"Smalltown Boy" - Bronski Beat

On Furthering the Cause

Fame was a tool for this activist turned pop star to fight for the voiceless.

It was month four of an already brutal labor strike by coal miners throughout the U.K. Margaret Thatcher renounced previous agreements with the union and slashed government subsidies to miners and their families. Union bank accounts were frozen, interfering with donations to the cause. Thatcher also had a stranglehold on the British press, which slandered the union’s efforts. It was either give up the strike or starve to death.

As defeat loomed for rural mining towns, an unlikely group of allies stepped in — London’s queer community. Gay activists were fighting the same battles of mistreatment by the government and misrepresentation by the media and mobilized in support of miners. The Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners collected donations during Pride events and at local bars, and one of LGSM’s most fervent activists happened to be a singer whose star was rising on the pop charts. Jimmy Somerville organized his band, Bronski Beat, to headline a benefit concert called “Pits and Perverts” — a title that mocked scathing tabloid headlines meant to discredit the unlikely partnership between rural mine workers and London’s queer community.  

The concert was a success and raised £5650 (the equivalent of more than £20,000 in today’s money) for striking miners and their families in South Wales. But it was also the scene of a truly historic breakthrough for politics and empathy when a spokesperson from the National Union of Mineworkers got up on the stage to tell the 1,500-strong audience:

“You have worn our badge, and you know what harassment means, as we do. Now we will pin your badge on us; we will support you. It won’t change overnight, but now 140,000 miners know that there are other causes and other problems and will never be the same.”

LGSM poster

Jimmy Somerville never intended to be a pop star or a labor union hero. He was a teenage runaway fighting for his right to exist without persecution. When his band caught a break, he leveraged fame to spotlight others who were overlooked.

Somerville had fled the homophobia of his Glasgow suburb and landed in London without money or a job. He squatted in any apartment he could find, made money as a sex worker, then moved in with pals and future bandmates Steve Bronski and Larry Steinbachek. The trio made their live debut at “September in the Pink,” London’s first LGBTQ+ arts festival.  Before signing with London Records in 1984, they had performed together a mere handful of times. 

As out queer men, Bronski Beat were irked by the notion that musicians had to be closeted in order to succeed. “Whenever we did Top of the Pops, I often wondered why my dressing room was halfway across the building,” Somerville revealed in a 2014 interview with Queerty. “It was because I was made to stay away from everyone else because I had such a big mouth. Boy George is such a big guy and when we finally got to talk and be sort of friendly he said to me, ‘I was so terrified of you. You had the biggest fucking mouth!’

The only other out and proud band in the U.K. at the time was Frankie Goes to Hollywood, which blazed the queer trail with their hit “Relax.” Bronski Beat hired the same music video director, Bernard Rose, to oversee the production of their debut single, “Smalltown Boy.” Where the video for “Relax” was set in an S&M bar and rife with sexual innuendo, the video for “Smalltown Boy” was a stark description of gay life. 

The “Boy,” played by Somerville, has a crush on a handsome diver at his local swimming pool. Later, he is viciously attacked by the diver and his friends. Then he’s outed to his parents when a police officer escorts him home with bruises on his face. Somerville is forced to leave home and, in a particularly cruel moment, his father gives him money but refuses to shake his hand as he leaves. The story is heart-wrenching. But it concludes with a note of optimism: The boy’s friends, played by Bronski and Steinbachek, join him on the train, and the video ends with the three headed to London, a brighter future hopefully ahead. 

Mother will never understand why you had to leave

But the answers you seek will never be found at home

The love that you need will never be found at home

Run away, turn away, run away, turn away, run away

When it was released, “Smalltown Boy” was an immediate hit, reaching No. 3 in the U.K. and No. 1 on the U.S. dance chart. Bronski Beat had somehow combined radical politics with infectious chart-topping dance-pop.

