Ed Miliband: Boo Hoo Squish Squish

‘The last thing I cried at was Pride. Pride is about this lesbian and gay community in London who go and help the miners in Wales and Justine and I watched it recently. I blubbed.’

Part of an Absolute Radio interview earlier today where Mr Ed tries to show his human side, quoted in Mail Online.

Pride was set a generation ago - taking sides in this celluloid fantasy is about as meaningful as saying who you'd root for in the English Civil War.

Funny how Miliband supports the Tories' war against the poor today.

Update: An alternative view...

LOLZ!

Pride: Shame

The cover for the American DVD release of Pride has removed all mention of homosexuality.

The film, about a group of gay and lesbian activists who rallied in support of striking miners in the 1980s, was released in the UK to acclaim last year.

However, the US DVD cover makes a number of shocking changes, entirely removing homosexuality from the story...

Pink News - thought I'd nick a story off them for a change, rather than vice versa (though at least I give credit for my sources). Can't be arsed to check it, so it could be balls.

The film also fails to mention The Sun was behind a smear campaign against LGSM. 

Thus this is just a paper - the movie is distributed by Murdoch's Fox, coincidentally.

The real question is not how a DVD cover excised The Gays, but how the film makes two great political struggles seem so anodyne.

Update: The film’s director, Matthew Warchus said he “understands”, that it was a “clumsy”, but a “valid” marketing strategy.

“Changing the cover is kind of clumsy and a bit foolish,” he told BBC Radio 5’s Phil Williams.

“But this is a film that is loved by people of all political persuasions and sexual orientations.

“I’m just keen for as many people who have yet to see the film to see it.”

Continuing, he said he “didn’t want to preach to the converted” and that he wanted the film “to find a mainstream audience [and] broaden people’s minds.' via Pink News.

Fagburn: Film Of The Year

This heart-freezing true story of Lesbians And Gays Support The Right-Wing (LGSR), tells how a group of Tory gaylords infiltrated our movement, and, during capitalism's greatest crisis in almost a century, got people to obsess about gay marriage and Russia instead. A lesson from history.

'A real feel-good movie that's so politically banal we'll have to invent an award for it!' Attitude.

Runner-up: The Disinformation Game - Benedict Cumberbatch plays tortured gay boffin Alan Turing, who, after finding the love of a good woman, invented the computer and single-handedly won the Second World War.

'Hats of too Alan Turink - a gay name that must now go down in histree' QX Magazine

Pride: Seen The Film? Buy The T-Shirt!

Now opening in the US - as in the UK, the film is distributed by Rupert Murdoch's 20th Century Fox.

Which might explain why all references to the LGSM and NUM-bashing The Sun - the origin of the term 'Pits And Perverts' - have been erased.

Fagburn wonders what that pinko commie queer, Mark Ashton, would make of all this...

Mark Ashton: Trust

There's a lovely archive being assembled on the Facebook page dedicated to Mark Ashton, co-founder of Lesbians And Gays Support The Miners.

A new oral history (inc some gays) documentary about the miners' strike, Still The Enemy Within, is in cinemas from today.



PS A friend remembers Mark. 

The Independent: Questions To Which The Answer Is No

The Independent.

In the US, Pride is; 'Rated R for strong violence, pervasive language and brief drug content.'

There is no mention of gaiety.

Typo Of The Week: Pink News

Pink News.

Damn you Daily Mail and all your pesky communist columnists!

PS Good piece in Sunday's Observer on LGSM's Mark Ashton; The real-life triumphs of the gay communist behind hit movie Pride.

PPS Apparently, Stephen Beresford is 'in talks' about turning Pride into a West End musical. Oh dear...

Mind you, maybe that means there's still hope for my feel-good musical about the Poll Tax riot.

PPPS On reflection, it can be a musical on condition that director Matthew Warchus gets Tim Minchin to write the songs. K?

Pride: Shaming A Gay Film

"There’s something very relieving [?] about the idea of attributes of compassion and heroism and a belief in everybody. So it’s not a film for just gay people or miners. Just because you’re not a woman, doesn’t mean you don’t believe in women’s rights!”

Thanks for clearing that up, brainbox!

No wait, there's more...

“It’s not a gay film, it’s about humanity,” he explains...

To HuffPost Gay Voices.

This dolt really is a banal trite gay cliche machine.

If it's not a 'gay film' then what the felch is it then?

A Chinese opera?

A French baguette?

But hey, maybe we're all baguettes, really, yah?

Still at least another right-wing paper loves Pride (The Movie)!

Yes, it's 5 Stars from the famously gay-loving, and union-loving Express for this 'delightful' film!

But are they sure it stars Mark Ashton?

Good to see you were all paying attention.

Update: Mike Jackson, co-founder of LGSM, is interviewed by Pink News.

Pride: The Daily Mail Sure Does Love It!

Daily Mail.

Also very popular with The Sun!

Is it only right-wing cunts who love this movie?

It's heart-warming, adorable etc etc Zzzz...

'You shall judge a film by its fans as well as by its foes' Joseph Conrad, probably.

