It’s been 40 years since Arthur Scargill led the National Union of Mineworkers on one of the largest strikes in British history. Vilified by Margaret Thatcher’s government and eventually broken, Britain’s mining communities were changed forever. Academic Robert Gildea and husband-and-wife team Amanda Powell and Richard Williams reflect on the strike and its lasting impacts. Gildea’s Backbone of the Nation: Mining Communities and the Great Strike of 1984–85 explores mining communities from South Wales to Fife, drawing on interviews with miners and their families for this groundbreaking new history. Gildea is Professor Emeritus of Modern History at the University of Oxford. Powell and Williams both reported on the strike when it happened, and revisit it in their book Coal and Community in Wales. Award-winning journalist Powell’s account of key events and press photographer Williams’ striking images offer an in-depth look at life in the South Wales coalfield before and after the strikes.
