Blood, Sweat & Tears
Photographs from the great miners strike 1984-1985
Picture: John Harris (Report Digital)
The 1984-85 miners’ strike was the longest national strike in British history. The miners took on a government that provoked the strike and then prosecuted it like a civil war. This book shows the resistance of the miners and their supporters
The striking communities withstood unprecedented police brutality and travesties of justice in the courts. They endured poverty, hunger and media smears, and they held firm for a year.
The photographs in this book document that struggle. The men and women who captured these images decided from the start of the strike which side they were on.
They could have stood behind police lines and provided images that supported the government and mainstream media’s attempt to demonise the miners, their families and supporters as thugs, ‘bully boys’ or dinosaurs from a bygone age. The alternative was to stand with the miners on the picket lines and live with the strikers in their communities and record the reality of what was really going on.
The photographs in this book not only captured the reality of the strike but played an important role in encouraging the solidarity movement that sustained the action for a year.
The book brings together images, some of which have not been published in 40 years, and some which have never been published before. Despite the passage of time, these photographs remain relevant. They are not some gritty artifacts of a bygone era, to be remembered via an uncredited social media post or admired in a gallery.
They were taken by photographers who were absolutely committed to the miners, and their publication today is aimed at inspiring a new generation of activists to fight back and win.
Available in November in a limited edition (144 pages, 22×28 cms).
The contributors
Brenda Prince
Brenda Prince took up photography in 1978, driven by the constant misrepresentation and stereotyping of women and so-called ‘minority’ groups. In 1983 Brenda joined Format Photographers, the first all-women photographic agency. As a working class woman, she felt it was important to document the 1984/85 miners’ strike from the perspective of women in the striking communities. With three other photographers (Raissa Page, Imogen Young and Izabela Jedrzejczyk) she participated in an exhibition at the Photographers Gallery in London Striking Women: Communities and Coal. She documented women’s lives in the Soviet Union, the Philippines, and Iraqi-Kurdistan.
In 2001 Brenda left Format Photographers and hung up her cameras. Her work is archived at the Bishopsgate Institute
Chris Killip
Chris Killip was one of the most influential British photographers of his generation. After working as a commercial photographer, he turned his camera and eye on working class life. His book, In Flagrante, made in North East of England during the 1970s and early 1980s, is a landmark work of documentary photography. Other bodies of work include the series Isle of Man, Seacoal, Skinningrove and Pirelli. Chris died in October 2020.
Chris Killip’s estate is represented by Magnum and the Chris Killip Photography Trust.
For more of Chris’s work, go to chriskillip.com
John Harris
John Harris began taking photographs in the late 1970s, as the jobs and industrial crisis gave rise to far right racist violence. He joined the Report/IFL agency at the beginning of 1984, photographing CND and the Greenham Common protests, then the Ban on unions at GCHQ before covering the Miners’ Strike from day one. After the strike John kept Report/IFL going until the death of its founder Simon Guttmann in 1989. In the mid-1990s John and a colleague developed one of the first online photo libraries in the world and he has been running Report digital and building its extraordinary photo archive of resistance ever since. He still takes pictures and has stuck to his guns throughout.
John Harris is represented by Report Digital
John Smith
John Smith contributed to Report/IFL from 1981 on, covering labour, anti-racism and trade union issues, notably the Bradford Twelve, the Stockport Messenger dispute and then the miners’ strike. After the strike he gave up photography to train as an environmental manager and ecologist. He set up a number of projects developing Aquaponics and Permaculture and has now retired to rural Lancashire.
John Sturrock
John Sturrock joined the photo agency Report/IFL, owned by Simon Guttman, a founding father of photojournalism in Berlin during the 1920s. John’s photography concentrated on politics and the labour movement. In 1981 he and a group of likeminded photographers founded Network Photographers, which during its lifetime was one of the UK’s most successful independent agencies. Paul Foot encouraged John to work for the Socialist Worker newspaper where he covered the fight against racism as well as industrial conflict, including the 1984-85 miners’ strike. In the 1990s, John began to work on the big London regeneration projects, first in Spitalfields, then Earls Court, Battersea, Canada Water and for the past sixteen years King’s Cross.
John Sturrock is represented by Report Digital. For more of John’s work go to johnsturrock.com
Keith Pattison
Keith Pattison was born and worked in the north east. During the miners’ strike he lived in and documented the pit village of Easington, in the Durham coalfield. In 2010, together with the author David Peace he published NO REDEMPTION, a photographic chronicle of the miners’ strike in the Durham Coalfield. Now out of print, a version is available on Blurb.
