Taking real pride in their cause

Paddy Considine (third from right) plays union leader Dai who rallied his members during the miners' strike of 1984.

Britain’s divisive miners’ strike led to an unlikely alliance, finds Helen Barlow.

Following in the tradition of The Full Monty and Billy Elliot, film Pride is a rambunctious British working-class comedy with strong social issues and a lot of heart. The true story, set in 1984 during the miners' strikes of the Thatcher era, tells of a little-known incident when a group calling themselves LGSM (Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners) approached the Mineworkers Union pledging their support - only to be turned away.

Ultimately LGSM took it on themselves to travel from London to help the striking miners of the Dulais Valley in South Wales. As the film points out, it was difficult to determine which group was more repressed. While their lifestyles couldn't have been more diverse, the two communities with the help of local union leader Dai (Paddy Considine) and the formidable village matriarch Hefina (Imelda Staunton) rallied together and formed a surprising bond.

"When I read the screenplay I couldn't believe it was true. It was such a perfect story," says director Matthew Warchus. "It was fresh and funny in a very natural way. There was a sense of significance about it."

The force behind getting the film made is the exuberantly witty screenwriter Stephen Beresford, who was hands-on during filming. The 42-year-old stumbled across the story 20 years ago and has been trying to get the movie off the ground ever since.

"I was having a fight with my then boyfriend in 1995 when John Major's government was finishing closing the pits," Beresford recalls. "I said, 'Why should I support the miners if they don't support me?' And he said, 'Let me tell you a story'."

During the course of researching and making the film, old bonds have been renewed and it is fascinating to look back and discover where the real people are now, as is revealed in the end credits.

In helping the film come together, it was a boon that leading actors Bill Nighy (squaring his jaw more than ever as an ex-miner and local historian) and the ever-lively Staunton had lived through the era and became impassioned to tell the story. Nighy comes from working-class roots but he had never heard about LGSM and cried every time he read the screenplay as it addresses themes very close to his heart.

"When I was young, people still went to jail for any public display of affection between people of the same sex," he notes. "It's bizarre to say that and I've never understood it.

But it's true and now, 30 years after these events took place, I can stand in a town hall in London and watch two of my male friends get married and turn to one another and say 'I love you' in a public place."

On the miners' side he compares the strike to a civil war in which Thatcher likened trade unions to a cancer that had to be got rid of.

"The government of the time prepared to provoke the strike before it was elected. It was their big idea to crush communities of decent working men and women who were demonised in the press and invented as enemies of the state. It now sounds extraordinary but that's what they did. They took away their houses, they defaulted on their mortgages, they bogusly criminalised them having beaten them up. It was largely misreported at the time. There was huge support among regular people for the miners. Lots of people collected money and there were benefit concerts staged on their behalf.
To find a screenplay that treated those men and women in that community with dignity and respect was long overdue."

Throughout the film Warchus says they were determined to cut what he calls "the treacle effect" with humour. "When Mark starts to make a big ideological statement it could have been a heroic moment, but it's preceded by Hefina saying, 'Get your feet off those seats!'
It was important to cut down on the sentimentality, make it much more true to life, less fake. Somehow the film still manages to be a fable so it's an interesting balance."