What “Pride” tells us about progressive prejudice

“Dai, your gays have arrived!” yells Gwen, a pensioner, as she opens the door of Dulais Valley Lodge in the coalmining heartlands of South Wales. A group of young Londoners stand before her. They call themselves LGSM or “Lesbians and Gays Support The Miners”. They have descended upon the mining village to lend their solidarity during the strikes of 1983 since they, too, are a group whom Margaret Thatcher dubbed “the enemy within”. It’s one of a number of lines that makes its way from Stephen Beresford’s 2014 film Pride into the fabulous new stage adaptation at the National Theatre. Beresford and his co-writer, Matthew Warchus, have transformed the classic Brit-flick portraying the then-unlikely union between working-class communities and metropolitan progressives during the miners’ strike