SOLOMON HUGHES recommends Sunjeev Sahota’s recent novel set in a trade union election campaign for its fresh approach to what unites and divides workers, but wishes the union backdrop was truer to life
ONCE the strike began grassroots women’s groups started to grow in the coalfields. They set up communal kitchens and prepared food parcels, persuading food shops to offer discounts for their bulk-buying operations.
Local shops, whether independents or branches of large chains, had an interest in offering such discounts in strike areas because their takings had plummeted once miners had little or no income.
Soon the sheer scale of need, with their children hungry and needing new clothes, forced the women’s groups to expand their activities. They began hunting for donations of second-hand clothes, shoes, children’s pushchairs and babies’ bottles.
MIKE QUILLE applauds an excellent example of cultural democracy: making artworks which are a relevant, integral part of working-class lives
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



