Former MP Adam Price: The miners’ strike helped me come out as gay
Former Plaid Cymru MP Adam Price has revealed how the miners’ strike of 1984 helped give him the courage to come out as gay.
The prospective Assembly seat candidate for East Carmarthenshire and Dinefwr spoke about his personal experience as part of an S4C series, in which the political storms of the year-long industrial conflict are recounted.
According to Wales Online, Mr Price was 15 during the dispute and had kept his sexuality a secret, having never met another gay person before.
He said: “I had known since primary school that I was different, that I was gay. It was hard for me to share it with anyone, it was hard for me to accept it myself. I was worried how my parents and their friends would react to this news.
“In one sense you can say that the culture of a coal mining area is very macho. My father was a former amateur boxing champion, you cannot get more macho than that.
“I was struggling to find a bridge between being gay and living in a coal mining valley. Being gay looked like something strange, something from London, something from far away.
“It was during the strike that I met gay people for the first time ever. The London Gays and Lesbians Support the Miners came down from London – a bus full of them – to Pantyffynnon rugby club.
“My Dad and Mam and many miners all sat down with the gays and lesbians and welcomed them. For me is was all pretty amazing.”
He added that without his experiences as a 15-year-old he would have been “a very different Adam Prince.”
“The strike represents one of the most important chapters in Wales’ recent history…
“For me, it was an inspirational time when Welsh communities defended our way of life against the power of the Tory Government.”
Adam Price a Streic y Glowyr will be shown at 9.30pm, Tuesday, September 30 on S4C.
In 2009, Mr Price was voted 37th on PinkNews.co.uk’s list of influential LGBT people in Politics.
