From a Rock to a Hard Place

By the end of the notorious 1984/85 miners' strike many wanted to forget their painful experiences. Many years on people are ready to look back and talk about what happened in Britain during this defining moment of industrial action. In this new and updated edition, Beverley Trounce, who worked in a pit village and whose father was a miner, delivers a candid account of this heroic struggle through the voices of people directly affected by the strike. Her research and contributions from ex-striking miners and activists cover the pickets, the collieries, the matter of simple survival through the extreme and grinding poverty of the time, the effects on the women and children involved and the wider community, as well as the aftermath and what its legacy means to people today. From a Rock to a Hard Place is a powerful and moving record of a divisive moment in history.

BEV TROUNCE is a qualified librarian and archivist. Her father was a miner. During the 1980s she worked in a coal-mining area in Nottinghamshire where she witnessed the hardships endured by miners. She helped to organise fund-raising events and the subject has always remained close to her heart. She lives in Sussex.