Summary
At the fundraiser concert, the LGSM and the miners sell t-shirts and welcome the attendees. Mark makes a speech, welcoming everyone there to the first-ever "Pits and Perverts Benefit Ball." Everyone cheers as Bronski Beat performs. Some of the miners find some girls to dance with, who are impressed with their dancing. Zoe and Stella give Joe a note to give to Steph, which is about their breakaway group for only women.
Dai makes a speech about the image of solidarity that is central to the Miner's Union, two hands shaking one another. As he makes the speech, Joe and a man kiss in the crowd. Jonathan and Gethin take the Welsh ladies out on the town, as they laugh that they want to see everything about the gay scene, even the "rubber scene."
They all go to a gay bar and dance to "You Spin Me Round" by Dead or Alive. We see a montage of the women in a basement bar, talking to various men in leather. On the way out of the bar, Mark runs into his ex-boyfriend, Tim, who tells him he's on a farewell tour and kisses him. "I miss you," he tells him, and implies that he has AIDS.
Gail confides in Steph that she was 16 when she met her husband, and complains that sex is for men. Here, Steph stops her and insists that sex is also for women. Abruptly, Gail kisses her, and they both laugh hard.
Back at the apartment, Hefina finds a dildo and pornography, which makes the women laugh hysterically. The next day, Joe returns to his parents' house to find his mother weeping in the living room. She and his father are looking at the newspaper story about the fundraiser and clearly displeased to have learned their son is gay.
At the bookshop, Mark is distracted and looks at a poster about AIDS. He rallies the group and gets them on the bus, but Joe is nowhere to be found. With no way to contact him, the group decides to return to the village without him. Cliff visits the Welfare Hall and sees that Maureen has changed the time of the meeting to noon, presumably to exclude the LGSM.
Joe's mother and father scold him about his sexuality, insisting that the law can protect him from himself. "It's such a terrible life," she tells him as he weeps. At the Union Meeting, Cliff is the only representative who can speak about the LGSM, and his fellow union members heckle him as he stammers about their cause. Martin protests that the meeting was brought together unlawfully and that most people there are not from the village.
When the LGSM arrives, they see that they missed the meeting, much to their dismay. Hefina, Dai and the others go and confront Maureen and her sons, who scold them for dancing around in London instead of attending the meeting. Maureen says that the gays have pretended to help, but have just been pushing their own homosexual agenda, as Hefina runs towards her angrily. Carl says that during the meeting they voted to decline help from the LGSM, as Sian empties a bag of all the money that the LGSM raised for them. Before she leaves the room, she scolds her husband Martin for not speaking up.
As Maureen leaves, Cliff confronts her, telling her that his brother (her late husband) would disapprove of her behavior. Dai thanks Mark for all their help and sends the group on their way back to London. Gwen tells Steph that she and the lesbians have opened her eyes, saying her goodbyes tearfully.
Back in London, Gethin gets angry about the loss and goes out to collect more money for the town. Mark gives up and resolves to distance himself from the cause. When Mike confronts him about it, Mark snaps at him, urging him to make his own decisions "for once."
That night as Gethin collects money for the miners, a gay man scolds him for not fighting for AIDS, since "there's gay people dying everyday." As Gethin leaves, a man follows him and asks to talk.
Steph goes to Joe's house and tells his mother to pass along the message that Gethin has been beaten up and is in the hospital. Joe comes out of his room and asks who came, but his mother lies and tells him it was a friend of hers.
In Wales, Cliff and Hefina make sandwiches, and Cliff comes out to her as gay. "I've known for a little while now," she says. Hefina picks up the miners in a new van that was bought with the money from the LGSM. When the miners refuse, she tells them that they will have to stay put if they refuse the ride, so they reluctantly climb inside.
On March 4th, 1985, the strike ends. Joe sees the news on television and leaves his house, even as his mother yells about what good news it is.
Analysis
The concert becomes a true exemplification of Mark's philosophy that when people lodge bigoted language and hatred at you, it is best to own it and make it part of who you are. The event is called "Pits and Perverts Benefit Ball," but even with its provocative name, it attracts both gay people and straight people alike. Mark's belief that embracing and celebrating the qualities that make one a marginalized citizen can have a healing and connective effect. The concert is an uproarious event, a coming together of all different kinds of people for a common cause.
The film's portrayal of gay culture is straightforward and usually lighthearted, but in this section of the film, the dark threat of AIDS enters the narrative. When Mark is leaving a leather bar with the group, he runs into his ex-boyfriend Tim, who tells him he is going on a "farewell tour" and drunkenly implores him to "take care." Even as gay solidarity with the miners has brought a great deal of levity and joy to the film's gay protagonists, AIDS is on the rise and threatens the young lives of all of the activists.
This section also takes a dark turn when Joe's parents learn about his sexuality. They have an exceedingly unsympathetic and bigoted response to the realization, and he does not even get the opportunity to come out to them himself, as they find it out from the newspaper. Joe, whose world has been opened by meeting the LGSM and finding people who proudly inhabit their sexuality, is crushed by his parents' insistence that gay life is lonely and unfulfilling.
These personal traumas and setbacks coincide with a setback for the LGSM itself. The Union votes, unfairly, to exclude the LGSM from their cause, despite the fact that the organization has raised thousands for the miners. Maureen, the main antagonist, remains undeterred in her bigoted convictions, insisting that the gay group is not trying to help, but rather to indoctrinate the town's people into a gay lifestyle. Just when it seemed that the LGSM could bring together dueling factions and create a true spirit of solidarity and mutual aid, the mining town shuts them down, much to the group and the sympathetic townspeople's dismay.
The film goes back and forth between lighthearted moments of hope and dispiriting setbacks rather seamlessly. For much of the film, we see rather dramatic and high-stakes scenarios played out in humorous ways. In this chapter of the film, the drama catches up with the characters and they each face different hurdles. Joe contends with a homophobic family, Gethin gets attacked in a hate crime, and Mark worries about the efficacy of his political efforts and the threat of AIDS.
