Packed Morning Star conference debates lessons of the miners' strike for today's struggle
UNION militants, miners’ strike veterans and left activists packed Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church at the weekend for the Morning Star’s Fightback conference.
Addressing the state of “the movement 40 years on from the miners’ strike,” sessions looked at lessons from the great 1984-5 strike itself and maintaining the strike wave in the face of draconian new anti-strike laws, with organisers from Unite, RMT and GMB among those setting out the strategies needed.
Wansbeck MP Ian Lavery roused the hall with his recollection of how as a 21-year-old indentured apprentice with no record of trouble with the authorities, he found himself battered and bloodied in the back of a police van on his first ever picket line.
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