Emotional tree planting ceremony in Derry in memory of Mark Ashton

Mark was a founding member of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM), a group of Lesbians and Gay people in London who supported the National Union of Mineworkers year-long strike from 1984-1985. This support of the strike then led to working class solidarity with LGBTQIA+ people, who were all being oppressed under the same forces.

Mark’s co-founder of LGSM, Mike Jackson, travelled to Derry last week to take part in the Independent Pride Derry and he planted the tree in memory of his late friend, with the help of Shá Gillespie, from Independent Pride Derry.

Mike said: “Mark died on February 11 1987. If Mark was alive today, he would be speaking to you, not me. He loved the limelight, I hated it. He would be amazed that the LGBT movement has come as far as it has today - as I am still, I just think it’s incredible. He would be amazed to see Derry city celebrating Pride yesterday and he would be very proud of the youngsters shouting ‘we’re here, we’re queer and we have no fear!’

“Sadly, he isn’t here. Instead, we’re taking up the baton that he has left for us. Keep on fighting, no matter what the odds are. The prize is a world free from hate where everyone lives with dignity, freedom, love and a mutual respect regardless of sexuality, gender, race etc. Solidarity is, and always will be, everything. Keep up the fight.”

Derry Playwright Micheál Kerrigan was in London at the time of the miners strike and said, although he never spoke to Mark, he always saw him around.

He said: “What I want to say about Mark Ashton’s contribution is that he was a very strong man and a very brave man. Gay rights were always in the back burner with the Labour Party and the trade unions and after the LGSM strike, they went from the back burner to the forefront. Then, all the trade unions had lesbian and gay branches and the British Labour Party took things on board. It led to other progressive legislation that eventually led to marriage equality.”

Jude Copeland, who has been campaigning to get a memorial in Mark Ashton’s hometown, said: “Mark Ashton was from Portrush and he fled the British criminalisation of homosexuality in Ireland to go to London. In London, he helped people - that was his first instinct. He did that through the London Gay Switchboard, by taking the early calls from people scared of their sexuality, of living away from home, of being rejected by family, of being vilified by the media and of this new disease which was coming over from America called Aids.

“The backdrop of all of that kindness, remembrance and all of that love, what really drove me to start this campaign was that people really didn’t understand that Mark Ashton was from here. Mark’s date of death, which I don’t think anyone really realised in the north, was also the date of the same-sex marriage here in the north. I thought to myself, ‘I wonder what Mark would have thought of all that’. Would he have been happy about how far we have come? Would he be happy about the marches and activism and the emails we’ve had to send, the agitations we’ve had to do? I think he really would have been quite angry but he would have been happy that we got there in the end.

“The reason why I think Mark Ashton is such a role model for people today, is that he thought about other vilified minorities. I think if Mark was here today, he would be thinking about who our equivalent to the miners are. He would be thinking about the low paid workers, the nurses on 1%, the barristers who have to represent the victims of domestic abuse, the people who are helping the sick, the asylum seekers who are on £8.10 a week, the people who have to fund their own trans healthcare. All of those minority people. I think Mark would be horrified by that but he would also be heartened by the next generation.”

Bernadette McAliskey said: “I think this is an important day for all of us. First of all, to remember a young man who was one of us, who was from here, our place and our community. Like the rest of us, he suffered all the contradictions and all the problems that that created.

“No matter what battle we are fighting of our own, we have to make some small space, if it’s all we can do, to stand with and support people fighting another battle who may be worse off than we are. One of the most important things that the message of solidarity teaches us is that rattling cans is important. Standing out on the street trying to persuade people to make a donation for miners when, by standing there, the thing you’re most likely to get is insulted, is probably one of the bravest things that people did. It cannot have been easy, as young members of the LGBTQIA+ movement, to take your personal self into personal and physical danger of derogation, of insult, of assault, in order to try and persuade people at the very least that they should try and understand what was happening in families who didn’t have enough to eat because of the miners strike. That’s a bit that cannot be forgotten. If we don’t have the rhetoric that shows we are all part of the one struggle, we have nothing. The reason I say that now is that we are going into the battle of our lives, and we better know that. Right now, all of us, straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, queer, working class, working class with pretensions of being middle class, people who think they’re above everybody else because they get salaries instead of wages and paid by the month instead of the week; all of those pretences are going to fall away over the winter - and don’t be in any doubt about that. People in this city, regardless of their sexuality and regardless of whether they’re working or on benefits, there will be people in this city die over this winter of cold, of isolation, of hunger or of despair. That will be replicated across the United Kingdom.

“When we go into the winter, we need all the solidarity we have. We need it in our thought, in our word and in our action. And I think that is the message that Mark left us. To have been in the position that he was in and to have prioritised the hardship of the miners, was one of the most intellectual, one of the most human, and one of the bravest things for any young Northern Ireland person stuck in London could do. It’s important for us to remember him in this way.”