What 1980s-era Welsh coal miners can teach trans Americans - and our allies - in 2026.
The miners lost their strike. Then they helped win gay rights, anyway.
The year is 1984. UK miners are deep into a strike against Margaret Thatcher’s government. The state has frozen the National Union of Mineworkers’ bank accounts. Mining towns are starving. And a young gay activist in London named Mark Ashton looks at all of it and says:
“It’s quite illogical to support lesbian and gay rights and not support the miners. It’s the same struggle.”
So at the June 1984 London Pride march, Mark and his friend Mike Jackson grab buckets and start collecting money for striking miners. They raise £150 that day. A week later, they found Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners - LGSM.
There’s a catch: nobody wants their money. The national union can’t take donations - Thatcher’s government has frozen their accounts. When LGSM calls local mining unions to ask where to send the funds, they get hung up on. Wales was one of the most socially conservative parts of the UK at the time.
But one union lodge, in Dulais Valley, says ... yes. Come visit. So a busload of London queers drives to a Welsh village hall expecting the worst. Instead, they get a standing ovation.
Over the next year, LGSM raises £22,500 for the Dulais miners and their families - around £70,000 in today’s money. Their biggest event was a benefit concert called Pits and Perverts. The tabloids had been using the phrase as a slur; LGSM took it back. Bronski Beat headlined. They cleared £5,000 in a single night.
The strike ends in March 1985. The miners lose to Thatcher.
But throughout, the miners of the Dulais Valley and their families did not starve, in large part due to the generosity and support of LGBTQ+ people they didn’t know from a whole country away.
Three months later, at the 1985 London Pride march, the Welsh miners showed up. They marched at the front of the parade, NUM banner alongside the rainbow flags, 4,000 miners from union lodges across Wales behind them.
Then in October, at the Labour Party conference, the NUM used their bloc vote to pass a resolution committing Labour to LGBT equality - the first major political party in the UK to do it. It happened because Welsh coal miners showed up for queer Londoners, then went home and made it party doctrine.
The miners lost. But then, they helped us win, anyway.
That is what solidarity means.
I think about that a lot right now. Across the nation and around the world, communities we’ve stood with for decades are standing up for us - on the ground, in the courts, in the streets, in the media, every single day.
Just like those Welsh miners in 1985, our allies today come from communities we might not expect.
They’re veterans helping us run Operation Lifeboat evacuations of trans folks out of Kansas - people who swore an oath to a Constitution and decided that oath still means something even when the people in danger are trans. They’re evangelical clergy holding sit-ins at statehouses in Idaho and Tennessee, looking at the laws being passed in their name and saying, with their bodies in the way: you will not do this in our name. They’re civil rights lawyers who could be fighting a thousand other fires, but chose this one. They’re volunteer pilots flying trans evacuees out of hostile places to safer ones for free. They’re cis, straight, lifelong Mississippians running PFLAG chapters out of their living rooms - in towns where that takes more courage than most people will ever know. They’re Colorado legislators drafting shield laws and refusing to back down. They’re even libertarians seeing the government use force against its own citizens - and holding true to their principles by showing up at city council meetings and state legislatures around the country, fighting alongside progressives to defend trans rights.
This is what coalition actually looks like.
It’s not always the same enemy. It’s rarely even the same fight at the same time. The Welsh miners weren’t losing jobs and being starved out because they were queer. Queer Londoners weren’t being beaten in pub raids because they were on strike from a coal mine. The source and shape of one community’s pain doesn’t always look like another’s, and the violence targeting one of us may never touch the person standing beside us.
Coalition is the choice to stand together anyway - to recognize that when authoritarians swing, it doesn’t matter much whose head the club lands on first. What matters is who’s willing to step in front of it. Queer Londoners didn’t need to be miners to find something familiar in police beating their distant Welsh neighbors. The miners didn’t need to share our queer identity to share our struggle. Veterans don’t need to be trans to recognize Americans that need defending from harm. Clergy don’t need to be queer to read their holy books and conclude their gospel demands they defend us.
That’s solidarity: people who don’t share each other’s identities, recognizing injustice, choosing to fight alongside each other anyway. Welsh coal miners in 1985. Veterans, clergy, lawyers, pilots, neighbors, legislators, and chosen families - everyday Americans from every walk of life - in 2026. Different fights. Same instinct.
The authoritarians always think they can isolate us. Pick us off one targeted group at a time. But as long as every time they try, we build coalitions of solidarity and show up for each other, they will never win in the end.
That’s what May Day is all about. The miners showed up in the 1980s. Many others are showing up for us right now.
If you can, find a May Day march near you today. Stand with each other - the workers, the immigrants, the organizers - your fellow Americans who’ve been doing this work since long before our current moment, and will still be doing it long after. But also stand with the newcomers to the fight who are showing up to stand in solidarity with us for the first time.
To my fellow trans Americans: I know how hard it is to extend trust right now. We’ve been promised support before and watched it evaporate the second it cost something. The wariness is earned. But Dulais Valley said yes when no one else would, and that one ‘yes’ changed history. Someone has to be the lodge that picks up the phone when the call is real. Let it be us, here and now, today.
To the allies showing up: you may walk into rooms that don’t trust you yet. Show up anyway. The London queers didn’t trust the Welsh miners the first time those miners showed up in their bars to build bridges in the other direction, either. But they became family by staying anyway.
And then, keep showing up. This fight will take years. There will be losses, and moments when it feels like we’re losing more than we’re winning. The members of LGSM felt that in March 1985. Three months later, they were marching at the front of Pride alongside thousands of union miners. By October, those allies were on the floor of the Labour Party conference, casting their bloc vote to write our equality into a major party platform for the first time in British history. From the picket line to the Pride march to the halls of power, in under a year.
I couldn’t be prouder to be in this fight - with the trans community I belong to, and with every one of you who choose to stand beside us when you don’t have to. Through all the struggle and strife, we will be victorious in the end, as long as we stand together.
Solidarity forever, and victory to trans Americans!
💙🩷🤍🩷💙
Samantha Boucher
She/they
Founder & Executive Director,
Trans Liberty
Happy May Day to all. This day has long carried weight in the history of the civil rights movement, and I’m glad to have shared this story with you today. (Go watch the 2014 movie Pride if you haven’t - it’s a masterpiece!)
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