Paul Symonds, an ex-miner, finds much of value in the new documentary on the 1980s Miners’ strike, even though it lets the Labour Party and trade-union leaderships off the hook

It’s forty years since the Great Miners’ Strike of 1984-5. An epic year, in the long history of the working class and trade-union struggle. It was a yearlong struggle worthy of all the words written, films made, and the discussions had. Any documentary film that looks at this momentous strike from a working-class and political perspective is to be welcomed.

Strike is definitely worth every minute of your valuable time. Directed by Daniel Gordon, the film uses powerful personal recollections of the people who were at the heart of the strike, and to hear their testimonies takes us on an emotional roller coaster. It also exposes the length the Thatcher government went to defeat the miners with unearthed government documents, and unseen archive footage.

The film starts with the beginning of the strike caused by the closure of Cortonwood Colliery in South Yorkshire, and goes on to look at the attempts of miners to picket out working pits, mainly in Nottinghamshire, and how Thatcher insisted on the use of police to stop miners reaching the Nottinghamshire pits.

The main story of the film focuses on ‘The Battle of Orgreave’ with footage of the battle and the aftermath. It shows how the police rioted, beating, arresting and then charging their victims with riot, a charge that potentially carries a life sentence. It highlights the depths the state will sink to in an industrial dispute with lies and cover-ups, aided and abetted by the mainstream media.

This was one of the best parts of the film. The testimony of miners on the frontline showed how the police planned to defeat our union with brute violence. The miners charged, and acquitted, of riot give an emotionally charged account of their ordeal, from severe physical injuries to the fear of losing their liberty.

The lawyers that defended the miners also give some highly relevant testimony. The trial was shown to be a conspiracy involving the doctoring of police-witness accounts to beef up the charge of riot. It was also revealed that the Thatcher government had drawn up plans to turn the police into a paramilitary force deployed against trade unions. It was clearly revenge for the role the miners played in bringing down the Heath government.

Accounting for defeat

However, the film, good as it is, has some limitations. The depiction of Arthur Scargill in his early days at Saltley Gate was inspiring, but it portrayed him as not much more than a rabble rouser, and plays down his politics and the principled leadership he gave. The film left me feeling that defeat was inevitable. As if, after picketing in Nottinghamshire had failed and then there was the defeat at Orgreave that seemed to mean it was all over! These were undoubtedly set-backs but there was still a long way to go.

There is little or no mention of the disastrous role of the Labour Party or the TUC. Nor is there much mention of the dockers, rail workers and the pit-deputies’ union, NACODS, that voted for strike action. There was also mass solidarity from unions like the print workers and others, all sabotaged by the union bureaucrats. The strike was supported by masses of working-class people, how else could we have survived a year without money? We also knew that this strike, orchestrated by the Tories, was always about much more than the miners! We knew that and Scargill knew that. It was this knowledge that we were fighting for our class that drove us and our supporters on every day.

It wasn’t the brutality of the police and the courts that were the deciding factors in our defeat, no. It was the Labour Party leadership and most of the trade-union bureaucrats who did for us. I would have liked to have seen some references to this in the film.

I understand that a director has to make tough choices on what to include in the film, so if you can, lookout for a screening with Q&A sessions at the end of the film.