In the preface to this special edition, Anne Suddick discusses the
issues that came out of the women’s forum at last year’s Miners’ Strike
Twenty Years On: Challenges and Changes conference, which was
attended by women activists from the Durham area, and by national
officials from Women Against Pit Closures.

In this issue, Behind the News focuses on the innovative way that
union learning reps (ulrs) and the learning and skills agenda have
been used to provide an opportunity to renew workplace and
governance engagement in the North East.

This interview with Ian Lavery, president of the National Union of
Mineworkers, was conducted at Ellington Colliery shortly after its
closure in January 2005. The interview covers his early introduction
to the industry and concludes with his perceptive and optimistic view
of the future of the industry to which he and so many others have
dedicated their lives.

This article reviews the debates about union decline and renewal,
and assesses the extent of the adoption of new organising strategies
and their potential significance for the future of trade unions.

This article explores the reaction of Parliament and the courts to the
miners’ strike, and looks at the impact on the law affecting trade
unions and workers.

This article examines the potential for alternative courses of action
and a different outcome to the 1984-5 miners’ strike, suggesting that
it was the failure to replicate to the same extent the mass and flying
pickets adopted during the 1972 miners’ strike, combined with the
relative lack of solidarity industrial action from other trade unionists,
that was crucial to defeat.

David Allsop discusses the effectiveness of the National Union of
Mineworkers’ shop steward organisation in a case-study colliery in

Nottinghamshire. The article highlights the recent history of the
mining industry, putting the issues at the colliery into context. It
then provides empirical evidence to show that militant trade unionism
is a significant factor in union survival.

Through detailed analysis of a miners’ support group in 1984-5, this
article suggests an approach to understanding the strike support group
movement — and potentially those of other protracted union struggles
— that emphasises geography, social identification and political
leadership.

Monica Shaw and Mave Mundy explore women’s activism in the
1984-5 miner’s strike. They draw on qualitative interviews with women
in the North East of England conducted in two periods, 1985-7 and
2002-4, in order to illustrate the ambivalence and complexity of
women’s experience in contrast to romanticised accounts in the
literature.

Based on a case study of a post-industrial mining community, the
authors offer the concept of ‘emotional regeneration’ to explain the
resurgence in the annual Durham Miners’ Gala. Also discussed are
issues of occupational identity, social solidarity and cultural heritage.

David Waddington discusses the doughty and seemingly indefatigable
struggle of local residents, development workers and regeneration
agencies to revitalise the Nottinghamshire ex-mining village of Warsop
Vale. The article highlights the role of newly-instigated class alliances
and solidarities in resuscitating a community almost destroyed by the
impact of pit closure.

Benjamin Franks distinguishes some of the main currents in British
anarchism at the time of the miners’ strike. The article explores the
effects of these libertarian movements on the conflict in the coalfield,
and assesses how the strike influenced the development of British
anarchisms.