The Miners' Strike was organised by Arthur Scargill of the National Union of Mineworkers. Scargill did not get along with the leaders of the TUC, the federation of trade unions, and so did not ask for their support.

For their part, the TUC neither recognised nor criticised the strike. Consequently, trade unions across the country offered different responses to the strike. Perhaps it would have been more successful if it had been better supported.

During the 80s, the police were seen as politically partisan. During the miners' strike, there were often violent clashes between striking miners and the police. The most prominent of these was the “Battle of Orgreave”, in which police allegedly set dogs upon protestors and faked arrest reports.

The bootboys were the antithesis of hippies: short-haired, violent, and racist.

They weren’t anti-union – they didn’t have any complex political beliefs at all – but Thatcher’s strident anti-immigration rhetoric was an attempt to win their support and votes.

However, Thatcher couldn’t been seen to endorse violence, so she clamped down on the bootboys' football holiganism. This has led to ordinary football fans being treated with suspicion and paranoia, and ultimately the biggest scandal of Thatcher’s career – the cover-up surrounding the Hillsborough disaster, in which 96 Liverpool fans died. Thatcher’s government tried to blame the fans, even though her policies and the actions of the police were to blame.

Thatcher was probably the most controversial Prime Minister of the 20th century. Although she lead the Conservative Party to three victories in General Elections, high levels of unemployment were blamed on her economic policies, which included closing or privatising many state-owned businesses. Thatcher is particularly reviled in working-class communities which depended on heavily-subsidised industries, such as Easington.

Thatcher eventually died of a stroke on the 8th of April 2013. This caused parties to break out across the UK.

The film version of Billy Elliot was set in the fictional County Durham town of Everington, but predominantly filmed in Easington. The stage version is explicitly set in the real place.

Easington was a mining town. In 1984, Britain’s mining industry was in decline. Easington was one of the last pits left. When it finally closed in 1993, over a thousand jobs were lost – a huge blow to a small town.