LGSM News
It's quite illogical to say ‘I’m gay and I’m into defending the gay community but I don’t care about anything else.’ It’s important that if you're defending communities, you’re defending all communities and not just one.
Mark Ashton
It's quite illogical to say ‘I’m gay and I’m into defending the gay community but I don’t care about anything else.’ It’s important that if you're defending communities, you’re defending all communities and not just one.
Mark Ashton
Campaigners and Margaret Thatcher travel to London for Home Office Demonstration - Thursday 15th December 2016
Last year on 15th December 2015 representatives from the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign (OTJC) submitted a legal document to the Home Office at the request of then Home Secretary Theresa May providing evidence and information about police brutality used against picketing miners at the Orgreave coking plant on 18th June 1984. The purpose of this was to enable the Home Secretary to consider holding a Public Inquiry into the events at Orgreave involving police fabrication of evidence, wrongful arrests, malicious prosecutions and perjury. No police officer has ever been held to account or been through a disciplinary procedure regarding what happened at Orgreave.
Nicola Field was a member of LGSM in 1984-85 and one of the founding members of Lesbians Against Pit Closures in December 1984. Her book Over The Rainbow was originally published in 1995 and explores where the UK LGBT movement was at that point. Out of print for some years, the book has now been republished by Doghorn Publishing, with a new introductory chapter that explores both the LGSM story and places the premise of the book in context by providing an update on where the LGBT movement now finds itself, with the passage of a further 21 years. Commercialisation and the ‘pink pound’, identity politics and both the legacy and trajectory of left politics within this movement are explored. Nicola argues that, if anything, the LGBT ‘leaders’ of today are less relevant to the lives of LGBT people in Britain today than they were in 1995.
A jointly organised screening of the movie Pride by LGSM and Jeremy 4 Labour at the Phoenix Cinema in Finchley on Monday 19 September 2016 raised an astounding £1.966.81 for Jeremy Corbyn’s Leadership Campaign Fund.
We were delighted to receive the following message from Jeremy Corbyn in response to our published statement endorsing his campaign to remain Labour Leader:
Thanks LGSM for supporting my leadership campaign. Your story exemplifies the strength of true solidarity.
We are original members of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (1984-85). Many of us are individual members of the Labour Party.
Jeremy Corbyn has been an active supporter of LGBT rights for his whole political life. He supported equality in the 70s and 80s, long before it became more mainstream or fashionable. He did so at a time when the Labour leadership repeatedly obstructed the Party’s commitment to LGBT rights because of concerns about media criticism. And he did so when speaking up for the rights for LGBT people brought hostility, ridicule and victimisation. From struggles against Section 28, through fighting for an equal age of consent, right up to equal marriage, Jeremy Corbyn has always stood shoulder to shoulder with the LGBT community.
