Class war: newspapers and the 1984-85 Miners’ Strike, at the Cartoon Museum

At this special event, journalist and author Nicholas Jones draws on his personal archive of cartoons illustrating the most violent industrial dispute of the Margaret Thatcher years.

Graphic, black-and-white depictions of police brutality and working-class solidarity illustrated the press in the mid-1980s, with most national newspapers supporting Thatcher’s crackdown on law and order and demonising the miners’ leader Arthur Scargill.

The cartoons are like a Bayeux tapestry telling the story of the year-long dispute which Jones brings up to date with insights from his coverage of the strike as an industrial correspondent for BBC Radio 4.

This event is based on Jones’ book, The Art of Class War: Newspaper Cartoonists and the 1984-85 Miners’ Strike, which was published earlier this year.

Cartoons of Class War: Newspaper cartoonists and the 1984-85 Miners’ Strike, at the Cartoon Museum, 63 Wells Street, Fitzrovia, London W1A 3AE, 6.30pm, 13 November 2025. Tickets available in advance here.

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