In December 1984, they debuted with album The Age of Consent. The title was a reference to the disparity between the legal age of consent for heterosexual intercourse in the U.K, which was 16, while it was 21 for homosexual sex.  “We listed inside the sleeve the ages for homosexual and heterosexual intercourse in every country around the world, and when you saw it written down the discrimination was astonishing,” Somerville told The Guardian in 2006.

The Age of Consent album sleeve

Also printed on the album sleeve was a telephone number to switchboards across Britain offering legal advice for LGBTQ+ people in need. Even as gay people became more culturally visible during the ‘80s, they continued to be stigmatized by the government and the media with the rise of AIDS. Four years after the release of “Smalltown Boy,” Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative party passed the Section 28 laws, which banned the “promotion” of homosexuality in schools and public libraries. According to an interview with the Guardian, Somerville was routinely targeted by media that threatened to run stories about him being HIV positive unless he could produce a negative test. 

The second single from The Age of Consent was “Why?”, a protest song in response to the discrimination.

Contempt in your eyes

As I turn to kiss his lips

Broken I lie

All my feelings denied

Blood on your fist

Can you tell me why?

You in your false securities

Tear up my life

Condemning me

Name me an illness

Call me a sin

Never feel guilty

Never give in

Tell me why?

Unfortunately for fans, Bronski Beat’s stardom was short-lived. By December 1984, the band parted ways. The “Pits and Perverts” benefit concert for LGSM was among the group’s final shows. Growing tensions led to Somerville quitting to form a new group, The Communards, in April the following year. 

The Communards were also short-lived but managed to top the U.K. singles chart with their cover of the disco classic, “Don’t Leave Me This Way,” in 1986 and “For a Friend,” a song written in tribute to Somerville’s best friend and leader of LGSM, Mark Ashton, who died in 1987 at the age of 26 of complications from AIDS. "I´ll never let you down, a battle I have found," Somerville sings. "And all the dreams we had, I will carry on."

Being an out celebrity was dangerous but because Somerville’s need for justice overruled his need for fame, he’d often express contempt for his closeted peers. He famously chided groups like Pet Shop Boys for profiting from queer culture without being aligned with it. Soft Cell lead singer Marc Almond, who partnered with Bronski Beat on the Donna Summer cover “I Feel Love”, felt that pressure deeply. “Jimmy Sommerville came along and he put himself on the line. He was incredibly brave, while the rest of us were hiding behind the eye-liner,” Almond told the Scotland Herald. Almond would come out in 1987 and Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys in 1994. 

“Now that I'm older, I understand that it's up to the individual to decide who they are or what they are. But I was fueled by the passions of sexual politics. This was a time when you'd be standing on the tube platform wondering which group of skinheads was going to throw you on the tracks that night. I had such an idealistic belief that I could change the world, that I could make a difference, that I could be a voice for a voiceless community,” Somerville said in a 2014 interview with the Guardian.

And change the world he did — by risking his career and safety to be an out and proud celebrity and through his charity work for AIDS fundraisers and other groups like Lesbians and Gays Suport Miners. In fact, because LGSM was such a pivotal fundraiser for striking miners in 1984, the union reciprocated by showing up at the 1985 Gay and Lesbian Pride Rally to march alongside their comrades. An estimated 140,000 miners from every rural corner of the United Kingdom descended onto the march carrying banners in support of gay rights. 

Because the National Union of Miners was so large, their political power  helped push the Labor Party into including gay rights into the party’s platform. 

1985 Gay and Lesbian Pride Rally in London

Editor’s note: The incredible story of LGSM’s partnership with rural miners on strike is beautifully depicted in the 2014 film Pride. The film stars British actors Dominic West (The Wire, The Crown), Bill Nighy (Love Actually) and Paddy Considine (Fleabag). The film doesn’t feature Jimmy Somerville as an active member of LGSM or that he even knew Mark Ashton personally. The creative license of storytelling I suppose.

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