23/05/2024
I knew little about the strike when I started on this project. I was a teenager in Belfast in 1984, we had other stuff going on at the time. Orgeave was a passing story on the 9 o’clock news. Margaret Thatcher for me was more about the 1981 hunger strike in the Maze prison than the 1984 miners’ strike. I think it helped that I didn’t know too much. What I then learned was not from history books or films or newspapers, it was from the people themselves, the people who had lived through the long, terrible 12 months of the strike. That was important when I came to put the book together. I wasn’t qualified to have an opinion.
Dan Gordon and I have worked on number of film projects over the years. He’d won a BAFTA for his Hillsborough film and wanted to make a film about the miners’ strike. It was, at that stage, with his own money so there was no money for me. I really wanted to be involved so I suggested that he do the film and I do the book, which is what we did. His film Strike: An Uncivil War is amazing and will be in cinemas next month and then on Netflix.
Dan interviewed striking miners, non striking miners, women, policemen, politicians, lawyers, people from the National Union of Miners and the National coal Board, and investigative journalists. The book was going to be their voices telling their stories. People could make up their own mind. I wanted them to be heard.
On reflection what has stayed with me most is not the injustices or grievances or bitterness or anger, all of which are valid, but rather the deep-rooted sense of community, of belonging and collective purpose, that defined the mining communities prior to the 1984-85 strike. It wasn’t something added on or woven in with an outcome in mind. It had evolved over generations and is
what the communities were at their very heart. It manifested itself in trust, camaraderie, caring, and hard work. It had prevailed in all the mining villages since the Industrial Revolution. And then it was gone.
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