"In 1984 I spent twelve months photographing the miners' strike. The dispute started when the Conservative government announced the closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Yorkshire, the first of twenty pit closures with the loss of twenty thousand jobs. The National Union of Mineworkers responded by calling a national strike, and at its height a hundred and sixty-five thousand miners were out, supported by people from all over the world. In many communities miners' wives pushed the struggle forward, joining picket lines and arranging communal food kitchens. The state responded by putting more and more police into the coalfields. After fifty-one weeks a special delegate conference voted by ninety-eight to ninety-one to return to work."