The Great Strike: The Miners' Strike Of 1984-5 And Its Lessons

by Alex Callinicos, Mike Simons

ALEX CALLINOS and MIKE SIMONS
THE GREAT STRIKE
THE MINERS STRIKE OF 1984-5 AND IT'S LESSONS
1985 THE SOCIALIST WORKER
8VO SOFT COVER
PRINTED IN UNITED KINGDOM

VG+ IOBA BOOK GRADING STANDARDS; Light Rubbing to Front and Back Covers, Light Staining to Half Title Page and Text Block, Tight Sound Binding, Clean Complete Unmarked Text.

[ ST]

Genres: Politics

256 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1985

About the author

Alexander Theodore Callinicos, a descendant through his mother of Lord Acton, is a political theorist and Director of the Centre for European Studies at King's College London. He holds both a BA and a DPhil from Oxford University.

Reviews

[Geoff Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a pretty exhaustive account of British miners’ epic year-long strike, 1984-85, when Tory PM Margaret Thatcher “mobilised all the forces of the state to crush the National Union of Mineworkers”, in an ideologically motivated class war. Originally published in 1985, hot on the heels of the events themselves, by two Socialist Workers Party (SWP) comrades, leading Marxist academic Alex Callinicos and Mike Simons, executive producer of “Still the Enemy Within”, a compelling documentary film about the strike.

Chapters of special interest include chapter 4, Orgreave and the battle for steel, exposing the use of heavily armoured and armed paramilitary police forces against striking miners, chapter 6, Communities under siege, which highlighted the amazing role of women in powering beyond traditional caring roles to key organisational, advocacy and leadership work, and chapter 8, What went wrong, which analyses the problems, the systemic problems, inherent in trade unionism and electoral politics, and points the way to better radical revolutionary socialist alternatives.

Watch the film “Still the Enemy Within” and read the book.