FORTY years after the 1984-85 miners’ strike against pit closures it might be thought that every aspect of the strike has been analysed and written about.

Not so.

A new book, The Art of Class War: Newspaper Cartoonists and the 1984-5 Miners’ Strike, by former BBC Radio News reporter Nicholas Jones, will be launched on Saturday in Leeds.

The book is prolifically illustrated — naturally — with cartoonists’ interpretations of day-by-day developments during the strike and their wider context.

It also lays bare how Tory-supporting newspapers used cartoons in their year-long campaign against the strike and its leaders.

From the start of the strike and throughout the following months newspaper cartoonists exploited a wealth of issues ranging from the “secret” pit closures plan, flying pickets, Orgreave, doomed talks between National Union of Mineworkers president Arthur Scargill and National Coal Board chairman Ian Macgregor — Thatcher’s hatchet-man — to the Thatcher government’s ludicrous denial that it was involved in the dispute in any way.

The cartoons are accompanied by Jones’s dialogue which is drawn in part from his own experience covering the strike, which he says in his preface “was the most momentous chapter in my career as a labour and industrial correspondent.”

He also built up a vast archive of cuttings of newspaper coverage during the strike, including cartoons which provide the material for the book.

Cartoons are supposed to speak for themselves, but Jones’s dialogue provides essential background and perspective.

The selection includes many published in the right-wing press — Express, Mail, Sun etc — whose agenda included the vilification of the leaders of the National Union of Mineworkers during the strike, in particular Scargill.

Some such attempts were simply crude — for example, a depiction of Scargill being added to a “Gallery of Honour” of British spies for the Soviet Union, as ageing Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev looks on in delight. 

Scargill is waving a knife and is overprinted with the words “I will destroy the British coal industry” and “I march against Britain,” unsurprisingly that cartoon by Cummings appeared in the Daily Express.

In some cartoons pickets are variously depicted as violent thugs, arsonists or gullible fools.

Divisions within the trade union movement during the strike also provided material for exploitation by Tory newspapers, particularly between the miners and the steelworkers’ union the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation led by Bill Sirs. 

The failure of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) under the leadership of Len Murray to support the miners provided more material — no opportunity to cash in on divisions in the trade union movement was missed.

Nicholas Garland at The Telegraph depicted the TUC-NUM split with a carthorse (the TUC) being pulled forward by its reins by Scargill and backwards by its tail by Murray.

But the book also includes cartoons which appeared in left newspapers and trade union publications which supported the strike, including the Morning Star.

“Images of police officers, truncheons at the ready, were rarely absent from the pages of the Morning Star and other left-wing publications,” writes Jones.

Such cartoons appeared with good reason following the police attack on miners at Orgreave coke works on June 18. 

As Jones notes in his chapter on trade union journals and the left press: “Without doubt the one event that had the greatest influence in encouraging them [the unions] to close ranks was the brutality of the Battle of Orgreave.” 

Never before had trade unionists witnessed the deployment of a combined police force on the scale that was evident that day: “The full force of the state had been lined up to crush the National Union of Mineworkers and there was a recognition that the future of the wider trade union movement was at stake.”

The Morning Star’s Eccles depicted the miners’ strike with a football match team graphic, showing the layout of players on the two halves of the pitch. On one side of the pitch every position was taken by “miner.” The team on the other side of the pitch was made up of “law, government, police, press, TV, big business.”

Some hard-hitting cartoons were transformed into posters which quickly appeared on picket lines and at rallies, says Jones: “In a show of solidarity in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Orgreave members of the printing unions at the Morning Star issued a front page statement in support of the strike.

“A cartoon by Tony Hall added impact. A grave was being dug for the miners and Thatcher was revealed crouching behind the gravestone whispering instructions to the NCB chairman Ian Macgregor.

“The caption was pointed and direct: ‘Don’t let them bury the miners.’

“Reprints of the cartoon appeared on a widely distributed poster under the slogan ‘Bury the Tories — not the miners,’” writes Jones.

As the strike wore on the media gave wholehearted support to the National Coal Board’s (NCB) “back to work” propaganda campaign and its offers of cash in the run-up to Christmas. The campaign was backed by government-funded full-page advertisements in newspapers.

Most of the media slavishly accepted the numbers issued weekly by the NCB detailing how many men had returned to work, and cartoonists on Tory-supporting newspapers had a field day, using TV game shows of the time such as The Price is Right and Take Your Pick to present strikers with a choice between accepting a proffered £1,000 pre-Christmas bonus or staying out on strike.

Peter Brookes of the Times had a depiction of the Seven Dwarves, picks over their shoulders, their pockets stuffed with pound notes, marching through the pit gates past a floundering Scargill, and singing: “Hi ho! Hi ho! It’s back to work we go!”

The Art of Class War is an excellent addition to the many volumes already produced examining the media and the miners’ strike.
And no-one could be better qualified to produce the book than Nicholas Jones, who is a leading activist, academic and author on the issue of press freedom and media manipulation.

The launch takes place at 2pm in the City Room at Leeds Playhouse on Saturday, March 1. The Art of Class War is published by the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom (North) and costs £10.