Stage, Screen & Radio - October/November 2014 - 8

Film
He's been an unassuming,
hard-working BECTU official
for over 20 years. So David
Donovan's colleagues were
astonished, and thrilled, to
find him being played as
one of the lead characters
in a brilliant new film, Pride.
It tells a touching and true
story of how two groups of
people came together to
support each other in the
darkest days of the miners'
strike in the eighties.

Pride of BECTU

STILLS COURTESY PATHE

A

fter all these years working
alongside the unassuming
and eminently likeable
David Donovan, his
colleagues were astonished to
discover last month that he is one
of the two leading characters in the
newly released feature film Pride.
The film, a comedy, is set in the
eighties during the miners' strike -
a bitter, longrunning dispute which
pitted the miners against the
Conservative government of Margaret
Thatcher. Many bonds were made
between striking miners' families and
the thousands of groups round the
country that raised money to support
them. But perhaps the most surprising,
given the times they were living in,
was the great comradeship that grew
between striking south Wales miners
and a London-based lesbian and gay
group - the story told by the film.
So how was David involved? "I only
found out about the film when I was
approached by the writer (Stephen
Beresford) just before they started
shooting it," he said. "They wanted me
to release the copies of the speeches
that I'd made at the time but I had to
tell them I'd never written them down
- only to be informed that they'd been
recorded by others. So I was happy to

8

Paddy Considine, left, as
David Donovan with Ben
Schnetzer as Mark Ashton.
Above: David himself

confirm the details of them."
David was from a mining family and
had been working at Abernant Colliery.
"I was a representative of the Neath,
Swansea and Dulais Valley Support
Group. If there was something we did
differently I felt that as the strike was
political, as well as raising money for
funds to support the families of
strikers we also needed to forge
political links with the support groups
across the country. And that's how I
first came in contact with Lesbians
and Gays Support the Miners".

The film
had such a
response
because
the time is
right

So it was David who went down to
London, as portrayed in the film, to
meet the representatives of LGSM
who had been collecting for the miners.
The people he met were Mark Ashton,
Mike Jackson and Robert Kincaid.
"Following the meeting I went with
the group to the Electric Ballroom that
night to pick up the money but,
importantly, that meeting led to a
confidence growing between me and
the individuals who were instrumental
in collecting for the miners. Everything
is about personalities isn't it? They
started growing in confidence and
we invited them down to Wales."
SOLIDARITY

"Of course this isn't a documentary,
it's a comedy drama and not all events
portrayed are entirely accurate," he
said, grinning. "But the thing is, it's
based on very solid facts of the events
of those days. A relationship was
formed between those living in the
mining communities and lesbian and
gay people in London who wished to
support them. And one can see a link
between those first faltering steps of
lesbian and gay politics entering the
mainstream of the labour and working
class movement. And it intrigued me
over the years how when the candle

Stage Screen & Radio October/November 2014
Stage, Screen & Radio - October/November 2014

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