IT'S 1984 and Britain is at war with itself. Thatcher against Scargill - the epitome of a class struggle wound up in the devastating miners' strike. It was a war that neither side could afford to lose.
Award-winning author David Peace cleverly captures that year in the most original way. GB84 is a fictional work set inside the real events of the strike as they happened. And it is not a pleasant place to go.
Peace's pithy narrative follows four principal strands of the conflict, in the style of James Ellroy. It tracks the covert spoiling campaigns by the brutal Special Branch and Thatcher's "man on the ground" - "The Jew" - an arch manipulator with orders to crush the dispute.
Scargill's NUM, seen through the eyes of disillusioned chief executive, Terry Winters, is a house of corruption, incompetence and greed.
Most original are the first-person accounts of ordinary miners Martin and Peter. Their stories of struggle and violence are presented as newspaper-type columns which break off every half-dozen pages. Although hard to follow and easy to skip, it is here, above all, where Peace captures the real essence of the conflict.
Updated: 08:48 Wednesday, March 10, 2004
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