Blood, Sweat and Tears - Photographs from the Great Miners Strike 1984-85

 

https://minersstrike.com/

Key images from one of Britain's most significant workers' struggles

The striking communities withstood unprecedented police brutality and travesties of justice in the courts. They endured poverty, hunger and media smears, and they held firm for a year.

The photographs in this book document that struggle. The men and women who captured these images decided from the start of the strike which side they were on.

They could have stood behind police lines and provided images that supported the government and mainstream media’s attempt to demonise the miners, their families and supporters as thugs, ‘bully boys’ or dinosaurs from a bygone age. The alternative was to stand with the miners on the picket lines and live with the strikers in their communities and record the reality of what was really going on.

The photographs in this book not only captured the reality of the strike but played an important role in encouraging the solidarity movement that sustained the action for a year.

The book brings together images, some of which have not been published in 40 years, and some which have never been published before. Despite the passage of time, these photographs remain relevant. They are not some gritty artifacts of a bygone era, to be remembered via an uncredited social media post or admired in a gallery.

They were taken by photographers who were absolutely committed to the miners, and their publication today is aimed at inspiring a new generation of activists to fight back and win.

Available in a limited edition (144 pages, 22×28 cms) from https://minersstrike.com/ or Bookmarks Bookshop in London 

Obituary - Tim Evans (1949-2024)

 The London Socialist Historians Group were sad to learn of the passing of revolutionary, poet, and artist Tim Evans who contributed to the LSHG Newsletter around the centenary of Llanelli 1911 in a piece on "A dim spectre of revolution hung over Britain":  The Great Unrest in a Welsh Town - and was involved in helping commemorate this strike locally - see here for more: 

https://londonsocialisthistorians.blogspot.com/2010/07/tim-evans-on-llanelli-1911.html

https://londonsocialisthistorians.blogspot.com/2011/05/llanelli-1911-by-tim-evans.html

Below is an obituary from Swansea SWP remembering Tim Evans: 

https://socialistworker.co.uk/obituaries/tim-evans-1949-2024/

The last few years have produced many disappointing, worrying and indeed sickening developments, such as Israel’s genocide.

In the 1960s and 70s it’s doubtful whether Tim Evans, who died over the holidays, imagined that the first quarter of the 21st century would turn out this way.

Nevertheless, Tim never gave up his optimism and his drive to fight for a better world or his desire to convince others to do the same.

The last few months have been particularly difficult for Tim because there was nothing his immense drive and passion could do to stop the advance of a human disease.

Like many of his generation, Tim was inspired by the counter-culture of the 1960s. He had an abundance of talent, including the ability to draw from a very early age.

For him, music, literature, poems and art were not just for enjoyment, but were tools to change the world.

Tim travelled quickly through individual action to discover Marxism, particularly the tradition of socialism from below and the Russian Revolution.

He was convinced that the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) was trying to bring together revolutionaries in the same way and that Lenin and the Bolsheviks did. He was inspired by his friend and comrade John Molyneux. 

Tim, in later life, really pushed his artistic contribution to the struggle. Teaming up with his partner Rhoda Thomas, he helped to create the Live Poets Society, a radical poetry group in Swansea that gave a voice to the oppressed.

At the same time, he and Rhoda injected life into the campaign to remember the Llanelli rail workers battle of 1911.

He wrote articles for the International Socialism journal on Wales, and specifically on syndicalism.

As well as all this, Tim was committed to working with as many people as possible against racism and war and for solidarity for those fighting this rotten system. 

Tim spoke and recited at many events, protests, meeting and demos—he was known as the speaker who didn’t need a megaphone.

Eloquent and inspiring, he has touched the lives of many and will continue to do so for years to come. Our love and solidarity to Rhoda and his son Iestyn.

Tim’s funeral will take place on Monday 27 January, 1pm at Llanelli Crematorium Penprys Rd, Dafen, Llanelli SA14 8BX

LSHG seminar - Monday 20 January - Tony Collins, Rethinking the Roots of British Communism

LSHG Seminar Monday 20th January 2025 In Person, Room 301 Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, Malet St, London WC1. 5.30pm. In person. Please book at this link as space is limited: https://www.history.ac.uk/events/raising-red-flag-rethinking-roots-british-communism

Tony Collins will talk about his new book which re-examines the rich and complex roots of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Using a range of original sources, he will investigate how the young CPGB was shaped by the experiences of the Social Democratic Federation, the Socialist Labour Party and the Workers’ Socialist Federation during the years of war, intense class struggle, and the rise of Labourism before 1920. Rather than being an imposition from Moscow, he will argue that the CPGB was an organic development of the British left, something that was both its strength and its weakness.’

