Voices in the Coalshed: In Loving Memory of Work

Voices in the Coalshed: In Loving Memory of Work

In Loving Memory of Work, Craig Oldham, 2015

In Loving Memory of Work charts the progress of the 1984/85 Miners’ Strike through an impressive array of artworks, images, posters and poetry. In five chapters – The Tools of Protest, Solidarity, Orgreave, Miners and the Media, and Never Forget Never Forgive – Craig Oldham exhibits the voices of the striking miners themselves and celebrates their lives, work and power in this retrospective collection.

The book celebrates the roles of art and creativity in the Miners’ Strike, resulting in a beautiful collection of posters, cartoons, badges, banners, and other ephemera. Oldham emphasises the importance of the local and humble sources of these images, writing that ‘making the perfect image, for the perfect message, at the perfect time, in the perfect place can be done just as effectively by the miner as it can by the designer.’ It is the miners themselves that come to the fore in the collection as the book becomes an expression of solidarity across the years.

Oldham importantly also outlines the diversity of support that the miners received during the strike, focusing not only on the group ‘Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners’, but also on groups that were similarly maligned and threatened by the police, such as racial minorities. Working across categories of identity and employment, the solidarities are displayed and celebrated in this beautifully compiled collection, interspersed with a wide range of testimony from those directly and indirectly involved with the strikes and support.

This literature review was written by remote Volunteer Indigo.

Image: NCMME