Strike: An Uncivil War

Couldn't help but compare this documentary to modern Britain. Forty years on and it's seems the government are using the same formula that Margaret Thatcher used all those years ago.

The documentary is told by the miners who are still waiting for answers. I found it incredibly raw and quite harrowing at times. Hearing how communities were ripped apart and how families lives have never been the same since made it difficult to watch at times.

The documentary made me think that the agenda back then is very, very similar to what's happening in our country now. The government Vs the working class.

No attempt made to provide any objectivity other than a couple of disgruntled ex police officers wheeled out to support the general tenor of the documentary. One might suppose from the content that the 5000 striking miners descending on Orgreave were there , in their' jeans and T shirts ' for a lovely nature ramble and were then set on by the thuggish lacky's of Mrs Thatcher's fascist state for no good reason . In fact the 5000 were there ( illegally as secondary pickets) to bring the rest of the country ( old and ill included) to its knees by disrupting power supplies and were out thought and out muscled by a ( thankfully) well organised police force. Did the police occasionally use too much force? Inevitability in such a large scale confrontation although nothing like the force that would have been brought to bear in any other country at that time.

I was pleased but surprised to find this unheralded documentary showing at my local Vue multiplex and attended a screening that attracted one other viewer. There have been several recent, quite unsympathetic docs on the strike so I was curious as to how this one would treat it.

The perspective is from miners themselves rather than from their former leaders or from commentators, apart from one BBC reporters at the time and a former policeman. That helps ground it into a working-class context, but I was less happy to be denied the necessary political context: where was the Labour party in this? It does mention the TUC's total lack of support but strangely portrays Scargill as no more than a rabble-rouser, out of his depth and outmanoeuvred by canny Conservative operators like Thatcher.

The coverage of the Orgreave battle between miners in a field near the coking plant and many thousands of uniformed police doesn't reveal anything new. The lack of serious injuries makes it appear more like a slightly riotous festival, certainly compared to the Marikana massacre in South Africa in 2012 in which 34 miners were murdered by the police.

In general, the film lacked a serious political analysis. But its presentation of the deep solidarity in mining communities, and how that was purposely destroyed by the Conservative government with the connivance of a right-wing Labour 'opposition', showed how much we have lost.

The in depth view from the miners perspective was insightful, however it lacks any form of objectivity. Viewers looking for an accurate and balanced account of this period need to look else where.

The in depth view from the miners perspective was insightful, however it lacks any form of objectivity. Viewers looking for an accurate and balanced account of this period need to look else where.

The in depth view from the miners perspective was insightful, however it lacks any form of objectivity. Viewers looking for an accurate and balanced account of this period need to look else where.

Many thanks.

Pleased to be able to see this on the big screen, but sadly only four others were there to see what is an important study of the most significant struggle of 20th century Britain.

The film is excellent in its documentary coverage of the Battle of Orgreave, the connivance between the Thatcher government and the British state's forces, and how this was covered up. There is moving testimony by strikers. However the interviews with cops and scabs also help show how the miners were broken.

But the real problem is that the film depicts the strike's defeat as simply being because of the violent defeat of the miners at Orgreave. While important, the real reason for the loss was the failure of the wider union movement to deliver significant and sustained solidarity strike action. The video of the lorries leaving Orgreave with coke for the steel plants should have explained that the drivers' unions failed to call them out.

I was also disappointed that there wasn't more about how the wider working class sustained the communities through solidarity and donations. These workers' didn't get strike pay.

So while the film is inspiring, emotional and will make you hate Thatcher even more, it doesn't get to the heart of how and why the TUC, the Labour Party and the union bureaucrats let the miners down. Thus viewers don't learn the lessons of how we can win next time.