Digging The Seam.

      Over on "A World To Win" there's a very interesting article on the effect the 1984/45 miners' strike had on our culture. It is a review of the book, "Digging the Seam". I also found the photos fascinating.

Women on picket outside Yorkshire Main colliery during the strike 

I can’t understand what has happened to Kim
There’s been such a terrible change
When I think of how that girl acted before
I can’t understand such a change

A beautiful hand with the pastry she had
Her sponge cakes were lovely and light
But, now it’s all muesli, and yoghurt, and nuts
While she’s out at meetings at night

We could have gone on, for the rest of our lives
Never knowing, just what she was like
And she’d have been trapped in our image of her
If it hadn’t have been for the strike.

 A woman attacks a suspected strike-breaker in Rossington.

In her haste for justice, she seems to have lost a shoe.

So ah’ll wait for me dream ‘ome till later,
Give ‘im all the support that ah can,
‘Cause when this lot’s ower, ah’m glad ah can say
Well, leastways ah married a man.  

 

Two young miners shackled to a lamp-post by police
after taking part in a mass picket in Nottinghamshire

      The full story of the state's brutality and duplicity in the 1984/45 miners strike has still to be told. There are lessons there for us all, on what is going on today and how best to resist.  

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