Aesthetica Magazine – Collective action

Once a year, on the second Saturday in July, more than 200,000 people take to the streets of Durham, in the northeast of England. They’re there for the Durham Miners’ Gala, also known for The Big Meeting, an event that claims to be the largest celebration of working-class culture in the world and has been taking place since 1871. It is a coming together of communities that, once built around the coal mines and continue to preserve that local history after the massive closure of the mines by Margaret Thatcher’s government in the 1980s. It also reminds us that, forty years after the miners’ strikes, the political, social and economic toll of the events is reaching deep into these communities. When Boris Johnson announced his intention 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 repeated across the country: Sheffield, Nottingham, Wales, there are countless places that have been shaped and continue to be defined by these events. Now, ONE YEAR! Photos of the miners’ strikes 1884-1985, examines how photography provided material for the government in their media campaigns, but also for the miners who sought to refute the mainstream narrative. It tells a story of collective action and explores how photography was “another frontier through which this war was waged.”

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 it would close 20 mines, threatening 20,000 jobs. The outrage over this news, led by Arthur Scargill, leader of the National Union of Mineworkers, marked the beginning of a years-long confrontation between workers and the government. In a 1984 speech to the 1922 Committee, a group of Conservative MPs who meet weekly during parliament, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher laid out the threat she said unions pose to the nation. She said: “The enemy within – miners’ leaders, Liverpool and some local authorities – just as dangerous (and) in a way that is harder to fight, but just as dangerous to freedom, (a) scar across the face of our country, poorly motivated, poorly intended, politically inspired.” This demonization of the strikers and those who led them to the picket lines is a topic that will be addressed during the retrospective. A series of photographs, credited as ‘anonymous press print (accredited by The Telegraph), show acts of vandalism, such as the carriages that took miners to the Health Colliery which was heavily ablaze in a depot, or the fire-damaged house of a strike-breaking miner. in Upton, near Pontefract. They cater to the common perception of a national aggression on the verge of boiling over, and fit perfectly into the way the establishment tried to present the protesters to the masses. Yet in the resistance of artists and photographers we can see the nuanced reality of the strikes, a strike full of solidarity, economic hardship and often a joyful coming together of a community. It is in these artists’ portraits that the British people were exposed to the other side of the story.

One of the most iconic images to emerge from the twelve-month protest was captured by John Harris. In the photo, a mounted police officer rides up to a woman, baton raised and ready to wave at Lesley Bouton, of the Women Against Pit Closures. The photo was taken in Orgreave, Sheffield on September 18^e June 1984, a turning point when excessive violence and militant police action against strikers was brought to public attention. The day became 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’s photographs, where large groups of police attack attacking miners and young men ‘Russ and Wayne’ show off their injuries. These iconic images took on even more meaning when they were reprinted and applied to posters, badges and t-shirts. Image-based creatives have long touted the power of art to move people to political action, with figures such as Peter Kennard lending his work to charities over the two decades.^e century. Here, the use of Harris’ images to encourage solidarity with striking workers and criticism of government actions. They became the “ubiquitous image of the oppressed versus the oppressors” and are emblematic of the urgent way photography was used during the dispute.

In the face of widespread demonization, police brutality, and economic hardship, the overwhelming outcome of this book is a sense of solidarity. There is a moving sense of collective action, within mining communities, with support from other marginalized groups and between these people and the artists and photojournalists whose work is part of this retrospective. In Brenda Price’s footage, the children of striking miners are greeted by a clown at a Christmas party in Nottingham, while women play musical chairs at another. Elsewhere, the group “London’s Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners” takes part in the St. David’s Day celebrations at the Neath Coelbren Club in 1985. The constant presence of women in the book is impossible to ignore; they are as central to the story as the male presence. employees. They take to the streets in support, organizing fundraisers, cutting free hair, running food banks and joining the picket lines. In one photo, large groups of women wave banners reading “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 film, Dot Hickling, who is on strike from a mine canteen, helps organize the miners’ kitchen in Nottingham. Each of these images observes the changing role of women within the mining communities during the period, presenting an 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 book, perhaps best sums up the lasting power of the images: “Regardless of the outcome of the attack, photographs remain as a reminder of the imagination, unity and hope of those who came together in defense of their communities and the fundamental right to work and survive.”

ONE YEAR: Photographs of the 1984-85 Miners’ Strike is published by Bluecoat: bluecoatpress.co.uk

Words: Emma Jacob

Image credits:

Buying an ice cream at the Yorkshire Miners’ Gala. June © Brenda Price.

Ladies picket at Bevercotes Colliery, night shift, 11pm. Nottingham, February 1985. © Brenda Price.

London’s Lesbian and Gay ‘Support the Miners’ Group takes part in David’s Day celebrations at Neath Colbren Club, March 2, 1985. © Imogen Young.

Durham Miners’ Gala, 1984. © Chris Killip Photography Trust – Magnum Photos.