Once a year, on the second Saturday of July, more than 200,000 people descend upon the streets of Durham in the Northeast of England. They’re there for Durham Miners’ Gala, also known at The Big Meeting, an event which claims to be the biggest celebration of working-class culture in the world and has taken place since 1871. It’s a coming together of communities that were, at one time, built around the coal mines and continue to preserve that local history after the mass closure of the pits by Margaret Thatcher’s government during the 1980s. It is also a reminder that, forty years on from the Miners’ Strikes, the political, social and economic toll of the events continues to run deep through these communities. When Boris Johnson declared his intentions to attend the event not long after his 2019 election victory, he was told in no uncertain terms that he would not be welcome. It’s a story echoed across the country – Sheffield, Nottingham, Wales, there are countless places which have been shaped, and continue to be defined, by these events. Now, ONE YEAR! Photographs from the Miners’ Strikes 1984-1985, considers how photography provided material for the government in their media campaigns as well as for the miners who sought to counter the mainstream narrative. It tells a story of collective action and considers how photography was “another frontier this war was waged along.”
In 1983, there were more than 170 deep coal mines in the country, employing 187,000 people. The following year, the National Coal Board announced that it would close 20 pits, threatening 20,000 jobs. The outcry at this news, spearheaded by National Union of Mineworkers leader Arthur Scargill, marked the beginning of a yearlong confrontation between workers and the government. In a 1984 speech to the 1922 Committee, a group of Conservative backbench MPs who meet weekly during Parliament, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher laid out the threat she believed unions posed to the nation. She said: “Enemy within – miner’s leaders, Liverpool and some local authorities – just as dangerous [and] in a way more difficult to fight, but just as dangerous to liberty, [a] scar across the face of our country, ill motivated, ill intentioned, politically inspired.” This demonisation of the strikers and those who led them on the picket lines is a topic addressed throughout the retrospective. A series of pictures, credited as “anonymous press print [accredited to The Telegraph] show acts of vandalism like the coaches used to take miners to Health Colliery burning fiercely at a depot, or the home of a strike-breaking miner’s fire-damaged home in Upton, near Pontefract. They speak to a common perception of a national aggression about to boil over, and fit perfectly into how the establishment sought to present the protestors to the masses. Yet, it is in the resistance of artists and photographers that we can see the nuanced realities of the strikes, one filled with solidarity, economic hardship and, often, a joyous coming together of a community. It is in these artist portrayals that the UK population were exposed to the other side of the story.
One of the most iconic images to come out of the 12-month protest was taken by John Harris. In the photograph, a policeman on horseback rides towards a woman, truncheon raised and ready to swing down at Lesley Bouton, from the Women Against Pit Closures. It was taken at Orgreave, Sheffield on 18th June 1984, a watershed moment which saw the excessive force and militant policing used against strikers brought to public attention. The day came to be known as the ‘Battle of Orgreave’ as more than 100 miners were injured and 95 arrested for violent disorder. It is a violent clash that plays out in Harris’ photos, where vast swathes of police officers charge striking miners and young men ‘Russ and Wayne’ show off their injuries. These iconic images took on even more significance as they began to be reprinted and emblazoned onto posters, badges and t-shirts. Image-based creatives have long touted the power of art to move people to political action, with figures like Peter Kennard lending his work to causes throughout the 20th century. Here, the use of Harris’ images to encourage solidary with striking workers and criticism of government action. They became the “ubiquitous image of the oppressed versus the oppressor” and are emblematic of the urgent way photography was used during the dispute.
In the face of widespread demonisation, police violence and economic hardship, the overwhelming takeaway from this book is a feeling of solidarity. There is a moving sense of collective action, within mining communities, with support from other marginalised groups and between these people and the artists and photojournalists whose work makes up this retrospective. In Brenda Price’s images, the children of striking miners are greeted by a clown at a Christmas party in Nottingham, whilst women play musical chairs in another. Elsewhere, “London’s Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners” group take part in St David’s Day celebrations in Neath Coelbren Club in 1985. The constant presence of women in the book is impossible to ignore, they are just as central to the narrative as the male workers. They take to the streets in support, they organize fundraisers, cut hair for free, run food banks and join the picket lines. In one photograph, great swathes of women wave placards that read “women support the miners” and “we married men not mice” as they take to the streets to support their husbands, sons and friends. In another, Dot Hickling, on strike from a colliery canteen, helps to organise the miners’ kitchen in Nottingham. Each of these images observes the changing role of women within the mining communities during the period, presenting the intimate view of the more domestic side of the protests that contrasted with the mainstream media’s focus on physical confrontation. Isaac Blease, in his introduction to the volume, perhaps sums up the enduring power of the images best of all: “regardless of the strikes outcomes, there photographs survive to remind up of the imagination, unity and hope of those who came together in defense of their communities and the basic right to work and survive.”
ONE YEAR: Photographs from the Miners’ Strike 1984-85 is published by Bluecoat: bluecoatpress.co.uk
Words: Emma Jacob
Image Credits:
Buying an ice cream at Yorkshire Miners’ Gala. June © Brenda Price.
Women’s’ picket at Bevercotes Colliery, night shift, 11pm. Nottingham, February 1985. © Brenda Price.
London’s Lesbian and Gay ‘Support the Miners’ Group take part in David’s Day celebration in Neath Colbren Club, 2 March 1985. © Imogen Young.
Durham Miners’ Gala, 1984. © Chris Killip Photography Trust – Magnum Photos.
