Martin Jenkinson, Mark Harvey and Mark Metcalf: Images of the Past – THE MINERS’ STRIKE

http://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Images-of-the-Past-The-Miners-Strike/p/6436/

This book is packed with photographs taken by the late Martin Jenkinson, who was responsible for some of the most striking images to have emerged from political and industrial struggle in Britain over the last 30 years. In addition to his work with the National Union of Mineworkers, Martin was also commissioned by many other unions, notably the National Union of Teachers and the TGWU/UNITE. Martin was a former steelworker who combined his politics and his belief in social justice, fairness and equality with his love of photography. Martin died of cancer aged 64 in June 2012.

       Martin Jenkinson, working at Yorkshire Miner’s Gala, Rotherham. June 1985

The coalminers’ strike of 1984/5 was the longest national strike in British history. For a year over 100,000 members of the National Union of Mineworkers, their families and supporters, in hundreds of communities, battled to prevent the decimation of the coal industry on which their livelihoods and communities depended.

Picket wearing a joke police helmet talking to Police at Orgreave on 6 June 1984

Margaret Thatcher’s government aimed to smash the most militant section of the British working class. She wanted to usher in a new era of greater management control at work and pave the way for a radical refashioning of society in favour of neo-liberal objectives that three decades later have crippled the world economy.

Miners’ pickets being chased by mounted police at Orgreave on 18 June 1984

Victory required draconian restrictions on picketing and the development of a militarised national police force that made widespread arrests as part of its criminalisation policy. The attacks on the miners also involved the use of the courts and anti-trade union laws, restrictions on welfare benefits, the secret financing by industrialists of working miners and the involvement of the security services.  All of which was supported by a compliant mass media but resisted by the collective courage of miners and mining communities in which the role of Women against Pit Closures in combating poverty and starvation was heroic. Thus inspired by the struggle for jobs and communities an unparalleled movement of support groups right across Britain and in other parts of the world was born and helped bring about a situation where the miners long struggle came close on occasions to winning.

Superintendent John Nesbitt arrests Arthur Scargill, NUM President at Orgreave. This was the only arrest made by Nesbitt during his time as Superintendent.

At the heart of the conflict was the Yorkshire region, where even at the end in March 1985, 83 per cent of 56,000 miners were still out on strike. The official Yorkshire National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) area photographer in 1984-85 was Martin Jenkinson and this book of his photographs, supported by a written detailed account from Mark Metcalf, serves as a unique social document on the dispute that changed the face of Britain.

25% of the author’s fees from the sales of this book are to be divided between the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign and Justice for Mineworkers. Unite branches interested in getting copies should contact Mark Metcalf on 07952 801783.