Strike

Strike PDF Author: Peter Wilsher
Publisher: A. Deutsch
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Strike

Strike PDF Author: Peter Wilsher
Publisher: A. Deutsch
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description


The Enemy Within

The Enemy Within PDF Author: Seumas Milne
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1781683433
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
Margaret Thatcher branded the leaders of the 1984-85 miners strike “the enemy within.” With the publication of this book, the full irony of that accusation became clear. Seumas Milne revealed for the first time the astonishing lengths to which the government and its intelligence machine were prepared to go to destroy the power of Britain’s miners’ union. There was an enemy within. It was the secret services of the British state, operating inside the NUM itself. Milne revealed for the first time the astonishing lengths to which the government and its intelligence machine were prepared to go to destroy the power of Britain’s miners’ union. Using phoney bank deposits, staged cash drops, forged documents, agents provocateurs and unrelenting surveillance, M15 and police Special Branch set out to discredit Scargill and other miners’ leaders. Planted tales of corruption were seized on by the media and both Tory and Labour politicians in what became an unprecedentedly savage smear campaign.

Minor Miner

Minor Miner PDF Author: Matthew Morgan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Early 1984, South Yorkshire, friends Harry Turner and Dale Edwards are working the Cortonwood Colliery mine. Dale is a strong advocate of the active picketing being proposed by Arthur Scargill's National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). The Minister of Trade is in the area to understand what is going on, meeting with Scargill and trying to counter the strikes. His Press Secretary, Ellen Minor, is with him. After the meeting, Ellen finds herself in a local pub where she meets Harry and Dale. She has a strong attraction to them both.Back in Westminster Ellen uncovers a government plan to escalate tensions with Libya. By escalating tensions, the Thatcher government intend to draw attention away from the miner's strikes. By doing so they hope to increase their approval ratings that have slumped since their 1983 election win. The Minister of Trade, via an underworld third party, engages a professional hitman to significantly disrupt a protest outside the Libyan Embassy in London. Having uncovered this plan and with newfound affinity for the miners, Ellen tries to stop this happening. However, she is too late, leaving the hitman undetected and free to kill WPC Yvonne Fletcher.While the killing of WPC Fletcher swings public opinion as intended, it opens the door for a Libyan-based, pro-Gaddafi organisation to inject money into the NUM. By doing so the Libyan organisation hope to destabilize Thatcher's government by shifting public focus back to the mineworkers. Peterborough brick manufacturer and advisor to the NUM, Tom Linney and NUM Chief Executive Roger Windsor are employed to set up the transactions. However, the two have an idea to skim money off the top to help them personally finance a property development in the newly established Canary Wharf area of London. Lack of attention and lack of funds means efforts for the miners are not as effective as they need to be. As a consequence, the largest strike action ever organised, in Orgreave, descends into violent chaos.Dale has been involved in "The Battle of Orgreave" and along with Roger and Tom the three are sent as a delegation to Libya to secure more money. Suspicious himself of the NUM leadership's motives Dale reaches out to his friend Harry, now in a relationship with Ellen, for help. Dale, Harry and Ellen contrive a plan to uncover the deception. Roger however is one step ahead of them all and implicates Tom and Dale who are subsequently arrested and jailed in Libya. With attention focused on Tom and Dale, Roger is able to leave Libya with the money for himself and ultimately forms an illicit partnership with Scargill to bankroll property investments.Armed with proof of both the selfish motivations of the NUM and the recklessness of the Thatcher government, Harry and Ellen settle themselves in London. They are driven to campaign for the release of Dale and for justice for WPC Fletcher. However, by doing so they risk incriminating themselves and ruining a life they are building together. Ellen works closely with a journalist from The Times newspaper to tell what she knows, but with pressure from government the story never makes it to print. Public attention has moved on and events like the bombing of The Grand Hotel in Brighton helps maintain public favor in Thatcher's government. By early 1985 the strikes are over. With time running out to save Dale, who is sick from many months in a Tripoli jail cell, Ellen, out of all other options, ultimately sacrifices everything she has worked for to save him.

