Forty Years Since Miner's LGBT+ Solidarity

Socialist quarterly magazine Tribune, which has been a voice on the Labour Party's left for nearly a century, commemorates the fortieth anniversary of the vicious Miner's Dispute of 1984-5, a period of intense class warfare in Britain and one which has left bitter recriminations in the intervening decades.  One of the most important LGBTQIA+ groups that emerged during this period is LGSM - Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners.  The magazine meets with some of the activists who collected on the gay scene and made explicit the struggle against homophobia and the struggle against the most rapacious aspects of the free market system that the government was trying to impose on the country.  In return, the National Union of Mineworkers helped use its clout politically to get the Trade Union movement to develop stronger policies on LGBTQIA+ liberation and also influence Labour Party policy and that of the broad left, ranging from the Communist Party through to anarchist groups and community action organisations.  The article also touches upon what lessons today's LGBTQIA+ movement can learn from the politics of the early to mid eighties.  Tribune is available from progressive and radical bookstores and from larger newsagents.