‘No politics … We’re a Mardi Gras now’: Telling the story of LGSM in 21st-Century Britain

Abstract

What does it mean that Pride was released in 2014, 30 years after the formation of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) and the same year in which a Conservative government made same-sex marriage a legal reality in the UK? In this article, I explore the narrativising of LGSM’s story, in order to consider how nostalgia operates in the film. Chiefly, I consider the choices that the screenwriter, Stephen Beresford, made in reconstructing the story of LGSM, and examine what these choices reveal about the changes that have taken place in the political landscape of gay Britain over the last 30 years. Through an analysis of these choices, I argue that Pride offers contemporary audiences a story of radical LGBTQ activism that they can enjoy and celebrate, while side-stepping uncomfortable questions regarding identity politics, single issue politics and the demise of collectivist politics.