Miners' Strike - Book launch
WORKERS, APRIL 2009 ISSUE
On an unusually balmy March evening in Leeds, the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom held a public meeting to launch Shafted, a compilation of writings about the miners’ strike of 83-84 by journalists who covered these events, and miners and their wives who were at the heart of them.
Veteran folk singer Roy Bailey ensured the mood of the meeting was as warm as the weather, and his brief set of mining related songs had the crowd surprising themselves at how well they could sing. (This after Bailey’s prompting “…Sing up! It’s only the defeated who don’t sing.”)
Speakers, including Shafted editor Granville Williams, regional industrial journalist Peter Lazenby, NUM secretary Chris Kitching and Anne Scargill reminded us all of the forces of the state that were deployed in that struggle, but, like the book, were positive about the capacity of workers to fight with courage when something they hold dear is threatened.
Go to www.cpbf.org.uk/shafted for more about the CPBF and this excellent contribution to our understanding of this seismic upheaval in our recent history.