Former BBC radio reporter Nick Jones was at Leeds Playhouse on March 1 to launch his latest book about the miners’ strike that ended 40 years ago this month.
“I’m half journalist and half squirrel,” said Nick, explaining how The Art of Class War came about.
“As the strike went on it moved from the picket front line to the media front line and became a propaganda
war. I used to cut out everything from the newspapers, including the cartoons. I have a vast archive that I have now given to Sheffield University, and as I went through the boxes what stood out were the cartoons.
“I thought we could tell the story of the strike through the tapestry of cartoons.”
Joining him at the Leeds event was Steve Bell (author of the book’s foreword), who reminisced about featuring the strike regularly in his own Guardian cartoon strip If…: “The great thing was the Grauniad just let me get on with it. Mind you, things have changed these days.”
