The Miners' Strike 1984/85

Something very different to bring to a conclusion my series of four films for the 40th anniversary of the 1984-5 miners’ strike. The Miners’ Hymns was premiered in July 2010 in Durham Cathedral, directed by Bill Morison the avant-garde filmmaker, with music by Icelandic composer Johann Johannsson, the founder of Kitchen Motors, an experimental art group in Reykjavik. It is a beautiful, poetic celebration of mining culture and particularly its music. Using archive footage, the film features “The Big Meeting”, otherwise known as the Durham Miners’ Gala, and the music blends with and highlights...

Kameradschaft (1931) is my third film for the 40th anniversary of the 1984-85 Miners’ Strike, this one to celebrate the international solidarity for the strike. In the Lorraine–Saar region, it was not unusual for mines on either side of the Franco-German border to be close together, separated on the map by a red line which meant absolutely nothing underground. Gas, flooding, subsidence, dust — the ever present dangers of mining life — were no respecter of cartography or the wheeling and dealing of nationalistic politicians. A fire breaks out in a French mine and threatens to engulf the German...

Proud Valley , the second film I’m highlighting for the 40th anniversary of the 1984-5 miners’ strike, was directed by Penrose Tennyson in 1939. It was the last British film to feature the Black American activist, singer and actor Paul Robeson. He plays David Goliath, an American sailor stranded in Cardiff, who makes his way up the valleys to find work at a colliery. He is accepted into the community, partly due to his splendid singing voice which immediately assures him a place in the colliery choir. However, all is not well. An underground explosion kills the choirmaster and the management...

Some aspects of the Channel 4 documentary on the 1984-85 miners’ strike, The Battle for Britain , are worth paying attention to. It includes interviews with former striking miners, who give straightforward, honest and hard-hitting accounts of what happened to them and, in particular, their appalling treatment at the hands of the police. The contrast is stark with the accounts from miners who worked through the strike: they seem blissfully unaware of the broader issues of the strike. They offer a fixation with the idea of “intimidation” as driving the strike, but little in the way of evidence...

Events marking 40 years since the miners' strike — various events

The coming weeks of fewer labour-movement meetings and activities are a good time to read our longer books, and within our general half-price offer we’re doing a special deal on The Fate of the Russian Revolution volume 1 and The Two Trotskyisms Confront Stalinism : both large books for £10 post free. If you’ve already read those, or want something easier, the half-price offer also makes many shorter texts more available. Socialism Makes Sense is an attempt to allow anti-socialist ideas full voice and then refute them in favour of the idea of socialism which was advocated by the mass socialist...

During and after the 1984-5 miners’ strike a large number of strikers were arrested and served prison sentences solely for the crime of defending their communities, their jobs and their union. The National Justice for Mineworkers campaign (NJM) has, for many years, been collecting money to help these men, some of whom have never been able to find regular work. Most of this money has been collected at public meetings and labour movement events, but the Covid pandemic has meant that many of these events, such as the Durham Miners’ Gala, have been cancelled. As a result there is a special...

Sadly, Rick Sumner of the National Justice for Mineworkers Campaign has died. Once a miner at Shuttle Eye Colliery in West Yorkshire, in the aftermath of the 1984-5 strike he, along with his wife, Christine, organised the Justice campaign to help the many miners who were victimised and unable to find work. I met him a few times at various functions such as the Chesterfield May Day Rally and the Durham Miners’ Gala, where he was a regular presence with his stall of miners’ memorabilia and publications. A few years ago he stood down and the work of the campaign is being continued by others...