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The video is based on an interview with a group of miners and their wives from the Doncaster branch of the National Union of Mineworkers. They are named as: Robert Allsop; Neil Moore; Alan Robe; Tony Clegg; Carol Greathead; Lyn Clegg; Jim Donnelly; and Elaine Robe. They talk about their experiences during the strike with an emphasis on the role of the police. They also talk about travelling to Nottinghamshire to picket at Ollerton and Calverton as well as their experiences during the violent scenes at Orgreave Coking Works in Yorkshire. Dave Douglass, also from Doncaster NUM, is interviewed seperately. He talks about wider issues of the change from a regional to a national police force, phone tapping during the strike, pay rises that the police and army received when Margaret Thatcher came to power and the fact that the law exists to protect private property and not working class people. We see police road blocks in Nottinghamshire stopping and arresting the Yorkshire flying pickets; scenes of police clashing with miners including excessive truncheon use and police horses charging crowds (many of these shots are from Orgreave). Archive shots of police internment swoops in Ireland in 1971; the Notting Hill riot of 1976 and Toxteth in 1981 are used to show the methods deployed by the police. Towards the end of the video there is an interview with Dennis Skinner MP about the role of the police in the strike and the video ends with comments from the NUM leader Arthur Scargill who quotes from Pastor Niemoller's famous poem about the power of the Nazi regime.
Music: Police and Thieves - The Clash; Fite Dem Back - Linton Kwesi Johnson
Produced by the Miners Campaign Tape Project for the National Union of Mineworkers
Contributors:
Community Production Group; Open Eye (Liverpool); Faction Films (London); Cinema Action (London); Active Image (Rotherham); London Media Research Group; Films at Work (London);
Nottingham Video Project; Birmingham Film and Video Workshop; Amber Films (Newcastle); Community Video Workshop (Cardiff); The Other Cinema; Trade Films (Newcastle); Platform Films (London)
Orgreave material: Steve Colton
Post Production: London Video Arts
Support from NUJ and ACTT