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
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).
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LORD JOHN HENDY KC explains how the events of ’84-5 were an ideological assault unleashed on the working class in revenge for gains of the ’70s
The government’s response to the cost-of-living crisis is nothing short of class war. Workers can’t be expected to take these attacks lying down, says LORD JOHN HENDY QC
It’s the steady erosion of collective bargaining over a number of years that has led workers’ pay to fall, while employers’ profits continue to rise, says LORD JOHN HENDY QC in the first of a two-part article series
Instead of these weak and often unclear proposals from the government, we needed unions themselves to be put back into the heart of negotiations and given the freedom to defend their members, writes LORD JOHN HENDY QC
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With solidarity coming in from across Britain and the world, PETER LAZENBY speaks to the people who made Christmas 1984 a celebration of working-class resistance in Britain’s striking coalmining communities
LORD JOHN HENDY KC explains how the events of ’84-5 were an ideological assault unleashed on the working class in revenge for gains of the ’70s
Britain’s coalfields were already seething with anger and lightning walkouts when the national strike against pit closures was triggered at Cortonwood colliery in Yorkshire on March 6 1984. PETER LAZENBY reports
Durham Miners Association chair STEPHEN GUY explains how the legacy of the strike lives on in north-east England with the miners’ gala in July and the under-refurbishment ‘Pitman’s Parliament’