Strike: An Uncivil War

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.

Why were the miner's strikes of 1984 and 1985 so divisive, so violent, why did a generation of voters despise and loathe The Tory party, and why did friends and families fall apart.

This very well made and interesting documentary goes some way to answering some of those questions, but sadly not all of them.

I don't get how this one passed me by, was it poorly advertised, or was the subject material just not enough for people?

Fascinating first hand evidence from miners up and down the country. Great use of stock footage, but if you're educated on events, you'll see how much was omitted, some of the scenes were truly staggering, violence of the highest order, perhaps they wanted to make this suitable for all?

It focuses, perhaps quite rightly on the miners, and its affect on them and their families, it just lacks a bit of content on the political side of things, what was going on behind the scenes.

I don't want to get too political, but I'd say the way they depicted both Thatcher and Scargill was interesting to say the least.

There was one particularly fascinating piece of info given, the chap that talked about 21 houses on his street, and all 21 houses being supported by people working in the mines.

Anyone that doesn't know these events should definitely check if out, it's a turbulent, but very interesting piece of history.

8/10.

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.

This documentary is really well made it is extremely well made but it is entirely mythologizing the miners as some kind of special human group which others cannot possibly understand . The problem is here it is based entirely on a false premise Mrs Thatcher did not wage wars on the miners she had no interest in the miners the miners were lower-class people people she despised . In her worldview only the wealthy matter 45 years after she visited these shores the British Isles the place is destroyed shredded nobody under the age of 40 will ever be able to afford housing she turned houses into investment opportunities leaving the generations which come after unable to ever buy a home for themselves.

She destroyed dental care which was free and available to all before she destroyed higher education she set the wheels in motion for privatization of practically everything public transport which used to be always average but adequate in the UK after coming to power became bit by bit more and more expensive more and more unreliable she is entirely to blame for all of this there are no positive aspects of Mrs Thatcher's in her time in power she was like Attila the Hun in a skirt .

Now what we have to look at here is who was she really targeting she was not targeting the miners she was targeting Arthur Scargill and the unions she was targeting the power of the working class her entire time in power was class war she wanted to destroy and subjugate the bottom half of the population and she did that very very well people who admire her usually people in the top third of the of the earning population respect her for that she made the wealthy wealthier the same process was going on at the same time in the USA a country run at the time by an ijut called Ronald Reagan both of these people Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were in fact following the moronic writings of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School which is still followed in 2025 by the current Argentinian head of state. Okay moving back to the miners this shows communities of people in the north of England, Scotland, Kent, Wales, the northeast who were basically living in what looks to us now in 2025 like something out of a Dickensian period in little houses covered in coal dust working in jobs which were so dangerous and many examples are given here of people who died in the mines which really quite frankly you cannot have nostalgia for but they seem to they have that, kind of generations of slaves underground slaves the mistake that was made was not to shut down the mines the mistake that was made was to despise the human group there and therefore not find any replacement job-wise you cannot take away people's livelihood like that completely and do nothing about it this was inhuman inhumane this is where it showed the true evil witch character of the prime minister of the times

Showing the guys getting back there in 2023 was interesting because you see them all probably around the age of 60 or something and they're all fairly well dressed they don't look like they lost you know everything in the war but they still are nostalgic for this which to anybody who doesn't do that job looks like absolutely unbearable conditions of work

So the documentary here is extremely well put together interviewing some of the police people who were there some of them quite shocked by what they were asked to do showing the scam and the lies which them their management and the government forced them into you cannot possibly tell people that you brought three quarters of the police force of England and Wales and that you really meant to be dealing a fair treatment to the people targeted.

After Arthur Scargill and the unions lost to Margaret Thatcher they lost in 1984 and they lost for good after attila the hun in a skirt went by the country was never the same again it is now all about money all about one-upmanship it's not quite the usa but it's trying hard to be I personally lived that entire period in the UK and to this day loath the woman absolutely profoundly loath the woman anybody who is interested in social rights in class struggle in social history will really like this but I still think it is slightly skewed as it is not naming the real enemy that she called "the enemy within" it was not the miners it was socialism she absolutely loathed socialism communism her favorite line was "there is no such thing as society" when you have that kind of belief you can destroy entire communities and not feel a thing and that is the kind of monster we were faced with in 1984 until her being kicked out on the 22nd of november 1990 a day I still celebrate 🙃😉

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.