Summary
1984. "Solidarity Forever" by Peter Seeger plays. We see workers protesting in Margaret Thatcher's England. A young man, Mark Ashton, watches something on television as another young man, with whom he has presumably spent the night, tells him he left his phone number "just in case." As Margaret Thatcher comes on television, saying that she has no intention of being a "softie," but instead wants to be a "good, firm leader," Mark runs out the door.
We see another young man, Joe, run out the door and head to a gay pride march in London. It is Saturday, June 30, 1984. Joe jumps into the march as another man, Mike, hands him the side of a large sign that reads: "Queers: Better Blatant Than Latent." Mark arrives and tells his friends, a group assembled around the sign Joe is carrying, that they need to march in solidarity with the miners. Mike goes along with it, telling Joe that they always do what Mark says.
Joe wanders to the side of the street as a woman passes him with her child, telling him that the march is "disgusting." He watches the march as Mark yells about the fact that the gays in the march support the miners and their families. Joe jumps into the march and takes a bucket, saying that the next train to his home in Bromley is not for a while. He chants his support for the miners as they pass an old woman holding a sign that says "Burn in Hell." Later that evening, Joe calls his mother and tells him that he will be staying in London with some friends from college.
Inside at a party, Joe looks around at the openly gay partiers with wide eyes. A girl, Steph, calls him over and tells him that she's hiding from another girl at the party who broke her heart at a Smiths concert. "I've never met a lesbian before," he says, to which she replies, "I've never met anyone who irons their jeans." She points out his birthday broach, which he takes off, embarrassed. He tells her it's his 20th birthday, and she informs him that he's illegal, since the legal age is 16 "for the breeders" and 21 "for the gays."
He is shuffled off with some other partygoers to count the pins from the march that day. Mark leads the group, making jokes about the police and suggesting that they are now targeting the miners. "These mining communities are being bullied just like we are...Bullied by the police, bullied by the tabloids, bullied by the government!" he says. The other men push back, suggesting that the miners never come to the help of the gay community, but Mark insists that it's important and tells them they raised 200 quid that day. One man speaks up and suggests that he has been getting beaten up by members of the working class his whole life, before leaving the meeting.
Mark announces the name of their organization: "Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners." He asks who wants to get involved in the cause, and only a few gay men agree, while the rest leave. They have recruited six people so far when an older gay man, Gethin, tells Mark that he and his partner Jonathan would like to join as well. Spotting Joe, Steph invites him to join as well, and they have a small group.
We see a montage of the group collecting money for the cause outside the shop. Mike calls someone who hangs up on him as soon as he has said the name of their organization. At catering college, Joe is distracted by thoughts about the group. Gethin encourages Jonathan to go out with the activists, but Jonathan is committed to a more hedonistic schedule. "What happened to gay lib, Jonathan?" Gethin asks him, to which Jonathan replies, "I don't know. What did happen to it?" Joe asks Steph about Jonathan, and she tells him that Jonathan is an actor who once stabbed Susannah York with an ice pick.
When the group goes to donate money to the mining union, they do not accept it, so the members troubleshoot about how to get the miners to accept their donation. While some members suggest they ought to change their name or make the donation anonymously, Mark maintains that the miners will call them back and that their refusal has nothing to do with the sexual identities of the group's members.
Steph follows Mark outside to help him collect donations, since it's a rule of the group never to collect alone. He immediately goes inside, however, and decides that they should bypass the union and call a mining town directly. Gethin points out a town in Wales where there is a giant coalfield, saying that it would be a good place, even though he hasn't been back in 16 years. Mike calls the group over and they call the town.
An older woman answers and accepts their donation. The group erupts in joy at the success back in the office at the bookshop, before singing "Solidarity Forever." When a man comes to collect the money, he asks what their name stands for. When they tell him, he informs them that they couldn't make out what the acronym stood for over the phone, but he is accepting of them, even though they are the first gays he's ever met. He tells them to return to their community and thank the people who donated.
