I'm having another sad day - I haven't been too well but mainly it's because there are a couple of events tomorrow I'll be missing.
First of all, tomorrow is The Durham Miners Gala (pronounced 'Gayla'), which I've always wanted to see.
It's a memory from the days when the North East was a major centre for coal mining. These days 'The Big Meeting' celebrates a once proud industry and reaffirms working class support for Trades Unions and The Labour Party.
Some 200,000 people will meet up, starting early in the morning in countless pit villages in the area around Durham.
In each village a carefully preserved Lodge Banner will be set up and with the village brass band at their head, the people will carry their banners to the centre of Durham, stopping to play at the hotel where Labour movement leaders like Jeremy Corbyn watch from the balcony before marching on to the racecourse where there is a fair and celebration.
It's a unique event and one I've always wanted to see but I can't cope with the drive there and back, let alone the endless walking and standing about.
The same applies to 'London Pride', which also happens tomorrow. In the 1970's I was regular on 'Gay Pride' marches, usually responding to a call to 'bodyguard' the march from the far right. I'm very proud that I was associated with the campaign back then when it was a small scale activists march with little support outside the Gay community.
I'm really proud of everything that has been achieved and would have loved to have made it one last time to celebrate.
It's also fair to say that in the 1990's at High School, Robyn was an AIDS Activist and I am very proud of the courageous role that she played there too.
Of course it's very different now; very corporate with lots of sponsorship. It's a carnival now with big Banks and Retailers and it certainly isn't going to be attacked by the right or by the police any more. Indeed The Metropolitan Police Gay and Lesbian Association will be on the procession.
I guess we really did win!
Again, too much travelling and too much standing about for me these days. Too painful.
So I'll be spending a quiet day indoors with some memories instead.
Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)
Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com
Showing posts with label Pride. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pride. Show all posts
Friday, 7 July 2017
Tuesday, 27 December 2016
Pride.
Last night was the highlight of my Christmas; we watched 'Pride', a film about the Miners Strike of 1984 and the response from the Lesbian and Gay movement in London.
The film came out last year and back then I didn't feel able to go and see it - too many memories, too emotional.
Back in 1984, courtesy of Mrs Thatcher, I was out of work for most of the year. When the Miners went on strike against her plans to close down the coal industry, I got fully involved; collecting money in buckets on the high street, standing outside shops appealing for tins of food, attending meetings and marches.
I was singing at the time with The Workers Music Association and spent the year doing benefits for strikers up and down the country (and it wasn't just the Miners who were striking) to raise money.
It was one of those hectic, amazing times when I was trying to juggle searching for a job with having no money and trying to change things as well. It was exhilarating and if nothing else it changed me for ever.
Anyway, to get back to the film; I wasn't the only one having those kind of experiences. The National union of Miners had had its funds sequestered by the Thatcher Government and it's bank accounts frozen. Effectively any money raised and passed on to them through normal, legitimate channels would be seized. There was no strike pay for the families and children.
Up and down the country all kinds of people set up Miners Support groups to raise money and it was no different at the Gay Pride march in 1984; Mark Ashton, Mike Jackson and a small group of friends started collecting money in buckets and out of that grew an organisation; LGSM - "Lesbian and Gays Support the Miners".
This turned out to be one of the most successful groups of it's kind; the attacks on the Miners by the Government, press and the police rang a bell with Gay people who had also known what oppression was like.
Much of the film is spent charting the LGSM's at first difficult time getting acceptance from the close knit and very traditional mining community they adopted in The Dulais valley in South Wales. It's a very funny, very human film.
I got very emotional and at certain points quite upset. In one scene two characters are making sandwiches for a social - margarine and nothing else. In another, one of the prizes in the bingo at the Miners Welfare was a tin of corned beef.
I well remember we rang the Kent Coalfield because most of the food donations we were getting were baked beans and we weren't sure they'd want them; they told us they were desperate.
Back in 1984 I was unaware of the LGSM but if I'd heard of it, it wouldn't have surprised me as I'd had a lot to do with the Gay community and their struggles in the 1970's.
These days 'Pride' is a massive carnival and celebration, paid for by corporate sponsorship and with Tory politicians falling over themselves to be associated with it.
Back in the 1970's it was a small, unpopular protest march, always at danger of being attacked. Every year a call would go out for people like me to come and support the march and help protect it from physical attack.
At the time I was pleased to help out and I attended 3 or 4 of the marches at the end of the 1970's.
Now, every year when the glossy, glitzy 'Pride' takes place I think back to those days with my own personal pride that I was a small part of that struggle back in the early days.
Anyway the film ends with the defeat of the Miners; a setback that allowed Thatcher free to ruin this country, to sell off its assets and reward her rich and powerful supporters who became billionaires as a result.
The lesson of the strike is simple; don't lose. We weren't tough enough or ruthless enough to win.
