Mail columnist shocked that Pride doesn’t give a positive portrayal of Thatcher
Right-wing columnist Stephen Glover appears mystified that a film highlighting Margaret Thatcher’s role in defeating the miners’ strike avoids showing the ex-PM in a favourable light.
‘Pride’, one of the most celebrated British gay films in recent years, tells the real life inspiring tale of how a group of gay activists in London decided to fundraise for a mining community in South Wales during the miners’ strike of 1984-85.
The Mail – who in the eighties backed Thatcher’s stance against the miners – praised the film in a 4-star review earlier this month.
But Mail columnist Stephen Glover feels aggrieved that Thatcher “is portrayed as a pitiless destroyer of the lives of working people.”
He criticised the film in an article condemning novelist Dame Hilary Mantel for admitting that she briefly fantasised about assassinating Thatcher in 1983.
Glover wrote: “In a similar way, a new film called Pride — which tells the story of how gay and lesbian activists threw their support behind a Welsh mining community during the 1984 miners’ strike — offers an off-the-shelf vilification of Margaret Thatcher, who is portrayed as a pitiless destroyer of the lives of working people.”
He continued: “Needless to say, the contrary view that the striking miners were holding the country to ransom is not given the slightest airing. Nor is there a word of rebuke for the intransigent miners’ leader, Arthur Scargill, whose opposition to any sort of compromise spelled the end of the mining industry.”
Actor Bill Nighy, who stars in ‘Pride’, says the film encapsulates Thatcher’s hostility to the mining community.
“It’s beyond refreshing to get a movie that treats these decent men and women who worked in the mining community with dignity and respect,” he told the LA Times.
He said: “They were being beaten up by the police and being invented as enemies of the state.”
Recalling the battle for gay rights, the actor said: “One of the things I don’t understand is why [the government] should feel they should get involved in anybody else’s sex life.”
He added: “It was only 30 years ago that a national newspaper in England could describe the gay community as the slime of society and no one commented”.
In August last year, Mr Glover wrote a Mail article attacking the government’s decision to legalise same-sex marriage in England and Wales.
“I don’t think many people want gay marriage. I even doubt that the majority of gays do”.
He added: “What next? The legalisation of drugs, perhaps.
“The social campaigners win one battle and go on to the next. The social conservatives put up a fight, and nearly always lose. So it goes on.”
