This year marks the 40th Anniversary of the miners’ strike. There has a been substantial coverage of this seminal event in post-war British history in the publication of new books and articles, documentary films and academic conferences. This presentation makes an intervention into the complexity of the origins and development of the strike through drawing on the testimony of 96 former miners that were interviewed in recent years. Case studies of pits in North Wales and Lancashire provide crucial insights into the politics of the dispute, divisions in the National Coal Board and the National Union of Mineworkers, and the ways in which the strike continues to impact on commemoration and heritage in post-coal communities.