MARIA DUARTE is swept along by the cocky self-belief of a ping-pong hustler in a surprisingly violent drama
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No longer satisfied with playing second fiddle
John Green talks to EMILY INGRAM whose moving documentary charts the remarkable resilience of Doncaster women at the time of the miners’ strike of 1984
WORKING CLASS HEROINES: Few outside of the UK’s former mining towns and villages remember Women Against Pit Closures (WAPC), a radical women’s movement that ensured miners and their families were fed and clothed during the strike of 1984 - 1985
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STEVE ANDREW recommends a lively and often moving guide to once vibrant spaces that have been abandoned or swept away
GEOFF BOTTOMS appreciates the local touch brought to a production of Dickens’s perennial classic
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production whose design and cartoonish acting overwhelms the close scrutiny of characters
SUSAN DARLINGTON enjoys the raucous familiarity of a traditional topsy-turvy pantomime
RON JACOBS introduces the latest novel by the best writer of US working-class fiction writing today
THE national miners’ strike of 1984/85 was probably, apart from the 1924 General Strike, the most traumatic and iconic working-class struggle of the 20th century.
Although a number of films have been made about that strike, the role women played in it has not been given the coverage it deserves.
Women in the past have always been there supporting men in their struggles, for the first time during this strike they set up their own parallel organisation, Women Against Pit Closures (WAPC) and what became known as “the fight for jobs.”
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With solidarity coming in from across Britain and the world, PETER LAZENBY speaks to the people who made Christmas 1984 a celebration of working-class resistance in Britain’s striking coalmining communities