Comments on the movie 'Pride'

We went to see 'Pride' Thursday afternoon at the Bow-Tie Chelsea.  For those of us who lived through the Reagan years in the U.S. and the comparable Thatcher years in the U.K. it's a vivid reminder of an era of repression for gays and for labor unions.

Poster for 'Pride'.

Written by Stephen Beresford and directed by Matthew Warchus, 'Pride' is based on the true story of the unlikely alliance between a London gay and lesbian group (Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, or LGSM) and Onllwyn, a small mining town in Wales during the miners strike that lasted for 14 months in 1984 and 1985.  Although the strike ended with the miners returning to work in defeat (and Margaret Thatcher reaffirming her role as the 'Iron Lady'),  it also created the bond between the gay community and labour unions that would lead to the Labour Party adopting gay and lesbian rights positions that eventually enabled significant advances in British gay rights.

The cast includes a wonderful collection of British character actors including Bill Nighy and Imelda Staunton as Welsh union activists and Dominic West as an aging London disco queen.  Paddy Considine plays the head of the Onllwyn miners union who is gradually won over by the group from LGSM.  Ben Schnetzer is terrific as Mark Ashton, the chief rabble rouser spokesman for LGSM.  George MacKay plays Joe, the innocent gay observer and LGSM photographer, who during the movie finds the courage to come out.  Joe is the only major character in the movie who is purely fictional -- all of the others are based on real people who participated in the actual Onllwyn-LGSM encounters.  

As the closing credits sadly disclose, several of the LGSM characters later died of AIDS and one of the Onllwyn characters went on to become a member of Parliament.  They fail to point out that Mrs. Thatcher (and Ronald Reagan) died of dementia related to Alzheimer's disease.