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Miners in the Front Line
Granville Williams
Unfinished Business: The miners' strike for jobs 1984-5
By Peter Arkell and Ray Rising, Lupus Books £7.99
DATELINE: 18/8/09
When I was chasing material to include in Shafted: The Media, the Miners' Strike and the Aftermath I wanted to use some photos from the book The Miners' Strike 1984-85 by News Line photographers and reporters (New Park Publications). Unfortunately I didn't succeed in tracking down any contacts. Now however we have Unfinished Business, an attractive, well-designed book with a really good selection of photographs, some published for the first time, by photographers who worked on News Line.News Line, for those unfamiliar with the history of organisations on the revolutionary left, was the daily paper of the Workers' Revolutionary Party (WRP) and this book is written by Peter Arkell and Ray Rising, News Line photographers during the 1984-85 strike.
The book is in two parts. The first half is an account of the strike and includes a vivid eye-witness account, with photos, by Ray Rising of events in Stainforth in South Yorkshire in August 1984. 'The extraordinary sights,' he points out, 'testified to the civil war nature of the miners' strike.'
I don't agree with some of the points made in the book – for example, the assessment of the influence of the WRP in the strike or the blanket condemnation of trade union leaders. Dave Douglass, former NUM branch secretary at Hatfield Colliery, in his own review of Unfinished Business makes some useful corrections:I know what happened at a mass meeting of the Immingham dockers addressed by Ron Todd, the TGWU general secretary.
He took the platform to plead with the Immingham men to hold the line, not scab on the miners, plus the Aslef, RMT and NUS unions, which were all blocking fuel and iron ore, or betray their own agreements and standards. My informant tells me he thought they were never going to get out of the hall, as big, burly dockers attacked them. Todd was hit with one of the iron bolts thrown at the stage and I have it on good authority that he ended up making his appeal for solidarity with blood running down his face.
So perhaps the accusation of 'traitor' should be directed not at union leaders in this case, but at rank and file scabs. There is a brand of left workerism which refuses to see 'ordinary workers' as ever being at fault. Sorry, comrades, but scabs are responsible in the final analysis for their own actions and their own lack of courage. *
But the overall account of the strike and its aftermath is well told. The authors cite a Financial Times report from March 2009, The number of adults claiming incapacity benefit in the English and Welsh coalfields was a staggering 336,000 in 2007, and since the financial crash in September 2008 the number of unemployed men claiming benefit has risen between 75-100% depending on the area.
The second part of the book is a selection of photographs arranged by themes: On the frontline; Women against pit closures; Communities come together; Paying in blood; The NUM leaders; On the march and Aftermath.
These photos are incredibly evocative and powerful, capturing the different facets of the strike – the warmth and solidarity in the communities as they struggled to feed families and striking miners; the determination, energy and humour of Women Against Pit Closures; and the menacing force displayed by the police at Orgreave and elsewhere.
The final photo in the Aftermath section of the book is Steve Tulley, former NUM branch secretary of Frickley Colliery which closed in 1993, standing in front of derelict miners' houses in South Elmsall, West Yorkshire. I live a couple of miles from South Elmsall and saw a confident community unravel once the pit closed and a key source of employment and prosperity with it.
The book rightly points out 'the miners faced challenges which are now back on the social agenda 25 years later' and concludes 'the great miners' strike remains unfinished business'.
This review was written on the day the unemployment figures were published in August 2009. 220,000 individuals were thrown on the scrapheap in the three months to June, taking the total figure to almost 2.5 million, with worse to come. The governor of the Bank of England announced on the same day that the recession was deeper and would last longer than some were predicting. Absurdly the FTSE 100 was up 45.4 points in spite of this slew of bad news.
We have the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, caused by the rush for easy profits of commercial and investment banks, hedge funds, insurance companies, private equity firms and other financial institutions. Governments give massive bailouts for banks, whilst recession and mass unemployment loom ever larger for working people.
Unfinished business indeed!
* You can read the full review of Unfinished Business by Dave Douglass here.
You can buy Unfinished Business here.You can buy the CPBF book Shafted:The Media, the Miners' Strike and the Aftermath edited by Granville Williams (£12.50 inc P&P) here.
BE THERE!
The Miners' Strike and Politics TodayFriday, 30 October 2009, 7.00-10.45 pm
College of Pharmacy, Brunswick Square, London WC1N 1AX
Ken Loach's Which Side Are You On?Introduced by Tony Benn
Other speakers:
John Nichols, Washington correspondent for The Nation magazine
Playwright Lee Hall (Billy Elliot and The Pitmen Painters)
Photographer Marc Vallée & Guardian journalist Paul Lewis
Admission £5 Book online at www.cpbf.org.uk
Last modified: Wednesday, August 19, 2009
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Previous stories
Reviews
REVIEW: Marching to the Fault Line
New pamphlet from Spinwatch: Spinning the Wheels
Review: Trading Information: Leaks, Lies and Tip-offs
Review: The History of The Times Vol VII 1981-2002 The Murdoch Years
‘Big Brother’ - the perfect neoliberal TV programme
A must read for anyone concerned about Vanunu and Israel
Review: Demons, Dragons and Bogeymen
CPBF Scotland