RUTH AYLETT admires the blunt honesty with which a woman’s experience is recorded, but detects the unexamined privilege that underlies it
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What the miners’ strike was really like in Wales
STEVE ANDREW hails a moving and insightful collection of photographs and accounts that document the response of communities in Wales both as class and nation
Wales
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Coal and Community in Wales
Images of the Miners Strike: Before, During and After
by Richard Williams and Amanda Powell, YLolfa, £14.99
FORTY years after British miners began a relentless fight in defence of pits, jobs and communities, it is fair to say that the literature examining their struggle is now huge and continues to grow.
The quality of it, however, remains varied. Although there has been a shift away from portraying miners as “the enemy within,” now that is effectively safe to do so, many accounts remain either narrowly sectarian or overly romantic and sentimental in their approach.
Fortunately, Coal and Community in Wales is neither of these and, to my mind, is a real people’s history that uses image and text skilfully to capture the strike as a lived experience.
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