And as I wrote when Robyn and me took a day trip to South Wales, most traces of the mining industry have now been wiped off the face of the earth. It's as though they don't want anyone to remember what happened.
Which makes this film all the more important.
I'll end with this amazing photo from the front of 'Pride 2015', to mark the release of the film and which is led by two proud banners;
On the left is the original LGSM banner from The Miner's Strike while on the right is an image taken from Mark Ashton's panel on the UK Aids Memorial Quilt.
Mark, who continued to be an active communist after the strike, died of Aids 12 days after he was diagnosed in 1987.
Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)
Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com
Monday, 29 June 2015
My Soho.
Sunday - we went up to town again! We were going up to catch some music but because I couldn't face the tube and as it was a Sunday I drove up.
It worked out well, I found somewhere to park in Fitzrovia;
Well, these days I can. Ronnie Scott is long gone as is his business partner who sold up a few years ago. It was never cheap but it had integrity and great sounds.
Now it's a little too expensive and a little too showbiz for me.
They redecorated for goodness sake!
May be I'll pop in again if I can ever get tickets to something good.
We walked by Soho square and up and down the three streets of Soho. It's a very respectable place now - gone is that definite hint of menace the old place had.
I tried to work out where 'The Marquee' had been on Wardour Street. That was where I saw 'The Jam' and a host of Punk bands and where, if it was a good night, the sweat condensed on the ceiling and dripped back down on the audience.
It was always a good night with 'The Jam'.
Gone too are the Soho characters - not that they were all that nice, most of them.
Here's 'The Coach and Horses', lovingly called 'Norman's' by the new owners.
Nobody ever loved 'Norman' who was the landlord for many years and was titled 'The Rudest Landlord in London' by the satirical magazine 'Private Eye', which is written just a little further along Greek Street.
The pub was for many years the spiritual home of Jeffrey Bernard who was a journalist rather prone to drinking too much and who adopted as the name of his column the apology that had so often taken the place of his usual articles; 'Jeffrey Bernard is unwell'.
That was never my scene although next door is though. That's my kind of place, what you could call 'history on a plate';
'Maison Bertaux' is a family owned French Patisserie and tea rooms and rather proudly states that it was established in 1871.
Soho was always the home of refugees and revolutionaries - Karl Marx lived here after he escaped from persecution in his native Germany.
As the French were defeated in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, the workers of Paris refused to surrender, even after the French Army and government had ran away.
They defended Paris against the Germans in a long siege, during which time they set up a primitive socialist system in the city.
This alarmed the German government as much as the French and they co-operated to put down the rising.
Over 30,000 Communards were brutally murdered or transported to penal colonies for the cheek of wanting democracy.
Over 70,000 came to Britain as refugees, many settling in Soho. They are responsible for its slightly riskeé, slightly bohemian atmosphere.
The Coach and Horses which was built in 1850, was never known as 'Norman's' but always as 'The French', because like many Soho businesses it had had a French landlord for many years.
'Maison Berteaux' is now the last remaining link to the escaping Communards.
We were there the day after 'Pride', the Gay festival and carnival, which had a special meaning this year after the U.S. Supreme court upheld the right to have 'same sex' marriages anywhere in America.
It's a huge victory and a really big deal because other countries will follow on as well.
There must have been some big, big celebrations the night before.
The flags were still out;
And rainbow banners and balloons everywhere.
These days Pride is huge and it has respectable sponsors.
Everyone wants to be associated with it - banks, shops, even brands.
It wasn't always like that - in the 1970's Pride wasn't a carnival - it was a protest march and it took real courage to come out and take part.
Sometimes the march would be attacked, it always faced hostility from the authorities and the police.
I attended three times from 1978 to 1980 - appeals had gone out for people to join the march and face off attackers and I was happy to do that.
Now I am really proud that I did, not because Gay people ever really needed any physical protection, they were always able to look after themselves but in the 1970's they needed a bit of moral support.
As I said, they were making a very courageous stand back then and I share their pride in what they achieved; they changed the world just a little.
It hasn't been an easy road, this is 'The Admiral Duncan' pub.
In the 1980's, as a prominent Gay pub, it was part of a long struggle with conservative Westminster council who declared that the rainbow flag was 'advertising' and required planning permission before it could be flown.
Legal battles and demonstrations followed and with the backing of Ken Livingstone's radical Labour Greater London Council, the Tories of Westminster council eventually had to give in.
So strange to see Tory politicians like Boris Johnson falling over themselves to court the pink vote these days.
'The Admiral Duncan' is even more important to Soho - in 1999 a crazed right wing nutter (it's official - he's in Broadmoor hospital with the criminally insane now) launched a bombing campaign in London, targeting Black, Asian and Gay targets.
The Admiral Duncan was blown up killing three people and injuring 70.
