A new Exhibition opens this week at Salford’s Working Class Movement Library
Marking the 40th anniversary of the 1984-1985 Miners’ Strike, the Working Class Movement Library’s exhibition showcases the strike through artefacts, photos, and poetry from its collections.
Photographs by John Harris, who operated “behind the lines” during the dispute, capture events from the strikers’ viewpoint.
Almost all the poems were written by women during the strike, many of them miners’ wives, and published in works now in the library’s archive. Together, they provide a powerful insight into the strike from the perspective of those who were there.
The Library contains the most extensive collection of material related to the 1984/5 Miners Strike in the UK, including books, pamphlets and papers, as well as hundreds of items of ephemera from banners and placards to posters and personal diaries.
The library also has a remarkable collection of pin badges produced during the strike. Often handmade and created to respond rapidly to changing issues and events as the strike progressed, they visually and succinctly reflect the concerns of the people involved. Most items have never been on public display before. The library is about to embark on a major transformation, and this exhibition will play a part by highlighting this collection to a new and diverse audience.
As part of their commitment to work in new ways with new partners, our artefacts will be displayed alongside contemporary images of the strike by acclaimed photographer John Harris, and their significance explored via poetry and recollections from people who were involved.
Combined they will support our mission to provide open access to our collections so that working class people can learn from, and interpret, their history in order to enable them to apply a class perspective to contemporary politics and economics.
