RITA DI SANTO draws attention to a new film that features Ken Loach and Jeremy Corbyn, and their personal experience of media misrepresentation
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ALISTAIR FINDLAY recommends a brilliant collection of poems written to accompany stunning images of the Miners’ strike
SOWING DISCORD: A Leicester miner with a placard reflecting the media/Thatcher narrative (not in the book)
JULIA TOPPIN recommends Patti Smith’s eloquent memoir that wrestles with the beauty and sorrow of a lifetime
MARJORIE MAYO welcomes an account of family life after Oscar Wilde, a cathartic exercise, written by his grandson
KEN COCKBURN guides us through a survey of Chekov’s early short fiction, and the groundwork it laid for his later masterpieces
ANDY HEDGECOCK revels in a hugely enjoyable but deadly serious examination of the 1930s, that is an indictment of our own era
The bard distills our hellish times into fiery words
Strike
Sarah Wimbush
Stairwell books £15
EVERYTHING the NUM predicted on its badges and posters during 1984-5 did come true.
There is no British coal industry left, not even in Nottingham. Youth unemployment in the former coalfields rocketed and has still not come down just as many former miners never worked again, spending their non-working years claiming dole not coal, which remained a cheap import from Poland.
What used to be called the working class are now the working poor and the absolutely skint.
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HEATHER WOOD pays tribute to a champion of working-class women and a fierce voice of solidarity
In the third extract from her new memoir, former NUM headquarters staffer HILARY CAVE recounts how women throughout the striking coalfields showed their mettle when the going got tough
In the second extract from her new memoir, former NUM headquarters staffer HILARY CAVE recounts the bitter struggle to provide sustenance for strikers’ families, and the invidious role of David Willetts – now in the House of Lords
In the first of four extracts from her new memoir, former NUM headquarters staff HILARY CAVE recalls challenging police intimidation during the miners’ strike, exposing how the full machinery of state was deployed against the working class