Miner Conflict – Major Impact : an Anarchist Communist perspective on the Miners’ Strike 1984-85 by Dreyfus
Dreyfus shows how and why the anarchists were involved. ‘This wasn’t altruism or an act of goodwill to support our mining communities. […] This was the instinctive yet enlightened self-interest of class solidarity.’[p.4]
Impressionistic in places, ‘Misty early morning picket lines took on a surreal air against the back drop of growing ghost towns’[p.18], elsewhere there’s a comic moment from heckling Kinnock at Hanley, ‘I remember one steward shouting to another “You get him!”, pointing to one of our number. After a second thinking about it, he responded “No way, YOU get him!” We were secure.’[p.30]
It’s good to have an anarchist communist view, and one from the potteries. Most importantly, this is history that means something: ‘What remains an enduring impact for me is the experience that class struggle changes people.
‘The lessons the “Left” drew were administrative and all about leadership. They pushed the lessons that the TUC can’t be trusted, that Labour Party is not a friend of our class while continuing to try and infiltrate and take over both. Political memories of that sort of thing are relatively short-lived.
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