The devastating divide of the miners still runs deep
There is one section in Miners’ Strike: A Frontline Story
(BBC Two) that will bring you up short. Dave Roper was a South Yorkshire miner when his son died at a week old. With no wages coming in, he applied for a funeral grant. It was denied because he was on strike. The undertaker told him that there was a solution: to bury the baby in someone else’s coffin. A willing family was found, but Roper and his wife couldn’t bring themselves to attend. “I’d have to attend someone else’s funeral,” Roper said. “And they’ll think, ‘That’s them that can’t afford a funeral.’ So a bit of pride stopped me going.” Tough as old boots, Roper doesn’t cry when he recounts this. But when he says “the bastard Tories” you can feel the weight of emotion behind it.
Channel 4 stole a march on the BBC last month by releasing its own, very good documentary on the 1984-85 miners’ strike. The BBC version is similar: a mix of archive footage (pickets yelling “scab” at working miners, police brutality at Orgreave) and contemporary interviews.
The Channel 4 programme, across three episodes, offered a more rounded picture. It included interviews with former aides to Margaret Thatcher, and NUM executives who provided insights into Arthur Scargill’s tactics. A Frontline Story relies on the accounts of miners from both sides, along with the women involved, plus contributions from officers who policed the strikes.
Their words have power, because their feelings – anger, pride, heartbreak – remain so strong. There are the two brothers, one who went back to work and one who stayed out on strike, whose relationship has never recovered. The man still mentally scarred by the experience of being beaten so hard by a police officer that the truncheon broke in two (an attack captured on camera). The woman who ran a soup kitchen using whatever meat could be found and would tell people: “You might find some teeth in it. Don’t swallow them. And don’t complain. It’s a dinner.”
Everyone here laments the television news coverage of the time, which they perceived as pro-police and government. Here they can tell their side of the story, to an audience in which many people will not have an innate understanding of these working-class communities. There is one funny recollection about a Cambridge University feminist group coming to Nottinghamshire to do a play about the strike. They ended by covering their faces in mock coal dust and declaring: “One day, the women will unite and work side by side down the pits with their men.” Middle-class cluelessness at its worst.
TV shows can sound like a game of “would you rather”. How would you prefer to spend a week: Lost in Alaska with Sue Perkins? Extreme Fishing with Robson Green? Or Into the Congo with Ben Fogle?
The last one is a new three-part series on Channel 5. I’d choose Fogle’s company every time. Apart from anything else, he has such lovely manners. Here he is in Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of the Congo, being offered some sort of deep-fried grub. Fogle doesn’t flinch and searches for something positive to say, which turns out to be: “It tastes quite cheesy!”
In the rainforest, staying with the Mbendjele tribe, he is the perfect guest, helping with the chores and complimenting his hosts on their cooking and comfy tent. This is a man who would load your dishwasher after a dinner party and send you a thank you note the next day saying that your profiteroles were divine.
I am so tired of seeing celebrities go through the motions on travel shows – visiting all the obvious places and most likely retreating to a comfortable hotel – that it was refreshing to see Fogle exploring a little-known
(in TV terms) part of the world and introducing us to people whose way of life is so far removed from our own.
The Mbendjele welcomed him in an extraordinary way, 100 tribespeople singing and dancing to greet his arrival. He appeared genuinely overwhelmed. “My body is flooded with emotions right now. It’s the most astonishing welcome I’ve ever had.”
Fogle is good when speaking from the heart like this, less so when saying what he thinks travel presenters should say. In the capital he made reference to the “riot of colour” and the “assault on the senses”, which are the standard descriptors for anywhere beyond Europe, and which lost all power when the cameras panned around to capture a street market with less colour and bustle than the one selling artisan doughnuts outside Kings Cross station.
Miners’ Strike ★★★★ Into the Congo ★★★★