The Miners’ strike came to an end 40 years ago this week and it was fitting that on 1 March a new book was launched covering an important aspect of the year-long action that has largely been overlooked, until now. The book, The Art of Class War: Newspaper Cartoonists and the 1984-5 Miners’ Strike, by former BBC Radio News reporter Nicholas Jones, was launched on 1 March in the Leeds Playhouse. (Photo shows Nick Jones (left) Granville Williams Media North (centre) and cartoonist Steve Bell (right) during the closing q & a session.)
Well illustrated with cartoonists’ interpretations of events during the strike and their wider context it was left to a cartoonist Steve Bell who drew the strip cartoon ‘If’ on the back page of The Guardian’ and wrote the foreword to kick off the launch with a humorous and passionate introduction. He told the meeting that at that time he saw his role as doing what he could to redress the massive weight of propaganda against the miners and their leader Arthur Scargill. But he did more than just that. Living in Brighton, one day he was driving with his family past the local coal fired Shoreham power station when they stopped to offer support to NUM pickets outside the power station. That support turned into providing accommodation to the two pickets for the duration of the strike. He went on to highlight them in some of his cartoon strips.
The cartoons which featured many published in the right-wing press — Express, Mail, Sun, Star etc often portrayed pickets as violent thugs, arsonists or gullible fools. Their political agenda also included the vilification of Arthur Scargill and other NUM leaders. But the book also includes cartoons which appeared in left newspapers and trade union publications which supported the strike, including the Morning Star, News Line and NUM publications.
All are supported by Nick Jones’s commentary based on his own experience covering the strike, which he says in his preface “was the most momentous chapter in my career as a labour and industrial correspondent.” He explains: “My critique seeks to explore, explain and assess the pressures they (the cartoonists) faced and what might have influenced the way they depicted an epic showdown between hard-line conservatism and ordinary workers.”
The book is an important addition to the many publications examining the role of the media during the miners’ strike.
Writing in the Morning Star on 28 February https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/which-side-are-you journalist and NUJ member Pete Lazenby explains that he is fascinated by a book of cartoons that shows how newspaper cartoonists were employed to, on the one hand, denigrade and, on the other, to defend the miners’ strike of 1984-85.
The Art of Class War is published by the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom (North) and costs £10. Contact: Granville Williams at cpbfnorth@outlook.com