Tribune – Comment, news and reviews from Britain's democratic left

Penallta: A Pit and its People by Gareth Salway
Old Bakehouse Publications, £12.95

DURING the 1984 miners’ strike, a dispute observed with unflinching solidarity in South Wales, an old Valleys collier remarked: “There’s a great wealth of lack of knowledge in London about the men of this coalfield.” Another vignette came from a senior civil servant visiting Wales at the invitation of Phillip Weekes, the NCB’s area director: “My difficulty is when I travel down the M4 and arrive at the Severn Bridge I have the feeling that the cavalry turns back and I go on alone.” There’s more than a little truth in both statements. Although the media concentrated on the easy option of a Scargill versus Thatcher fight the role of individual pits received less attention than was their due.

The English Civil Wars 1640-1660
by Blair Worden
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £12.99

The English Civil War of 1642-1646 was fought along the fault lines of class, religion and ideology right across this country. It was, in fact, a revolution rather than a civil war (as Paul Foot once wryly observed, only the English could describe a bloody revolution as a civil war) as the people of this country rose up in defence of, among other things, parliamentary democracy and cut off the head of a despotic and devious little man who was trying to rule as an absolute monarch. All this almost 300 years before the revolutionaries in Russia did the same to the tsar.

The Contingency Plan
Bush Theatre, London

FOR years, I have been moaning about the lack of plays that deal with climate change, surely one of the most pressing of all political subjects. Now, I can complain no more. Steve Waters’ gripping double bill, The Contingency Plan, is both a welcome addition to the canon of contemporary plays that engage with difficult issues and a definitive exploration of the subject.