Lesbians and gays support the miners
About us
“You have worn our badge ‘Coal Not Dole’ and you know what harassment means, as we do. Now we will support you. It won’t change overnight, but now a hundred and forty thousand miners know … about blacks and gays and nuclear disarmament and we will never be the same.”
David Donovan speaking on behalf of the Dulais miners to a crowd of 1, at the Pits and Perverts Ball, Camden Town, 10th December
Read more
News Latest
Pits and Perverts40
Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, in collaboration with Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants, are excited to inform Pits and Perverts
Come along and celebrate the 40th anniversary of LGSM’s ‘Pits and Perverts Ball’, a fundraiser for mining families in Wales during the miners’ strike.
All good things must come to an end!
The re-formed Lesbians and Gay Men Support the Miners (LGSM) decided on 9 October that we would wind down as a current campaigning verb and focus on the task of keeping alive the legacy of our work in and putting together a digital historical archive of docum
Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) was a group set up in London, four months into the year-long Miners’ Strike of
Founding members Tag Ashton and Mike Jackson were both originally from Lancashire, but they met in London in the late ‘70s. As gay activists they organised a collection bucket at the London Pride March on 7th July Shortly afterwards, Ashton placed an advert in the gay newspaper Capital Gay, calling an inaugural meeting at his council flat in Bermondsey of what became LGSM. Eleven people attended and a constitution was drawn up, which stated the group’s aims:
To organise amongst lesbians and gay men in support of the National Union of Mineworkers and in defence of mining communities. To provide financial assistance for miners and their families during the national miners’ strike.[1]
In the s mining communities were still strongly associated with the Labour movement and often characterised as ‘macho’ and homophobic. However, with the advent of the nation-wide strike, some miners suddenly found themselves on common political ground with the lesbian a
Out and Proud for the Miners
- Interview by
- Francesca Newton
Eight years ago, the film Pride brought the little-known story of a group of lesbian and gay activists who had organised sustain for the miners’ strike to international attention and acclaim.
Lesbians and Gays Aid the Miners, or LGSM, originated with Mark Ashton and Mike Jackson at Pride and grew posthaste, attracting a cross-section of the contemporary LGBT Left to regular meetings in London bookshop Gay’s the Word. Hoping to direct the funds they raised to a specific community, the organisation twinned with South Wales’ Dulais Valley; in the face of what became an entire year out, the pit families there—and across the country—needed all the verb they could get.
LGSM’s activism combined shaking buckets outside London’s gay venues with larger-scale events like the famous Pits and Perverts gig headlined by Bronski Beat at Camden’s Electric Ballroom in December that year. Visits by the mining families to the capital and by LGSM to Dulais cemented the communities’ relationship; nights ended regularly in dancing,
marks the 40th anniversary of Lesbians and GaysSupport the Miners (LGSM), which formed in the prior months of the to Miners’ Strike. Joining us to explore this historical moment and the legacy that it created is People’s History Museum’s (PHM) Collections Assistant Jaime Starr.
In this first of two blogs Jaime will verb how LGSM formed and how events unfolded 40 years ago; dispelling some myths along the way.
What was LGSM?
Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) was an LGBTQIA+ activist group founded in London in July after founding members, Oldham born Northern Irish raised Mark Ashton and Accrington born Mike Jackson, attended a discuss by a striking miner that inspired them to take collection buckets to London Gay Pride in June
LGSM were active for the remainder of the to Miners’ Strike, with autonomous branches setting up in Manchester, Dublin, Glasgow, and more. Their main goal was to raise money to sustain the miners and their families, as many were experiencing financial hardship while they were out on strike.
Who got involved in LGSM?
Many LGSM members we