Miner Conflict – Major Impact
An Anarchist Communist perspective on the Miners' Strike 1984-85
From Kate Sharpley Library
October 8, 2024
by Dreyfus
An Anarchist Communist perspective on the Miners' Strike 1984-85
I apologise to all and any for detail or names wronged in my recounting. I claim complete ownership of my pride in my involvement that period. What remains an enduring impact for me is the experience that class struggle changes people.
The lessons the ‘Left’ drew were administrative and all about leadership. They pushed the lessons that the TUC can’t be trusted, that Labour Party is not a friend of our class while continuing to try and infiltrate and take over both. Political memories of that sort of thing are relatively short-lived.
What those involved will not unlearn is what it feels like to break with the normality of life under capitalism and, the experience of genuine community and solidarity. This for me was the highpoint. The key point. It continues to point the way forward.
Preface
In the 40th anniversary year of the British Miners Strike (1984/85), we were approached by the Kate Sharpley Library with an invitation to draw together our recollections of that strike from an Anarchist Communist perspective.
We were pleased to be able to do this and that is what follows. We are grateful for the prompt to review our history from this class struggle perspective - one less present than many in the revolutionary archive.
Introduction
This is a personal and largely anecdotal history of participation as an anarchist communist in the great Miners’ Strike 1984/85, based on my own experience.
Though largely accurate, I cannot guarantee my memory is correct in every detail except in the emotive and sensory nature of that recall.
Although this is neither an analytical nor academic study of the strike, many of which abound elsewhere, it will inevitably reflect the perspectives my comrades and I had and developed throughout that struggle.
I will try to convey a general context of the events that were taking place at the time, but like most involved, my key memories will probably hang on those particular moments that had the biggest impact on me and thus my recall of that period. ‘‘Anarchdotes’ perhaps! ‘Simply put, I will tell a few key stories of my involvement and the environment in which they happened.
I have used no identifiable militants’ names throughout, though all reference to the masses involved, villains and vacillators living or dead, are entirely intentional.
Six months before the outbreak of the strike, September 1983, I had decided not to return to university after a year’s leave of absence following the deaths of several close friends. I had already been an anarchist for several years and a queer and, consequently soon after, AIDS activist.
I had been a lousy student and had helped organise several occupations against the government’s education cuts. Having been on the Union Council when I took a year out, I was already persona non grata for the university authorities who had banned me from being on campus for the following year - which I ignored.
In short, I had already spent about 18 months living in what was effectively a diaspora commune of anarchists scattered around North Staffordshire. This scattered commune went by the name ‘Careless Talk Collective’ (CT), founded in 1980 by a former member of Solidarity for Social Revolution and a collection of anarchists, libertarian and council communists.
At the start of the strike, the beginning of March 1984 we, a household and a small extended network of comrades, were living, largely unemployed, in the West Midlands mining areas around Stoke-on-Trent, North Staffordshire.
We lived in terraced streets alongside neighbours who were on strike (at times) and heavily involved with our community from start to finish, both being influenced and influencing. Part of the struggle, not ‘intervening’ from the outside.
View rest of piece, here as a PDF (4.0 MB): https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/n8pn3d