Summary
The miners have a parade in the village, and Joe arrives. Spotting him, Cliff makes a signal of solidarity towards him. Joe spots Mark standing nearby smoking a cigarette and goes to him, but Mark walks away. "I've been virtually under house arrest," Joe says, but Mark gets angry with him, insisting that he "have some pride, because life is short."
Mark takes a pin with a pink triangle that says "I am (discretely) gay," and pins it on Joe's jacket, before walking away and telling Joe not to tell the others he saw him. Joe goes to Sian's house, where her daughter has a love note for him to deliver to Jeff. Sian asks Joe if Gethin is alright, but Joe has no idea about it. They drive back to London and visit Gethin at the hospital. Jonathan is there and Gethin tells Sian to take care of him, as he is HIV-positive. Gethin's mother comes into the room and greets them.
Outside, Sian talks to Jonathan about his diagnosis as he rolls a joint. He tells her he is the second person in London to have been recorded as contracting HIV, but that no one knows what is keeping him alive. "I think it's the grass," he says, smoking. He asks Sian what she is going to do with her life, and she tells him it'll go back to normal. "You have a first-class mind. You should do something, go to college!" he encourages her. He tells her not to waste her talent while there are good, promising people dying every day.
Sian drives Joe back to his house in the LGSM van, but there is an event going on at the house. Joe's mother rushes outside to apprehend it, as Joe hugs Sian. She runs to the window and asks Sian to leave, and Sian tells her to appreciate her son, "because there's a whole village in Wales that thinks he's a hero."
Joe's mother rushes inside, as Joe tells her he is leaving for good. "I hope one day we can be friends again, Mum," he says. His sister's husband asks Joe if he has anything to say to his sister, in whose honor the event is being thrown. Joe tells the husband that he is a dick and tells his sister that her perm does not suit her, before leaving.
Joe goes to the bar in London and finds Steph and the others. She offers him a pint and they talk. That night, Steph tells him that she has become "demure and accommodating, the lesbian Lady Di." Joe says he's disappointed to hear this, and she tells him she's glad he's back.
June 29th, 1985, Gay Pride London. Joe goes to the bookshop, where the group is making signs and clothes. Suddenly, Mark arrives outside with a megaphone pretending to be the police and asks to speak to Mike. When Mike comes to the window, Mark says "I behaved like a prick before, do you forgive me?" Mike invites him up and Mark goes inside. Upstairs he throws Joe a pin for his 21st birthday. Joe thanks him and tells him to stop calling him "Bromley."
They go to Gay Pride, raising a banner for the miners. A nearby cop reminds them condescendingly that the miners lost. Mark gets told by the authorities that they are not allowed to have political slogans at gay pride, as it's "time for a party." The lesbian breakaway group approaches the LGSM and tells them that they should compromise and march in the back with the fringe groups, but they do not want to.
"Whether we march with banners or without, the important thing is that we march together, all of us," Joe says, confidently. Suddenly, they are interrupted by the arrival of the LGSM van full of Welsh villagers. Cliff, Hefina, Dai, Sian, and the others arrive to march with the group. Gwen emerges from the van calling out, "Where are my lesbians?" and hugs Stella and the others.
The head of the parade tells them there are too many of them, so they will have to lead the march. When everyone looks behind them, more buses arrive carrying dozens of Welsh miners. They have banners and they join the march. Even Maureen's sons come along, and they all march at the front of the parade.
In the credits, we learn the fates of the real-life people featured in the film. Sian got a degree and became the first female member of parliament in her constituency. Jonathan was one of the first people to get diagnosed with HIV and is still alive. Mark continued working as an activist and died in 1987 of AIDS at 26. A year after the strike ended, gay and lesbian rights were included in the Labour Party's manifesto, due to a block vote from the National Union of Miners.
Analysis
In this final section of the film, repairs are made to the fabrics of the respective communities. Joe finally leaves his parents' house and goes to the mining town, where he sees Mark, who urges him to have pride and live boldly in the world. Joe leaves the restrictive and prejudiced world of his family and returns to his community, reunited with some of his friends from Onllwyn and his London gay friends. Some of the angst of the previous section—Joe's reckoning with his parents, Mark's disenchantment with organizing, and the miners' hopelessness—levels off in this final section towards something like resolution.
This final section is marked not only by healing but also by tragedy. Gethin is in the hospital after getting beaten up, Mark and Jonathan are both confirmed to be HIV-positive, and while the strike was successful in certain ways, it was not the transformative political conversion that it might have been, due to bigotry and distrust. Each of the characters must come to terms with the limits of their aspirations and dreams, sometimes in devastating and tragic ways. Even so, this tragedy does not cause them any regret about the ways they have conducted themselves, and they remain proud of their identities and the political work they have done together.
When the groups have splintered a bit, the viewer begins to see the individual characters even more clearly, and the reasons why they have found themselves drawn towards the group. Mark is desperate for a cause because he has a hard time dealing with his personal life. Joe finds the group as a chosen family when his own family is unsupportive of his sexuality. Steph struggles with her sense of self, worrying that she should be softer and more "demure." Likewise the Welsh villagers also have their own struggles that lead them towards the group; Sian feels that her husband is unsupportive, while Cliff has struggled for many years to come out of the closet.
Ultimately, the group comes together to fight for equality together at a Gay Pride Parade. Joe realizes his family is not going to protect him and care for him in the way that the group does. Gethin is discharged from the hospital. Mark returns, apologizing for his blunt and unceremonious exit, and they go to a parade together, with banners and t-shirts. The final scene of the film shows us the importance of the political gathering, and the ways that activism requires not only resilience but joy, a sense of togetherness and connection in fighting for a better world.
Indeed, resilience and solidarity are even more called for at Gay Pride, where the group is told that they are not supposed to have political slogans, but instead embrace pride as a party. The group resists this notion, insisting that pride is inherently political, and they begin to argue with the lesbian group started by Stella. When the arguing gets to be too much, Joe insists that they should stop arguing and that the most important thing they can do is march together. In a moment of fracturing within the gay movement, Joe reminds his peers that they are strongest when they are fighting together against the authorities. Further proof of this sentiment arrives mere moments after, when the van and multiple buses full of miners pull up to march in solidarity with the gay movement.
