A conversation with historians Robert Gildea and Jim Phillips.

The first week in March marks the 40th anniversary of the Miners’ Strike, when 170,000 miners, backed by their families and supporters across the UK and abroad, fought to defend their pits, their jobs and their communities. The defeat of the miners shattered the labour movement in the UK and devastated mining communities, although there are also amazing stories of miners and their wives reinventing themselves, beginning new careers, and endeavouring to repair their communities.

Robert Gildea, Professor Emeritus of Modern History at Oxford and author of Backbone of the Nation, Mining Communities and the Great Strike of 1984-85 (Yale), and Jim Phillips, Professor of Economic and Social History and author of Coalfield Justice. The 1984-85 Miners’ Strike in Scotland (Edinburgh, 2024), will be in conversation with Patricia Clavin, the current Professor of Modern History. Robert and Jim collaborated interviewing former miners, their wives and children, in Fife in 2021. They will discuss the challenges and outcomes of their work and its social and political significance.

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