The group takes the man, whose name is Dai, to a gay club, where he goes onstage with a drag queen to thank the gay community for contributing to his town. He gives a speech, eventually winning over the people at the bar with his remarks. "When you're in a battle with an enemy so much bigger, so much stronger than you...to find out you had a friend you never knew existed, well that's the best feeling in the world." The bar cheers.
Afterwards, Steph collects money in the back of the bar, while Dai talks to Jonathan. Mark suggests that they need an official photographer, and Joe offers to do it, since he has a nice camera. "Victory to the Miners!" they all cheer.
In Wales, a small group talks about the fact that the gay group wants to come to their town, with some of them unsure about the alliance. The women worry that if gay men come to town, the Welsh men will start trouble. Dai insists that no other group has raised as much money, when a young woman who isn't in the group, Sian, suggests that they ought to invite the group to their town.
Sian goes home and tells her husband what she's done. He is skeptical of her plan, since they are new to the community and he knows that the small town will not be receptive to the group.
Analysis
The film begins in a politically tense London in 1984. Margaret Thatcher's career as prime minister has created a particularly fraught economic and social environment for both gay Brits and workers, particularly miners. Thatcher—with her austerity politics and commitment to being a "firm leader" rather than a "softie," as she says in her television interview that Mark watches at the start—has stirred up a great deal of hostility and anger amongst Brits. The working class is decimated by her policies, just as the gay population is villainized by her bigotry. The protagonist of the film, Mark, sees a parallel between these two seemingly very different groups, citing the fact that they are both hated by Thatcher, the police, and society, and that they ought to work in solidarity with one another against the establishment.
The other protagonist in the film is Joe, a closeted 20-year-old from a rather conservative family who wanders into London on his birthday for the Pride March and ends up getting swept up in the excitement of the movement. He is the perfect foil to the seasoned, confident activist, Mark, in that he is young, green, and unsure. One minute he is wearing a birthday pin given to him by his parents (with whom he still lives) and the next, he is in a meeting of gay radicals in the city, plotting ways to consolidate the gay movement with the working-class movement to fight back against the authorities. He is wide-eyed and still scared about being openly gay, but we can also see that he is desperate to be himself and have a community, which keeps propelling him towards this punk-ish group of new friends.
Mark's plan to get the gay community working in solidarity with the miners is not easily accepted by his fellow activists. When he tries to make a case for why they ought to support the miners, one man says that the working-class people always used to beat him up for being gay when he was growing up, so he cannot see why he should be sympathetic to the miners. It is here we see the tension between class concerns and concerns of identity politics, the fact that many gay Brits feel that the lower classes—even if they share a dislike of the authorities and the police—will not accept them and never have. Mark, by contrast, believes that it is the gay community's responsibility to form alliances with the working class because of their shared interest in fighting back against the state.
Not only are other gay people less than amenable to the group, but the beneficiaries of the activism, the mining union, does not want anything to do with the organization. When they call to donate the money they have raised to the group, their name turns the union off to the help they want to give, and the gay activists must plot about how to get their funds into the right hands. While some members want to cover up the fact that they are a gay group in order to get the miners to accept, Mark is vehement about the fact that they remain unapologetic about their identities. Thus, they find themselves in a bind; how do members of a gay and lesbian group remain proud about their sexual identities while also navigating the prejudice of a group with whom they are trying to establish solidarity?
Once the group finds a group of miners, in a small town in Wales, that is open to taking their donations directly, they must now navigate an uneven political landscape. While the representative from the town that comes to collect the money, a man named Dai, is perfectly gracious and kind-hearted in dealing with the group, there are many in the town who worry about the implications about involving the gay community in their cause. A new member of the community, Sian James, shares Dai's belief that the town ought to be gracious and inviting to the group, and they end up inviting the London gaggle to their town for what promises to be both a tense and an amusing clash of cultures.
