In the summer of 1984 a group of gay rights activists came to the unlikely aid of a Welsh mining village in the midst of strike action.

At the centre of this was a 30-year-old Accrington man, whose story is now the subject of a feature film ‘Pride’, currently out in cinemas.

Mike Jackson left Willows Lane in Accrington for London in 1970 aged just 16 in search of a new career. In the following decade the gay rights activist would go on to become a founding member of the Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) group.

Mike and his fellow activists saw the miners as another group who were seemingly being ostracised by society; particularly after Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher labelled the strikers as “the enemy within” during the bitter Miners Strike of 1984-85.

By December 1984, the LGSM group had collected over £11,000 through a mixture of pub, club and street collections, benefits, parties and other events and were able to donate a minibus to a miners’ support group in Neath.

Mike, who was secretary of LGSM, remembered the group’s early nerves as they got in touch with the Welsh mining town.

He said: “God, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when they opened my letter.

“I just said, ‘solidarity and greetings, we are a LGSM support group and we would like to offer you support.

“We weren’t naive. Times were tougher for lesbians and gay men then. But you just go with it, we were well used to homophobia.”

Miners in the Dulais Valley, however, welcomed the group with open arms, and Mike still receives Christmas cards from the former miners.

The group raised thousands for the Dulais Valley community in south Wales and forged a friendship that would ultimately result in the National Union of Miners supporting gay rights and paving the way for future equality legislation.

Growing up a gay man was a different story, however. Mike, whose father died in a car accident in Accrington when he was eight, was brought up by his mother.

Mike said: “Until I was 13, homosexuality was a crime. I came out when I was 19 and it was hard. It was pretty tough growing up, it was just me, my older sister and my mum. Mum worked in M&S and at a hotel in Accrington.

“My family had grown up in a time of homophobia and it took some years for them to get round it and accept me.

“It took a lot of persuasion from friends to make me believe that there was nothing wrong with it.

“When you move away from the fear of what you are, you are overcome with joy and also incandescent rage that you believed all the lies about being homosexual.”

Mike said that the recent release of Pride was ‘fantastic’ and said it was a way for people to reconnect with a forgotten story.

He said: “What a fantastic journey. Our history was there and nobody knew about it, but credit to writer Stephen Beresford for seeing and telling it. Seven of us have died since and I worried that all of this would get lost when I went too.”

Now 60 and a freelance lecturer in horticulture, Mike is hoping to return to Accrington in the near future to retell his inspirational story.