Seumas Milne

not a general history of the strike (although it has some stuff about it, and what it does say really whet my appetite for more - basically all the popular ideas about it are bullshit) it focuses on the manufactured scandal in 1990 of supposed embezzlement by scargill and shows how it was manufactured by intelligence services and with the acquiescence of Labour and the TUC. the extent of intelligence service infiltration and the dirty tricks campaign is kind of incredible and is the big takeaway from the book - it's important to realise how this stuff happens and how everyone vaguely left is a target for it. it's also clear that many right wing labour leaders were supportive and in some cases acted as paid informants for MI5. there's also a chapter about the changes in Soviet politics at the end of the 1980s that seriously affected the strike - the complete shift away from working class solidarity to focus on being a "respectable state"

if you're interested in the topic it's a really great book - honestly I'm still slightly disappointed it didn't have more on things during the strike itself but that's really verso's fault for advertising the book confusingly. a great piece of investigative journalism with important lessons for radical movements today… (más)