On March 6th 1984 miners at Cortonwood Colliery in Yorkshire went on strike. Six days later, on March 12th, NUM President, Arthur Scargill, made the strike official across Britain. And so began the UK’s biggest strike since the General Strike of 1926. It ran for almost a year until March 1985 - a year of bitter conflict between the miners and Margaret Thatcher and her government and marked the end of the mining era in Britain. Kerstgens’ friends and contacts enabled him access to much that was closed off to the press and when he later moved on to Yorkshire he lived with the family of a striking miner whose wife, Marsha Marshall, was one of the leading lights of Woman Against Pit Closures (WAPC). He even met Arthur Scargill. The resultant photographs offer a powerful insight into what was a brutal strike that tore a rift through British society, entire mining communities, and even individual families.