With Banners Held High

Commemorating the 30th anniversary of the return to work after the year-long miners’ strike on 5 March 1985. Unity Works, Wakefield: Saturday 7 March, 10.30am-5.00pm.

Premiere of a specially commissioned film, a spectacular new CD Orgreave Justice and a new book by Ian Clayton on Castleford Women’s Centre.

The big national event to remember the end of the miners’ strike thirty years ago takes place at Unity Works in Wakefield, West Yorkshire on Saturday 7 March. NUM banners will be hung from the beams in the newly refurbished Main Hall in the building.

The venue is at the heart of the former West Yorkshire mining community and Manor Colliery, a mile down the road from UnityWorks, survived until the early 1980s.

Compered by writer and broadcaster Ian Clayton, WITH BANNERS HELD HIGH has a packed programme with keynote speaker Dennis Skinner MP for Bolsover.  In the Main Hall a programme of music, drama and poetry includes Red Ladder Theatre, Sentimentalists and the Pitman Poet.

A series of debates on issues related to the strike such as Surveillance, the Media and the Strike, Inequality and the Miners and the Law will also take place. Speakers include the former BBC reporter Nick Jones, Alice Nutter, Helen Steel and Dave Douglass. There will also be two rooms showing films about the miners’ strike and Women Against Pit Closures.

Granville Williams, chair of the planning group, said, “This event will appeal to a wide range of interests. What we wanted to do was put together a programme which paid tribute to the spirit and courage displayed by the miners and their communities during the epic year-long struggle and I think we have done that.
“We are really pleased that a new film directed by Judi Alston, dealing with the humour of the miners’ strike, will be shown for the first time.  A new CD Orgreave Justice contains a superb line-up of acts who have given their music free of charge, and Ian Clayton’s book on the history of Castleford Women’s Centre during the strike will be on sale, as well as DVDs of the film.”

Exhibitions of work by Martin Jenkinson, the Sheffield-based photographer who died in 2012, and Report Digital photographers will also be on display, as well as paintings by former miner Harry Malkin and a rare collection of miners’ lamps.

Tickets are on sale from www.unityworks.co.uk/events or Tel 01924 831114.