THIS remarkable DVD commemorates the 30th anniversary of the end of the miners’ strike.

It’s packed with powerful testimonies from striking miners like Mick Appleyard from the 1,200-man Sharlston pit, closed in 1993 despite millions of pounds of investment in developing new faces.

He recalls that in the miners’ strike of 1974 the fight was to put food on the table. “It was a financial strike,” he says. “But in the 1984-5 strike we were fighting for our jobs and communities.”

Derbyshire miner John Dunn tells how his head was split open by a police truncheon and he was arrested while picketing, and there’s a gripping account of miners successfully blockading the Humber bridge.

Members of the Women Against Pit Closures movement speak of fundraising and opening soup kitchens to feed hungry miners and their families — and also of empowerment.

“There were 19 kitchens in Barnsley, and we raised £100 a week for each of them, every week except for two or three weeks,” one says.

Such solidarity is the dominant theme of the DVD, with one Yorkshire miner telling how six pickets went to Liverpool for a street collection.

“We were shouting: ‘Support the miners’,” he recalls. “I looked down and my tin was full. An unemployed bloke emptied his pockets into the tin, saying: ‘Your need is greater than mine’.”

Strikers tell of the emotive time at Christmas 1984, when the labour movement at home and abroad rallied around with support and one of them, John Dunn, says: “The French CGT sent lorryloads of food and toys.

“You got your head smashed in and it did not bother you. But the sight of a French teddy bear was very emotional.”

- To purchase a copy of With Banners Held High ring 07729 846-146 or send £12.50 (includes p&p) to Banners, CPBF, 23 Orford Road, Walthamstow, London E17 9NL. Cheques payable to CPBF. There’ll be a free showing of the DVD on Wednesday March 25 at Unity Works, Westgate, Wakefield, West Yorkshire at 7.30 pm. The event includes speakers, music and poetry.