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By the way if anyone has'nt already seen it, rent Billy Elliot. A good film that deals with the strike in a fair way..

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June Thomas of Slate, who grew up in a mining town, was skeptical of the realism of Billy Elliot:

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The sight of Billy in such a house ratchets up the sympathy level, but it's exceedingly unlikely that a small family with two coal-face workers wouldn't have modernized their home. Although the yearlong strike caused severe financial hardships for miners' families, they started out relatively well off—it's dangerous and dirty work, and by the early 1980s miners were among the highest-paid manual workers in Britain. Billy wouldn't have been in Tony's hand-me-downs; the family's income would've risen considerably during the 10 or so years between them.

But the bigger problem is the presentation of the strike itself. In the movie, policemen gambol unmolested on the village green as they wait to escort the next shift of strike-breakers into the pit. The film's coppers never speak, which was certainly not the case in real life. In The Miners' Strike 1984-5: Loss Without End, Martin Adeney and John Lloyd report that the village of Easington, where Billy Elliot was filmed, was rife with "intimidatory" police tactics—women and children were verbally harassed, drivers were picked up and questioned—that hardly gibe with the movie's pastoral idyll.

Later, in what is probably the movie's most unrealistic scene, Jacky—who's stressed out about raising the cash to get Billy down to London for his Royal Ballet School audition—casually decides to break the strike, boards a bus full of scabs, and heads off to do a shift underground. Tony sees him on the bus and, along with five friends, climbs over the unprotected (not even barbed wire!) fence onto mine property to talk Jacky into keeping the faith. Although there was an element of formalized protest in the eggings, name-calling, and physical intimidation of scabs by strikers, if it had been that easy to get near the mines, there would have been a lot more violence and vandalism. As it is, two miners were killed on picket lines and more than 11,000 people were arrested during the strike.

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UK, The anarchist Class War Calendar of 2004

If you liked our 2000 and 2002 calendars, you will love the one for 2004!

As 2004 marks the twentieth anniversary of the miners strike we have pictures throughout from the strike itself, taken by striking miners in
their fight against the British state.

Orders from London CW for just £7, plus 70 pence postage.

Email: [email protected]
http://www.londonclasswar.org/contact_london.htm

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[ 14 March 2004: Message edited by: Mick ]

[ 14 March 2004: Message edited by: Mick ]