PS The wonderfully thick Andrew Scott strikes again!

So it's just a film that happens to be about The Gays, then?

You stupid fuck.

What makes a film 'gay'? Craig Johnson, The Advocate.

PPS Seen the film, buy the t-shirt (that cost £4 to make).

Or you could just give the Orgeave Truth And Justice Campaign £4.

Cut out the middle-man and not buy a shitty, politically vacuous, over-priced t-shirt!

PPPS The Daily Mirror thinks it honks of sentimental, apolitical crap...

Let me say again, the story has all the components for a fantastic film, a tale of unlikely brothers in arms united against an evil enemy in a desperate climate.

But sadly the makers rely on the clichés we see in way too many light-as-a-feather British comedy-dramas – see, in particular, Made In Dagenham, Cemetery Junction and Kinky Boots.

Slap your forehead as the hostile locals are won over by West dancing on the table in their community hall; feel your toes curl as two biddies show their innate lovability by calling their new pals “the gays” or “my lesbians”; and sink even deeper into your seat as the same swap talcum powder tips with a man in a gimp suit.

Bless them! Aren’t they surprisingly tolerant?

And then there’s an overwhelming, cloying, knuckle-chewing score signposting when we’re meant to laugh or cry.

Meanwhile, the grit of the strike – the out-of-control coppers, the vindictiveness of the National Coal Board and the miners’ desperate poverty – are largely glossed over so we can get to another scene of Staunton proving her broadness of mind by dancing in a gay club where (and I’m not making this up) she attempts to talk to a man wearing a ball gag.

The Times.

Yes! It's the feel-good comedy guaranteed not to offend anyone who wanted all miners and queers to be killed at the time!

Mark Ashton.

And finally, from the Morning Star...

Often when a film with LGBT themes is produced there can be difficulties of prejudice along the way and I was curious to know if the prodcuction team had encountered something similar.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the change in attitudes in recent decades, it wasn’t the LGBT but the socialist theme that people had an issue with.

A major US distributor went so far as to abandon the project entirely because it deals with socialism and from an early stage the crew were advised not to use the word “communist” under any circumstances or there’d be stiff opposition to marketing the film in the US.

This presented some difficulty not least because one of the main characters of the film and a founding member of LGSM is Mark Ashton, beautifully played by Ben Schnetzer. At the time he was the youngest-ever general secretary of the Young Communist League...

So in fine - the message of this movie is; the miners' got fucked, but you got gay marriage.

But everything now is alright for ever.

PS Also from the Morning Star, Pits And Perverts: The legacy of communist Mark Ashton.

Pride: Lesbians And Gays Support The Miners (Not Today's Workers)

Don't forget to get your free tickets to the Pride premiere today!

They are available from those well-known bastions of working-class solidarity, the Daily Mail and Gay Star News.

And at all Picturehouse cinemas.

That's right.

Workers from Picturehouse have been on strike most of this year.

And don't forget, one of the many reasons GSN is so abysmal is cause they think it's okay not to pay people who work for them, and just get some unpaid interns in.

Solidarity!

Still, all hail Pride (the movie).

'I'd cross a picket line to see this feel-good movie about gays and trade unions and err...' Daily Mail.

'This is the best film ever since the last one we said that about*, can you put this on your poster?' Attitude.

* Weekend.

PS Other hilarious incongruities in the Daily Mail's film of the year.

Update: Another rave review, this time from Britain's only communist daily newspaper, the Telegraph!

The Guardian: Trending

Hard graft is trending for winter 2014, especially manual labour...

This is an actual thing in The Guardian - probably to coincide with the middle classes' favourite film du jour, Pride (The Movie).

Attitude: Remembering The Miners' Strike With Louis Vuitton

Our @AttitudeMag cover star #AndrewScott is looking great in @LouisVuitton_UK at @PrideMovieUK #pridemovie premier pic.twitter.com/B4rUvujjJy
— Joseph Kocharian (@JosephKocharian) September 2, 2014

There was also a star-studded launch event #applestorepride - that'll be the anti-union, worker-crushing Apple Stores, then?

PS Mercifully brief Metro interview with boring Andrew Scott; 'Being gay doesn't harm your acting career.'

Gosh, really!? Is it true they stopped burning witches now, too?

Pride: Support

"You have worn our badge, Coal Not Dole, and you know what harassment means, as we do. Now we will pin your badge on us, we will support you. It won't change overnight, but now 140,000 miners know that there are other causes and other problems. We know about blacks and gays and nuclear disarmament and we will never be the same."

Dai Donovan, then a striking South Wales miner, addressing the Pits & Perverts benefit concert organised by Lesbians And Gays Support The Miners in 1985.

He is featured in an Observer article inspired by the film Pride, that also has interviews with Jonathan Blake and Mike Jackson from LGSM, and Siân James from the Miners' Wives' Support Group (she's now a Labour MP).

Strange how some other media think that what people who acted in the film think about LGSM and the miners' strike is more important, insightful and interesting.

