Pride

“Summer comes, I remember how we’d march
We’d march for love and pride, together arm in arm
Tears have turned, turned to anger and contempt
I’ll never let you down, a battle I have found
And all the dreams we had, I will carry on”

– For a Friend, The Communards, 1987

I went to see Pride at the National Theatre last night. I haven’t seen the film but I knew bits of the story from reading Rev Richard Coles’ autobiography, Fathomless Riches.

If you haven’t come across it, it tells the story of the founding of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) in 1984 by Mark Ashton and friends, and how they supported a Welsh village during the miners’ strike. They put on a benefit gig, headlined by Bronski Beat, which raised thousands of pounds. Their efforts led to an alliance between the National Union of Miners and the LGBT+ community, which holds to this day.

The show was a joy from start to finish. Brilliantly written, scored, choreographed and performed.

It was both hilarious and heartbreaking and it turned on a sixpence: one moment you were laughing or cheering, the next someone would deliver a line that made your heart ache.

I don’t want to spoil it for you if you’ve got a ticket (it’s sold out but if you get the opportunity, go). I will say that Samuel Barnett’s performance is phenomenal. The audience also becomes the audience for the speeches and events taking place on stage, which is an incredible experience.

At the same time as members of LGSM are raising money and marching, they are facing the AIDS epidemic. HIV was poorly understood at the time and there was lots of misinformation about it.

Mark Ashton told Richard Coles and Jimmy Somerville he had AIDS just as they were about to go on tour overseas in 1987. They said they would see him when they got back. They never got the chance.

Somerville wrote For A Friend in his memory.

“I never cried the way I cried over you
As I put down the telephone and the world it carried on
Somewhere else, someone else is crying too
Another man has lost a friend, I bet he feels the way I do”

It was played as we filed out at the end of the show.

Pride remains a protest today as much as it did in 1984.

And we still need Pride because we still remember, and we’re still fighting for acceptance, 40 years on.