Film Review: "Pride" (2014)

by Róisín Lyder

Pride is a dramatized version of a series of events that took place in England and Wales during the 1983-5 miner’s strike, which was brutally crushed by Margaret Thatcher and her Tory government as part of their efforts to break the British trade union movement. The movie opens with the song ‘Solidarity Forever’ playing overtop of historical images of the strike and the song punctuates the rest of the film. Indeed solidarity is the real theme of Pride, a film that is a light-hearted meditation on the possibilities created when members of the working class overcome what may seem like insurmountable differences.

At the 1984 gay pride march in London we are introduced to Mark Ashton as he begins taking up a collection for the striking miners. It is at this march that the group Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) is formed. Ashton persuades the others to join by asking: “Who hates miners? Thatcher, the police, the public and the tabloids. Sound familiar?” The young queer people see the parallels; one suggests that the usual police harassers have been absent from the gay nightclubs lately because they have been too busy harassing the miners. The group sets about fundraising and eventually finds a mining town reluctantly willing to accept the cash. Following the usual practice of thanking solidarity groups, the LGSM are invited to the small Welsh town of Onllwyn where they meet an assorted cast of characters ranging from those who effortlessly lack prejudice, to the mildly uncomfortable, to the outright and staunchly homophobic. A series of predictable yet entertaining moments of bigotry and acceptance ensue.

UK: Half of jobless youth suffering depression

Morning Star newspaper

A "frightening" wave of austerity-stoked chronic depression is battering young people across the country, researchers found today.

The Prince's Youth Trust (a UK charity - RY) found that 27 per cent of working young people are "always" or "often" depressed - while the figure rocketed to 48 per cent for those not in paid work, education or training.

More than one in 10 young people said they felt unable to cope with day-to-day life, rising to a fifth of those with neither employment, education or training, according to the trust's annual Youth Index.

Pollsters who surveyed more than 2,000 16-to-25-year-olds found a clear link to the economic crisis.

More than a quarter said they believed it had "permanently damaged" their career prospects - and a fifth of those out of work said they believed their self-confidence would never fully recover.

Youth unemployment currently hovers around 20 per cent, with the total number expected to reach more than a million again this year.

Those in work continue to see hours, pay and conditions dwindling.

Official figures in November showed that of the 316,000 new jobs since 2011, more than two-thirds were part-time - with an average 15.8 hours paying just £155 a week (or about $246 CND - RY).

Prince's Trust chief executive Martina Milburn said it was often those from the most vulnerable backgrounds who found it hardest to get work, creating a "demoralising downward spiral."

"A frightening number of unemployed young people feel unable to cope - and it is particularly tough for those who don't have a support network," she said.

The survey follows an alarming study in August directly attributing more than 1,000 suicides since 2008 to the economic crisis.

Researchers at the University of Liverpool found 846 men and 155 women took their lives during the last four years over and above pre-recession trends - meaning around two-fifths of the rise in suicides among men could be attributed to rising unemployment.

Suicidal protests are also on the rise. In December an 18-year-old Torbay man set himself on fire after being refused housing, while a Birmingham man set himself alight outside a jobcentre in June.

Is the same thing taking place in Canada? Share your point of view and experiences in our comment section.

WFDY on riots in Britian

WFDY condemns the reckless violence and widespread criminality of recent nights, however we understand it as a direct product of the capitalist system and of the resulting dangerous lack of stability and rights for the youth of today, accompanied by disenfranchisement and exacerbated by unprecedented levels of alienation.

It is clear that the anger of the youth is derived from a number of factors including police brutality, the massive reduction in public spending on youth and other services, and a general frustration at a future with little prospects.

Furthermore, WFDY notes that the cuts in public spending have had a disproportionate impacton both the youth and ethnic minority groups. The first and main responsible for the wave of violence that now is taking place is the system under which the British people live, responsible for massive unemployment, huge rates of precarity, extremely expensiveaccess to the higher levels of education and almost impossible access to proper housing, mainly for the young generations.

It is also important to remind that it is this system that engages the British youth in wars just to satisfy the greed for profit of the big national and international monopolies. We admit these concerns along with our member organizations in Britain, especially with comrades of YCL Britain, demanding to address the root causes of unrest and violence and by supporting the genuine concernsof young people in the street and their frustration while outright rejecting their way of vandalizing, looting andcreating chaos without certain goal of socio-economic transformation.

In this extremely sensitive moment, WFDY calls upon all the young people in Britain to organize themselves and find the best ways to revolutionary transform their country, which will surely be through the overthrown of this dominant order and not through the destruction of public or private goods, for a Britain and a world of peace, solidarity and social transformation.