The seminar is organised by the Socialist History Seminar at the IHR and the London Socialist Historians Group. Contact Keith Flett @keithbeard.bsky.social

BBIH - call for blog posts

 The Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH) is looking to commission a series of blog posts (500-1000 words) from historians at different career stages about how they have used BBIH:

 

·        To research or write about a particular topic within socialist history.

·        For a particular research task. For example, for a literature review at the onset of a project or as a horizon scanning exercise when starting on a new field of research, whether that be for a seminar paper, journal article, book, PhD, or another research outcome.

·        In teaching. For example, devising new teaching modules, updating, or creating new reading lists, or supporting assignment supervision.

Please contact jennifer.lelkes@sas.ac.uk for more information or to contribute thanks 

 

LSHG Autumn Seminar series

 Monday 7th October 5.30pm Rosalind Eyben, John Horner & the Communist Party, Uncomfortable Encounter with Truth. On Zoom. To book (required, free) https://www.history.ac.uk/events/john-horner-and-communist-party-uncomfortable-encounter-truth

Monday 21st October 5.30pm Fabrice Bensimon, The Chartist Meeting at Kennington Common, 10th April 1848. The daguerreotypes, the crowd and the coachman. In person, Room 301, Institute of Historical Research https://www.history.ac.uk/events/chartist-meeting-kennington-common-10-april-1848-daguerreotypes-crowd-and-coachman

Monday 4th November 5.30pm Gregor Gall, Mick Lynch. The Making & the Unmaking of a Working Class Hero? On Zoom To book (required, free) https://www.history.ac.uk/events/mick-lynch-making-and-unmaking-a-working-class-hero

Monday 18th November 5.30pm, Bob Henderson, Lenin in London. In person. Room 301 Institute of Historical Research

Monday 2nd December 5.30pm, Aidan Beatty. Gerry Healy & the WRP. Violence, Gender & the Perils of Trotskyism. On Zoom

All seminars are free to attend. Registration required, details to follow. Organised by the Socialist HIstory Seminar at the Institute of Historical Research & the London Socialist Historians Group

A Useable Past - Stephen Yeo

A Useable Past: The History of Association, Cooperation and un-Statist Socialism in 19th and early 20th century Britain. ​

A three volume set 

Volume 1. Victorian Agitator, George Jacob Holyoake (1817-1906): Co-operation as 'This New Order of Life. 

Volume 2. A New Life, The Religion of Socialism in Britain, 1883-1896: Alternatives to State Socialism.

Volume 3. Class Conflict and Co-operation in 19th and 20th Century Britain. Education for Association: re-membering for a new moral world. 

 About the author

 Professor Yeo was Principal of Ruskin College, Oxford, 1989-97 and since then has been Chair of the Co-operative College and the Co-operative Heritage Trust in Manchester and Rochdale, engaging with and writing about the movement. Stephen began his adult life as a Labour Party Parliamentary candidate in the elections of 1964 and 1966. As a social historian, he is known for his work on association, cooperation, labour movements and religious and voluntary organisations. He taught at the University of Sussex for 25 years, and he was also active in Brighton’s community politics.

LSHG seminar - The British Labour Party’s New Socialist and the business of political culture in the late Twentieth Century

Monday June 3rd 5.30pm on Zoom Colm Murphy. 'The forgotten rival of Marxism Today: The British Labour Party’s New Socialist and the business of political culture in the late Twentieth Century' Free. Book at this link https://www.history.ac.uk/events/forgotten-rival-marxism-today-british-labour-partys-new-socialist-and-business-political This paper explores the world of the 1980s left in the UK and argues that political historians should integrate ‘business history’ questions to situate and evaluate sites for political debate. No history of the 1980s is complete without reference to the Communist Party’s glamorous Marxism Today. However, scholars have overlooked one of its significant market competitors. In 1981, the Labour Party founded its own intellectual magazine, the New Socialist. Initially, it was highly successful, recording healthy circulation figures and attracting iconoclastic pieces by leading socialists. Its early commercial success shows that it has been unjustly neglected since. Yet unfavourable political winds and internal editorial divisions fatally overlapped with ruinous business decisions in a worsening financial environment. This precipitated the collapse of New Socialist in the later 1980s—just as its Eurocommunist rival declared the arrival of the ‘New Times’ and wrote itself into history books. Closer attention to business contexts thus returns New Socialist to histories of the left and provides a better map of its ideological debates during a transformative decade. It also situates the travails of the 1980s left within social and cultural trends over the twentieth century.