Remembering the Strike: the miners’ strike of 1984-5 in popular memory

Hosted by the Society for the Study of Labour History

Speaker
Dr Natalie Thomlinson is Associate Professor of Modern British Cultural History at the University of Reading, and co-author of Women and the Miners’ Strike (2023). She has written widely on women, gender, and feminism in late twentieth century Britain.

About the John L. Halstead Memorial Lecture
This series of annual lectures is named in memory of the late John L. Halstead, who served the Society through six decades in numerous capacities and has been much missed since his death in 2021.

Previous John L. Halstead Memorial Lectures
, delivered by Professor Keith Laybourn, 2023

, delivered by Dr Emmet O’Connor, 2022

Abstract
This lecture is less an exploration of the miners’ strike itself, and more a study in how it has been remembered, both popularly and privately. Both during and after the strike, a large number of books, films, plays and newspaper articles about the dispute were created; this lecture examines how the stories these cultural productions tell have come to tell about the strike as variously a heroic failure, a moment of emancipation for working-class women, or as the last gasp of the trade union movement, have come to frame how individual experiences of the strike were remembered and narrated. In particular, this lecture explores how the many women interviewed for Women and the Miners’ Strike 1984-5 recounted their stories using these larger cultural frameworks. Finally, this lecture turns to examine how these women thought about coalfield communities today, and how their nostalgia for the past could be used as a form of political critique of the present.

FINDING THE VENUE

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PLEASE NOTE

The University of Huddersfield now charges for car parking, even on weekends. Full information is here https://www.hud.ac.uk/about/maps/carparking/ [hud.ac.uk]

Host or Publisher Organised by the Society for the Study of Labour History