Still the Enemy Within (2014) User Reviews

"Look for me under the Lode and inside the Vein"

[zjoe90 · 9/10 · 13 November 2014]

A vital documentary for these desperate times in our mixed up country.

"Still the Enemy Within" is not for the faint hearted as it may have you snarling at the screen with anger, but it's a well made and timely piece with a core rightly centred around the men and woman who were at the centre of the 1984 strikes - predominantly the miners themselves.

Owen Gower lets period Footage, news bulletins, articles and music provide the backdrop to his documentary, but always in the foreground are a group of people who tell the story of the virtual destruction of Britain's Trade Unions. (which is effectively what happened after the Miners lost their battle) It's tempting to call these protagonists "characters" as Norman Strike (his real name!) in particular has a way with words and some killer one liners, but this would be a patronising and unfair moniker.All the central people are eloquent in their conclusions and share strong opinions which help to give the film a strong sense of narrative.

As the piece begins we see battle lines being drawn between an antagonistic Tory government and a group who are rightly portrayed as a microcosm of the "workers" fight against monetarism, privatisation and ultimately the depletion of this countries manufacturing base. Sadly we hear how ultimately the Miners stood alone in this fight and I was left with a feeling of regret about what could have been had one or two key moments been different during the period.

Gower skilfully takes us through the "conflict" at a good pace with key moments being reflected on. Even though I knew the outcome like we all do, I still got false hope when the "nacods" ( National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers) appeared set to join the strike and improve the chances of success. Somehow Gower genuinely made me live out the cliché of being on the edge of my seat, so he's definitely doing something right.

As the film progressed I did wonder how he would handle the inevitable conclusions as this would seem anti-climatic after the hopes that had gone before. Ultimately, this is a documentary and therefore nothing is sugar coated. Even now it's depressing to watch the early faltering of the strike as dribs and drabs of workers return to work. Some lured in by the NCB's outrageous offers and others simply close to collapse as their families are torn apart. In relative terms it's a few short years after their return that the industry is ripped apart. Gutting.

I and many others in the theatre gasped at several moments of police violence and held back tears along with the men and women commenting on screen. It would be nice to hear the voices of some of the police and authority figures who were engaged in quelling the strike at times in almost "para military" fashion as the film tells us, but again this is not the point of the experience. I left the theatre deep in contemplation, admiration for those who persevered and anger. The statistic that 40% of our power still comes from coal and yet 80% of that coal comes from abroad ringing in my ears. Continuing to put paid to the governments lie that by the 1990's there was no future for British Coal.

I know I'll think about this film for some time with mixed emotions, but any film that gets you thinking has got to be a good one!

Whatever your political stand point and whatever you may feel about Coal and its place in power generation this is a vital film as I said before. It reminds us of the people behind the headlines and along with the recent fictional movie "Pride" (watch out for some specific links!)keeps a part of our history very much alive. I'm hoping we can all begin to stop seeing workers with grievances as "enemies" at all, let alone "Still the enemy within".

60 % // 40 % This is a powder puff piece for the unions but they were still 60% in the right

[fashinrashin · 7/10 · 17 April 2015]

I agree with another reviewer here, it would have been nice to get some other perspectives, especially the police, perhaps even the Coal Board members that worked in the strike years. Perhaps even members of Thatchers government that were involved in those 84/85 strike years. It also has to be said that the TUC did have to be reined in. The "Winter of discontent" of 1978 to 79 had all of us who lived through it, in a state of shock and disbelief. The unions seemed to run the country, it was this "winter" that augured in Thatcher. Essentially the unions invited Thatcher to break them up. Another point to all of this lost in the shuffle was Arthur Scargill was an idiot. He had many moments where an actual compromise could have been reached. But he chose to ignore common sense. The brilliance of Thatcher was to divide and conquer , was to go after the NUM , to use the media, with chilling effect. What came out of the whole affair was devastation, wholesale dismantling of communities , lives shattered. Britain was never the same. The one thing that is positive about the documentary and the history of unions is this. No matter what, workers can still organize, if the powers that be become tyrannical the workers can still collectivize and temper that tyranny.

If you can watch this documentary with an open mind, knowing that it's meant to make the miners look like saints and Thatcher look like a demon, then you'll enjoy it

[maclock · 5 February 2015]

This is a good documentary, no doubt about it, but remember that it's a completely uncritical retrospective on the 1984-1985 miners' strike in Britain, one which is unabashedly sympathetic to the coal miners alone. Did Margaret Thatcher smash the coal mines for ideological reasons? Most probably. Were the nationalised mine pits losing money the length and the breadth of the land? Most definitely. Had the people of Britain long tired of the extreme militancy of British union leadership, especially the kind of "leadership" served up by the likes of Arthur Scargill? Absolutely.

The 1970s left Britain hobbled, broke, and thought to be the washed-up sick man of Europe. Margaret Thatcher had to move quickly to bring it back to life. This meant that many things had to change, including the extreme stranglehold that unions had over day-to-day life in Britain and the ability they had to shut the place down. For better or worse, Lady Thatcher sorted that out. What you think of her depends on where you fall on the political spectrum.

To the left, Lady Thatcher remains a Devil-like character, whose memory should be retained only to caution the generations which came after her rule that she was an evil harridan in their eyes. To the right, Lady Thatcher remains a God-like character, whose pragmatism and ruthless strategising saved not only Britain, but, indeed, the entire Western world from itself. How you feel about Margaret Thatcher will colour to a certain degree how you feel about this film. If you're big into social justice, climate justice, or any of those left-wing causes du jour, then you'll absolutely love it. I'm not, but I enjoyed it because I recognised it for what it is: an attempt to depict these strikers, their union, and their movement as the closest thing to having saints walk amongst us since Christ and his twelve disciples walked throughout the Holy Land.

Am I the only one who found it completely unbelievable that the filmmakers responsible for this documentary made no mention of the economic chaos which union militancy and the status quo had put Britain in at that time? Am I the only one who is incredulous the filmmakers didn't mention that these once-private industries, nationalised for ideological reasons in the decades after World War II, were bleeding money and required massive state subsidies to keep running? The situation was untenable and Britain was being run into the ground. Let's be perfectly clear: many of the guys and gals featured in this documentary weren't saints; they were scroungers. But the ideological biases and/or the desires of the filmmakers to make these supposed justice warriors look like saints prevented them from being objective, so they completely omitted any mention of facts like these. All the same and despite being completely one-sided, this documentary is entertaining and it's worth watching. Just know that there is another side to this story and this whole mess wasn't as simple and straightforward a case as big bad government setting out to subjugate saintly miners. Recommended.