Tag: solidarity

Lesbian and Gays Support the Miners at Lambeth Town Hall (1985)

Ray Goodspeed recounts the fundriasing meeting held at Lambeth Town Hall in support of the Miners’ strike
“Look at me in my dapper 1980s style chairing a very successful LGSM public meeting in Lambeth Town Hall in January 1985, with Stuart Holland, the left Labour MP for Vauxhall, and Ali Thomas, a miner from Dulais. I said when introducing the meeting – and I absolutely meant it – that I had never been so proud to be gay or so proud to be working class as I was at that time. Solidarity!”
From Capital Gay 25th January 1985

The Long March – a play in solidarity with South African workers

The Long March is a play by the Sarmcol Workers’ Cooperative, performed in both Zulu and English, about the 970 striking workers in South Africa in 1985 who were all fired by BTR, a British multinational corporation. They worked at Sarmcol, a rubber company owned by BTR. The play is based on the experiences of the workers involved, forming a union, campaigning for their rights and what happened when they were all sacked 3 days into the strike.

The Long March toured Britain in 1987 and was performed to a packed crowd in Brixton on 1 November.

You can read more about the Sarmcol strike and the workers’ cooperative that was established during the dispute here http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/the-great-sarmcol-strike

The dispute was finally settled in 1998 when Sarmcol/BTR agreed to pay R11,7m in compensation to the 970 workers they sacked in 1985.

You can read the very informative programme for the play here The Long March