The four people above all think the film Pride has - hey! - done everyone who was involved proud.

Fagburn still thinks it's notable how the movie is getting raved about in the usually union-bashing and gaybashing right-wing press - the biggest quote on the poster is the Daily Mail calling it 'Indescribably wonderful!' - and by gay journalists with the politics of a wobbly pink blancmange.

The Sunday Times has a feature, Stephen Beresford: How I turned the miners' strike into a gay comedy.

That title alone surely speaks volumes - maybe the appeal of Pride (the movie) is that it's coal dust and dirt, blood, sweat and tears, dipped in some fabulous gay glitter?

PS And here's a video made by LGSM in 1985, Dancing In Dulais.

Inane Tweet Of The Day: Pride (The Movie)

"Labelling is for cans, not for people." A brilliant quote from an audience member here. #AppleStorePride pic.twitter.com/6PXxKKvSsX
— Pride Movie (@PrideMovieUK) August 28, 2014

How very vacuous.

So why wasn't it Unlabeled People Support The Unlabeled People?

PS This is from a live Q&A at the union-busting Apple Store. Irony!

Pride: Now That's Magic!

Modern culture is obsessed with the idea of gays giving straights a moral makeover. Apparently gays are really politically switched-on and super-fashionable – not to mention dab hands at interior design! – and so they are encouraged to grab straights by the scruffs of their badly dressed necks and turn them into better people. You see this trope everywhere these days: in Queer Eye for the Straight Guy; in the Aussie reality TV show that sent a busload of drag queens to “educate” the beer-swilling inhabitants of South Australia; in Glee, in which pretty much every storyline involves a monosyllabic jock having his prejudices corrected by a shy, erudite gay kid. The TV Tropes website describes this kind of character as the “Magical Queer”, who has “all of the wisdom in the world because he is gay” and who is often charged with “bringing culture to his heterosexual brothers and sisters”...

The Magical Queer trope takes on a political edge when it is applied to the miners’ strike. What we have here is a subtle but quite profound rewriting of history, with the miners’ strike wrenched from its historical context and turned primarily into a problem of attitudes among far-away communities rather than a life-and-death political conflict. Thatcher might have beaten the miners, but it is the new cultural treatments of their strike that really bury them, through reducing them to little more than exhibits in today’s moral trial of British men and our being found guilty of having been too macho for too long and now needing to become softer, more consensual and a bit more gay...

Brendan O'Neill, The Telegraph blog.

[Insert obligatory, 'Now while I don't agree with everything Brendan O'Neill says...' caveat here].

I haven't seen Pride (The Movie) yet, but there is something deeply disturbing about how fawning and uncritical the coverage has been.

See the ever-so-slightly OTT quotes used on the poster above, for example.

The cover of the latest issue of Attitude even declares it; 'The greatest gay film of all time'. 

Of course it is, dear. 

Maybe this is because the subject matter is - now that enough time has passed - a wet liberal's wet dream?

And how ironic that a film about working-class resistance, rebellion and non-conformity should induce such cosy bourgeois conformity.

For shame.

PS Brendan O'Neill's piece seems to be founded on a belief that homophobia no longer really exists and all is hunky-dory for The Gays now. If so, may I kindly ask him to read the Telegraph readers' delightful comments? A gay version of Lewis's Law?

Update: The Daily Express - that well-known champion of striking workers and gay rights - has called it 'an absolute joy from start to finish'.
Makes you suspect the people behind this film have fucked-up big time, no?

Thought For The Day: Mike Jackson

“The one thing the ruling class don’t want is solidarity; they don’t want us to join the dots up.

“Real change always comes from the bottom up. Change has never come from the top down, it comes from ordinary people, not so-called politicians or leaders.”

Mike Jackson, co-founder of Lesbians And Gays Support The Miners.

From a piece in The Guardian by Owen Jones on the film, Pride. 

Fagburn gets the feeling every critic will gush about this 'feelgood movie' about industrial strife and homophobia, even in papers that in 1984 hated queers as much as they hated striking miners.

Might have been interesting to hear more from Mike about LGSM than the two lines above, but there you go...

The Rev Richard Coles and comrades supporting the miners in 1984.

• Celebrating Community Spirit During The 1984-85 Miners' Strike: Q&A with members of LGSM and the cast of Pride. People's History Museum, Manchester. Saturday 23rd August.

Pride: The Digested Review Bingo

Important romcom about gay activists and striking miners... heartwarming, faith-restoring... unlikely but true story... Kinky Boots style dance-off... impossible not to smile or be moved... Bill Nighy...  Imelda Staunton... reminiscent of Billy Elliot and The Full Monty... an uplifting film about humanity and kindness... it's not out til September.

The Independent.

Don't forget to play words bingo in all reviews.
And note from the quotes used here it's getting ecstatic notices from the very papers that demonised the miners and queers in the 80s.
This is one of the trailers that makes you feel you've watched the film - it does look like they've airbrushed all the grit and coal dust out of the story.
To make 'The feel good comedy of the year'?
Fingers crossed the miners win.