• Engelsk
  • Utdanning: Vg2
  • Karakter: 5
  • Ord: 1063

Innledning
Today we enjoy loads of rights that we all take for granted. It is not often we talk about how many of the luxuries we see as common sense now had to be fought for via protest, voting, and other means.

However, nowadays movies that bring up and discuss the struggle for political achievements such as civil rights are becoming more prevalent, for instance the movie Pride, from 2014.

The movie shows how the struggle for LGBT rights in the UK was achieved through solidarity with other marginalised groups despite their differences and puts an emphasis on the importance of it and why we need to stand in solidarity with one another.

Utdrag
The striking miners were cracked down on by police and ridiculed by the press, something which sounds a lot like how gay people were treated during the 1980s in Britain.

Being homosexual was not a crime at the time, but there was no legal protection against discrimination, and there was a high social stigma against gay people.

There were laws in place forbidding the “intentional promotion of homosexuality”, making gay rights advocates often clash with the police (Nicholls, 2021).

On top of the social stigma against gay people, the AIDS epidemic, and the media hysteria around it only worsened the conditions.

The support group founded by the gay rights activists, named Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM), got its founding from exactly these similarities in struggles.

Despite the stigmatisation against gay people being way higher and prevalent than that surrounding the miners, the group wanted to help regardless.

Their help could not only support people who face the same struggles, but also give gay people a better image in society.

Mark Ashton, the founder of the support group, was a communist, which could have been one of the reasons the group was established in the first place (Doward, 2014).

His sympathy for the workers being oppressed was likely a huge motivation in reaching the goal of solidarity with the miners. Many gay people did not really show much support for the people protesting.

Gay issues and workers’ issues are similar but not quite the same. Quite a lot of gay people had grown up in rural areas and had been subject to loads of discrimination for coming out.