At the height of the 1984-85 Miners' Strike, Arthur Scargill discusses the dispute as well as policing and representation in the media.

In November 1984, filmmaker Stewart MacKinnon sat down with Arthur Scargill, President of the National Union of Mineworkers, at the Union's headquarters in Sheffield to discuss the ongoing Miners' Strike. More than three months still lay ahead until the dispute finally ended on the 3rd March, 1985, but the fight had already been long, hard, and bitter. Scargill speaks frankly about the tools that were being used by the Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher to erode the civil liberties and rights of many miners and their wives making the reality of Britain in 1984 an 'Orwellian nightmare.' Scargill is scathing of the police for the tactics and violence used against lawful protestors as well as the kind of police harassment that, before the strike, would befall only those in Black and Asian communities. He is also contemptuous of the media who reflected time and time again only the views of the establishment against the Union. However, while the strike will eventually lead to defeat, Scargill sees the positives that comes from the dispute, both in the birth of a new kind of 'political awaking' for many men and women, and the support the union had received from overseas and within the British Black and Asian communities.

Interview with Arthur Scargill, president of the National union of Mineworkers, on the pit strike of 1984-85.