Marching to the Fault Line

Marching to the Fault Line PDF Author: David Hencke
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1849012369
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 403

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Book Description
A controversial new investigation in the 1984 Miners strike and how it changed Modern Britain. The Miners' strike was a dividing line in Modern British history. Before 1984, Britain was an industrial nation, reborn from the ashes of the Second World War by Clement Atlee's vision of a welfare state. Most of the great industries were nationalised and the trade unions was one of the major forces in the land. After the strike, which ended with humiliating defeat in March 1985, Thatcher's Britain was born. In March 1984, the leader of the Miners' Union, Arthur Scargill, led his members out of the pits without a ballot to protest at planned pit closures; they would spend the next 13 months facing the utmost deprivations as they fought to keep their jobs. On picket lines the miners faced harassment and the police, which culminated in the violent Battle of Orgreave. Meanwhile Thatcher's government feared that Britain was on the verge of a civil war. It was a struggle of attrition that neither side could dare lose. Twenty five years after the strike, the debate is still controversial. Marching to the Faultline tells the full story of the strike from confidential cabinet meetings at Downing Street to backroom negotiations, and life on the picket line. The book draws on previously unseen sources from interviews with the major figures, private archives and documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act to set the record straight.

Anne & Betty

Anne & Betty PDF Author: Betty Cook
Publisher: Independently Published
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Anne Scargill and Betty Cook met at the beginning of the miners' strike. Together they helped to create perhaps the greatest thing to come out of the strike, the Women Against Pit Closures movement. Inspired by the working-class values that raised them, they put their arms around those who needed support, fed the hungry, and stood firm against those whose intent was to destroy their way of life. Once the strike was over, through education and direct action, they stepped over the threshold to support working people in struggle both at home and abroad, changing not only the direction of their own lives, but many other women too. 'Their warmth, thoughtfulness and humour resound on every page.' The Guardian 'At once politically powerful, genuinely funny and personally moving.' Red Pepper 'A must read about two women with extraordinary courage and a commitment to their community that has never faltered.' Ricky Tomlinson

The Miners' Strike, 1984–5

The Miners' Strike, 1984–5 PDF Author: Martin Adeney
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000424200
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
This book, first published in 1986, examines the miners’ strike of 1984-5 – an event that formed the decisive break with a forty-year-old British tradition of political and industrial compromise. The stakes for the main parties were so high that the price each was willing to pay, the loss each was willing to sustain, exceeded anything seen in an industrial dispute in half a century. This book examines and assesses the strike’s full implications, and puts it into its historical and political context.

Scargill

Scargill PDF Author: Paul Routledge
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Scargill the Stalinist?

Scargill the Stalinist? PDF Author: Nicholas Hagger
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Coal Strike, Great Britain, 1984-1985
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Scottish Coal Miners in the Twentieth Century

Scottish Coal Miners in the Twentieth Century PDF Author: Phillips Jim Phillips
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474452345
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
Examining working class welfare in the age of deindustrialisation through the experiences of the Scottish coal minerThroughout the twentieth century Scottish miners resisted deindustrialisation through collective action and by leading the campaign for Home Rule. This book argues that coal miners occupy a central position in Scotland's economic, social and political history, and highlights the role of miners in formulating labour movement demands for political-constitutional reforms that eventually resulted in the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. The book also uses the struggle of the mineworkers to explore working class wellbeing more broadly during the prolonged and politicised period of deindustrialisation that saw jobs, workplaces and communities devastated. Key featuresExamines deindustrialisation as long-running, phased and politicised processUses generational analysis to explain economic and political changeRelates Scottish Home Rule to long-running debates about economic security and working class welfareAnalyses the longer history of Scottish coal miners in terms of changing industrial ownership, production techniques and workplace safetyRelates this economic and industrial history to changes in mining communities and gender relations

The Shadow of the Mine

The Shadow of the Mine PDF Author: Huw Beynon
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1839767987
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
No one personified the age of industry more than the miners. The Shadow of the Mine tells the story of King Coal in its heyday – and what happened to mining communities after the last pits closed. The Shadow of the Mine tells the story of King Coal in its heyday, the heroics and betrayals of the Miners’ Strike, and what happened to mining communities after the last pits closed. No one personified the age of industry more than the miners. Coal was central to the British economy, powering its factories and railways. It carried political weight, too. In the eighties the miners risked everything in a year-long strike against Thatcher’s shutdowns. Their defeat doomed a way of life. The lingering sense of abandonment in former mining communities would be difficult to overstate. Yet recent electoral politics has revolved around the coalfield constituencies in Labour’s Red Wall. Huw Beynon and Ray Hudson draw on decades of research to chronicle these momentous changes through the words of the people who lived through them. This edition includes a new postscript on why Thatcher’s war on the miners wasn’t good for green politics. ‘Excellent’ NEW STATESMAN ‘Brilliant’ TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT ‘Enlightening’ GUARDIAN