Skip to main content
Work with the NEU
Building the left 40 years after the miners' strike
In a major conference this weekend, the Morning Star will bring together veterans of the great strike with leading organisers of today’s left and labour movement to chart the path forward, writes BEN CHACKO
WAR FOOTING: A picket walks past the massed ranks of the police outside Orgreave coking plant, 1984

NEXT month will mark 40 years since the beginning of the 1984-5 miners’ strike. It was not only a formative struggle for an entire generation of socialists and trade unionists, but one whose outcome continues to shape British society today.

But when we meet this weekend for our Morning Star conference — Fightback: 40 Years On From the Miners’ Strike — we will be looking forward, not back.

The miners’ strike was the largest and most consequential industrial dispute of the Thatcher years. Their defeat put rocket boosters under Thatcher’s programme of privatisation and deregulation, from which we can trace a direct line to today’s failed state of collapsing services, enfeebled workplace rights and threadbare social security.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
A massive gathers in Hyde Park, London, for a meeting during the General Strike, May 1926
History / 1 January 2026
1 January 2026

BEN CHACKO says in different ways, the centenary of the General Strike and that of Fidel Castro’s birth point to priority tasks for the British left in the coming year

Morning Star
Features / 31 October 2025
31 October 2025

Across the country readers are rallying to the People’s Paper’s cause. Star campaigns manager CALVIN TUCKER has some handy ideas on how to get involved

 TJC march on June 14, 2025 / Pic: Neil Terry Photography
Durham Miners’ Gala 2025 / 12 July 2025
12 July 2025

The Home Secretary’s recent letter suggests the Labour government may finally deliver on its nine-year manifesto commitment, writes KATE FLANNERY, but we must move quickly: as recently as 2024 Northumbria police destroyed miners’ strike documents

Your Paper / 28 May 2025
28 May 2025

Our roving AGM from this Thursday through Sunday and our upcoming Morning Star Conference 2025 on June 14 in London are great opportunities to meet the team and help plan the way forward, says editor BEN CHACKO