Other documentary projects include Squatters in Clerkenwell, Teesside Industrial Communities, Newcastle United supporters and 100 Sunderland Library users. With other photographers, Keith is working on a new project, Coalfaces, focusing on the broader coal mining industry.
To contact Keith about prints and licensing, email [email protected]
Martin Jenkinson
Martin was a former steelworker whose love of photography combined with his politics and his belief in social justice, fairness and equality. He was responsible for some of the most striking images to have emerged from political and industrial struggle in Britain over the last 30 years. Martin died in 2012.
For more of Martin’s work and information on prints and licensing go to mjimages.pressphotos.co.uk
Martin Shakeshaft
Martin has worked as a Freelance Photojournalist, Videographer and Lecturer since graduating from Newport College of Art in 1985. He has exhibited in the UK and abroad. His Strike84 exhibition of the miners’ strike and Look Back in Anger, which returns to his 1984-85 images, are available for hire. A selection of his work is housed in the National Museum of Wales’s permanent collection.
For more of Martin’s work go to martinshakeshaft.com
Mike Abrahams
Mike Abrahams has worked as a freelance photographer for more than 40 years having become renowned for his sensitive eye in documenting the lives of ordinary people often in extraordinary situations. In 1981 he was a cofounder of Network Photographers the Internationally renowned picture agency and his work has taken him around the world.
His coverage of the troubles in Northern Ireland was the subjects of a Television documentary “Moving Stills”. Other important assignments have included coverage of the division of Cyprus, Migrant labour in Southern Africa, the Intifada in the Occupied Territories, the Berlin Wall, the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, the rise in the influence of the religious in Israeli politics, the Cult of Assad in Syria, Northern Ireland and documenting Another Britain.
For more of Mike’s work go to mikeabrahams.com
Peter Arkell
Peter Arkell has been a photographer since 1970, working for the News Line until 1985, and then working as a freelance. He covered the Miners’ Strike mainly in Yorkshire. He has co-authored Unfinished Business: The Miners Strike for Jobs 1984-5 and A Pub Crawl Through History, about commoners who have had pubs named after them.
Peter is represented by Report Digital
Raissa Page
Raissa Page was a pioneering feminist photographer and founder member of the women’s photographic collective Format. Her photography captured the lives of marginalised groups at times of social change during the late 20th century. During the miners’ strike of 1984-85, she travelled the country capturing communities, marches, and demonstrations. She contributed to Striking Women: Communities and Coal (1986). Other work includes a powerful series of portraits of women coal miners in West Virginia in 1978. Their slogan, “Women Miners Can Dig It Too”, captured the way they presented themselves – proud, defiant, and humorous.
Raissa died in 2011. Her work can be found at the Richard Burton Archives, Swansea University
Ray Rising
Ray Rising was a photographer for the News Line from 1973-1985 and before that was a keen amateur photographer. He covered the Miners’ Strike in all the coalfields. He co-authored, with Peter Arkell, Unfinished Business: The Miners Strike for Jobs 1984-85.
Ray is represented by Report Digital
Rick Matthews
Rick Matthews studied photography at Mid-Cheshire School of Art and at West Surrey College of Art & Design before going on to work freelance in Glasgow and London including with Simon Guttmann’s prestigious Report/IFL agency. On returning from London to his native Chester he worked for 16 years as Group Picture Editor for NWN Media/Newsquest newspapers.
Rick is represented by Report Digital
Ron Richardson
Ron Richardson was a miner and photographer who worked at Rossington Colliery near Doncaster. He played an active part in the strike and captured the police invasion of his community.
Stefano Cagnoni
Stefano Cagnoni was invited to join Report/International Freelance Library by its founder Simon Guttmann. Guttmann had known Stefano since he was a child, and in 1982 offered to train him as a photographer declaring, in his abrupt, inimitable fashion: “Stay with us for 3 months and if you’re any good, I’ll tell you so; and if you’re no good, all you’ve lost is 3 months of your time.” Six years later he was still there, having worked as a photographer, darkroom printer and administrator for an agency whose aims were to provide an alternative visual viewpoint to that of the mainstream press.
He has contributed to Report Digital since its establishment as the online heir to Report/IFL; and has been responsible for archiving some of the vast body of photographic imagery originally represented by Report/IFL
Stefano is represented by Report Digital
