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A free public event hosted by Durham University History Department.

Although the Miners’ Strike took place nearly forty years ago, the families and communities that experienced it in County Durham still have vivid memories of that year and have had to wrestle in their lives with the destruction of an industry.

This event features historian Robert Gildea, who is writing an oral history of the strike, in conversation with one of the families he interviewed. David Wray was an electrician at Sacriston during the strike. He and his wife Dorothy ran a soup kitchen in Leadgate and their daughter Sam, a teenager at the time, enjoyed the visits of musicians who helped to raise funds for striking families. They will be joined by Sam’s daughter, Caitlin, now a student at Newcastle University, who speaks for a third generation that has been shaped by the strike.

Following a conversation with the family the floor with be open to members of the audience who would like to share their own memories of the strike and its legacy.

Robert Gildea is Professor Emeritus of Modern History at the University of Oxford. His most recent book is Empires of the Mind: The Colonial Past and the Politics of the Present (2019), and he has published many books on modern European and transnational history, especially on the Second World War and Europe’s 1968. His work has been awarded the Wolfson Prize for History.

With thanks to Tom Hamilton, Associate Professor, History Department, Durham University.