THIS exhibition displays photographs made during the Miners’ strike and looks at how they were used and disseminated through the visual media of the time. 

One side used images to illustrate chaos on picket lines being sprung by a so-called “enemy within,” while those in support of the strike attempted to debase such media bias, by showing the violence acted out by the state in police brutality, as well as the cruelty of the economic destitution endured. 

Photojournalists John Harris and John Sturrock showed the day-to-day activities such as union meetings, winter picket lines, and coal riddling. Both photographers’ images were used by left-wing and union press, as they made careful decisions around who to licence to, knowing well the fractious mediatic landscape and its potential pitfalls. 

Sturrock’s coverage of the strike begins on the first picket line at Cortonwood Colliery in early March 1984 and continues until the return to work marches a whole year later, covering picket lines from Bilston Glen in Scotland all the way down to Didcot in south-east England. 

Also displayed in the exhibition are numerous iterations of John Harris’s iconic image from Orgreave, depicting a police officer swinging his truncheon at Lesley Boulton, an activist from Women Against Pit Closures. The photograph epitomised the violence applied by the state through policing and, when emblazoned on badges, posters, and T-shirts, became a ubiquitous image of the oppressed versus oppressor.

An intimate view of the other side of the dispute is illustrated by the photo albums compiled by Philip Winnard, made while on strike from Houghton Main Colliery. 

Winnard began a rigorous documentation of his experience picketing, chronologically spanning the entire year of the strike. Day-to-day activities such as handing out newsletters, attending marches and waiting on picket-lines show a genuine camaraderie between the miners and Winnard’s camera, at what was a tense time for photographers due to the skewed media coverage. 

His images of strike-breakers have a profound tension, in particular the long shots of workers loading coal — each isolated by the camera, surveillance-style. Visually they hold a heavy ambiguity, yet act as powerful records for the conflicted positions that the strike put individuals in.

Altogether the album pages have a sequential quality throughout, where multiple images of an event accumulate, in a sense mapping the territories in which the dispute took place.

The geography of the strike was broad and in the exhibition are photographs from Scotland to South Wales as well as key mining areas in England, from County Durham to Yorkshire. Coal fields were often based quite far from metropolitan areas, and in the majority of such cases were the main employer of a region. Chris Killip’s seminal book In Flagrante charted this changing landscape in north-east England from 1973 to 1985, observing the affect that these changes had on the surrounding communities.

Within the areas documented the coal industry symbolised tradition, history and heritage, with the communities inextricably connected to it. Photographers Roger Tiley and Howard Sooley, both grew up in areas affected by the strike, Tiley in the Gwent valleys and Sooley in Doncaster. Each took to photography as a line of work, deviating away from what was expected of them as members of coal mining communities. Both were to capture the events of the 1984-85 strike, in some of their earliest published photographs.

Many of the works show the solidarity between communities out on strike and document the wide-ranging support for the miners from people across vast geographies and demographics.
 
Brenda Prince’s depictions of women in Nottinghamshire, picketing and travelling to fundraise while also organising food packages, counteract the stereotypical portrayals of women at the time. 

Images covering the essential participation in the strike by groups such as Women Against Pit Closures, and Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) helped to forge new representations of people often marginalised or objectified by visual media. An example of the catharsis and blurring of social barriers during the strike is profoundly felt in Imogen Young’s photograph showing the joyful dancing by members of LGSM with the members of Neath Coelbren miners club on St. David’s Day in 1985.

These affirming scenes of humanity captured the imaginations of journalists, activists and photographers, many of whom used their positions to champion the miners’ cause. 

The working classes in Britain, so often ignored, overlooked and patronised now took centre stage; the visibility of numbers in support forming an archive of resistance that is now etched into the country’s history.

Those born after the period will gain a vivid understanding of Britain in the 1980s through the images, footage, art and music that was produced during this anxious and divided time. The legacy of the State’s actions are also profoundly felt in the now, manifesting in a lack of organised labour, tribalised politics, a weaponised media, and a level of privatisation unimaginable 40 years ago.

It is hard to gauge the impact that photographs contribute to actual change in society, but they do clearly divert, express and galvanise support and momentum during social movements. They also form a powerful record, and 40 years on, the miners’ strike presented here through the photographs and ephemera collectively bring it all alive again. 

Regardless of the strike’s outcome, these photographs survive to remind us of the imagination, unity and hope of those who came together in defence of their communities and the basic right to work and to survive.

Runs until March 31 at Martin Parr Foundation, 316 Paintworks, Bristol. Admission free.