In the preface to 2014’s fourth edition of Seumas Milne’s
book about the secret war against the miners and the UK’s organized labour
movements by Margaret Thatcher and her right wing administration, The Enemy Within, first published in
1994, he states ‘The aftershocks of the
miners strike of 1984-85 can still be felt in Britain thirty years later. The
strike was without doubt a watershed in the county’s post-war history. Indeed,
it has had no real parallel in size, duration and impact anywhere in the world.
It was the decisive domestic confrontation of the Thatcher years: a conflict
which pitted the most powerful and politicized trade union in the country
against a hard-right conservative administration bent on class revenge and
prepared to lay waste to the country’s industrial heartlands and energy sector
in the process, regardless of cost (monitory or socially). It convulsed Britain, turned coalfield
communities into occupied territory, and came far closer than was understood at
the time to breaking the Thatcher governments onslaught on organized labour’[1]
Things could have been so different if Thatcher had been defeated!
There have been many films on the subject of the miner’s
strike. Which
Side Are You On is a stunning documentary that Ken Loach made in 1984
whilst the strike was in progress. The film
features the experiences of the miners and their families told through songs,
poems and other art. Loach successfully highlights the fact that the people involved
and supporting this industrial action are ordinary, honest working individuals,
not shirkers or lazy bastards just people who want to work and continue to work
in an industry that not only supports their families but the community they
live in.
Another
documentary is Burning
Issues (2004). The Banner
Theatre originally made the film to mark the 20th anniversary
of the miner struggle. Founded in 1974 it is the only theatres company
that tour consistently to Britain’s trade unionists. The company has performed
at union events, pubs, clubs, theatres, festivals and rallies over the past 40
years. It pioneered and continues to use documentary theatre techniques. The film
is a celebration of the solidarity, resourcefulness and resistance of mining
communities throughout the strike, and allows miners and their families to
speak for themselves twenty years on from the strike and to reflect on what it
has subsequently meant to them and their communities.
Its not always documentary’s that show the
hardships and struggles of the working class? Pride
(2014) is a feature film that successfully does just that. Ostensibly a
movie about solidarity, the solidarity of ordinary people that are persecuted
because of their sexual orientation or quite simply because they would like too
feed their families! This is an amazing
story that based on true events that happened during the miners strike. It
gives us an account of the alliance between the pioneering London fundraising
group Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM), and the
people of a mining village in the Dulais valley in Wales who like the rest of
the brave mining community were mainly reliant on outside help to enable them
to continue with the strike without starving!
The latest of these films, shown at the Robert
Burns Centre Film Theatre to a near capacity audience, Still The Enemy Within
(2014) gives a hard hitting and moving reassessment of the strike from today’s
prospective, narrated by the men and woman who actually took part in the
struggle, a struggle to support their right to work and live in a fair and just
society and not cow tail to the City of London and their cohorts in
Westminster. It uses interviews that
involve personnel experiences from ordinary
working class folk and a wealth of rare and never before seen archive, and
without the need of talking heads.
Owen Gower, who is normally found, directing factual
documentaries for television, has now directed his first feature film and you
can sense that his background has stood him in good stead. Most right-minded
people are aware that it was Thatcher’s intention to kill the strength of the
working class by destroying their workplace Unions. To this end she decided to
take on the strongest of them the National Union of Mineworkers. It was the
Tories plan to implement the closure of the mines threatening a complete
industry along with the communities attached to this industry and their way of
life. 160000 coal miner, their wife’s,
girlfriends and families took up the governments challenge and fought back,
coming very close to winning the dispute even taking into account the
underhanded tactics of Thatcher, a combat trained police force and the right
wing media. But as the documentary explains it was fellow Unions that did not
give the mineworkers their full support that brought them down in the end. But
looking back now I’m convinced of two things, if the unions had combined in
their support of the strike Thatcher along with her cohorts would have been
defeated and therefore we would all be living in a fairer society without a government
that only cares about the rich and powerful.
Interestingly the discussion that took place
between Dr Benjamin Franks - author of ‘Rebel Alliances: The Means and Ends of Contemporary British
Anarchism’s’, and the audience was truly engaged by the fact that there
were people in the cinema that had first hand knowledge of the dispute. What do we learn from such informative
documentaries? The wicked witch may be
dead but nothing changes! Its difficult to believe that changes (for the
better) will come through the ballot box with a chance recently missed for
Scotland’s with the Independence vote. Governments still lie and gullible
people still believe them!
