Before I go on to say what a fabulous piece of work this is, I must stress one criticism. I felt Milne went into perhaps too much detail about what happened to 'this million' or 'that million' with reference to where Scargill and Heathfield hid the NUM's donations. Although interesting, I would like to also have seen Arthur himself give a closer look at his own perspective of events surrounding the strike. I feel this would ultimately have been more revealing about the nature of the whole smear campaign than so much time and print being spent on the detail.

What double dealing and hypocrisy from everyone from the Soviets to Kinnock though! I'm sure I feel more angry at the likes of Ron Todd (not mentioned much actually) Neil Kinnock and the whole TUC and Labour Party than I ever will about Thatcher and her despicable (but at least openly hostile)cronies.

Anyway, I was moved by the miners' story. I am ashamed on behalf of all the British people who voted for, and kept voting for, Thatcher.

I am only sad that a movie has not been made based on this book. It's nail-biting stuff reminiscent of Forsyth so why is there so little literature and film on what happened? Where's Ken Loach? Come on Ken, get a film made of it all!

Great piece of work Seamas!

I'd like to begin with a disclaimer: I broadly share the politics of the author and I'm sure this influenced my rating. ...I would have preferred much MORE detail, ...In particular, I think it is regrettable that there is no appendix which gives verbatim extended extracts of the original Mirror and Cook reports to which the book is a rebuttal. (To be fair, this might not be the fault of the author -- it's possible that copyright considerations prevented the inclusion of such material. However, even if this is so, he should have mentioned it in the preface or acknowledgements.) I was somewhat put off by the author's unstinting admiration for Arthur Scargill. Yes, he has suffered a lot, and I'm sympathetic, too. But surely many of his unpopular stances (such as his adamant refusal to condemn any picket-line violence) could have been subjected to greater scrutiny. Despite these critical comments, I believe that this book is essential reading since it is a case study which constitutes a critical contribution to a much under-explored topic -- mainstream media coverage of the Industrial Left. I was also very impressed by the long list of works which Milne referred to. This gave me the impression that Milne had a great deal of background information to work with, and further motivated me to consult these other works.