Still the Enemy Within

Let’s hope the Daily Mail don’t get a hold of this doc, they’ll have a fit. ‘Still the Enemy Within’ tells the story of the 1984 miner’s strike from the inside, interviewing those who manned the picket lines. It exposes how the Thatcher government colluded with big business, the police and the media to break the back not just of the National Union of Miners, but of the entire trade union movement, and perhaps even any notion of working class solidarity.

This is an unashamedly one-sided viewpoint, but that in itself feels necessary to correct two decades of government obfuscation and excuse-making (all of which was definitively swept away earlier this year when newly released documents revealed just how far the Tories were prepared to go to realise their dream of an unrestrained corporate free-for-all). Lovingly made, beautifully shot and wonderfully soundtracked by the likes of The Specials and The Mekons, this is timely, important and truthful cinema, at once bitter, nostalgic and unexpectedly uplifting.