Haringey Independent Cinema

Still The Enemy Within | Owen Gower | UK, 2014 | 112 mins | Cert. 15


Thirty years on, Still the Enemy Within explores one of the most dramatic events in UK history: the 1984/5 Miners’ Strike. Using interviews and a wealth of rare and never seen before footage, it gives raw, first-hand accounts from a group of miners and supporters who were on the frontline of the strike for an entire year; the people then Tory Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher labelled ‘the enemy within’.

In 1984 Thatcher declared war on the working class. For those who believe industrial disputes are between workers and their bosses, this film will shatter any such illusions. The government and police took sides, as they always do, with the bosses and threw all the state had at a small group of workers. We know now that Thatcher had secret plans drawn up to ensure the Miners were defeated, revealing a brutal disregard not just for an industry but entire communities.

coal not dole WomenAgainst all this, 160,000 coal miners and their supporters took up the fight and became part of a strike that would change the course of history. And if the TUC had had the courage or integrity to support them, it may have been a fight they won. How different the Britain of today might be if they had.

For Thatcher and the rest of the rich and powerful elite the working class will always be ‘the enemy within’; possessing a potential so threatening that they try to beat us down whenever they get the chance. At times the battle may be lost, but for as long as such stark inequality and injustice exists, the war continues.

£4 waged or £3 for unwaged people