led a motley band of naifs to raise funds for a Welsh pit village 'so small there were no vowels in its name' (his character apparently based on real-life activist Mark Watson, who fell victim to AIDS only two years after the strike).  Dominic West had fun playing against standard macho type as a flamboyant Seventies ‘dancing queen’, while Andrew Scott ("Sherlock's" Moriarty) had to be more buttoned-up as West's gay-bashed Welsh lover.  The film played amusingly too with the uneasy gay/lesbian dialectic. 

For those of us who remember these events first-hand, it was striking what a different world 1984 was compared to today, similarly oppressive governments aside.  Motley found himself far more drawn to it as a wised-up forty-something than he probably would have done as a shy provincial teenager at the time.  Better late than never!