The Yate & District Labour History Group`s approach to the year-long strike of the National Union of Mineworkers has three points of articulation. The first is Yate & District Heritage Centre`s history of mining in the Yate area. The second is the ÒReaders` LettersÓ pages of the Dursley Gazette, where payment for provision of policing the strike was the chief topic. The third topic is the activities of the Conservative Party`s elite`s discussion of future tactics following the Heath government`s defeat by the miners in 1974. The dialectical systems theory used provides the framework holding the research together.
The author was an apprenticed and operative plumber, later becoming a plumbing lecturer at Oxford College of Art, Technology and Commerce, before making the shift to sociology in the late 1960s. He then became a lecturer in sociology at Filton College, Bristol. He has been a Labour Party member since the 1970s.