This collection was created by Margaret Kahn, a political science graduate student from the University of California, Berkeley. Kahn traveled to Great Britain to conduct research into coal miners' unions for her doctorate thesis on labor relations. While there, she witnessed and documented the coal miners' Great Strike of 1984/1985. The collection consists of Kahn's research notes and writings, along with books, papers, reports, pamphlets, and ephemera produced by unions, interest groups, companies, and government bodies. Subjects covered include the 1984/85 strike as well as broader contemporary conflicts over labor, energy, and governance in the UK.
The collection is sorted into eight series based largely on format.
The correspondence series consists of a handful of letters sent to Kahn directly, as well as a small collection of letters sent between other correspondents that Kahn collected as part of her research.
In the manuscripts series is the typescript for Kahn's unpublished biography of Arthur Scargill, the president of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) during the Great Strike.
The research notes series represents Kahn's original research. Kahn tended to create ordered compilations of annotated primary and secondary source documents interwoven with pages of her own handwritten notes. The interviews subseries features notes focused primarily on Kahn's interviews; however, additional interview notes are scattered throughout the other subseries. The alphabetical research notes are a portion of Kahn's research that she labeled by subject and alphabetized herself. At the end of the series are eight folders of unlabeled notes covering a variety of subjects.
The research documents series consists of mostly unpublished, unannotated papers that Kahn collected.
The subject files series are folders sorted alphabetically by Kahn's original titles and then grouped into broader subject categories. This series was left untouched during reprocessing due to uncertainty about the extent to which it represented Kahn's original order. Thus, there is some overlap between papers in this series and others, particularly the research documents series.
Publications are books, booklets, and other softbound publications Kahn accumulated. They have been grouped by their primary publisher, then sorted into subseries according to the sectors or interests they represent. While a good deal of materials concern the 1984 strike, they also cover related contemporary events in the UK, including the closure of collieries, the privatization of the energy sector, and the rise of Thatcherism.
Newspapers and clippings are newspapers, journals, and news clippings compilations (created by Kahn) that document the progress of the Strike, various strike topics, and issues regarding the British Press and the Strike.
Finally, the ephemera series consists of six folders of leaflets, brochures, flyers, order forms, and stickers related to coal mining, trade unionism, and political organizing.
