Talk in Wakefield will look back at how the miners' strike was covered in political cartoons

Former BBC journalist Nicholas Jones, who covered the strike at the time, will explain the ways that the cartoons brought the feelings of the nation to life during the industrial dispute.

The talk marks 40 years since the strike.

Mr Jones said: I used to take masses of newspaper cuttings – doing radio reporting means you only have one shot, one broadcast – and I always appreciated what the various correspondents on the newspapers and magazines were saying.

"I must have cut out several hundred cartoons and it was looking through my archive again – many of the files not opened for 40 years – that I realised how graphic the cartoons were – there are real dynamics behind a cartoon, the image and caption, and they are there in your face like the social media of today.

“The cartoonist was capturing something that couldn’t be captured on TV.

“TV was only a shadow of what it is today and we didn't have camera phones so the cartoonists were filling a big gap. Now everything would be captured on mobile phones.

He said that national newspapers would sometimes have two or three cartoons a day in different editions.

“Occasionally a cartoon caught the mood of the nation, having a greater effect than a press report or photograph,” he said.

He added: “Seeing the dispute again through the eyes of cartoonists from left to right, through their visions of heroes and villains, police brutality, working class solidarity and the growing despair of men starved back to work, was a brutal reminder of an unfolding and unyielding polarisation between the state and the mining communities.

"No cartoonist could have asked for more – a cast of larger-than-life characters in a fight to the death.

"There were plenty of opportunities to poke fun at the leading protagonists, but the overarching challenge was to keep pace with the anger and disarray that erupted during a dispute from which there seemed no way out.”

The event will take place Wednesday, May 8 at the Kingswood Suite in Wakefield Town Hall at 7.30pm.