They've won the right to fly their flag many times over.
Following that atrocity, the Metropolitan Police who had persecuted the gay community for many years, set up a mobile incident room outside the pub to take witness statements and staffed only by gay and lesbian officers.
Change comes!
And so today you see little signs like this one outside the Firestation;
It worked out well, I found somewhere to park in Fitzrovia;
And we were there far too early, so I forced Robyn to let me take her for a walk round Soho and Chinatown, some of my old haunts.
Who can resist Ronnies?
Well, these days I can. Ronnie Scott is long gone as is his business partner who sold up a few years ago. It was never cheap but it had integrity and great sounds.
Now it's a little too expensive and a little too showbiz for me.
They redecorated for goodness sake!
May be I'll pop in again if I can ever get tickets to something good.
We walked by Soho square and up and down the three streets of Soho. It's a very respectable place now - gone is that definite hint of menace the old place had.
I tried to work out where 'The Marquee' had been on Wardour Street. That was where I saw 'The Jam' and a host of Punk bands and where, if it was a good night, the sweat condensed on the ceiling and dripped back down on the audience.
It was always a good night with 'The Jam'.
Gone too are the Soho characters - not that they were all that nice, most of them.
Here's 'The Coach and Horses', lovingly called 'Norman's' by the new owners.
Nobody ever loved 'Norman' who was the landlord for many years and was titled 'The Rudest Landlord in London' by the satirical magazine 'Private Eye', which is written just a little further along Greek Street.
The pub was for many years the spiritual home of Jeffrey Bernard who was a journalist rather prone to drinking too much and who adopted as the name of his column the apology that had so often taken the place of his usual articles; 'Jeffrey Bernard is unwell'.
That was never my scene although next door is though. That's my kind of place, what you could call 'history on a plate';
'Maison Bertaux' is a family owned French Patisserie and tea rooms and rather proudly states that it was established in 1871.
Soho was always the home of refugees and revolutionaries - Karl Marx lived here after he escaped from persecution in his native Germany.
As the French were defeated in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, the workers of Paris refused to surrender, even after the French Army and government had ran away.
They defended Paris against the Germans in a long siege, during which time they set up a primitive socialist system in the city.
This alarmed the German government as much as the French and they co-operated to put down the rising.
Over 30,000 Communards were brutally murdered or transported to penal colonies for the cheek of wanting democracy.
Over 70,000 came to Britain as refugees, many settling in Soho. They are responsible for its slightly riskeé, slightly bohemian atmosphere.
The Coach and Horses which was built in 1850, was never known as 'Norman's' but always as 'The French', because like many Soho businesses it had had a French landlord for many years.
'Maison Berteaux' is now the last remaining link to the escaping Communards.
We were there the day after 'Pride', the Gay festival and carnival, which had a special meaning this year after the U.S. Supreme court upheld the right to have 'same sex' marriages anywhere in America.
It's a huge victory and a really big deal because other countries will follow on as well.
There must have been some big, big celebrations the night before.
The flags were still out;
And rainbow banners and balloons everywhere.
These days Pride is huge and it has respectable sponsors.
Everyone wants to be associated with it - banks, shops, even brands.
It wasn't always like that - in the 1970's Pride wasn't a carnival - it was a protest march and it took real courage to come out and take part.
Sometimes the march would be attacked, it always faced hostility from the authorities and the police.
I attended three times from 1978 to 1980 - appeals had gone out for people to join the march and face off attackers and I was happy to do that.
Now I am really proud that I did, not because Gay people ever really needed any physical protection, they were always able to look after themselves but in the 1970's they needed a bit of moral support.
As I said, they were making a very courageous stand back then and I share their pride in what they achieved; they changed the world just a little.
It hasn't been an easy road, this is 'The Admiral Duncan' pub.
In the 1980's, as a prominent Gay pub, it was part of a long struggle with conservative Westminster council who declared that the rainbow flag was 'advertising' and required planning permission before it could be flown.
Legal battles and demonstrations followed and with the backing of Ken Livingstone's radical Labour Greater London Council, the Tories of Westminster council eventually had to give in.
So strange to see Tory politicians like Boris Johnson falling over themselves to court the pink vote these days.
'The Admiral Duncan' is even more important to Soho - in 1999 a crazed right wing nutter (it's official - he's in Broadmoor hospital with the criminally insane now) launched a bombing campaign in London, targeting Black, Asian and Gay targets.
The Admiral Duncan was blown up killing three people and injuring 70.
They've won the right to fly their flag many times over.
Following that atrocity, the Metropolitan Police who had persecuted the gay community for many years, set up a mobile incident room outside the pub to take witness statements and staffed only by gay and lesbian officers.
Change comes!
And so today you see little signs like this one outside the Firestation;
Which just goes to show how you can change the world....if you want to.
Music review tomorrow!
Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com
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