The miners' strike of 1984-85 was a brutal clash between the miners' union, which was defending jobs, and the Thatcher government, committed to destroying 'militant' trade unionism. This article argues that due to the divisions within the miners' union about the way the strike was started, the Thatcher government was able to exploit this disunity to mobilise criminal sanctions against the miners. This was a 'lucky accident', since the government's preparation for an eventual showdown with strong trade unions had been based on civil legislation. The article combines a range of primary and secondary sources to analyse the extent to which fear over the erosion of civil and trade union liberties was brought to fruition by the strike.
Bob Dent, a journalist based in Hungary, has written a detailed and thorough history of an event that has been overlooked in the existing historiography of the country and, indeed, of the labour movement. The particular focus of the book is the protest on 1 September 1930 in Budapest in which 10,000 people, both employed and unemployed, took to the streets under the slogan 'Work and Bread'. The protest resulted in numerous people being injured and one being killed, when police used swords and fired shots into the crowd. Although the book is very much focused on this one particular event, Dent frames the genesis of the protest through Chapter 1, describing the industrialisation of Hungary and its expanding population from the mid-19th century; the impact of 1914-1918 on the country; and the bubbling social unrest, as manifested through various smaller protests, in the years leading up to 1930. In Chapter 8, particularly, Dent considers the relevance of the event and its effect on Hungarian political culture from its aftermath until recent times.Dent's especially salient point is the way that the Communist Party of Hungary (CP) claimed ownership of the event, when in fact, argues Dent, the affair was largely the work of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and trade unions. Dent presents various examples that evidence this point throughout the book: for example, he discusses how the slogan 'Work and Bread' was claimed by the CP, when in fact it may have been used by them, but there is no evidence that they coined it (p. 37). The culmination of this argument is on page 168, when Dent suggests that, following the collapse of communism in Hungary, there has been an over-compensation to disregard 'anything about the past which has labour or labour movement connotations' (p. 168). As further evidence of this assertion, Dent cites the 1956 Hungarian Uprising that gave rise to Workers' Councils; another development, he claims, that is notably absent in the existing literature (p. 166).Dent's background as a journalist is evident from the style of his writing. The tone is informal, but it also conveys a clear passion for the event and country about which Dent is writing. Thus, the reader learns something of Hungarian culture. Dent's discussion of 'radical artists ' and 'radical poets' (pp. 102-110), along with his detailed description of the physical geography of the site of the protest (p. 59), might be seen as a digression. But these details convey the subsidiary details with which the reader is probably not familiar, but which help to convey the scene to them. The structure of the book, in terms of its chapter headings, conveys fundamental research questions that Dent goes on to
The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was a visible presence across many significant trade unions in the post-war period, largely due to its industrial strategy. The party envisaged that politicising the rank and file of important trade unions and also capturing the leadership of these unions would allow it to influence the Labour Party, as these unions held a significant number of votes at Labour's annual conference. This chapter analyses the success of this strategy in the National Union of Mineworkers, a union that became increasingly emblematic of the difficulties trade unions faced in the late twentieth century, particularly obvious through its 1984 strike. This chapter considers the relationship between Communists in the party and those in the union, exploring the extent to which the party's strategy translated into the union in practice, and understanding if there was any conflict between these two groups who occupied distinctly different roles. Unpicking the concept of 'wage militancy', the way through which the party felt politicisation of the union rank and file would best be achieved, the chapter frames this discussion within the broader context of the increasingly divided CPGB, the political and economic policies of Labour and Conservative governments, and the union's national strikes.
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