Skip to main content
Join the Rosa Luxembourg Conference live stream
The defeat of the miners strike 40 years ago ushered in the era of neoliberalism
The Star publishes the Karl Marx Graveside Oration delivered by Lord JOHN HENDY KC at Highgate Cemetery on Sunday, on behalf of the Marx Memorial Library
TOOLED UP: Anti-riot squad police watching as pickets face striking miners against a background of burning cars at the Orgreave coke works, Yorkshire, 1984

IT IS one of the greatest honours of my life to be invited to speak by the Marx Memorial Library (of which I have the honour to be a trustee), here, where Fredrick Engels stood on March 17 1883 and gave the first oration at Marx’s graveside.

A week ago, Nature magazine published a report of the finding of the earliest known human manufactured tool – no less than 1.4 million years ago. I say “human” but these were the ancestors of modern humans, Homo erectus. Modern humans did not make their appearance until about 140,000 years ago. 

Marx would have been fascinated by the scientific advances that made possible the dating of this remarkable artefact (a method based on cosmogenic nuclides). 

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
 TJC march on June 14, 2025 / Pic: Neil Terry Photography
Durham Miners’ Gala 2025 / 12 July 2025
12 July 2025

The Home Secretary’s recent letter suggests the Labour government may finally deliver on its nine-year manifesto commitment, writes KATE FLANNERY, but we must move quickly: as recently as 2024 Northumbria police destroyed miners’ strike documents

(L to R) Nicholas Garland in The Telegraph; Frank Eccles Bro
Features / 28 February 2025
28 February 2025
PETER LAZENBY is fascinated by a book of cartoons that shows how newspaper cartoonists were employed to, on the one hand, denigrade and, on the other, to defend the miners’ strike of 1984-85
Ken Capstick, former vice-chairman of the NUM’s Yorkshire
Features / 20 January 2025
20 January 2025
Remembering KEN CAPSTICK, vice-president of the National Union of Mineworkers Yorkshire Area