ABSTRACT

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.

chapter 1|7 pages

The choice

chapter 2|20 pages

The coal question

chapter 3|25 pages

‘There's only one Arthur Scargill'

chapter 5|21 pages

Fear of the abyss

chapter 6|38 pages

Here we go

chapter 7|26 pages

‘No request for assistance'

chapter 8|22 pages

‘The right to go to work'

chapter 9|25 pages

Inside Hobart House

chapter 10|16 pages

‘The government is not involved’

chapter 11|22 pages

No other industry could do it

chapter 12|17 pages

‘Our enemies' front-line troops'

chapter 13|21 pages

Enough of being spat at

chapter 14|23 pages

‘Your members have yet to be heard'

chapter |6 pages

Postscript