Monday, September 15, 2014

Miner's Strike: 30th anniversary

This framed cartoon is on the wall of the community centre where I hold my Councillor surgery. The Chair of the centre is the daughter of a miner.

It takes me back to Yorkshire and my youth. This year is the 30th anniversary of the start of the 1984-1985 Miner's strike. As a politics student in Leeds at the time, I went to rallies and pickets lines to show support. But I don't think I really understood what what was really going on nor what it is like to actually go on strike until I became a trade union activist in UNISON.

The miners strike was not just about saving jobs but also about saving communities and a way of life - now long gone. They lost that particular battle but that does not mean that we cannot organise workers and communities to take action and act collectively in the future - and win the war.

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