LGSMigrants take their name and inspiration from a movement called Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners. Now immortalised in the film Pride, these original LGSM campaigners supported striking miners in the 1980s, whose jobs were destroyed when Margaret Thatcher decided to close the pits Standing amongst the rows of colourful protestors at the Home Office is Gethin Roberts, a founding member of the original LGSMiners. Reflecting on the group’s support of the miners in 1984, he says: “It was obvious to us as gay activists that we needed to stand up for that community and do what we could to support them,”The LGBT campaigners who Roberts name checks as inspiration were people who similarly saw the interconnectedness between groups facing social and political oppression. “Going back to the early 1900s, you had people like Edward Carpenter , a socialist, feminist, anti-war campaigner and environmentalist, who also kicked off the modern lesbian and gay movement in the UK.”Similarly, in the United States, people point to the likes of Harry Hay , who was a communist, campaigner for native American rights and an environmentalist, as well as setting up the first US lesbian and gay movement, the Mattachine Society, born in 1950.Roberts says that the original LGSM’s decision to fundraise for miners on picket lines wasn’t an idea pulled out from thin air: “Back then, we were building on a tradition, and it’s so great that 30-something years later, a bunch of young queers are stood out here doing the same thing.”These connections are relationships founded on solidarity, a term that fundamentally boils down to the expression of shared struggle. As long as there is sexism, racism, homophobia and all manners of oppression, minority groups will be standing together side by side.“Until we’re no longer discriminated against, we’ll keep on taking action,” says Morton Thaysen as the protestors head home for the day. He and the rest of Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants promise me there are plenty more protests and theatrics to come.